Amendment 2

Part of Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [HL] - Committee – in the House of Lords at 5:15 pm on 3 March 2020.

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Photo of Lord Browne of Belmont Lord Browne of Belmont DUP 5:15, 3 March 2020

My Lords, I am pleased to support Amendments 2 and 14 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe.

I note with interest that these amendments were tabled in the last Session in another place by the right honourable Frank Field, who served with great distinction from 1979 until last November as the Member of Parliament for Birkenhead. He made a significant contribution to children’s issues and chaired the Field review on early years intervention. I am sure he will be pleased that the noble Baroness has taken up these amendments, which could not be debated in the other place.

Divorce affects a community: the adults involved, their friends and families and, of course, the children. The likelihood is that the effects on most children will be long-lasting. Children have to watch their parents go through a divorce, then continue their lives afterward. The research base demonstrating the damage to children from divorce is so widespread—the fact that it is now recognised as an adverse children experience, or ACE, has already been alluded to—that I will not detain the House by looking at it in any detail other than to note that family breakdown is now recognised as the biggest factor behind the UK’s child mental health crisis. More than a third of children whose parents had split up reported poor mental health, compared with a fifth of children with parents who were still together. Moreover, Hetherington and Kelly’s research interviewing the children of divorce later in life revealed that 20% to 25% of children of divorce continue to suffer lasting social and psychological problems in adulthood, compared with just 10% of children from intact families.

The fact is that, after a divorce, children find themselves in a difficult situation. As has been referred to, Cockett and Tripp’s work in The Exeter Family Study demonstrates how divorce changes family life. Their research showed that in parental conflict during marriage, the child may be able to remain on the sidelines, whereas after divorce, they may be obliged to take a central role; for example, carrying messages between resident and non-resident parents who find that they are unable to communicate face to face. Children in re-ordered families reported that their parents frequently told tales about each other or each other’s new partners. Children also sometimes felt that they had to suppress telling one parent about enjoyable times they had had with the other, or had actually been asked by one parent to keep something secret from their former partner.

Inevitably, the child’s relationship with their parents changes; for example, one may move away and the other may become more prominent in their life while finding their own way after the divorce, potentially with less financial resources. The child might find that they have to move to be with a parent and change school. A recent article on parental divorce or separation and children’s mental health said:

“Marital instability presents not a single risk factor, but a cascade of sequelae for children.”

Much of the debate today has focused on helping lawyers and parents to sort things out amicably. I do not think we can disagree with that, but it is what the divorce means to a child in the long term that really matters. We must have their well-being at the centre of all our discussions, which is why these amendments are so important. We need to understand that, when viewed from the perspective of the best interests of the child, our number one priority should be not low-conflict divorce but promoting reconciliation and—where possible —avoiding divorce. The evidence suggests that low-conflict divorce can be more traumatic for children than divorce with conflict. Research by Amato, Loomis and Booth, who use a 12-year longitudinal study, found that the break-up of a low-conflict family is more harmful to a child than that of a high-conflict family. As Harry Benson explained:

“It’s not the ‘high conflict’ divorce that damages children but the low conflict ones. A low conflict relationship that ends in divorce makes no sense to a child. They don’t see it coming. It comes out of the blue.”

Social scientist Elizabeth Marquardt, the author of Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorces, states that

“two-thirds of divorces end low-conflict marriages, in which the parents divorce because they are unhappy or unfulfilled, or have other problems that are not seriously threatening. The children of low-conflict couples fare worse after divorce because the divorce marks their first exposure to a serious problem. One day, without much warning, their world just falls apart.”

I ask the Government to support these amendments, and call on them to publish their full and detailed family test impact assessment on all aspects of the Bill, and particularly its impact on children. I commend these amendments—without which there would have been no focused debate on children—to this House.