Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [Lords]

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 8th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Before I call the shadow Secretary of State, I need to inform hon. and right hon. Members that I will need to impose a time limit because the debate has to finish by 10 o’clock. I will start the time limit at five minutes for Back Benchers. In the meantime, I call David Lammy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Chalk]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question, and I pay tribute to the characteristic clarity and eloquence with which he made his representations. Although I cannot give any commitment to specific points, he has made powerful points. On behalf of the Government, I commit to continuing the conversation in Committee.

Part of the problem is that the court has limited means to investigate the circumstances. Having marched the parties up to the top of the hill by requiring petitioners to make allegations, the system rarely inquires into whether those allegations are true. It simply does not have the means to do so. In fact, just 2% of cases are contested, and only a handful progress to a contested court hearing. For more than 40 years, English and Welsh courts have not routinely held divorce trials to prove the allegations set out. That is because most people nowadays recognise that marriage is a voluntary union. When consent disappears, so, too, does its legitimacy.

That lack of inquiry is a problem because allegations may bear little resemblance to reality, but they are presented as established facts. The scope for injustice is obvious. To satisfy the statutory provisions, minor incidents may have to be dredged up and artificially repackaged as a pattern of behaviour. A respondent who, in truth, is a perfectly reasonable individual will have their behaviour branded unreasonable. Conversely, a respondent may have behaved despicably—a point made by the Lord Chancellor —but because of the fear of repercussions, a petitioner may seek to rely on two years’ separation instead. At the end of it all, in the eyes of the law, the culpable respondent will never have been publicly rebuked, and will exit the relationship apparently blameless.

All too often, the law does not do what people think it does. That is not just the Government’s view. Sir Paul Coleridge, a former family judge and chair of the Marriage Foundation, no less, said that the current system

“is, and always has been, a sham”.

I think I may be the fifth person to quote him this evening, but Sir James Munby, former president of the family division, criticised the current law for being

“based on hypocrisy and lack of intellectual honesty”—

a point powerfully made by the Chair of the Justice Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill). The same is true of academia. Professor Liz Trinder, who has conducted extensive research on the divorce process, has branded the current arrangements “a meaningless charade”.

I want to address the points that have been made with great force by my hon. Friends the Members for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) and for Devizes (Danny Kruger), and my right hon. Friends the Members for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) and for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes). To paraphrase—I will not do justice to the way in which they expressed it—the concern that they have raised is that the Bill will undermine the institution of marriage by making divorce more attractive. That is an important argument, and it has to be addressed.

The point is that it is a very sad circumstance indeed when a marriage breaks down, but some marriages do end. The legal process of divorce is not the driver for a marriage breaking down; it is the consequence. That is the point that my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor was making about the telescope. Petitioners do not issue speculative applications for divorce. In the overwhelming majority of cases, they take that step only after reaching a settled conclusion. In those circumstances, we must do all we can to mitigate the pain experienced by the couple and their family, especially the children. We cannot have a system where the legal process works to exacerbate acrimony and suffering where divorce is simply the process of bringing a legal end to a personal relationship that has ceased to function for both parties.

The point that is so often made by practitioners is that very often, individuals are surprised by the convoluted and artificial process that they are presented with. International evidence shows that long-term divorce rates are not increased by removing fault from the process of obtaining a divorce. In short, divorce and dissolution are a sad reality, but one that is sometimes unavoidable. This Bill prevents hardship and misery, and it will help people at a vulnerable time. I commend this Bill to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Hon. Members should now be familiar with the Division process, but I ask all hon. Members other than Front Benchers and Tellers to leave the Chamber by the doors behind me. I will not give the instruction to lock the doors earlier than probably 28 minutes after I call the Division.

Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [Lords]

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Committee stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 17th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Before I call the next speaker, I remind right hon. and hon. Members that because we are in Committee I cannot impose a time limit, but I am sure that everyone can see from the call list that there are still nine speakers. The debate has to finish at 6 o’clock. I am sure that hon. Members will want the Minister to have a good chunk of time to address the points that have been raised and the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) to have some time to respond. If everyone continues to speak for 15 minutes, not everyone is going to get in. I am just pointing that out and will leave colleagues to adjust their speeches appropriately.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I went into politics to make the world a better place. It has been my lifelong ambition since I was a kid to try to improve the world around me. The problem I have with this Bill is that it is just not clear that it does that. When I was four years old, my parents divorced, so I know first-hand what it is like to be the child of divorced parents. I have met so many of these people in my constituency surgeries. There are the estranged wives who say, “He’s a beep beep beep, he’s been horrendous, he does not turn up when he says he will, he’s been a terrible father.” Then the men come into my surgery saying, “She denies me access to the kids, she was unfaithful, she was this, she was that.” I have seen the problem of warring couples. Of course, as many colleagues have said, the children are often the ones to suffer.

Now we also have the more modern case where a couple cohabit and either do or do not have children, with the challenges for them of relationship breakdown and how they solve that. In recent years, since I have been a Member of Parliament, we have introduced civil partnerships for same-sex couples and then for opposite-sex couples, all designed to give people options, but ultimately, in my view, to help people have strong and happy relationships.

What do we do in this place if it is not to try to help people have better, happier lives—and what does that mean? I have heard an awful lot of, frankly, lawyers talking about the problems of this and the problems of that, the legal position here and there, and the financial position and so on, but ultimately this is about human happiness. What all of us in this place know is that human beings need to be together in communities. Just over the past few months, we have tested to destruction the idea of separating people into their single units to be lonely and isolated. We know that people want to be together, and yet what we never do in this Chamber is say, “We stand up for people being together and sticking together and loving each other, and we want to help them in every way we can.”

I really do not know what to make of this Bill, as someone who experienced divorce myself, and whose kids, now in their teens or early 20s, have friends whose parents split up and whose lives have been wrecked by the experience. I know so many people who have been through traumatic relationships. I also know lots of people who have divorced and got back together again—people whose relationships have been severely challenged and they have managed to find a way through it. I cannot see in this Bill any attempt to help them to stay together, to help them to get through a rough period, or to encourage them to stay together to focus on the children. It does not seem to me to do any of those things, which we all absolutely know are in the interests of a stronger and a happier society.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because he brings me to my key point: I totally support the idea of minimising the angst, pain, and further acrimony of a terrible divorce, as that is in no one’s interests—it is not in the interests of the warring couple, and it is certainly not in the interests of any children—but we are not talking about the other side of the coin. We are saying to people, “You can get divorced much more easily”, and that, in my view, is a good thing, because if the relationship is irretrievably broken down, it is right to make the process much easier. However, statistics show that up to 50% of people later come to be sorry about their divorce, and as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), that is because they still love their partner, or miss them, or because they are lonely. Yes, it might be because they are financially deprived. They might now be in a one-bedroom flat, whereas previously they were in a nice three-bedroom house with a garden. People may regret a divorce for all sorts of reasons, so why would we make this provision for six months? I literally do not get it.

Why not say that a couple can judicially separate after six months—they can move out of the family home, divide up their possessions, sort out arrangements for any children, decide who gets the cat and so on—but that they should at least then have a period of reflection? I simply do not understand. I think all the points have been made, and as a non-lawyer, I do not propose to get into that area, but I just feel that we are missing an opportunity to add to human happiness.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I have now to announce the result of today’s deferred division on the Abortion (Northern Ireland) (No.2) Regulations 2020. The Ayes were 253 and the Noes were 136, so the Question was agreed to.

[The Division list is published at the end of today’s debates.]

[Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), with whose comments I completely agree. The community I represent contains some of the most deprived wards in England, and the magnitude of some of the social challenges in Blackpool is frankly enormous. When I visit our local soup kitchens, or work with community groups who help the most marginalised in society, I speak to many of those who are reaching out for support. There are, of course, a wide variety of different personal circumstances, and a plethora of reasons why people need additional help. It always strikes me, however, that some form of family breakdown usually lies at the heart of it.

