Prisons: Suicides

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, as of 30 September 2023, there were 23,058 prison officers in bands 3 to 5. That is an important cohort, because those are the bands who have access to prisoners in the areas and respects of which the noble Lord has spoken. That is an increase of 1,441 officers on the previous year, which amounts to an increase of 6.7% in the number of officers in that cohort in full employment.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, one-third of all prison suicides occur very early—within the first week in custody. Research shows that isolation from relationships or a breakdown in communication can play a decisive role. Prison receptions can be very chaotic places and it can take days, rather than hours, to establish contact with family members, who are also very worried. What are the Government doing to improve care when people arrive in prison and, in particular, to ensure that early contact with families is made?

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that question and for the informal discussion we had prior to Questions today. We know that the risk of suicide can be higher when prisoners are on remand and in the early days of their sentence, when the experience of prison is new and shocking, or for that matter when they have been recalled to custody. We have digitally streamlined the reception processes to flag risk information earlier, in the manner I was describing earlier to the noble Lord.

We are promoting supportive conversations between staff and prisoners. All incoming prisoners are interviewed in reception areas to assess their risk of self-harm. There is a risk identification toolkit—a training measure for officers—which helps staff assess risk effectively and provides appropriate support to manage identified risk. We are rolling out a peer support project—this is the sort of work I was discussing with the noble Lord earlier—where prisoners mentor one another, thereby, most importantly, inculcating supportiveness and strengthening and encouraging self-worth.

Divorce

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, Resolution urges early support for separating couples to mitigate the pain of divorce and consequential mental ill health they and their children very frequently experience. The Lord Chancellor committed to join up government family support to mitigate the pain of no-fault divorce. Family hubs, as recommended by Justice Cobb’s Family Solutions Group, are firmly on the Department for Education’s agenda, but how will the Ministry of Justice ensure support for separating families?

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con) [V]]

My Lords, the noble Lord is correct to identify the family hubs as a principal part of the Government’s intention to join up government family support as part of the backdrop to implementing no-fault divorce. Ministers and officials from the Ministry of Justice are working closely with their counterparts in the Department for Education and a number of other government departments to share a cross-government agenda for strengthening families. Family hubs are a vital element of this agenda, and work is continuing to further develop the family hub model to ensure that they improve outcomes for children and families with children. This will include those at risk of separating or who have separated, equipping them with the skills to manage issues and decisions independently and effectively so that they do not need to rely on family courts. In addition, and as previously stated in this House, the Government will use the opportunity of revising the online divorce application process to improve the signposting of relevant support services.

Royal Commission on Criminal Justice

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, we have previously announced increases in the provision for police numbers. With regard to the royal commission, the terms of reference have not yet been finalised; I am therefore not in a position to confirm the precise terms.

[Lord Farmer (Con) [V]]

My Lords, will the royal commission take into account the importance of strengthening offenders’ family and other relationships to further the aim of reducing reoffending and to prevent intergenerational crime?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

The matter to which my noble friend refers is one of considerable importance but I cannot say that it is an issue that will be embraced by the royal commission.

Covid-19: Prisons and Offender Rehabilitation

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Thursday 23rd April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord German, on initiating this important debate. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester has just mentioned, maintaining family and other relational ties is indispensable to prevent reoffending. Having people to go straight for provides the all-important motivation to engage in other rehabilitation activities.

Therefore, while cancelling visits was necessary, I am relieved that mitigating this appears to be an overriding government priority, with 900 handsets provided for establishments without in-cell telephony. The Prison Service is also piloting video calls at six prisons. The rollout of virtual calls across the whole estate can and should be done at pace, because there have been various previous trials of video-calling technology on which the new pilots can build. As 60% of female prisoners have dependent children, their estate should be prioritised.

Learning from other government programmes, could the Prison Service not deploy an ongoing test-and-learn approach, rather than waiting for perfection? Safety and functioning can be constantly improved in the current crisis, when time is of the essence. Progress should then help to ensure widespread, business-as-usual use of the technology that we have all rapidly become very accustomed to using.

Obviously, public opinion can be antagonistic, but there has never been a better time for people to grasp that deprivation of liberty is the punishment for those in prison, not the disruption of family relationships or prohibited access to the means of communication that are becoming indispensable to most of us and re similarly vital to prisoners’ successful reintegration in mainstream society. Will the Minister update us on the progress being made in the provision of virtual visits? Also, how will suspension of prison visits be lifted? Will this happen across the board, or by establishment, dependent on infection rates? Finally, what is being done to ensure safer custody hotlines are working so that families can express fears about prisoners and receive a response? Thank you.

Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [HL]

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 17th March 2020 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Farmer]

2: Clause 1, page 1, leave out lines 9 to 15 and insert—
“(2) On an application for a divorce order the court must inquire, so far as it reasonably can, into—(a) the facts alleged by the applicant or applicants, and(b) if the application is by one party to the marriage only, any facts alleged by the respondent.(3) The court hearing an application for a divorce order must not hold that the marriage has broken down irretrievably unless the applicant or applicants satisfy the court of one or more of the facts described in subsection (3A), in which case it must make a divorce order.(3A) The facts referred to in subsection (3) are— (a) if the application is by both parties to the marriage, that the applicants have lived apart for a continuous period of at least one year immediately preceding the making of the application;(b) if the application is by one party to the marriage only—(i) that the respondent has behaved in such a way that the applicant cannot reasonably be expected to live with the respondent, including where the respondent has committed adultery;(ii) that the applicant and the respondent have lived apart for a continuous period of at least two years immediately preceding the making of the application;(iii) that the respondent has deserted the applicant for a continuous period of at least two years immediately preceding the making of the application.”

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak also to the other amendments in this group. It is not at all the norm for me to table amendments that appear to strike at the heart of what the Government, on whose Benches I sit, are trying to achieve. It is not something that I relish in any way. However, I feel compelled to keep challenging the introduction of no-fault divorce in this country. This is, in fact, because I support the two key principles set out in the original consultation paper and do not believe that removing the ability to cite fault fulfils them.

Those principles are, first, that the decision to divorce continues to be a considered one, giving spouses the opportunity to change course, and, secondly, that spouses are not put through legal requirements that do not serve their or the state’s interests and can lead to ongoing conflict and poor outcomes for children.

I realise that the various Front-Bench justice spokespersons, many of whom are lawyers, are for this Bill. However, I have become aware that many Back-Benchers and even some Front-Benchers are not truly cognisant of its contents and implications. I have a great respect for the legal profession but it is deliberate and appropriate that this House welcomes and appreciates those from different backgrounds who can provide a wider view.

The purpose of all my amendments—2, 5A, 6A, which supersedes Amendment 6, and 7, 8, 9, 11 and 12—is to retain the good things in this Bill and reject the bad. I am referring to those elements which I do not think will serve the best interests of families in our country. They aim better to fulfil the laudable principles with which the Government embarked on divorce reform. My amendments will retain the option for both parties in the marriage or civil partnership to make a joint application for a divorce, judicial separation or dissolution. They will also retain the minimum time period before which a divorce or dissolution cannot be granted. I heard what my noble and learned friend Lord Keen said about many fault-based divorces taking less time than the six months currently proposed.

My amendments would also retain the ability in the current law to cite fault to obtain a divorce or dissolution and to contest a divorce. I know that this happens rarely and that only 2% of respondents state intention to defend, with fewer than half of these going through the formal process. I also know that the number contesting may be less than 1,000 every year and that many are resisting the particulars of unreasonable behaviour and other fault-based facts. However, some will be trying to keep their marriage vows alive by resisting being unilaterally divorced.

At least the current law enables them to mount that defence. The removal of this facility ushers in, de jure, unilateral divorce with the full approval of the state. This is justified on the dubious grounds that we already have unilateral divorce de facto. This is where a reluctant respondent, who might have much preferred to attempt reconciliation, is more or less forced to accept that their marriage is over when fault facts of dubious veracity are used to establish the ground for divorce. Would it not be better to curtail the motivation and ability of people to do this through the minimum time limits proposed in the Bill and by significantly reducing the separation periods with and without consent so that they more closely resemble the Scottish system? That is what my amendments would also achieve.

A couple could jointly apply after one year’s separation. There would then be another six months to run, during which time, one hopes, much progress could be made on real areas of conflict—finances and children. A sole applicant could apply after just two years’ separation. In 2015-16, only 6% of divorces in Scotland were fault based because of these other remedies.

I have already alluded to the support of noble and learned Members of this House for the more draconian measures proposed in the Bill, so I know what I am up against, and I have very rarely experienced in this House an argument that has changed people’s minds. I still want to take the time to explain why I believe that these amendments will more adequately fulfil the Government’s stated principles.

On the first principle—

“that the decision to divorce continues to be a considered one, giving spouses the opportunity to change course”—

how does a sole application leading to a divorce after a 20-week reflection period, plus six weeks, achieve this? Leaving aside the important issue of both parties having the full extent of that period, I simply ask noble Lords whether no-fault divorce really does allow for reflection.

If fault is discarded, people can simply go online, late at night, after what may have been a rather trivial or resolvable argument—or possibly too many drinks—and apply within minutes. The irretrievable breakdown of the marriage would, in effect, be proven by the impetuous completion of that form. As one mediator writing on the Family Law website expressed it:

“Our culture has changed, and we must be alive to the unalterable fact that our online world can eliminate vital processing and reflection time.”


