Statement of Conscientious Objection

Part of New clause 9 – in the House of Commons at 6:45 pm on 17 June 1996.

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Photo of Peter Bottomley Peter Bottomley , Eltham 6:45, 17 June 1996

If so, what happens to those who have not made that commitment in the Roman Catholic Church, but, perhaps, in a register office? They would not be able to go to an ecclesiastical authority some years later and ask it to judge their state of mind some years earlier at the time they made the commitment. It shows that the new clause—not the amendment, which approaches the issues in a different way—is not helpful in trying to introduce a two-tier marriage.

What is worse, the new clause basically says to people that, when they are considering marriage, whether civil or religious, they should go through a list of reasons that are traditionally used as justifications for ending a marriage, and knock them out in advance. It is rather like saying, "Do you intend your marriage to be short-term?" I do not think that people know in advance how they will feel later.

Even if we could manage to halve the number of divorces from 160,000 a year to 80,000, which would be highly desirable, we should do it by convincing people that they want their marriages to continue, rather than saying that, when they believe they have come to an end, they are not in a position to remarry.

I want to cite one or two further quotations because they are important for those who follow our debates. It would be quite wrong if Catholic MPs were to be swayed in their view of the Lord Chancellor's proposals by incorrect information about the Catholic bishops' view … We can point out to legislators the bishops' positive response to the proposals made in the White Paper. That was said by Monseigneur Kieran Conry of the Catholic Media Office on 20 October 1995. Again, that was before the new clause was tabled, but it gives the Church's view on trying to move forward to a happier way of allowing people to apply for divorce if they so choose.

The last quotation I want to share with the House—there could be more—is: should Christians, and Catholics in particular, shun all attempts to reform the present divorce laws on the basis that divorce goes against the explicit statement of Christ: 'What God has joined together, let no man put asunder'. That was a reference to Matthew 19, verse 6. The quotation continues: I think not, because any attempt to lessen the harm done by divorce should be supported. That does not entail approving divorce but rather tolerating it as a lesser evil if it is the only way of ensuring the rights of the parties and the care and protection of children. That was said by the Right Rev. Peter Smith, the Roman Catholic Bishop of East Anglia, in a letter to The Times on 5 November 1995. All those quotations are in the context of a Church—although I am not of the same denomination, I regard myself as being in the same Church—where people make a commitment that marriage will go on until death ends it. The only occasion when some of the provisions in the Bill come into effect is when people find that their circumstances or their minds have changed. It is on those grounds that I believe that the House should not accept the new clause.

On slightly different grounds, the House should not accept the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle. We should accept the advice of the leaders of our Churches, and get on with trying to take away some of the unnecessary misery caused by the current state of divorce law.