The traditional family is a cornerstone of a strong society, and marriage is the glue that holds families together. Marriage creates a stable environment in which children can thrive, and we know that children born to married parents are more likely to go to university, get married themselves, and find long-term employment. Strong families and marriage provide the support and stability that benefits not just the individuals concerned, but society as a whole. Indeed, it is a sad fact that anything we do to weaken the family unit and marriage by making a divorce easier to obtain will result in greater family breakdown, and there will be more people falling on hard times and invariably presenting themselves for support at those community groups and food banks that I visit in my constituency.

The benefits of marriage speak for themselves. There is so much more that I would like to say on this, but I would like to associate myself with the comments made in the excellent speeches on Second Reading by my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), who highlighted many of the points that I would make this afternoon, had I more time.

I have reservations about this Bill and the message that it sends out to society. As a Government, we should be encouraging marriage and supporting the principle of the traditional family. If we introduce compulsory no-fault divorce in a six-month timeframe, the result will inevitably be an increase in the divorce rate and the problems within society that family breakdown creates.

One obvious way of mitigating the impact of the Bill is the provisions in new clause 1, which would ensure increased support for marriages and new support for couples where an application for divorce has been made to the court. Of course, there will be sad occasions when it may not be in the couple’s best interests to stay together, but I am speaking more generally when I say that it is in the national interest for couples to stay together.

Surely it would be an effective use of public funds for the Government to make available grants for marriage support services before marriage and during a marriage—that is, before couples appear before a court seeking a divorce. The estimated cost of family breakdown is £51 billion per year. In stark contrast, the Government’s forecast spending on relationship support in the last financial year was a paltry £10.2 million. So family break- down costs us £51 billion, yet we spend only £10 million trying to fix the source of it. Sadly, I am not sure that will make much of a difference.

A number of Government Members have expressed concerns about the Bill. It would go some way to show the Government’s support for marriage if they were minded to invest in relationship support, counselling and marriage preparation. Those programmes will make a significant difference. The Government’s own commissioned evaluation of relationship support provided in the UK found that counselling and relationship education resulted in statistically significant

“positive changes in individuals’ relationship quality, well-being and communication”,

and that couple counselling and certain types of marriage preparation were

“cost effective, providing substantially greater savings to society than they cost to deliver.”

The Relationships Alliance, a group that includes Relate, has published evidence on why good-quality couple and family relationships matter. In that publication, it stated:

“International evidence, including several randomised control trials, shows that relationship counselling or therapy can be effective in improving relationship quality, relationship satisfaction, conflict resolution skills, and wellbeing and mental health.”

Relationship support really does work, and it is clear that it would make a significant and effective difference. Services offered should be local and able to respond to a couple’s needs within days, especially given the minimum timeframe that the Bill currently specifies. I sincerely hope that the Government will see that the proposal in new clause 1 fits with their key policy objectives on divorce law reform, which include sufficient opportunity for reconciliation, and will therefore ensure that marriage counselling is made available to spouses when an application has been made for divorce.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. A reminder that there is pressure on time. There are still quite a few speakers, who would be well advised to take pretty well under 10 minutes to allow everyone to speak. I call Sir Edward Leigh.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I rise to speak to new clause 3, which stands in my name. It would replicate Scottish law, which replaces the two and five-year separation with a no-fault divorce after one year. It is a moderate compromise and I have no doubt that the Government will accept it.

I believe the Government are making a huge mistake. That is not just my opinion; the research is clear that liberalisation and expansion of no-fault divorce, wherever it has been introduced, has led to the most vulnerable in society being worse off. Look at the evidence from Sweden, Canada, and various US states—it all points in the same direction: we will have more divorces, and the worst-off will be hurt the most.