To those who argue that online completion allows that already anyway, I say this. The need to cite a fault fact will in itself be a moment of pause, even a deterrent, for many who might be all too well aware when they are doing so that their spouse could counter-accuse them of far worse.

I have also been told that it is patronising to suggest that those who come through the door, particularly of our top lawyers, to arrange a divorce are not doing it with very careful consideration. For this cohort, I am in complete agreement that this move will have been well thought through, not least as there is often so much money and property at stake. However, there will be many who think that they have far less to lose, and who may have given the issue far less thought.

Again, I am aware of Professor Janet Walker’s research, cited by the Nuffield Foundation’s Finding Fault? report, in defence of the argument that divorce is rarely initiated lightly. The report states that the research showed that the decision to divorce is not taken lightly or impetuously. Indeed, it is a typically protracted decision, based on months, if not years, of painful and difficult consideration. However, once that decision has been reached, the parties need to move forward without lengthy delays. Professor Walker’s study was a valuable analysis of provisions made in Part 2 of the Family Law Act, which was repealed. She followed thousands of people who took part in the pilots of the information meetings that would have become mandatory once the Act was brought into force. These, however, were volunteers, who had actively put themselves forward, not only to attend the meetings but to take part in research. So, despite my sincere respect for Professor Walker, I am not at all convinced that her subjects can be treated as representative of the overall divorcing population, including in terms of the level of consideration they had given to the decision to divorce.

On the second principle—that spouses

“are not put through legal requirements which do not serve their or the state’s interests and which can lead to ongoing conflict and poorer outcomes for children”—

this Bill falls very far short. I agree that the current system could be improved, but if the proposed reforms were enacted, respondents would be defenceless, in every sense of the word, and many of these are already the more vulnerable party, in financial and other ways. How are their interests served?

The assumption in debates during the passage of this Bill, as we have heard again today from the noble and learned Baroness, appears to have been that the abuser is often the respondent—but the abuser might also be the applicant. This law might penalise many more women than men, given that women are 12% worse off financially after divorce, while men are more than 30% better off.

How are the state’s interests served by this bad law, which cheapens the commitment of marriage? I have already cited research that shows that unilateral divorce leads to fewer marriages, fewer remarriages and more cohabitation, precisely because it makes marriage more like cohabitation. Does the state really want the greater instability that more cohabitation will bring, and higher numbers of children growing up without both parents? How is conflict significantly reduced when most of it is either prior to the divorce procedure or separate from it, at the stages when issues of money and children are being resolved?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Farmer]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who contributed to the debate on my amendments. They backed up my argument that opinions do not change much in this House when you put forward a case. I thank the Minister for the commitments he just made.

It was said that these amendments go back to the dark ages. In a way, what I was saying when I spoke to them was that they line up very well with what is going on in Scotland, which seems to work very well. In Scotland, there are reduced time periods of one year and two years instead of two years and five years. I am not suggesting that we go back to 1973. The Minister also defended the Finding Fault? review from my criticisms. The process of peer review should be ruthlessly rigorous. It should involve at least two academics reading an anonymised script and aim to be as objective as possible. Other Nuffield Foundation research has been turned into peer-reviewed journal articles. I can give my noble friend at least one example: “Reforming family law—the case of cohabitation: ‘things may not work out as you expect’”, by Jo Miles, Fran Wasoff and Enid Mordaunt.

Ms Miles is on record as saying:

“Divorce law has not got anything to contribute; it is changes in society”


which have led to increased divorce. She is entitled to her opinion, but that is a contested view. The Nuffield Foundation did not ask someone with a different view who could have provided a profound challenge to its assumptions, methodology et cetera, but someone who was of the view that this legal change would not have an adverse effect on society. Unsurprisingly, the research assumes that divorce rates will be unaffected by the law. I just mention that in reply to the Minister.

In any event, I must join my noble friend Lord McColl in waiting to hear what the elected Members of the other place make of this. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, in response to my amendment on children in Committee, the Minister said:

“Divorce, at least in terms of the legal process, is of limited duration”.—[Official Report, 3/3/20; col. 549.]


It may be seen in those terms by parents but I suggest to the Minister that that is not the case for children. He also suggested that I should review the family test for the Bill in response to the research evidence that I presented in Committee. I have done so and it seems largely to focus on reducing conflict between parents. The document refers to one specific study, which is described as highlighting the fact that

“frequent, intense, poorly resolved and child related interparental conflict adversely affects long-term emotional, behavioural, social, academic development, and future intergenerational/interpersonal relationship behaviours for”

children and young people.

Much has been made in this House of the damage done to children by warring parents staying together—I think that message will have reached the public loud and clear—and I am sure that in those situations children are not surprised to find their parents choosing to divorce. However, I am concerned that both our parliamentary debate and general public discourse have been less informed of the fact that where there is no conflict between parents, divorce can be more harmful to their children than their staying together. Children can face a divorce that comes out of nowhere.

I quoted extensively in Committee from research that highlighted this issue. I hope the House will also allow me to summarise that again. First, of those who split up, low-conflict families tare in the majority—that is, 60% compared to 9% high-conflict couples. Secondly, a 12-year longitudinal study found that children in low-conflict families had higher levels of well-being if their parents stayed together than if they divorced. The noble Lord, Lord Browne, quoted social scientist Elizabeth Marquardt, who said:

“The children of low-conflict couples fare worse after divorce because the divorce marks their first exposure to a serious problem. One day, without much warning, their world just falls apart.”


Thirdly, it is the new reality that children find themselves in that brings them stress after parents with low conflict split up—possibly in a new home, a new school and a new relationship with both parents as one moves away and the other takes on more responsibility.

My amendment does not say that parents must not divorce. Rather, it would require the Secretary of State to

“publish a report on the impact of divorce or dissolution on children of a marriage or civil partnership ending when there is either no conflict or low conflict between the parties.”

So far the Government have chosen to adopt the rather un-nuanced approach that conflict is always bad for children and that minimising it to the greatest possible extent is always good. They have not demonstrated any willingness to engage with the research that suggests that, first, while of course conflict is generally negative, there are occasions when a lack of conflict can make things even worse for children; and, secondly, that in a low-conflict context the interests of the children are best served by the marriage continuing. In that context, it makes sense that the Government should do more to encourage couples to fight for their marriage, rather than say, “It’s an autonomous decision” and go out of their way to remove obstacles to its termination.

In this context, I am moving this amendment because I want to ask the Lord Chancellor to engage formally with this research. The family test is inadequate because it does not do so. This is a major problem. There is a strong argument for saying that, until such time as the Lord Chancellor has engaged with this research, this legislation should proceed no further. I beg to move.

[Lord Farmer]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 16. I have brought back this amendment on the need for an annual report on the impact of the Bill because I disagree with the Minister’s reasons for rejecting it in Committee.

As I said, we could have moved to a divorce system that more closely resembled that of Scotland, which has much to recommend it, given that it sees so few fault applications. However, the Government have chosen to undertake an uncharted course, to a system described as enabling possibly the fastest divorce in the world, certainly for recipients of an application. Therefore, it seems irresponsible not to keep very careful track of any changes in our divorce, dissolution and separation patterns which ensue from this very significant change, especially given the existing high rates of family breakdown in this country.

I mentioned in Committee that research on which the Government have relied to justify removing fault points to how this degrades the commitment of marriage. Professor Wolfers says that its benefits are reduced; therefore cohabitation, which is widely agreed to be a less stable relationship form, becomes more common. So this will, very likely, have a knock-on effect on the number of children who experience the breakdown of their parents’ relationship.

I disagree with the Minister that the requirement to report annually on the number of divorce applications, including by gender, is unnecessary, given that the data is already publicly available and published in the Family Court Statistics Quarterly. The point of reporting is to be accountable for changes in that data and to draw Parliament’s attention to it. If the Government are not convinced that the Act will have a detrimental effect on any of these patterns, they should have no qualms about reporting on it.

I also disagree that it would be unduly onerous for the courts service to collect income data, or unduly intrusive for the applicants to supply it. The collection of income data is easily achieved by including this in standard demographic data income bands, the completion of which would of course be voluntary. We are constantly told that data collection is important to the Government, to help understand why people make choices, and to help make forecasts for the future. Understanding how different income brackets are affected by a policy is therefore not unusual or shocking. It makes no sense to me that in this area the Government are so coy about asking people to give them this information.

In conclusion, there is an inconsistency in the Government’s approach to informing themselves when it comes to tracking the effects of this Bill, despite the heavy social costs of relationship failure and the ramifications across the whole of government. I encourage the Minister to see the constructive point of this amendment in helping the future outworking of this law.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 17 in my name. It seeks to address some confusion that emerged during debate in Committee. I will not press this amendment to a vote but I hope that, as a result of this debate, we may gain greater clarity about the place for reconciliation during the divorce process.

We have heard very mixed messages from the Government on their commitment to reconciliation in the divorce process. On the one hand, there have been repeated statements of interest in promoting it. I have found no fewer than 30 occasions where the Government have said that promoting reconciliation during divorce is part of the policy intention behind these reforms.

