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Dr. Spink: Does my right hon. Friend believe that more effort, counselling and guidance might be given to people and couples before marriage, so that they can resist and overcome the difficulties that inevitably come in marriage? Should not Churches give a firmer lead in preparing couples for marriage?
Mr. Patten: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have, in a spirit of helpfulness, a six-point plan to help Her Majesty's Government, with which I intend to conclude. One of those points is exactly the one to which my hon. Friend referred.
Mr. Patten: I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Sir J. Wiggin).
Sir Jerry Wiggin (Weston-super-Mare): Does my right hon. Friend recognise that although what he says will, I suspect, have the support of the whole House, the tragedy is that many of the evils that he describes exist in the present situation and that today's law allows all those things to happen? This is a genuine attempt to try to improve what is currently an outrageous situation.
Mr. Patten: I do not doubt that. I listened with great care to what my hon. Friend said. Of course, he is right when he puts forward the view that, on many occasions, there is no--or very little--fault when a marriage breaks down. People fall out of love, get bored with each other, drift apart, and, alas, a marriage dies on its feet and they end up in the divorce courts. It is wrong of the House to send a message to people in the real world outside, who know that from time to time a fault occurs in a marriage, that we in this place say that that fault can never happen.
That is why I was so interested to hear the hon. Member for Brent, South say that we must recognise that, in marriage, as in other areas of human relations, culpability exists. I remember exactly what he said and look forward to hearing what he has to say during later stages of the Bill as to how we can take into account that recognition of culpability. It does us no good, whichever party we belong to, to pretend to the outside world that something does not exist when the outside world knows jolly well that it does.
Mr. Tim Devlin (Stockton, South):
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mrs. Gorman:
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Patten:
I am trying, in the spirit of Madam Speaker's earlier ruling, to make a quickie speech, but I shall give way to my two hon. Friends and then try to crack on.
Mr. Devlin:
Does my right hon. Friend agree that, if there is a fault in a marriage, it is not compulsory that one must immediately exercise one's right to divorce, and that
Mr. Patten:
I am sure that my hon. Friend and I agree that much more effort will be needed in reconciliation. I sense from interventions that have been made that there is common ground on that between hon. Members on both sides of the House.
I now give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman).
Mrs. Gorman:
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way, and I address myself to his sincere remarks. Is it not a fact that the Catholic Church has welcomed the Bill, particularly because it helps to protect children?
Mr. Patten:
His Eminence the Archbishop of Westminster, in an article in The Tablet, made his views perfectly clear and suggested ways in which he thought that the Bill could be improved, but I argue my case purely personally and on secular grounds, to which I now wish to refer.
Surely, practice must be about learning from experience. Bitter experience in this country has taught us that predictions made when the divorce law was last reformed, in 1969, have turned out to be entirely wrong. The hon. Member for Brent, South made that point. Experts told us then that as a result of that legislation, the divorce rate would stabilise, the rate of illegitimacy would drop, and cohabitation in place of marriage would become rare. Yet my distinguished constituent, Ruth Deetch, principal of St. Anne's college, Oxford, has demonstrated that nothing of the sort has happened.
Since 1969, the rate of births out of wedlock has risen from 6 per cent. to more than 30 per cent., and in 30 years the divorce rate has more than trebled. In 1969, doubtless for the best of motives, we in this place set out to make changes, which, alas, have made us the divorce capital of Europe.
These new reforms will, in their turn, considerably quicken the rate of divorce, for they will speed up the 27 per cent. of divorces that are currently granted on the basis of at least two years' separation. They will also speed up many divorces that are already based on fault.
Fortunately for the people of Scotland and Northern Ireland, the Bill does not apply there. I do not see many Northern Irish or Scottish Members here clamouring for the measure to be introduced in their countries.
Sir James Molyneaux (Lagan Valley)
indicated assent.
Mr. Patten:
I see my right hon. Friend from the Ulster Unionist party indicating assent. I do not think that he and his hon. Friends wish to have the Bill visited on them.
We already know that, in Northern Ireland and Scotland respectively, about 60 per cent. and 75 per cent. of divorces are granted after two or five years' separation. Why is this new divorce law being uniquely visited on England and Wales? Why is there no clamour for it in Scotland and Northern Ireland? Why have not those who bear the heavy responsibility of formulating this legislation harkened to the experiences of the United States, where individual states began to go in for no-fault divorce from 1969 onwards? Since then, they have reaped a social and economic whirlwind.
I was told in January this year that records in the state administrative office in Oklahoma show that, over the past three years, the number of marriage licences issued across the state has nearly been matched by the number of divorce petitions. There are as many divorce petitions as there are applications to get married. The reaction against no-fault divorce and its social and economic consequences, particularly for women, has led to the introduction of Bills to reform no-fault divorce in six states in the United States. As its journal, Newsweek, pointed out on 18 March, that movement is beginning to sweep America.
In America, many who would class themselves as feminists, some of whom once supported these forms of no-commitment marriage, now believe that they are creating a whole new class of people in poverty as a result--divorced women with children. As Mrs. Deech says, there is an equal danger in this country of accelerating the trend towards a two-tier system that disadvantages women; in other words, a world with husbands who can afford their own lawyers and where many wives will have to rely on mediation.
In conclusion, I shall make some practical suggestions, in the same measured and constructive way as my noble Friend and constituent, Baroness Young, did so far-sightedly in another place. These debates are certainly not a waste of time, for they have brought matters to a head, giving the Government the chance to stop and rethink what they are doing.
I have six suggestions for Her Majesty's Government. First, if they wish to proceed with the Bill as drafted, they should give my constituents the choice of a real marriage contract if they insist on trying to forge ahead with a no-commitment marriage contract. Secondly, we must introduce an element of consideration of conduct or of fault, or, to borrow the phrase used by the hon. Member for Brent, South, of culpability in the divorce process.
Thirdly, we should lengthen to 18 months--or perhaps two years would be better--the period during which couples with children should go through not just mediation but reconciliation procedures. That is very important. Fourthly--this deals with the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Dr. Spink)--Churches, voluntary organisations and others need to do much more to provide couples with courses explaining what marriage is like and how they can surmount the problems before they marry. That should be not just encouraged but supported by the Government.
Fifthly, if a divorce is contemplated, specific attempts at reconciliation should be made before mediation. They should involve frankness. Advice should be given to couples with children which spells out the uncomfortable facts that many do not wish to hear, although, sadly, they are true. For instance, despite the best efforts of many
divorced or divorcing parents, the children of such parents are five times more likely to live in poverty, and at least twice as likely to suffer from health problems or difficulties with employment or to take drugs.
That is the rough, tough stuff of reconciliation: putting the facts before a man and his wife before they split and help to wreck their children's lives--although they do not mean to. We should be talking about that rather than about mediation and the divvying up of spoils, which is a secondary and residuary matter. The Government must accept the consensus that clearly exists in the House. What is being said is hard-edged, nasty and not nice to say or to think about, but it is true.
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