Marriage

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech]

My Lords, I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for choosing this topic. I am also very pleased to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, on her maiden speech. I am sure that we all wish her a long, committed and happy relationship with this House.

I intend to be largely pragmatic and legal, albeit firmly in favour of marriage, female independence and equality. Bearing in mind the national deficit, my proposals are designed to reduce marriage breakdown but not to involve expensive action. The overall cost of family breakdown has been variously estimated at between £24 billion to £40 billion. As a society, we cannot afford serial marriage breakdown and cohabitation on this scale. Ironically, it is being proposed by the Ministry of Justice that at least £350 million be sliced off legal aid, and the people on whom the cuts will fall are those who are adversely and expensively affected by family breakdown. Let us save a few families and save on legal aid. Sadly the planned cuts to legal aid and to support for citizens advice bureaux may make divorce and breakdown even more likely. If legal advice is unaffordable, couples are less likely to get the information that might help at the outset. Mediation has a place, but it also has to be paid for.

It is marriage that makes all the difference, for only 8 per cent of married parents split up before their child is five compared with 43 per cent of the unmarried. According to the Telegraph, in response to a survey conducted in 2008, children under 10 revealed that if they could make a new rule, they would ban divorce. Marital splits were named by the children as the second worst thing in the world after being fat.

But politicians will not talk about it. We live in a nation that is health obsessed and expects its citizens to take care of each other and the environment. There are government messages about obesity, alcohol, drugs, smoking, school food, eating five portions of fruit a day, AIDS, seat belts, exercise and recycling. We are told that we should say no to supermarket bags and use public transport. You cannot take a photograph of a child or drive children to school without being checked. But a parent may abandon their children and pay nothing for them in the future without any such condemnation. The evidence about broken relationships is off limits.

I have some inexpensive proposals. First, we need to make sure that divorce law is not made any easier. Research across 18 European countries indicates that 20 per cent of the increase in divorce rates during the past 40 years is due to legal reforms. Fortunately, the previous Government did not implement the no-fault divorce provisions of the Family Law Act 1996. I propose the introduction of a waiting period to stop divorce being granted as quickly as it is by adding to the present grounds for divorce a provision that no decree shall be granted until at least 12 months have elapsed from the service of the petition. Others have called for a three-month cooling-off period before proceedings can start, in which finances and the impact of divorce could be explored. Marriage education at school should be promoted as strongly as the health and environmental issues that I mentioned.

Secondly, there should be no more legislation equating cohabitation with marriage. Statistics show that the best thing for children is to live with two married parents. The construction of a forced—indeed, illiberal—law of cohabitation may deter even more men from making any commitment, let alone marriage. We ought not to risk adding to the number of one-parent families by tempting men to walk out before they reach the threshold qualifying period for such a law—say, two years—in order to avoid financial liability, because all recent studies show that Britain's children are near the bottom of European leagues for outcomes. Concern for children should keep us from doing anything that would encourage more instability and abandonment. Cohabitants' children are already protected by Schedule 1 to the Children Act 1989.

Thirdly, the Government should swiftly enact a law to validate prenuptial contracts. If these were certain to be upheld, it might encourage couples to enter into marriage without the fear of drastic rearrangements and loss of family assets if the end were to come. Opponents of this seem to think that women marry only for money. This is not so. The current law on maintenance is unfair and liable to be used to split family businesses or inheritance, which would not be subject to such orders in most other countries. Financial provision divorce law is in urgent need of reform so that couples will spend less on lawyers and will be able to divide their marital assets with certainty, as happens in many European nations. This would also make savings for legal aid.

Most of all, we need to hear Ministers speak of marriage with as much enthusiasm as they show in discussions about, for example, the environment—and please may we drop the word “partner”, which should be confined to tennis and solicitors' firms, and be less shy about marital status? After all, being married is the most public way that men and women have been able to invent over thousands of years of showing a permanent bond with each other and with their families. There can be no family tree without public recognition and preservation of its roots.