ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN (SCOTLAND) BILL. (Hansard, 12 November 1929)

Duchess of ATHOLL

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the law as to the duration and recovery of aliment for, and the custody of, illegitimate children in Scotland; and for other purposes connected therewith. The Bill which I now beg leave to introduce aims at removing some very obvious disabilities under which the unmarried mother and her child labour in Scotland to-day. The first disability is in regard to the period during which the court may require the father to support the child. The duration of the obligation has not been very clear in Scotland. In no case does it extend beyond the age of puberty, although it is said that the obligation will endure until the child is able to support itself. I think everyone will agree to-day that children, either boys or girls, are not in a position to maintain themselves in their early teens. As a matter of fact the courts have rather made a practice of making a decree which is only operative until the age of seven in the case of a boy, or until 10 in the case of a girl. Then, of course, it is open to the mother to make a further application for aliment. But then comes in a right of the father to take custody of the child instead of continuing to pay aliment and the mother can only be sure of being able to retain custody of the child herself if she fails to make application for further aliment.

I submit that such a position might well be an intolerable one for a mother who had been doing her best for her child. She might be put in the impossible position of having to choose between struggling to maintain the child by her own unaided efforts, or losing the child altogether. After great difficulties, after enduring per haps much shame, after hard struggles for herself and her child she might find that she could only ensure the comfort and security of the child by parting with it. I can hardly imagine a more cruel position for a mother. So this Bill seeks, in the first place, to ensure that the father shall be liable for aliment until the child has reached the age of 16 and in the second place, it proposes to give the courts power to make such orders 1734 for the custody of the child as may seem in the best interests of the child, having regard to the conduct of both parents. It also cancels the present right of the father to discharge his obligation for continuing to make aliment for the child, by offering to take custody of it.

The next point with which the Bill deals is the amount of aliment that may be claimed. At present, under Scottish law, both parents are responsible for the maintenance of the child in equal pro portions and that necessarily limits the amount to the limit of the capacity of the poorer parent to pay. As we know, many unmarried mothers have a very hard struggle to provide for themselves and their children and sometimes the father may be in a position to make a considerably better contribution to the child's maintenance than the mother. So, Clause 1 (2) of the Bill proposes that parents should be made liable according to their several means and circumstances. I should add that at present the father is rarely liable for more than 4s. 6d. per week for the maintenance of the child, and although that may be as much as some fathers can afford, there are others who might afford a great deal more and the Bill seeks to remedy that anomaly.

Another point is that the unmarried mother often fails to secure any aliment at all from the father. He may dispute parentage, or he may leave the district, and I am informed by social workers in touch with a good many cases of this kind that in their experience sometimes 50 per cent. of applications by unmarried mothers for aliment fail to be made good. An application can only be made after the birth of the child and no application may be made, as in England, for the expenses of the confinement. It is not in the interests of the health of the mother if, when arrangements are being made for the confinement, she is quite uncertain as to whether she will receive any aliment for the child and is without any power to claim anything towards the expanses of the confinement. I am told that sometimes the courts are crowded with cases and that it may be many months after the birth of the child before aliment is awarded by the Courts. 1735 Accordingly another Clause in this Bill gives power to a woman to present an application to the Court within three months of her expected confinement and to make the application cover the expenses of confinement as well as aliment—though, if the case is defended by the putative father, no decree can be operative until after the birth of the child.

Finally, the Bill will empower the courts to order the aliment to be paid to some person other than the mother, such as an officer of the court, or an inspector of the poor, or other suitable and reliable person who may be taking a friendly interest in the mother. The purpose of this provision is to ensure that there shall be no unnecessary con tact between the man and the woman if it appears that marriage between the two is unlikely to take place. Those briefly are the points dealt with by the Bill.

I am sure the House will agree that there are few people in this country or indeed in any country, who have to face greater difficulties than the unmarried mother and her child. She may be responsible—she is, at least, partly responsible—for the difficulties which she has to face, but that does not affect the desire of many people to help her to face those difficulties successfully, and public opinion in this country is united in wishing to see that the children suffer as little as possible from any mistakes which the father or mother may have made. I am sure also that opinion on all sides of the House desires to see fathers doing their utmost within their means to assist in the suitable maintenance of their children. I submit that the present position in Scotland which I have endeavoured briefly to describe, is very far behind what public opinion to-day feels to be desirable or fair or just, either for the mother or her child, and I ask the House to let me present this Bill which seeks to do a tardy act of justice to both.