Parents: Separation

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Farmer]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to support parents considering separation, and to promote early resolution of private family law arrangements.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords contributing to what I consider an important debate this evening. I will not soft-pedal why we are discussing these issues: parental separation is an enormous and egregious problem, the scale and ramifications of which few seem ready to acknowledge. Parental separation is a recognised adverse childhood experience; by the time British children turn 14 years old, 46% no longer live with both their natural parents. Family breakdown is a major risk factor for children and young people’s poor mental health. Children who experience it are significantly more prone to anxiety and depression. Research from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience also found greater susceptibility to severe mental illness such as schizophrenia. The IFS’s Deaton review on inequality reported that between 1971 and 2019 the percentage of births outside marriage ballooned from 8% to 48%: half of all births take place in inherently less stable, cohabitating couple families, or to parents living apart from the outset. Professor Matthew Goodwin drily comments:

“Britain is now … giving Europe a masterclass in … ‘non-partnered motherhood’—namely, women who give birth with no partner at all”.


In the rest of Europe, 5% or fewer of mothers are in this position, but in Britain and the United States that figure is 15%, so a growing number of children have never experienced life with both their parents. Many then endure multiple transitions, where step-parent figures come and go, further compounding their sense that relationships are fundamentally unreliable or worse. Children living with father substitutes are eight times more likely to be on the at-risk register and 50 times more likely to die of an inflicted injury than those living with two biological parents. Centre for Social Justice research found that they are also twice as likely to get involved in crime. Some 75% of young offenders did not grow up with both parents, and 40% experienced abuse or neglect.

Adults are also deeply and detrimentally affected by family breakdown: it is often a gateway to poverty, loneliness, mental ill-health problems and domestic violence from informal partners. Kiernan and Estaugh’s research found that women are more likely to be physically abused, assaulted during pregnancy and seriously injured by live-in boyfriends than by husbands.

Professor Jan Walker’s research found that many wished they had been warned of the harsh realities of post-separation life. There is no information about sources of support on the online divorce system, and emails from it mention neither mediation nor options for help in agreeing child arrangements. Could the online divorce process signpost people to such support? Moreover, in this age of graduated smoking bans and online regulation to reduce well-evidenced harms, should we not point people to research-based information about how divorce is rarely the end of a painful process but the beginning of a new one, especially for their children?

Family instability is the social trend of the last half century. It gets almost no airtime in government yet is a major contributor to our housing and loneliness crises, among others—massive societal harms exacting huge costs on the taxpayer. Matthew Goodwin again calls out the hypocrisy of elites who are, he says,

“by far … the most likely to get married, have children in marriage, and then stay married”.

Yet they

“downplay the importance of stable families, encourage others to lead ‘fluid’, ‘individual’, and ‘diverse’ lives, and deride anybody who points to the importance of marriage and family as right-wing reactionaries who want to return to the 1950s”.

Their “Do as I say but not as I do” is a classic “luxury belief”, an idea aggressively promoted to bolster their own standing, despite the harms and costs entailed, but which they do not personally pursue.

Sadly, our own Government have undermined the value of commitment in hard times by introducing no-fault divorce to reduce conflict over what was on the divorce petition. However, the reality is that this source of conflict pales alongside that over money and children, and everything else that has to be negotiated when one household becomes two. The interminable wrangling over such issues fuels the immense backlog of well over 100,000 family court cases and the average 45-week wait for private family law cases involving children, despite the Government’s target of 26 weeks. Allegedly, in some areas it is over 60 weeks. All the time conflict, unhappiness and eye-watering costs grow: last year Cafcass alone cost almost £150 million. May I ask the Minister the total costs for that year for family courts and the family justice system? They do not seem to be published.

Our family courts are vital but should be the place of last resort. Before then, every proper assistance should be given to couples, as the Lord Chancellor said during the passage of the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act. His commitment was that

“as a Government, we will work harder … to bring together the strands of policy that sit with various Departments and to ensure that we have a family policy that is fit for the 2020s”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/6/20; col. 902.]

The vehicle for doing that now is the growing number of family hubs in around 100 of 150 local authorities. I declare my interest as a guarantor of FHN Holding, the not-for-profit owner of the Family Hubs Network Ltd. Family hub networks include and build on Sure Start’s vital early years work. They bring together all the family support in an area for parents with older children and those with special needs.

The independent review of children’s social care and the Children’s Commissioner emphasise the need for integrated, community-based family support in family hubs. Moreover, historically, Michael Young, Labour architect of the welfare state, knew that struggling parents needed support. The Second World War had a long tail of effect on families, particularly the emotional cost of high levels of divorce and separation from parents—trends that have of course continued, as I have already outlined. Family centres were legislated for in the Children Act 1989; Sure Start children’s centres were the first step, and family hubs are the next iteration. However, much remains to do, extending way beyond the next election, for hubs to fulfil their transformational potential.

Since 2006, Australian family relationship centres have successfully signposted families away from the courts by providing mediation and focused guidance. A key message from the academic evaluation was that their work would be greatly enhanced by collocating or integrating help with housing, debt and other support that families need at times of transition. In other words, they would be greatly improved by being part of a family hub network—and our family hubs would be greatly improved if they included an offer akin to that of the Australian family relationship centres.

The March Budget promised £55 million for family courts, including money to support families through non-court dispute resolution. Ministry of Justice documents on earlier resolution of private family law arrangements prominently feature family hubs. Minimum expectations for all government-funded family hubs by March 2025 require support for reducing parental conflict and information for separating or separated parents.

Pioneering local authorities, such as Rochdale, already include evidence-based programmes for parenting when separated, and the Family Solutions Group has a pilot-ready model to further enhance such provision. Even in cases that must go before a judge, much could be achieved during pauses between stages by drawing on services in family hubs that help address entrenched relational difficulties, such as post-separation parenting programmes and support for their children. I ask the Minister again: will the Government fund such pilots and encourage family courts to work closely with hubs?

In conclusion, I have highlighted that family breakdown is the elephant in the room of many social policy problems. Family hubs are well-positioned to prevent and mitigate its considerable harms through early intervention and support. We must now build on the good foundations that the Government have laid in their family hubs programme, and maximise their potential in this vital area.