I would like to highlight a few of these statements. The initial consultation document from September 2018 stated:

“The reformed law should have two objectives: to make sure that the decision to divorce continues to be a considered one, and that spouses have an opportunity to change course”.


The Government’s response to the consultation in April last year stated:

“Sometimes, a marriage will still be reparable at the point at which one spouse seeks the divorce … But the law can—and should—have a role in providing couples with an opportunity to reflect on that momentous decision and to pull back from the brink if they decide that reconciliation is achievable.”


At Second Reading of the Bill in the other place in June last year, the then Justice Minister stated:

“The Government believe that the need to confirm to the court that it may make the conditional order, and to apply to the court for the final order, means that a divorce or dissolution is never automatic and that the decision to divorce is a considered one, with opportunities for a change of heart right up to the last moment.”—[Official Report, Commons, 25/6/19; col. 580.]


This is consistent with the family impact test assessment, which suggests that one of the strengths of the new system is the increased scope that it will provide for reconciliation. It states:

“The current law works against reconciliation by incentivising (in order to get a divorce more quickly) a spouse to make allegations about the other spouse’s conduct which can create conflict … The current law also offers little opportunity for reflection and conciliation, as the initial decree of divorce can come only a matter of weeks after the divorce proceedings have started.”


It then says that the Government want to exploit the new opportunities for reconciliation under a no-fault system, saying:

“We want to create conditions for couples and parents to reconcile if they can”.


Yet despite these repeated statements in support of reconciliation, and the suggestion that the scope of reconciliation will be enhanced in the no-fault system, there is little or no evidence of a political will to exploit this. On the contrary, there have instead been contradictory statements that reconciliation is not possible once the divorce process has started. I was concerned that, in response to my amendment in Committee, the Minister replied:

“The noble Lord expressed concern, as did others, that the Government’s statistics give the impression that a significant number of divorce petitions never reach decree absolute. There is, however, no evidence that these represent cases of reconciliation.”—[Official Report, 3/3/20; col. 537.]


Later in the proceedings, he said:

“I understand the desire of noble Lords to see that the marriage relationship can be supported, but it has to be supported at the right time. That is not at the point of an application for divorce on the grounds of irretrievable breakdown, which is why we do not consider that the Bill is the right vehicle for tackling the wider issues that lead to relationship breakdown.”—[Official Report, 3/3/20; col. 565.]


There seems to be some conflict between these two sets of statements, so I am probing the Government’s intention. If one believes that reconciliation, once divorce begins, is so unlikely that it makes no sense to prioritise it, then the statements in the consultation, consultation response, press releases, family impact assessment and at previous readings of this Bill all seem misplaced.

Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [HL]

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Lords Chamber

My basic position is that the Bill is perhaps not the right place for consideration of this issue. It has to happen long before. However, I would support an amendment on Report that focused on the need to fund support for effective parenting for divorcing couples. As many noble Lords have said, we know that divorces have terrible consequences for children. If parents can be helped as they go through divorce to be more responsible and careful, that would be a valuable step forward. If successful, such support could avert serious problems—mental health problems and others—for the children of divorced couples in the years ahead. However, I cannot support this amendment.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 21, which is grouped with Amendment 3. It is also about marriage counselling once the application for divorce has been made. My amendment requires the Government to offer relationship and marriage counselling before and during the divorce procedure.

Marriage is the specific relationship form being directly affected by the Bill so it should be the focus of additional support. Much weight has been put on the evidence from research at the University of Exeter funded by the Nuffield Foundation, Finding Fault? It describes itself as the first empirical study since the 1980s of how the divorce law in England and Wales is operating. It is a piece of grey literature—that is, it has not been peer reviewed. The Government very rarely act on single studies, especially those that have not been peer reviewed by academics from other universities, which often challenge the conclusions of whichever study it is. The reliance of the Government and noble Lords on this research is surprising, to say the least. In reality, it is one study with 81 interviews and an analysis of 300 divorces. There was a survey in which around half the participants were divorcees and the other half were nationally representative: 71% of them supported retaining fault, which was ignored. I put that at the beginning of what I am saying because, in the Government’s argument, an awful lot of weight is being put on this research.

In the early 2000s, there was a healthy marriage initiative in the United States. Many of the programmes were focused on unmarried couples. It taught them the basics of commitment and how to resolve conflict and brought many to a point where they perhaps knew enough to separate because they realised the relationship did not have a future, or where both partners felt able to make the formal commitment of marriage. I notice a right reverend Prelate is in his place. The Church of England and many other churches run good marriage preparation courses which go into gritty detail of the problems that marriages can present.

Much has been said about the need to avoid the complexity of the Family Law Act. My amendment does not reintroduce information meetings, but makes it more likely that a couple who see no alternative to divorce, perhaps because both sides of the family have been through it, will, by going through counselling, have their eyes opened to the possibility that times can get better if you stick together. It allows people to reflect on the possible implications of what they are doing. Wealthy people can often access divorce consultants who dispassionately lay out the implications of staying together or splitting up. Many people pull back when they have someone dispassionately explain to them, for example, what has been termed the indissolubility of parenthood—that their relationships with their children, which the vast majority are absolutely determined to maintain, will require them to have ongoing relations with their ex-spouse not only to ensure the smooth running of day-to-day contact arrangements, but to negotiate every future major family event.

Professor Janet Walker led the evaluations of the pilots following the passage of the Family Law Act 1996. She interviewed more than 6,000 people. She commented that funding for relationship services was identified as a necessary part of divorce reform during the passage of the Family Law Bill and remains necessary today. She goes on to say that knowledge and understanding of what works in supporting relationships at times of change, challenge and crisis has also grown, and it is apparent that early intervention to support relationships increases opportunities for relationship ruptures to be repaired and for partnerships to thrive and endure. Therefore, we need to be sure that the opportunity to seek support is provided when relationships begin to deteriorate as well as in the period after an application for divorce is made, when the focus is likely to be on helping couples to reduce conflict and to focus on the ways in which they will continue to parent in a life apart. Relationship support, she says, must be accessible, affordable and available when it is first needed and at any time when families are seeking to repair or manage difficult relationships. In a follow-up study, which involved over 1,500 people, she found that, two years on from divorce, many people wished they had been warned beforehand of the harsh realities of post-separation life. If they had been forewarned, they might have sought reconciliation. They now have to work harder than ever to get on with their ex, given the need to maintain harmonious arrangements around finances and children.

US researchers, in the early 2000s, found that people who are unhappy in their marriage are more likely to be happy five years later if they did not divorce than if they did. Two out of three who were unhappily married but avoided divorce ended up happily married after five years. The problem is that, in our society, it is still stigmatised to ask for help with one’s couple relationship. When he was on “Desert Island Discs”, the American ambassador to the UK, Matthew Barzun, was very up front about the ongoing relationship counselling he and his wife had to maintain a good status quo in their relationship. Let us hope he is an early adopter, but the broad culture is not there yet. Marriage support and counselling can create a context where the root of the conflict can be addressed and terminated, rather than the relationship itself.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, I support both amendments. I want to look at Amendment 21 first; it contains a reference to Section 22 of the Family Law Act 1996 and one of the provisions supported by Professor Walker in the passage that my noble friend quoted. I regard it as absolutely essential that the Government should support families in difficulties. There are plenty of reasons for difficulty in family relationships, perhaps more than there were. But in any case, whether that is so or not, there are still difficulties, and help in overcoming these is essential as early as possible. Amendment 21 deals with Section 22 and the need for counselling in relation to the later stage.

I also support the provisions in Amendment 3, which are a last resort. It is so important that people really consider what is happening and get what help they can before it happens. The idea that it is always too late is not quite right. Sometimes reconciliation can come quite late—and better late than never—which is what Amendment 3 supports. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, was Bishop of Oxford when the 1996 Act was considered and ultimately passed. I think it was he who put this amendment in form first. The Government fully supported it, as I do now. I also support its continuation, which is in the amendment.

There are some quite interesting amendments. Section 22 of the Act says:

“The Lord Chancellor may, with the approval of the Treasury”.


I am not sure why I had to put that text in the Bill, but it must have been part of the price I paid for getting that section into it, which remains law. The amount provided for it now has fallen. I would like to press on Her Majesty’s Government that one of the most important things for the present is that our family life is preserved and strengthened. I am sure that, as was said on earlier amendments, a good deal of difficulty has arisen from the failure to support family life in the way that the Government should. Therefore, I am very much in favour of Amendments 3 and 21.

Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [HL]

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, this amendment more than doubling the period before conditional order seems to be based on the proposition that the law obliging people to stay married for longer will either help children or encourage more reconciliations. In the debate on Amendment 2, speakers on all sides of the House demonstrated the fundamental commitment of us all to the welfare of children, who—as we all agree—suffer badly from family breakdown and its consequences. The noble and learned Lord spoke eloquently on that. For all the reasons given by many noble Lords in the earlier debate, I agree with those who have said there is no basis for saying that the children’s interests would be best served by denying or delaying divorce to one or both parties to a marriage who have determined on a divorce.

As for the second proposition, that keeping unwilling couples tied into a failed marriage for a longer period may lead to more reconciliations, the evidence is overwhelmingly to the contrary. The decision to divorce is a hard one, rarely taken lightly. Of course, changes of mind occur. Separated couples often get back together—sometimes successfully and sometimes not, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, pointed out earlier—but in every such case they make the decision to reconcile willingly, not because they are obliged by law to try to do so. In some cases, of course, divorced couples even remarry each other. Again, that step is open to couples after divorce and is dependent on free will, not obligation.

