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Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [Lords] Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDesmond Swayne
Main Page: Desmond Swayne (Conservative - New Forest West)Department Debates - View all Desmond Swayne's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(4 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe law should have majesty; it should be awesome. May I ask the Secretary of State to resist this fetish for translating everything into newspeak?
There is fault in divorce. We all know that. It is a question not just of unreasonable behaviour, but of abominable, disgraceful and outrageous behaviour. But I accept the principle of the Bill—namely, that by trying to attribute fault, we vastly magnify the bitterness and unpleasantness of the conflict that divorce creates. We have all experienced in our surgeries those parents who continue to use their children as weapons in prosecuting a continuing war against their former partners. The removal of fault will not remove that entirely, but I am confident that it will certainly diminish it.
My problem with the Bill is with respect to the streamlining and potential shortening of the process. The difficulty I have is this: by making divorce more straightforward and easier, it becomes the first resort, rather than the last. It becomes the easy and quicker way out, vastly reducing the potential for counselling and reconciliation. We should remember that divorce is the swiftest route to poverty. Of the people who might come through the door during one of my morning surgeries, if you scratch the surface of their problem—whether the problem presents as debt, housing, education or access to children—nine times out of 10, divorce and family breakdown are the root cause. And the easier we make divorce, the more we shall have of it.