My Lords, I am not at all convinced by the Government’s family test statement for the Bill, which says that there will be next to no long-term impact on divorce rates and that marriage will be unaffected. They again draw on Exeter University:

“Concerns that the removal of fault will undermine marriage and prevent reconciliation are not consistent with the research evidence or international experience.”

As I said at Second Reading, research relied on by the Ministry of Justice found that marriage rates reduce by about 3% to 4% following the introduction of no-fault divorce, and the likelihood of divorcees remarrying declines by around one-third to one-half. As Professor Justin Wolfers says,

“the benefits of marriage (tying your spouse to a contract) are reduced in a no-fault world.”

Less marriage will tend to mean more cohabitation, an inherently less stable relationship form. The whole of society is affected when the contract of marriage becomes devoid of meaning.

How will it impact divorce rates? Such reform leads to an immediate spike in the divorce rate that apparently dissipates over time. Let us be clear: that spike is made up of people, adults and children. If couples are struggling to persevere, the introduction of no-fault divorce undermines an important cultural underpinning of assumed permanence to marriage which could push such marginal couples into divorce. I am not, of course, arguing that couples should stay together if there is irresolvable violence, abuse or conflict. It is unsurprising if the numbers drop back, given that people are marrying less and that the divorce rate is calculated as a percentage of married couples.

Because of the many and varied ramifications of family breakdown which we have heard about this evening, which include education failure, poor mental health in children, increased pressure on housing stock, loneliness and fatherlessness, which can lead to gangs and county lines, the Government should commit to tracking the trends that follow this legislation. It is very important to do so. It is not enough that the Office for National Statistics collects the data. That is not the same thing as the data being laid before both Houses. The Government need to publish reports on family stability, as they committed to do when the Welfare Reform and Work Act was discussed in this House.

History has shown that we need to pin the Government down when it comes to tracing family stability. During the passage of the then Welfare Reform and Work Bill, the coalition Government promised to introduce a new duty to report on worklessness and educational attainment. They said that

“alongside these statutory measures we will develop a range of non-statutory indicators to measure progress against the other root causes of child poverty, which include but are not limited to family breakdown, addiction and problem debt. Anyone will be able to assess the Government’s progress here. The Government are saying, ‘Judge us on that progress’.”—[Official Report, 9/12/15; col. 1585.]

We have gone backwards rather than forwards in this regard. The family stability indicator has been discarded in favour of measures that look at the quality of parents’ relationships. Of course, these are also important, but parental relationship breakdown is the forgotten adverse childhood experience. Even—and, perhaps, especially—when there is no conflict, it is very difficult for children to come to terms with their parents’ separation. In fact, when there is no conflict, it is harder to understand, so they blame themselves, and that is where much of the mental health harm comes from. There might be different data between different parts of the United Kingdom, perhaps between London and the new Conservative seats in the Midlands and the north-east of England. That could be instructive. It is important that the impact of this radical new divorce Bill is assessed and laid before Parliament. I beg to move.