Once the decision to divorce has been made, forcing parties to stay married for longer than is necessary to confirm that decision serves no purpose. Enforced delay rarely leads to reconciliation. It extends the unhappiness and uncertainty. It infringes on the parties’ autonomy, preventing them making decisions for themselves, arranging their new personal lives and futures, making safe and secure arrangements for their children and organising their family finances. It also—most significantly, I suggest—extends the hostility between the parties, who are frequently embittered by divorce proceedings and whose embitterment starts to heal only when the divorce is finalised and they go about the business of joint but separate parenting or building new, separate lives. This Bill is all about reducing bitterness by removing fault from the actual process of divorce.

The Government have proposed a 20-week period—reflecting other jurisdictions, such as New York and Finland—as appropriate for the confirmation of the decision to divorce. No period will ever be perfect to the week, but my belief is that the 20-week period to a conditional order is about right and is supported by the evidence. I commend the Government for choosing it.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I have attached my name to Amendment 21 tabled by my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern. As he said, his original Family Law Act 1996 required this longer period, and explicitly stated that this enabled the children and the finances to be resolved. Importantly, this meant that someone was not free to remarry before these important responsibilities from the former marriage had been put to bed. To quote my noble and learned friend, at Second Reading on the Family Law Bill, he said:

“A very important requirement in the Bill is the requirement that parties decide all arrangements relating to their children, finance and home before a separation or divorce order can be made… In making this change the Government have been influenced by those who responded to their consultation paper who were of the view that parties who marry should discharge their obligations undertaken when they contracted their earlier marriage, and also their responsibilities which they undertook when they became parents, before they become free to remarry.” [Official Report, 30/11/95; col. 703.]


I am fully aware that the report Finding Fault? Divorce Law and Practice in England and Wales states that the average length of divorce proceedings is currently six months. A six-month minimum period would therefore mirror current practice. A longer period would be punitive for those who need to divorce quickly. This would include those experiencing domestic abuse, as we have heard, with 15% of Finding Fault? petitioners citing physical violence.

To this I say two things. First, it seems that when it suits the researchers, behaviour patterns are accurate, so when 15% cite domestic violence, what they say is accurate. Yet as I understand it, one of the main reasons for this no-fault divorce—for removing fault from divorce—is that in the majority of cases, the reason given is either false or inaccurate.

Secondly, in the consultation preceding the Bill before us, in response to the question: “What minimum period do you think would be most appropriate to reduce family conflict, and how should it be measured?”, 1,044 people—33% of the 3,128 responses—said a year. Only 297—9%—said six months.

In their response to the consultation, the Government said:

“Those opposed to reforms proposed a minimum period of one or two years, depending on whether the application was joint or sole, or on whether the couple had children.”


In other words, those opposing the reforms should be ignored, even though they were in the majority. Remember the bigger picture of the consultation: 83% wanted to retain the right for an individual to contest a divorce. Only 15% stated that this right should be removed. Also, some 80% did not agree with the proposal to replace the five facts with a notification process. A mere 17% were in favour. However, the Government also said:

“Those who selected nine months or longer felt that this would enable counselling or mediation and proper reflection to enable reconciliation where possible. In particular, those suggesting a year or more felt that this would more properly reflect the importance of both marriage and divorce as significant life decisions, particularly in cases involving children or where one party wishes to remain in the marriage.”


This Bill takes account only of the worst-case scenario—domestic violence—and deems the application for divorce to be a one-way street towards a final order.

The Bill should also take account of good things happening. The Government have said that they wish to make sure that couples have sufficient time to reflect on the decision to divorce and that that reflection period may result in them pulling back from the brink. I have heard noble Lords say today that when someone applies for a divorce because of irretrievable breakdown there is no going back, but we are introducing a new element into divorce proceedings based on the applicant saying that there is one-fault divorce. For example, a husband who is having an affair with someone in the office and his wife has no idea about it, knows that all he needs to do is write a letter to the court and say that the marriage has irretrievably broken down. The wife has not been advised and this comes as a bombshell to her. There could be many instances like this where, because of the new procedure, a unilateral request for a divorce is not recognised by both parties.

Many people initiate divorce early in the new year, which is also a popular time for booking one’s summer holidays six months hence. We all know that that six months goes extremely quickly and, before you know where you are, you are in June when it was January. Likewise, a divorce which gathers momentum and is all over at the end of six months will seem to come around very quickly, especially for the party who has been unilaterally divorced. Time for reflection and reconciliation will be squeezed out.

If the Government were to accept the amendment, I would expect it to extend to Clause 4 and to civil partnerships.

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Moved by

[Lord Farmer]

5: Clause 1, page 2, line 9, at end insert—
“( ) For the purposes of subsection (5), “the start of the proceedings” means—(a) in the case of an application that is to proceed as an application by both parties to the marriage, the date on which both parties apply for a divorce order, or(b) in the case of an application that is to proceed as an application by one party to the marriage only, the date when the notice of an application for a divorce order has been served to the other party to the marriage.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to address that, if the 20-week period begins as soon as the application is made, the respondent may have less than 20 weeks by the time they have been served notice.

[Lord Farmer]

I beg to move.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, I support this amendment on the basis that it is not right that the length of the notice should be determined solely by the applicant. The present definition of the start of the application is settled by the rules of court. It would be a good idea if the rules of court committee examined this matter because if it is willing to change the present rule to a rule that accommodates the need to make sure that the respondent has received some kind of notice, either as a deemed service or as an actual service, at the start of the proceedings, that would be satisfactory. It would also be satisfactory if it were left to the rules committee because who knows what difficulties might arise? Nobody can forecast every possibility. If it was with the rules committee it could make the necessary adjustment later without recourse to Parliament. It is good idea that the rules committee decides this question. I think that is the best answer to it.

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[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames]

My Lords, I rise to speak to the amendments standing in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Burt of Solihull. Amendments 8 and 9 concern applications for divorce orders, Amendments 11 to 13 concern applications for judicial separation orders, and Amendments 17 and 18 concern applications for dissolution orders in respect of civil partnerships. In speaking, I shall address the applications for divorce orders, but the others run in parallel.

Our amendments have one theme: the Bill starts the 20-week period leading to the conditional order with the start of proceedings. I see the point the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, makes that that is not technically defined, but on any ordinary construction—the construction intended by the drafters of the Bill—the start of the proceedings is the issue of the application.

Concern was expressed at Second Reading and publicly that, under the Bill as drafted, the respondent may not receive notice of the application for a conditional order—this the point the noble and learned Lord was making—before much or all of the 20-week period has passed. He or she may not, therefore, have had time to consider his or her position before the proceedings are effectively determined, so the respondent could find himself or herself subject to a conditional order before even knowing of the proceedings. To that concern, some supporters of the Bill—which I strongly support—respond that to start the 20-week period only on service of the proceedings would encourage, or at the very least enable, unco-operative respondents to evade service or to refrain from acknowledging service, and that would frustrate the proceedings. This concern was mentioned by the noble and learned Lord at Second Reading. Our probing amendments are designed to encourage a search for a compromise by requiring an applicant to serve his or her application for a divorce order quickly, with provision for that applicant to apply to dispense with service, or to apply for an order that service be deemed. Those provisions would involve an obligation to ensure that the applicant knows of the proceedings well before a conditional order is made and, at the same time, to prevent respondents from seeking to frustrate the proceedings by avoiding service or not responding to them.

We have suggested a time limit of six weeks for service by the applicant—of the application for an order or for an alternative order—dispensing with or deeming service. We recognise the concerns of some, including those of Professor Trinder from the University of Exeter—I completely endorse her views on every other aspect of the Bill—but it is difficult, at present, to secure an order dispensing with or deeming service within a six-week time limit. I agree with the noble and learned Lord that rule changes could be made to speed up those procedures. There is a possible concern, also mentioned by some, that “service” needs better definition for this Bill. Perhaps it does, but that can be achieved.

Neither I nor any other noble Lord who supports these amendments is dogmatic about the precise definitions or time limits. At Second Reading, the Minister indicated an openness to discussion on this issue. I am very grateful to him for the time he and his officials have given to the discussions we have had between Second Reading and Committee. I hope that discussions with and within the department will enable a compromise to be reached which will achieve an acceptable balance between applicants and respondents and between simplifying procedures and avoiding injustice. We hope to discuss these issues further, including any necessary rule changes to implement a compromise and the procedures needed to bring about or clarify those rule changes, before Report.

[Lord Farmer]

My Lords, I shall speak now to my Amendments 5 and 15, which includes civil partnerships. If the 20-week period begins as soon as the application is made, the respondent may have less than 20 weeks by the time they have been served notice. There is even the possibility that they may not hear about it until the end of the period. We can all imagine scenarios in which this could have very negative consequences for the respondent in a sole petition who may have been unaware that the marriage was in the dire straits that a divorce application suggests. It also gives the applicant the advantage. One hears of parental alienation syndrome, where one party can persuade the children to come round to their way of thinking. Also, when it comes to talking about and arranging the finances, one party can find that they have been hidden away.

