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6.14 pm
Mr. Paul Boateng (Brent, South): Families are the natural, fundamental units of our society, and safe, secure marriages are the most certain buttress of those families. We shall be concerned in the course of our deliberations to ensure that nothing that we do here adds to the strain and stress already manifest around the institution of the family.
The history of the House legislating in the area of family law has not been altogether happy. In 1969, we stated as a House that the objective of what is now the law was
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman:
With his knowledge of history, the hon. Gentleman may recall that it is almost 150 years since a Government introduced a Bill on divorce. The Leo Abse Bill was a private Bill taken through with Government assistance, but it is not usual for a Government to bring in such legislation.
Mr. Boateng:
The hon. Lady makes an important point. It is because this is a Government Bill that we have a special responsibility to get it right, and we shall do so together for as long as it takes in the weeks and months ahead.
Since the Divorce Reform Act 1969, the incidence of divorce has escalated, with the consequential increase in bitterness and alienation on the part of the parties to it. All too often, the children are forgotten during the battles fought out in divorce proceedings. Moreover, the House Library estimates that the consequences of divorce cost the country about £5 billion per year.
The impact of the current law on marriage can be clearly seen in the statistics. Men and women are marrying later, and fewer of them are marrying. More and more people are divorcing younger and younger and after ever shorter marriages. In 1951, 10 per cent. of marriages had ended in divorce after 25 years. By contrast, 10 per cent. of couples who married in 1971 were divorced by their sixth wedding anniversary and 10 per cent. of those who married in 1981 had divorced within four and a half years. It is a problem with immense human consequences.
Labour Members will be guided by the following criteria: how we can best support marriage and family life, how we can best encourage shared parental responsibility and how we can best protect vulnerable family members. Each part of the legislation must be judged against those criteria.
We welcome the fact that the Government, in sponsoring the Bill, have recognised their responsibility to ensure that there will be free votes on those parts of the Bill which are peculiarly matters of conscience. Other matters, however, are equally important. I very much hope that there will be a prevailing spirit on both sides of the House that enables us
to approach them in a manner that is free from partisan considerations. Partisan considerations should not apply because every hon. Member and every Government--present or future--will have to live with the consequences of the legislation that we make. We must approach our consideration of the Bill with that thought very much in mind.
At the heart of the Government's proposals is the notion that the family's interests are better protected by mediation than by the adversarial approach that is all too often associated with lawyers and with the current law. The Lord Chancellor has referred to that aspect on a number of occasions, and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster referred to it in introducing the Bill. That proposition must be tested with great care. While mediation undoubtedly has a role to play, and I welcome it, we must ensure that an infrastructure is in place for it and that it is undertaken by properly qualified people. There are gaps in the Bill in relation to such provision.
In appropriate cases, there is a role for mediation, but it is folly to believe that it is primarily concerned with justice and equity, because it is not. Mediation is about arriving at a settlement with a minimum of conflict, whereas conflict is sometimes necessary to achieve justice and equity. During our deliberations on the Floor of the House and in Committee, we must ensure that we do not propose a two-tier divorce system which says, in effect, "If you can afford a lawyer, you will receive justice and equity; if you cannot afford a lawyer, it will be the mediators for you." That cannot be right, and we must ensure that it is not a consequence of the Bill.
The matter does not end there, because there is another confusion at the heart of the Bill, which the Lords were beginning to tease out so as to remedy it. The confusion arises from the notion that mediation and reconciliation are somehow interchangeable; they are not. Mediators tell us that they are not concerned to effect reconciliation or to save those marriages which can be saved. They have another interest, which in some senses may be opposed to the achievement of reconciliation between the parties. Their interest is to achieve the speediest possible resolution of outstanding conflicts about the disposal of property, the children's future and parental responsibility.
Reconciliation is a very different matter. The Bill says much about mediation, but much less about reconciliation. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in his opening remarks, did not allay my concerns on that score.
Mr. Leigh:
In the hon. Gentleman's view, is there an arguable case for extending the time so that people can have at least six months for reconciliation before mediation even begins?
Mr. Boateng:
There is no point in approaching the issue on the basis that there would necessarily be greater attempts at reconciliation if one had 18 or 24 months to wait as opposed to 12 months. That would be a mistake. That is not to say that, in Committee, we should not try to ensure that some time is designated in which reconciliation is the focus and to discover where the link can be made between that opportunity--whether it is through meetings with marriage guidance counsellors or in some other way--and the information meeting. It is an illusion to suppose that at the information meeting a magic wand can be waved that will direct people in the "right direction" of mediators, lawyers and people concerned with reconciliation, because it will not happen.
In Committee, we must examine in much more detail what form the information sessions or meetings will take and what opportunities there will be for people to go from information meetings into a process that is primarily about reconciliation rather than mediation. We shall table amendments on that issue in Committee.
The Government also need to deal with the issue of infrastructure--I very much hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will deal with it at the end of this debate--and the related issue of resources. The Chancellor mentioned that it would be necessary to make resources available for reconciliation. I do not know what thought has been given during the preparation of the Bill to the exact scale of resources that will be necessary. It has been said--the Lord Chancellor's Department has gone on at some length about it--that the Bill is a cost-neutral measure, but that is impossible. As currently constituted, the measure cannot be cost neutral. If it is intended, in appropriate cases, that there should not be a reduction of access to legal advice, assistance and representation, that it will continue to be available under the legal aid scheme and that there will be access to mediation, reconciliation, marriage guidance and counselling, where will the money come from? How much will it cost?
Mr. Donald Anderson:
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not only a question of resources, however important those are, but of people? It is unlikely that an army of people will emerge like terracotta Chinese soldiers from the ground to reconcile and to mediate. Will such people be available and can they be trained in time? Will the effort be put in to ensure that the people are available as well as the money?
Mr. Boateng:
That is another unanswered question. The Government must publish their figures, as we have asked them to do in the past. Some costing must have been done during the preparation of this measure. If the House is to give the Bill the detailed consideration that it must have, we must know how much it will cost. If we do not know that, anything that Ministers say about the importance that they attach to reconciliation will amount to little more than weasel words and pie in the sky. As the Chancellor recognised, one cannot hope to have adequate machinery for reconciliation without resources being made available for it. We ask that the Government publish the figures, that we have an informed debate on the resource implications of the Bill and that the pretence that the Bill is cost neutral be abandoned. If cost neutrality is to be obtained by abandoning access to legal aid, I have to inform Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department that we shall fight them tooth and nail.
There are some cases in which mediation is simply not appropriate. That is most true in cases involving violence against women. To ask a woman who has been the victim of repeated assaults and who has been terrorised in her own home to sit down in the same room as her victimiser and oppressor and to believe that there can be a hope in hell of that resulting in adequate mediation is to live in cloud cuckoo land.
"to buttress rather than undermine, the stability of marriage, but when a marriage had irretrievably broken down, to enable the empty legal shell to be destroyed with the maximum fairness, and the minimum bitterness, distress and humiliation".
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