Marriage

Lord Patten Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patten]

My Lords, these days in your Lordships' House we seem to have either feast or famine, filibuster or a 4-minute sprint, although we now have an extra minute or two, thanks to the indulgence of my noble friend the Chief Whip. In my few minutes, I have two points to make in what is a very packed debate which has attracted so many speakers. Like the right reverend Prelate, the whole House and I look forward to the forthcoming maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Tyler of Enfield.

One of the themes of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester was the need—I think he was speaking to the churches as well as to the secular world—for the churches to be bold in what they say. Over the years, I have had a sense that those in the churches have been very willing to speak to the converted and perhaps rather less willing to enter into the public policy debate about the importance of marriage generally. I happen to be a Roman Catholic, rather than an Anglican, but the Roman Catholics had a good run in the last Question before the debate started. I would encourage both churches and all religions to speak out much more boldly, to borrow the phrase of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester, on the importance of marriage.

All that said, there seems to be an odd conspiracy of silence concerning the public promotion of the overwhelming evidence that marriage promotes everything from a decent level of sustained happiness, via helping to accumulate resources and so promoting independence from state help, to apparently reducing depression and slowing down the progress of Alzheimer's disease in later life. All these findings come from peer-reviewed academic journals, such as the British Medical Journal. They do not come from some right-wing think tank which has made it up to support this outdated institution of marriage. The evidence shows variously, through, say, the work of the Prison Reform Trust or the Centre for Social Justice, that young offenders are much less likely to come from married families. It is exactly the same with health.

The excellent and notable University of Exeter family study clearly demonstrated the huge disparity between the lower levels of health problems of those in intact married families and those who are outside them. I shall not go on through each government department looking at their areas of responsibility but, for example, I can find absolutely no evidence in recent decades that argues to the contrary that, for example, children from married homes generally perform better and have better life chances, although I recognise, as did the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester, that such statistical generalisations mask heroic individual outcomes to the contrary from those who are not married.

That said, these I think are simple facts not judgments. Politicians and bishops should not be fearful of facts. I increasingly recognise what I think of in public discourse as marriage denial. There undoubtedly is that. Why is it politically and socially correct on the basis of incontrovertible facts to assert loudly that drunken driving is bad, yet people are generally so muted in saying that marriage is a personal and public policy good, based on similarly incontrovertible facts? To me that seems to be daft and to be the reverse of the boldness which the right reverend Prelate was seeking us all to take on.

My second point relates to what the Government should do in the current zeitgeist. They should fearlessly and to the public good promote knowledge of the facts. That cannot be denied, whatever personal views there are about marriage or individual life. Above all else, Governments should not send contradictory messages on marriage, as were sent out, alas, by the Family Law Act 1986, which on the one hand provided for support for marriage services, the subject of the debate in the name of the right reverend Prelate, but, at the same time in the same Bill, introduced what the tabloids accurately, if rather colourfully, called quickie, no-fault divorces—provisions which were, mercifully, repealed very quickly.

Alas, also, to avoid that trap is difficult in the face of the very different views on marriage of the coalition. We all know the dangers of surfing the web. I did a little light Googling on liberal views about marriage, but once I saw what Mr Clegg thought about the institution, I felt that it was best for me to ask my internet provider to block my access to such hard-core material in future. That said, by comparison, I know that I can look to my right honourable friend the Prime Minister to continue to say in the clear language that he is so good at that he supports marriage and to encourage those of his Ministers who feel the same way to pump out the facts again and again like hamsters on the oratorical wheel until they are more understood in the intervening years between now, when I believe that critically important expenditure reductions must continue, and when it should surely be possible to spend a bit more on marriage support in future, in exactly the way that the right reverend Prelate asks.