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[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, as I believe I indicated previously, we accept that we should address the service issue in the context of the Bill. Therefore, I can advise the Committee that my right honourable and learned friend the Lord Chancellor raised this issue with the President of the Family Division last week. The Family Procedure Rule Committee will be invited to consider the matter when reviewing the rules required to implement the Bill, including a rule requiring service of the application within a specific period following the issue of proceedings.

The rule committee has a statutory duty to consider whether to consult on rule changes. I hope it will decide to do so in order that wider scrutiny can be given to any proposals for achieving timely service. I also hope that through the increasing use of an online divorce service many respondents will be served quickly and efficiently by email, as the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, suggested. However, I am clear that the provisions in the Bill will need to work for the many cases that, at least in the short term, will continue to be dealt with through paper applications to the court.

Amendments 5 and 15 seek to provide in the Bill different definitions for the start of proceedings in respect of joint and sole applications. For sole applications, the practical effect will be to define the starting point for the 20-week period as the date on which notice of the proceedings is served on the respondent party. However, that will create the potential for new disputes as to when notice is served or received. The only certain way to evidence this is through an acknowledgement of service, if one is returned by the respondent. Such an approach risks handing too much power to a respondent party who wishes to frustrate the divorce proceedings by avoiding or disputing service or delaying the entire process.

Resolution, the leading body in England and Wales, representing over 6,000 family justice professionals, has identified this as the greater mischief. Its concerns are underpinned by evidence. The noble Lord, Lord Marks, referred to the work of Professor Liz Trinder. In her study, she found that no acknowledgement of service was returned by the respondent in a sample number of cases representing 13.7% of the total. That was only a sample, but it would amount to about 14,000 cases annually if extrapolated nationally. In the majority of cases where there was no return in the sample, this appeared to reflect a decision of the respondent not to co-operate with the process, whether they were opposed to the divorce in principle or simply wanted to make the process difficult for the petitioner.

The amendment creates new potential for mischief from a respondent who is not co-operative. The Government are concerned to avoid introducing new opportunities into the revised legal process for divorce for a perpetrator of, for example, domestic abuse to exercise coercive or controlling behaviour. It is a question of achieving the right balance. We consider that the right way to achieve this is by working with the Family Procedure Rule Committee to address the issue.

I shall deal with the entirety of the group of amendments beginning with Amendment 8, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and consisting also of Amendments 9, 11, 12, 13, 17 and 18. I thank the noble Lord for his consideration of this issue and our discussion of it. Amendments 8, 11 and 17 would amend the Bill to insert a new delegated power into Section 1 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 and a new Section 37A into the Civil Partnership Act to enable the Lord Chancellor to make provision by order to set out a further minimum period within which a sole applicant must effect service of notice. Amendments 9, 13 and 18 would make that power subject to the negative resolution procedure and Amendment 12 would apply in judicial separation cases.

These amendments would add to the Bill further delegated powers that are simply not needed. We consider that the best way to achieve resolution of the service issue is to work with the Family Procedure Rule Committee to address the rules around service. The provisions of the Courts Act 2003 already provide a power for the Family Procedure Rule Committee to make rules of court regulating matters governing the practice and procedure to be followed in family proceedings, including the requirements for service. I am quite happy today to give a commitment that we will work with the Family Procedure Rule Committee to address these concerns over service. They already have the relevant statutory powers to address this. In these circumstances, understanding that these were put forward as probing amendments, I invite noble Lords not to press them.

[Lord Farmer]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanations. I am to some degree heartened by him wanting new advice to be gained from the rule committee. In this instance, we wish him well and hope we can come to a sound agreement. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 5 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Farmer]

7: Clause 1, page 2, line 19, at end insert—
“( ) In the case of an application that is to proceed as an application by one party to the marriage only, there shall be no commencement of financial provision proceedings until the end of the period of 20 weeks from the start of the proceedings for the divorce order unless—(a) the other party to the marriage agrees to the commencement of financial provision proceedings, or(b) there is an application under section 22 for the court to make an order for maintenance pending suit.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would ensure that there are no discussions about financial settlement for 20 weeks unless both parties agree or there is an application to the court for interim maintenance and financial injunctions.

[Lord Farmer]

My Lords, this amendment would ensure that there are no discussions about financial settlement for 20 weeks unless both parties agree, or unless there is an application to the court for interim maintenance and financial injunctions.

The 20-week period I refer to is dependent on the longer period argued for in Amendment 4, which was 46 weeks. If the minimum period is only 20 weeks before a conditional order is granted, a shorter legislation-free period would be appropriate. However, as I am arguing with my noble friend for a 46-week minimum period, waiting 20 weeks before even starting to sort out finances allows the genuine pause for reflection the Government say they are committed to.

There are already many divorces initiated which are not pursued to final order. That number might reduce considerably under a legislative framework that has no natural brake pedal. The Law Society supports the concept of a litigation-free period. I beg to move.

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 7. It would carve out a specific 12-week period at the beginning of the divorce process where no financial provision proceedings may take place. Of course, this would not include cases where both parties agree to commencement of such proceedings, or where there is an application for maintenance.

This is a vital amendment, as it would act in the interests of vulnerable respondents and improve the chances of reconciliation. It serves to recognise that the parties to a marriage might have very different perceptions of the marriage at the point when a divorce application is made. It may come out of the blue for one party—we have heard that referred to earlier. They will need time, and it is not helpful to be plunged into the heat of battle over finances. Financial provision proceedings are by nature contentious and would serve only to undermine the chances of meaningful conversation between spouses in the initial weeks. I believe that keeping the first 12 weeks free from litigation would increase the possibility of the parties being able to discuss their marriage without having to take up entrenched positions.

All couples should be given an opportunity, perhaps even be incentivised, to consider the ramifications of divorce carefully and work towards saving their marriage. Some divorcing couples do reconcile and most of those do so in the initial weeks of an application for divorce. This initial 12 weeks is a key period to try to save the marriage.

Ministers in the other place have said that once one party has asked for a divorce, inevitably—in 100% of cases—it means that the marriage is over. But they fail to mention the more than 10,000 divorce proceedings that are dropped each year, while this position is also counter to their own policy objective of making space for reconciliation. I know that we could argue all day about the reasons for that and whether some of them are attributable to cross-petitioning, but no one can deny that some people embark on a divorce and then change their mind because they reconcile with their spouse.

In evidence to a committee in the other place last year, David Hodson OBE, a distinguished family lawyer and spokesman for the Law Society, argued strongly for a 12-week litigation-free zone. He told the committee:

“We are very keen for there to be a period of reflection and consideration, which is what we had in the 1996 legislation in another form, to give an opportunity to pause, reflect, talk, maybe to have counselling, maybe in some cases to have reconciliation and maybe for one party to get up to speed with the other party. It is the constant experience of divorce lawyers that one party may have come to terms with the ending of a marriage before the other, so we are dealing with a very different emotional timetable. This three months will not be of any prejudice. If urgent applications have to be made for interim provision, that is fine. It will not affect children or domestic violence, which are always separate proceedings. It just is a litigation-free zone for three months.”—[Official Report, Commons, Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill Committee, 2/7/19; col. 9.]


Writing into divorce law the concept of a three-month litigation-free period will send a vital signal of hope to divorcing couples that perhaps they can work out their differences. It will give them the time and space to attempt to do so. Most of the debate on the Bill has focused on the barriers to divorce which couples face when their marriage has broken down, but not much time has been spent discussing how many couples reconcile and want to have a strong marriage.

I do not think I need to remind the Committee of the impact of family breakdown in the United Kingdom. We have one of the highest rates of family breakdown in the developed world. Surely this shocking fact places a duty upon us, as legislators, to do something to keep families together if possible. We all recognise that some marriages are unsavable but the Government should not focus on those alone. In addition, we must do all that we can to save marriages which are savable. They exist: why else would we have a proliferation of marriage counselling services? Does our own experience of marriage not tell us that, too? Many marriages go through rocky periods where the spouses, and their family and friends, fear that the writing is on the wall. But then conversations take place, apologies are offered and accepted, and changes are made to behaviour and circumstances—and a few years later, the couple are happier than ever. Let us do something for them, not just the ones where all hope is lost.

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[Lord Keen of Elie]

The matter of legal aid is not within the scope of the Bill, and it is not the present intention to address it.

[Lord Farmer]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions. I am saddened that mine was not welcomed more than it was, but at this stage I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 7 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Farmer]

19: After Clause 5, insert the following new Clause—
“Report on the impact on divorce applications and marriage support
(1) The Secretary of State must publish an annual report on the impact of this Act on divorce proceedings and marriage, with the first report to be published no later than 18 months after the day on which this section comes into force.(2) The report under subsection (1) must include, but is not limited to—(a) the number of divorce applications made under the provisions of this Act by the sex and income of the applicant and respondent;(b) the number of married couples or civil partners who seek relationship counselling during the divorce process, broken down by the demographics of the parties and geographic location;(c) the number of children in the relationships subject to the divorce applications; and (d) a statement on the support services and marriage counselling available to married couples or civil partners as an alternative to divorce proceedings under this Act.(3) The report under subsection (1) must be laid before each House of Parliament.”

[Lord Farmer]

My Lords, I am not at all convinced by the Government’s family test statement for the Bill, which says that there will be next to no long-term impact on divorce rates and that marriage will be unaffected. They again draw on Exeter University:

“Concerns that the removal of fault will undermine marriage and prevent reconciliation are not consistent with the research evidence or international experience.”


