Probation Services

Debate between Andrew Griffith and Robert Buckland

Thursday 11th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

The hon. Gentleman makes a thought-provoking point and links the Thomas commission to it. Of course, the Welsh Government must respond to that, but we are ahead of the hon. Gentleman. As he knows, in Wales, the probation service was unified from the end of last year and is already supporting the people of Wales. The unified service, headed by Amy Rees, an outstanding civil servant, is delivering that integrated service that the hon. Gentleman so badly wants. We do not need further devolution or a separate jurisdiction.

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

I would like to think that private enterprise has no greater friend than me on this side of the House, but I welcome my right hon. and learned Friend’s announcement because we should follow the facts, and there are a great many benefits in the statement in terms of unified leadership, clear accountability and mobilising resources.

[Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. These decisions are never made lightly or easily, and I can assure him that they are made on the evidence and not as a result of ideology, which, I am afraid, still seems to infect some of the comments of my friends in the Labour party.

Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [Lords]

Debate between Andrew Griffith and Robert Buckland

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 8th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

The hon. Gentleman is right to talk about the caseload, which covid has exacerbated. He will be reassured to know that the senior judiciary and Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service are working every day to expand the current capacity, to open more courts as we move away from the peak, and to look at alternative capacity in order to get as many cases running as possible and to deal with what must be an agonising wait for many families and victims. I would say—and I know that the hon. Gentleman would agree—that this Bill is not about the immediate crisis. It has been brought forward after long consideration, and has been dealt with very carefully in the other place. Indeed, it went through most of its stages in this House during the last Parliament, and represents an important milestone in the evolution of our approach to the sensitive and difficult subject of divorce.

I was talking about the perverse position whereby the current attribution of blame does not benefit anyone or serve society’s wider interests. Instead, it can create long-lasting and often bitter resentment at the outset, precisely at a time when couples need to work together to agree arrangements for their children and their finances. Furthermore, the simplistic allocation of blame to meet a legal threshold does not really reflect the reality that responsibility for a marriage breakdown may be shared. Marriages sadly end for a multitude of reasons. Existing law does not reflect that reality, and the truth is that we have stretched the law for a number of years in order to set out behaviour particulars sufficient to satisfy the court and obtain a divorce—a form described by the former president of the family division, Sir James Munby, as intellectual dishonesty.

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

I accept the immense good faith with which my right hon. and learned Friend brings this Bill to the House, but does he share my concern, sadness and pain for the grandparents involved in any situation where there is family separation?

[Robert Buckland]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to remember the wider family concerns, and the difficult position that grandparents—often on both sides of the divide—face when it comes to issues of contact and the welfare of much-loved grandchildren. He is right to remind us that that is a real dimension of the situation.