Clause 26 deals with orders for financial provision on divorce. It wipes out the equation of divorce with death in Scottish law and replaces it by the provision that the pursuer may…apply to the Court…for the payment by the defender…of a capital sum or an annual or periodical allowance… I do not take exception to that, but I take exception to paragraph (b) which says: either party to the marriage may apply to the Court for an order varying the terms of any settlement made in contemplation of or during the marriage, so far as taking effect on or after the termination of the marriage. This presupposes a legal settlement being freely entered into before marriage in contemplation of that marriage ending in divorce.

It is a little beyond me to understand why we are giving a new right to vary a settlement entered into in this way. It is as disturbing as the idea of the settlement having been made in the first place is offensive. In an interjection an hon. Member opposite talked about equating blood relationship with money, but it is evident that the bonds of matrimony have a literal meaning for some people. I could not allow the Clause to pass without making reference to this point. No doubt I shall receive the reply that this is simply realistic and prudent, but if it is all that realistic and prudent I do not see why the settlement should not remain. We should not give an additional right to vary it.

If there is to be no sanctity in relation to the vows of marriage I hope that hon. Members opposite will see to it that the long proclaimed principle of the sanctity of contract is upheld. It seems that marriages are made in much more mundane circumstances and with much more mercenary motives than are usually attributed to them in song and story. My hon. Friends may think that I am too much of a Presbyterian puritan, but I feel rather strongly about this. When, before going into a church to take vows of marriage—"till death us do part"—people openly and realistically enter into a settlement concerning what will happen when the marriage ends in divorce, in my opinion that settlement should not be open to variation.