As I said at Second Reading, research relied on by the Ministry of Justice found that marriage rates reduce by about 3% to 4% following the introduction of no-fault divorce, and the likelihood of divorcees remarrying declines by around one-third to one-half. As Professor Justin Wolfers says,

“the benefits of marriage (tying your spouse to a contract) are reduced in a no-fault world.”

Less marriage will tend to mean more cohabitation, an inherently less stable relationship form. The whole of society is affected when the contract of marriage becomes devoid of meaning.

How will it impact divorce rates? Such reform leads to an immediate spike in the divorce rate that apparently dissipates over time. Let us be clear: that spike is made up of people, adults and children. If couples are struggling to persevere, the introduction of no-fault divorce undermines an important cultural underpinning of assumed permanence to marriage which could push such marginal couples into divorce. I am not, of course, arguing that couples should stay together if there is irresolvable violence, abuse or conflict. It is unsurprising if the numbers drop back, given that people are marrying less and that the divorce rate is calculated as a percentage of married couples.

Because of the many and varied ramifications of family breakdown which we have heard about this evening, which include education failure, poor mental health in children, increased pressure on housing stock, loneliness and fatherlessness, which can lead to gangs and county lines, the Government should commit to tracking the trends that follow this legislation. It is very important to do so. It is not enough that the Office for National Statistics collects the data. That is not the same thing as the data being laid before both Houses. The Government need to publish reports on family stability, as they committed to do when the Welfare Reform and Work Act was discussed in this House.

History has shown that we need to pin the Government down when it comes to tracing family stability. During the passage of the then Welfare Reform and Work Bill, the coalition Government promised to introduce a new duty to report on worklessness and educational attainment. They said that

“alongside these statutory measures we will develop a range of non-statutory indicators to measure progress against the other root causes of child poverty, which include but are not limited to family breakdown, addiction and problem debt. Anyone will be able to assess the Government’s progress here. The Government are saying, ‘Judge us on that progress’.”—[Official Report, 9/12/15; col. 1585.]

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[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, I begin with the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Farmer. The requirement sought within the amendment to report annually on the number of divorce applications is unnecessary, as this data is already publicly available and published in the Family Court Statistics Quarterly.

The amendment also seeks a requirement to gather data on the sex of applicants for divorce. This is also unnecessary, as official statistics already break down the number of divorces per year by the gender of the applicant. In addition, the amendment seeks a requirement to collect data on the income of applicants. However, such data would be unduly onerous for the courts service to collect and, more so, unduly intrusive for the applicants to supply.

The amendment also seeks a requirement to report on the number of divorcing couples who seek relationship counselling during the divorce process alongside relevant demographic information. Such information could not be provided without forcing divorcing couples to declare it, thus introducing an unnecessary burden at what is already a difficult time for them. The choice to seek such counselling during the divorce process would be a personal one for those involved.

In summary, as much of the information referenced in this amendment is already publicly available, the requirement to report on it would be unnecessary. As regards the other kinds of information referenced by the amendment, they would be not only onerous to collect but raise very real issues around what is appropriate from the point of view of demand placed upon applicants for the divorce process. I therefore respectfully invite the noble Lord to withdraw that amendment.

I turn to Amendment 19A. The noble Lord, Lord McColl of Dulwich, is persuaded that marriage brings many social benefits. The Government agree. However, if a marriage is broken down irretrievably, there is no virtue for the family involved or society at large in it continuing. This amendment would mandate an annual report to Parliament, which I presume the noble Lord, Lord McColl, intends to complement the data sought by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, in Amendment 19. However, it is not clear how the survey would operate or exactly what it would seek to demonstrate beyond, perhaps, interest in the married couple’s allowance.

Divorce is something in which society rightly takes an interest, but it is also a deeply personal and often distressing matter for the individuals involved. While I respect the courtesy of the noble Lord, Lord McColl, in proposing that participation in his survey would be voluntary and anonymous, the Government believe that such an invitation would be unnecessarily intrusive in any event. At worst, many of those questioned might feel that they were being asked to justify the state of the ending of the marriage, which strikes against the whole intention of the reform, for which it would appear to me that wide support has already been demonstrated in the House.

There is also an issue of the point at which the survey would be conducted. People’s perceptions of the divorce process will change between the time that they make an application and secure the divorce—or some time after, when they have gone through the process and been able to address it with the benefit of hindsight. The Government believe that this amendment would reintroduce an element of conflict into the divorce process. It would certainly be intrusive for those engaged in the divorce application. In these circumstances, we would not be prepared to accept it, so I invite the noble Lord not to press it.

[Lord Farmer]

My Lords, I am again saddened at the response from my noble friend the Minister. I may have misunderstood something but, to my knowledge, my amendment did not seek to find out any financial information. This report was to be put before Parliament so that it could respond to this Bill—the unilateral or no-fault divorce Bill—when it becomes law.

It is quite a big Bill on marriage to come through Parliament and become law. It is very important to me that Parliament can respond to the response to the Bill shown in marriages. How many people are getting divorced? Is it more? How many children are involved? What sort of support services are involved? Is there marriage counselling? There are all those things. It is important for both Houses of Parliament to look back and say, “Is this good? Is it working as we intended?” I am sure that my noble friend the Minister is right that this information is available here, there and everywhere. However, we want it brought back to us in one body related to this Bill.

Therefore, I am saddened at that response. Obviously, I will go no further on this occasion but this may come back on Report. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 19 withdrawn.

Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [HL]

Lord Farmer Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard)
Wednesday 5th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I join the noble and learned Lord in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Hunt of Bethnal Green, on a lucid, thoughtful and challenging maiden speech. I also welcome her to this House.

I am, uncharacteristically, in almost complete disagreement with the Government on the main measure of the Bill: the introduction of no-fault divorce. It is fundamentally flawed because it not only ignores the urgent need to strengthen families but weakens them. It is an inconvenient truth that, as we seek to make the United Kingdom match-fit for a competitive global market, we are a world leader when it comes to family breakdown. We have high rates of single parenthood, divorce and separation, and large numbers of children entering local authority care. Across the OECD, the average proportion of children growing up with both their parents is 84%. We are fourth from bottom on this metric, with a little over two-thirds of our children living in intact families, compared with Finland, for instance, where that figure is over 95%.

British adults brought up by one biological parent are two and a half times more likely than those brought up by both to be in trouble with the police or in prison. Similarly, the Newcastle study tracking more than 1,000 babies born in 1947 showed that a boy’s likelihood of conviction before his early 30s was doubled if he had experienced divorce or separation before the age of five. Broken and dysfunctional family lives drive so many of the social problems that this Government are grappling with, particularly knife and gang crime; county lines; mental ill health in children, young people and adults; educational underachievement; early pregnancy; drug and alcohol addiction; and poor productivity.

Father absence is having a terrible impact. Recently, Croydon looked at 60 children in deep trouble to identify and learn from any patterns in their experiences. Most startling was the scale of father absence. In more than two-thirds of homes, fathers had walked out; this was often the turning point in a child’s behaviour.

The Government were elected on a manifesto that explicitly recognised that a strong society requires strong families. This will have resonated with the electorate. The Onward pamphlet, The Politics of Belonging, emphasises:

“While Westminster and Whitehall are still locked into a paradigm that places the extension of liberty above all other ends of public policy, the public mood has changed … If the price of greater freedom is rootlessness and disconnection, voters no longer seem to think it is worth the cost.”


They prioritise

“not rugged individualism but resilient communities.”

Given the scale of our family breakdown challenge, we should be pressing ahead with our manifesto commitment to strengthen families by championing family hubs and improving the Troubled Families programme. Stabilising families has to be high on the agenda. The Croydon report concluded that if targeted support and a holistic family plan had been provided earlier, these children might have achieved better outcomes.

What was not in our manifesto is no-fault divorce. Allegedly, there is a lot of support for this Bill. Lawyers and judges will of course be in favour of sanitising the messiness of divorce. Picking through people’s private lives must be harrowing. Yet when the general public were asked recently, “Should fault continue to be one of the possible grounds for divorce?” 71% thought that it should. A very different YouGov survey question found that 69% did not agree with the statement, “People should be able to seek a divorce without having to show their spouse is at fault.” Such a response is not at all surprising as I suspect that most people are aware that it is already possible to divorce without showing fault. Yet the Ministry of Justice relied on this survey result when dismissing the strength of feeling in response to its own consultation where 83% wanted to retain the right for an individual to contest a divorce. Only 15% stated that this right should be removed. Some 80% did not agree with the proposal to replace the five facts with a notification process, while a mere 17% were in favour.

The Government decided that certain, perhaps religiously motivated, interest groups had responded negatively in response to a campaign and should therefore be ignored, yet it was a campaign by lawyers and the Times that launched this Bill in the first place. The elites must be heard but not the “ordinary people”, who are deeply affected. Does that sound familiar? It is hardly meaningful consultation.

I understand that the fault cited may bear no resemblance to the reason the marriage faltered, but the removal of fault sends a very strong signal that marriage can be unilaterally exited with no available recourse for the party who has been left. Commitment within marriage will become illusory and unreliable. The Government’s plans create de jure unilateral divorce on the grounds that we already have it de facto. No-fault divorce is state-approved unilateral divorce.

