Divorce Law

Lord Mackay of Clashfern Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

My Lords, the Government look forward to working with my noble friend and many others in your Lordships’ House—we recognise the expertise and experience contained therein. As proposals emerge, we will look for contributions from noble Lords to help us shape them further. I turn to my noble friend’s point about timing and mention the online divorce system that we set up in May 2018. It has had 11,000 applications. People can submit their forms online. It makes it quicker and easier to access justice and, as importantly, it means that the number of mistakes made on the forms is vastly reduced, thereby speeding up the whole process of divorce. I agree with my noble friend that we need to make it quicker, and we are doing something about it.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, is it worth Ministers looking at a Bill which passed both Houses of Parliament 22 years ago to allow for no-fault divorce? No doubt, having been introduced so long ago, the Bill has elements that could be changed—it represents my views at the time—but the essence of the Bill, which passed both Houses of Parliament with considerable majorities, was no-fault divorce.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

My Lords, I recognise the enormous amount of work that my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern did on the Family Law Act 1996. It was a ground-breaking piece of legislation that led the way for Parliament to take the principled decision that divorce law could be changed to make it no-fault. However, that legislation was, some would say, overly amended, and in the end it became impracticable. Those provisions were repealed in 2014. However, we will go back to that legislation to see what Parliament agreed then. Society and probably parliamentary views have moved on since then, and I hope that we can craft something proper for the future.