The Brining study in the US showed that 75% of low-income divorced women had not been poor when they were married. The Parkman studies show that, overall, women living in American states with no-fault divorce work, on average, 4.5 more hours a week than their counterparts in states with fault-based divorce. In this country in 2009, the then Department for Children, Schools and Families produced an evidence review that showed that a child not growing up in a two-parent household was more likely to be living in poor housing, to experience more behavioural problems, to perform less well in school, to need more medical treatment, to leave school and home when young, to become sexually active, pregnant or a parent at an earlier age, to report more depressive symptoms, and so on.

We now understand the intent behind the Bill: it is to make divorce easier and to propel more families, and particularly more women, into poverty. We know that, in reality, the Government’s intention is to speed up the divorce process, which they say will make it more efficient, but look at the side-effects I just described. Surely the cure is much worse than the disease? I realise that I am out of alignment with Government policy—a rare event for me—so I want to outline the purpose and rationale of the new clause. I admit it would constitute a rewrite of the Bill, but I think it is quite a moderate rewrite, and it accords with the central purpose of the Bill, which is to encourage no-fault divorce and, like it or not, to speed up the process.

Hon. Members will recall that the current law sets down the five facts that must be established before a divorce is granted. The separation ground does not require proof of fault, so we already have no-fault divorce, but the Government say the period is too lengthy. The problem campaigners have with the current no-fault divorce law is that it takes too long, and I agree. As Baroness Deech in the other place has said,

“the essence of the demand for reform is speed.”

I think the Government should be honest about wanting to speed up the whole process. Ministers do not like to be reminded that they are making divorce easier, but we must be honest: if a process is made easier, human nature being as it is, more people will do it. Of course, for many divorce is an agonising decision, but when married couples are having problems, the quicker and easier it is to get a divorce, the more likely they are to choose divorce, instead of choosing the hard work of talking out their problems.

My parents met at Bletchley Park during the war, and it was a great pleasure to attend their 50th wedding anniversary celebration in 1994, shortly before my father’s death. It was a shock for my sister and me to find some extraordinary and poignant letters written in the 1940s that showed our parents were clearly having enormous problems, but it was just as obvious that they were determined to make a go of it. People might say, “It was a previous generation,” but there were many couples like my parents in their generation. I owe them so much for keeping together and looking after us, and always being ready to help my brother, my sister and me. I am proud of what they did and the sacrifices their generation made, and I worry about what my own Government are doing in sending the wrong signal—sending the signal that marriage is not one of the most precious things in the world.

It has already been said that people can sign up to a mobile phone contract and be stuck with it for two years, in which they have to fulfil the obligations of the contract, but they can have a church or civil ceremony, profess lifelong fidelity before the law, before God, before friends and neighbours, and after just six months walk away. Basically, they just say, “I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you,” and that is that. What sort of message is our own Conservative Government sending to society? I believe we should be Conservative with a big “C” and conservative with a small “c”—socially conservative. I know that not a lot of people in Parliament agree with that message, but I have no difficulty with it. People out there understand what is at stake. In one poll, 72% of people said that no-fault divorce may make people more blasé about divorce. We do not need to look at a poll; it is obvious that it will make people more blasé about divorce.

Clause 1 abolishes all five fact grounds and replaces them with a system where one spouse can simply resign from a marriage and get a divorce in six months. My new clause would make a much less dramatic rewrite of the law. We can maintain the fault grounds for those who wish to use them, while substantially speeding up no-fault divorces, but still giving people time to reconsider. Far from giving couples in difficulty more options, this Bill takes them away. Is it a Conservative option to take away options, rather than keep them to provide people with different ways of getting a divorce if that is what they really want to do, and give them more time to reconsider?

We should think of the wife who is faithful to her husband for 30 years only for him to run off. She will have no way of getting a divorce that recognises who was in the right and who was in the wrong—that is taken away. Abolishing fault deprives spouses who wish to obtain a divorce on fault grounds any opportunity of doing so. We should think of the man or woman who is mentally or physically abused by his or her spouse. He or she will be unable to get any recognition of that through the divorce process. This new system will be blind to all suffering and to all injustice. The spouse being divorced against his or her wishes will have zero opportunity of contesting the divorce to try to save the marriage or to slow things down and plan for the future.