Where does it leave the weaker party—often the primary carer, often the woman, and often the financially disadvantaged? University of Essex research found that women tend to experience a 12% drop in income after divorce compared with men who experience more than a 30% increase in income.

Where does it leave the institution of marriage? Some argue that it will strengthen marriage because the barrier to entry is lower if parties know they can exit cleanly. That suggests that in reality, people are making a much more contingent and shaky commitment, so why go to the bother of getting married at all? Research relied on by the Ministry of Justice found that marriage rates reduce following the introduction of no-fault divorce by about 3% to 4% and the likelihood of divorcees remarrying declines by around one third to one half. As Professor Justin Wolfers says,

“the benefits of marriage (tying your spouse to a contract) are reduced in a no-fault world”.

Less marriage will tend to mean more cohabitation, an inherently less stable relationship form. The whole of society is affected when the contract of marriage becomes devoid of meaning.

How will it impact divorce rates? Such reform does lead to an immediate spike in the divorce rate that “dissipates” over time. Let us be clear: that spike is made up of people—adults and children. If couples are struggling to persevere, the introduction of no-fault divorce undermines an important cultural underpinning of assumed permanence to marriage which could push such marginal couples into divorce. I am not of course arguing that couples should stay together if there is irresolvable violence, abuse or conflict. It is unsurprising if the numbers drop back, given that people are marrying less and the divorce rate is calculated as a percentage of married couples.

Regardless, the Government should commit to tracking the trends that follow this legislation. It is not enough that the Office for National Statistics collects the data. The Government need to publish reports on family stability, as they committed to do when the Welfare Reform and Work Act was discussed in this House.

How will it affect children? I support this Government’s broad policy intent to reduce parental conflict, which can affect children’s well-being so profoundly when it is frequent, intense and unresolved. However, the idea that removing the need to cite fault drains an appreciable level of conflict out of a separating family seems naive in the extreme. Conflict heightens around financial and children issues, which of course are considered separately.

A spouse deserted by an unfaithful partner, whose path to a new life with his lover has been made smoother by the state, will hardly entertain warm and fuzzy feelings about him just because he did not conjure up allegations of fault against her to achieve that end—especially if she, as the respondent, has less than 20 weeks to adjust to her new position because the clock starts the minute he applies. This might be intentionally when she is on holiday, abroad or otherwise out of contact. Such an imbalance between applicant and respondent must be addressed. I know there is concern about coercive and controlling respondents who might trap the applicant by refusing to be served notice, but yet again we are warping family policy in response to domestic abuse, instead of seeking a more nuanced approach that would benefit society more broadly.

This issue lies at the root of previous Governments’ general agnosticism about family stability, despite evidence that parental separation—not just parental conflict—is an adverse childhood experience. Moreover, the ending of low-conflict rather than high-conflict marriages is more damaging to children. They blame themselves and internalise the sense that no relationships can be relied on, even those that seemed fine on the surface.

Another imbalance needs to be addressed, and we have heard of it today already: the Bill only assists couples to divorce, despite all the negative social ramifications this can entail. There is no support to help struggling couples stay together. This sends a terrible signal: we are on your side if you want easier divorce, but if you want help to face your marital difficulties you are on your own. If we have to have this Bill—I sincerely wish we do not—it has to come with an expansion of support for relationships.

We should listen to those who have been through the pain of divorce. Two-thirds of divorcees agree that family breakdown is a serious problem in Britain today and that more should be done to prevent families breaking up. The DWP has established an important bridgehead in this area with its Reducing Parental Conflict programme. This should be expanded in the spending review and delivered across the country in the promised family hubs.

Nearly two-thirds of British adults in their second or more marriage agree that it is too easy to get a divorce today—and that was before this unnecessary Bill. What good will it accomplish that comes even close to remedying the harm it will inflict by further emptying marriage vows of meaningful promise? The argument that it will benefit marriage by removing the need to cite fault to exit is shameless casuistry—which, according to a quote in the Oxford English Dictionary,

“destroys by Distinctions and Exceptions, all Morality, and effaces the essential Difference between Right and Wrong.”

I return to my opening remarks. This Bill blurs the distinction between right and wrong. The public did not vote for it or support it at consultation so, as is the function of this House, I urge the Government to think again.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay on his excellent maiden speech.

The Prime Minister has promised a vast interlocking programme to unite and level up the whole of the UK and unleash its potential, so the royal commission on the criminal justice system should mesh with the Government’s promised review of the children’s social care system. A quarter of imprisoned men and a third of women were in care. Care-experienced children are five times more likely to offend. Such crimes imply victims, increased costs and other considerable negative impacts on society. This care review needs a relentless focus on prevention. Preventing children coming into care where possible prevents care being a conveyor belt into crime and other highly detrimental outcomes. It must focus particularly on the relationships children in care need to thrive. They are an underexploited resource, yet for a child to surface, someone has to be irrationally committed to them. The Government have developed the Lifelong Links programme through their innovation fund, but the DNA of this programme has to be replicated throughout the care system and in the lives of care leavers in prison.

Returning to the royal commission, efficiency and effectiveness need to be measured against purpose. That includes public protection, safety and order, the reform of offenders and preparing prisoners for release. My two reviews have shown incontrovertibly that relationships, the golden thread that must run through the prison rehabilitation system and the criminal justice agencies that surround it, are fundamentally important if offenders are to change.

Family and other relational ties provide meaning and the all-important motivation to other strands of rehabilitation activity. They are the third leg of the stool, alongside employment and education, which bring stability and structure to prisoners’ lives. They are particularly important for women as relationships are their greatest criminogenic need. Women are frequently in prison because of a coercive partner or family member, and preparation for release must enable disentanglement from toxic relationships. The royal commission should pay specific attention to the needs of female offenders and build on the Government’s strategy, the implementation of which appears to have lost momentum. It must also address the intergenerational transmission of crime, given that almost two-thirds of male prisoners’ sons become offenders, with an even higher prevalence among the children of imprisoned mothers. They are more likely to end up in local authority care, further necessitating the royal commission’s co-ordination with the care review.

Disappointingly, the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill survives. Its stated purpose, to remove issues that create conflict within the divorce process to strengthen family support, is naive and oxymoronic. Removing fault from divorce is unlikely to lead to a more harmonious post-separation world. Solicitors say that enduring conflict is focused on who gets the children and for how long, as well as on finances. The Government disagree that removing any notion of responsibility from divorce alters the character of marriage or affects longer-term divorce rates. However, contradictory evidence and manifold contrary responses to the consultation process were ignored. With the full approval of the state, emotional and financial harm is inflicted on the partner who is unilaterally divorced, as well as on the children, who typically prefer parents to mend it, not end it. Such inconvenient truths belie Government claims that no-fault divorce will “strengthen family support”. I will strongly resist this at Second Reading and it was not in the Conservative manifesto.

However, I fully endorse the commitment to champion family hubs, which give families the intensive and integrated support they need. Focusing attention here is the best way for the Government to strengthen family support. These would be an accessible, stigma-free place parents can go before, during and after any potential separation to get help with relational problems and prevent them impacting their children. As in Australian family relationship centres, mediation and other family law interventions could be delivered in these hubs. This would require the Ministry of Justice to work with the Department for Education and the troubled families unit.

Every department of government has a role in strengthening family relationships, so we need a Cabinet-level Minister to co-ordinate and lead this cross-cutting work, served by an equivalent apparatus to the Government Equalities Office. The Conservative Manifesto says:

“A strong society needs strong families.”


Strong families ensure that children experience the safe, stable and nurturing relationships they need to thrive. They cherish grandparents and great-grandparents so that they can face the challenges of older age flanked by love and support. They bolster working adults so that they are match fit for an ever-changing workplace. Families and relationships are not tangential at best and irrelevant at worst to policy-making or politics. They are central to human flourishing, but they will not be strengthened by words. Concrete and co-ordinated actions are required. I and others will continue to hold the Government’s feet to the fire until they deliver.

I am now very pleased to welcome my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower to make his maiden speech.

Criminal Justice System: Women

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Farmer]

To move that this House takes note of the needs of women in the criminal justice system.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all who will contribute today for staying until the last moment before the House rises for a well-earned Recess. There is a wealth of expertise on the list of speakers, and I greatly look forward to hearing everyone’s contribution.

Opening a debate provides the opportunity, perhaps even the responsibility, to stand back a little and set the scene. Last month the Ministry of Justice launched the final report from my review, Importance of Strengthening Female Offenders’ Family and Other Relationships to Prevent Reoffending and Reduce Intergenerational Crime—quite a mouthful. Commissioned as part of the female offender strategy, in effect I was asked to look at women in the criminal justice system through the lens of family and other relational ties.

Obviously, it is my intention that this debate should go much wider than that. However, over the course of the review, I became aware of just how fundamentally important healthy and supportive relationships are to women in the criminal justice system, and how many other problematic issues stem from a lack of these. Ministry of Justice research identifies them as women’s biggest criminogenic need. If a woman has bad relationships and lacks good relationships, she is at greater risk of reoffending.

