Orders of the Day — Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Bill [Lords]

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 4:59 pm on 16 February 1984.

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Photo of Sir John Morris Sir John Morris Shadow Attorney General 4:59, 16 February 1984

I am confining my remarks to the authority and experience of the Lord Chancellor in regard to the administration of justice. If we are to delve into ecclesiastical matters, it is surely not for us to comment on what happened in another place. But we have noticed the way in which the Lord Chancellor dealt with the bishops. Perhaps there are better ways of debating than that, but I say no more.

The change in the institutions would allow a different approach, and the activities of the Supplementary Benefits Commission and the courts would not continue as though there was no connection between their respective roles. I believe, as others do, that the clauses proposed merely play with the problem.

There is the absence of any provision in the Bill for proper conciliation machinery—a matter with which the Attorney-General dealt in his closing remarks. If we believe so much in the importance of the preservation of marriage, a fraction of the resources given to destroying marriages should be expended to try to preserve some of them. The state has to pick up so much of the Bill, not only for the costs of the divorce machine but — and much more important — the resulting costs of state maintenance. But, of course, state maintenance is not on the Lord Chancellor's Vote.

The other great difficulty about our governmental procedures—and I speak with a little experience—and the influence of the Treasury in the allocation of resources is that so frequently in its opposition to proposals which cost money, it cannot see the bottom line of eventual savings. If only one family out of 100 could be saved from becoming state dependants, the cost of a properly funded conciliation service would be a good investment for the Treasury. That, of course, is taking a view right across Government as opposed to looking at it departmental Vote by departmental Vote.

It is all very well for the Lord Chancellor to say—these words were repeated today by the Attorney-General —that no primary legislation is necessary. He may well be right, and I tend to agree that most of these matters, if not all, can be dealt with by changes in the rules of procedure. However, the Lord Chancellor's and the Attorney-General's defence would carry more conviction if their words were accompanied by a positive statement of intent to devote additional resources to conciliation. That is what it comes down to at the end of the day.

The Bill also omits the lack of proper provision for children. I welcome the statement that children will come first in financial provision, but what does that mean—first in time, first in importance? Does it apply to maintenance, capital provision or accommodation? The Bill has been criticised because of an underlying assumption that we can separate the maintenance of wives from that of children. Certainly, for capital provision that can be a useful assumption for children if the wife remarries.

The startling omission of the Bill is the lack of proper provision for the children of one-parent families. Neither in this respect, nor in respect to a relation of the balance between the first wife and the second wife, can one get a quart out of a pint pot. It is the state that has to step in, and only a very small minority depend solely on maintenance.

I appreciate that this is a wider matter than that of pure divorce legislation, but in our view there is a long way to go before the real poverty that exists in one-parent families is properly alleviated. The real answer to the financial problem of protecting the single parent would be either a non-means-tested one-parent family allowance of significant size, or a major increase in child benefit. The latter stands at no more in real terms now than it Ix as in 1979, yet because it is non-means-tested—I emphasise that— it is the best way out of the poverty trap that ensnares so many hundreds of such families today.

It is a cause for wonderment that the Lord Chancellor can proceed to change the law of maintenance when so little research has been done. The Law Commission tells us that the difficulty encountered in examining any proposal for law reform in this area is that … very little reliable information is available about the operation of the existing law … The lack of such factual information obviously constitutes a handicap to the task of law reform. We have to await the results of the valuable consultation paper referred to by the Attorney-General, issued by Mrs Justice Booth's committee.

How much do we as a House, as opposed to personal experience, know of the cost of bringing up children? What levels of poverty exist? What guidelines will the courts have in deciding what is just and equitable? It is all very well to say, trust the judges, but the judges, be they the registrars, who do most of the work, or High Court judges, are entitled to some guidance, and that guidance should be based upon fact.

The Law Commission proposed that provision be made for continuous monitoring of the operation of any amending legislation dealing with the financial consequences of divorce. The precedent was section 105 of the Children Act 1975. The Lord Chancellor would have none of this. His, he said, was not a research Department. In typical Whitehall jargon, he had thought of something bigger and better. This—again I speak from a little experience—is an old Whitehall ploy where the best is deployed as the enemy of the good.