Nearly three-quarters of all female offenders, whether in custody or serving sentences in the community, have problems with relationships that increase this likelihood. This rises to over 80% of female prisoners. Many enter custody from chaotic relationships from which they require protection, and domestic abuse, which frequently includes pressure from coercive partners to commit crime, lurks in the background for 57% of them. Over half experienced emotional, physical or sexual abuse in their family backgrounds and almost one-third spent time in care as children. Unresolved trauma related to such adversities in childhood or later life typically drives unhealthy coping strategies such as substance misuse and self-harm. Indeed, women’s vulnerabilities, concentrated in the criminal justice system, are the distillation of the breakdown of family and other relationships so prevalent in our wider society.

My concern about this and the lack of a comprehensive and coherent government strategy to address it was a key motivator for my becoming involved in politics over 12 years ago. It is a quarter of a century since the then aspirant Labour Prime Minister talked generally about being tough on the causes of crime and particularly about the role played by family breakdown. The implication was clear then and still is now: we need to do more to prevent crime happening in the first place. Research from the Centre for Social Justice, which controlled for factors such as socioeconomic grade and ethnicity, found that those who experience family breakdown in their childhood or youth are over twice as likely to experience homelessness, be in trouble with the police or spend time in prison.

Around a quarter of families with dependent children are headed by a single parent, which has perhaps normalised relationship breakdown. An understandable zeal to avoid piling stigma on top of the very heavy load single parents already bear can hamper public discussion about the significant challenges they face. They can also be framed almost exclusively in terms of financial poverty, as lack of money is a major problem for half of single parents. The lack of a co-parenting relationship to ease the load is a less readily acknowledged challenge, which is greatly amplified when a woman becomes enmeshed in the criminal justice system. The dependent children of three-quarters of women in prison are not looked after by their fathers. One study found that adult children of imprisoned mothers are more than twice as likely to be incarcerated than adult children of imprisoned fathers.

Such evidence compels me to support this and former Governments’ efforts to keep women out of prison where possible, as such punishment encroaches on family life in many troubling ways. The damage done to good relationships is one of the “referred” pains of imprisonment, the psychosocial burdens experienced by an inmate’s family members. These pains are particularly acute when it is a primary carer who is behind bars.

Professor Nicola Lacey from the LSE points out that for most of the two centuries in which imprisonment has been routinely imposed as punishment for crime, the systems of thought and governance on which it rests have focused on,

“the individual offender and his or her relationship with the state”.

She goes on:

“Penal philosophy’s strongly individualistic presuppositions about the nature of human beings and social relations are open to challenge”.


Hence my call for the importance of family and other relationships to be the golden thread running through all processes and the culture of the criminal justice system, including liaison and diversion services, sentencing, probation and prison. Ministry of Justice research found that male and female prisoners who received family visits were 39% less likely to reoffend than those who do not. Healthy and supportive relationships are undoubtedly rehabilitation assets. Enabling offenders to maintain and strengthen these relationships where appropriate must be valued as much as other rehabilitation activities such as employment and education. Indeed, this is the third leg of the stool alongside these, and can bring stability, meaning and motivation to offenders’ lives.

As I have already touched upon, female offenders are typically among the most vulnerable members of society. This word is used so frequently in relation to female offenders that we need to understand exactly what it means. From the Latin “vulnerabilis”, it means “wounding” or being susceptible to “attack”, “physical harm or damage” or,

“emotional injury, especially in being easily hurt”.

This describes very well many of the women I met in prison, or those serving community sentences. Deprivation of liberty, the purpose of detention, has to be accompanied by diligent exercise of the duty of care. This has to involve thinking ahead to when a woman leaves prison, where she will live and who will be there to meet her.

While I was deeply motivated to improve the lives of mothers in prison and their children, many women have no children and no one in their family able or willing to come and see them. About half of prisoners may have no family or other visits and some have no supportive relationships at all. Frankly, these are the women who concern me most. Without the safe haven of good relationships, it is highly unlikely that they will be able to rebuild their lives. When they leave prison, they lose all anchor points and are cast adrift, and life can be unbearably difficult. Many will return to drugs or other crime. Abuse and trauma can have profoundly affected their ability to develop and sustain healthy, trusting relationships.

Therefore, it is essential that all professionals, wherever they are in the criminal justice system, are trained in and adopt a trauma-informed approach, and know which relationships are rehabilitation assets in the life of a female offender and which are toxic. I recommended gathering information about a woman’s relationships, any children in her care and other circumstances, such as her accommodation, in a personal circumstances file which she, not the state, owns and controls. The aim is that, with her permission, this information is used to help her sustain or resume supportive, meaningful relationships with people with whom she might otherwise lose touch. For the more than half of women in custody who have dependent children, we need to know who and where those children are.

A key priority of my review was enabling mothers to continue to shoulder their parental responsibilities. A governor told me women often ask her, “How can I stop being a mother now that I am in prison?” She replies, “We don’t want you to stop, we want you to continue”. These women are still assets to their family and need to know it, yet the practical and emotional difficulties that mothering from inside prison entails must not be underestimated. Several of my recommendations sought to mitigate these. For example, I proposed Skype-type visits for all women who do not breach risk boundaries.

On that subject, more broadly, I encouraged governors and the Government to think about risk-to-reward ratios. As a trader, I take risks for a living based on sound intelligence and the expectation that I will reap a reward. Research suggests that taking bold and ambitious steps to make the most of prisoners’ family and other ties could reap significant gains. Whatever is learned by rolling out Skype-type visits across the small female estate will inform deployment of this technology in the much larger male estate, where the risk-to-reward ratio might be harder to gauge without the insights garnered from a pathfinder population.

I also called for workforce changes inside female prisons, largely on the advice of prison governors on the female estate, who are incredibly alive to the essential role good relationships play in rehabilitation. One told me, “I don’t want more prison officers, I want social workers and family engagement workers”. As parenting difficulties and other family factors are not addressed in the community, she often sees the third generation of offenders come through her gate.

The family engagement worker model evaluated by Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology is highly effective in improving the quality of ties and resolving tensions between prisoners and family members. These workers can also help women reconnect, where necessary, with their families or friends. Much of their caseload involves supporting prisoners with ongoing children’s care proceedings, but they can struggle even to get hold of the community social worker who has a prisoner’s child on her caseload. They, and therefore the women they represent, are at a disadvantage because they do not have the same professional status. If every women’s prison had its own resident social worker, she or he could represent the interests of these women in professional dialogue with community-based social workers. In the sadly commonplace battles over custody of prisoners’ children, such equality of arms is incredibly important to ensure a just outcome.

Other noble Lords might describe the difficulties women face accessing housing on release—the desperate insecurity of those who have in some ways been kept safe in prison but are then turned out with nothing. Again, information captured in the personal circumstances file might enable contact to be made with someone who can provide a roof over her head until she gets back on her feet and, I hope, avoid the harrowing scenario of her ending up in a tent outside the prison perimeter.

A particularly pernicious Catch-22 is faced by women with children who cannot secure suitable accommodation until the family is living together, but whose children cannot join them until appropriate housing has been found. I recommended that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government change allocation guidance for local housing authorities to recognise the prospective housing needs of women leaving prison in a parallel way to families seeking large enough properties to house future foster and adoptive children. Every department of government, not just the Ministry of Justice, has a role to play in meeting the needs of women in the criminal justice system.

The Government’s implementation team, with whom I have already met, understand that the body of recommendations in the report is not a ceiling of good practice to aspire to, but a basic floor of provision. The goal is cultural change, in the criminal justice system and more widely in government.

I wanted to emphasise at the outset of this debate that meeting the relational needs of women in the criminal justice system is of fundamental importance. Without the unconditional support of at least one other human being, any talk of rehabilitation risks being empty rhetoric. Only once good foundations have been laid, can we start to rebuild damaged lives. I beg to move.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, the timings in today’s debate are very tight, so I think the House would appreciate it if all noble Lord speaking could keep to the time limits on the Order Paper.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Farmer]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this important debate. It is clear that the female offenders’ estate is not the same as the male one and needs specific, bespoke attention. One benefit of a debate such as this is that it keeps this on the radar screen and makes our direction of travel a bit more hopeful than with past reviews, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said. One point of my reviews of the male and female estates was that there should be implementation meetings. I have already had a meeting, in the last week, with MoJ officials about the female review. I hesitate to use the expression “keep our feet on their necks”, but we intend to keep driving forward these recommendations to change the culture. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, spoke with great experience about reviews being done and then there is a change of Secretary of State or a change of Government and before you know where you are you are back to where you started and all the research has come to nothing.

I thank all noble Lords for their thoughtfulness, hard work and excellent contributions today. I am sure these will help the Ministers and Secretary of State to push things forward.

It just leaves me to say, since, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, this is the last debate on the last day of term before the Recess, and since I see the Chief Whip in his place, that I also pay tribute to him and thank him for the way he has looked after newcomers such as me—I have been here for five years. His gracious and gentle initiation and encouragement throughout the years have been extremely helpful; coming into this place can be quite intimidating for people who do not know it, so I add my thanks and appreciation to those of everybody else to the Chief Whip and wish him the best in his retirement. At the same time, I take the opportunity to thank all noble Lords. They have all worked very hard this term and I hope that their holidays are fun and they can have good family time. I hope they are rehabilitative, so that when we come back we are all refreshed and energised to keep pressing on.

Motion agreed.