HC Deb 10 May 1946 vol 422 cc1447-56

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."— [Captain Michael Stewart.]

4.0 p.m.

Mr. Skeffington-Lodge (Bedford)

Owing to the shortage of time and the necessity for making my remarks as concise as possible, I must apologise to the House for using somewhat copious notes on this occasion. Although several aspects of the serious problems created by the huge number of undisposed divorce cases involving Service men and women have been debated in another place on, I think, two occasions I make no apology for availing myself this afternoon of a long-sought opportunity of drawing attention to a wholly deplorable situation. The more its import can be brought home to our people, the better, and all too many of them unfortunately are already personally involved in the mass of human misery which it constitutes. I am sure that I can look for sympathy and help, as far as it lies in his power, from my right hon. and learned Friend, who is most kindly going to deal with some of the points which I shall raise. I hope that in the course of his remarks he will be able to indicate to the House what is being done as far as grappling with the time factor is concerned.

First let me paint the picture in all its grimness as it stands at the present time. From July, 1942, to the end of last year, 48,500 applications for assistance in divorce proceedings had been accepted by the Command legal aid sections of the Services, both at home and overseas. Roughly 5,000 cases so far have been tackled, although unfortunately not all of them have been disposed of. That leaves some 43,000 cases still to be dealt with This involves more than 80,000 men and women, who are unable at present to live normal lives, and have no chance of happiness until their cases have been heard. If one includes in each case a third person, in the shape of a co-respondent, we reach the gigantic total of 120,000 people personally and directly affected. The semi-permanent state of separation in which the bulk of these folk are now living should be ended at the earliest possible moment. That is if the body politic is not to be irreparably injured. An especially tragic feature of the position is that many of these people have unwanted children whose prospects of a good upbringing are in dire jeopardy.

This figure of 48,500 which I have cited, represents, I fear, only a fraction of the known cases of infidelity, and the longer the delay in dealing with this matter, the more will the slime of unfaithfulness creep over our land. For every man who decides on divorce when his wife was thought to have been unfaithful, there are probably one who did not, and two or three who have delayed taking steps until their return from overseas. I feel sure that I am not exaggerating when I say that roughly half a million of our people are in a greater or lesser degree involved in these Service tragedies.

What are the reasons for this terrible scourge? What are the reasons for this smashing up and throwing overboard of the most sacred pledges and ties to which men and women can commit themselves? How can the present situation and position be most rapidly resolved both in regard to the saving of as many as possible of these marriages, and, where this cannot be done, in disposing of the cases expeditiously? Above all, what remedies are there which might be adopted against any further encroachment on the family life of our country? Let me put some ideas before the House, under each of these headings if I may.

Firstly, about the landslide in behaviour, of which these cases provide such clear evidence. That the war is partly to blame we all recognise, but I fear that there is much more to it than that. The disintegration of family life has clearly been accentuated by the upheaval from which we have just emerged, but that disintegration has been developing for many years and has merely been given a fillip by the disorderly and irregular way in which, owing to war conditions, various social and economic changes have taken place. Above all, I believe that the decay in religious faith and practice in our country is responsible. However much the finger of scorn may be pointed at Victorian morals, it was certainly not true in those days that 40 per cent. of all girls under 20 in England and Wales were pregnant on their wedding day, nor that one in four of all first babies born to married couples were conceived outside marriage. Millions of people in this land are unfortunately without a philosophy of life, which only, as I have said, the Christian religion can supply for them.

Mr. Beverley Baxter (Wood Green)

Can the hon. Gentleman tell us how he arrives at the figure of 40 per cent.? Has he any confirmation of that?

Mr. Skeffington-Lodge

I went into the figures very carefully before I prepared my speech and I have no reason to doubt their strict accuracy. I have very little——

Mr. Baxter

If I may interrupt the hon. Gentleman again, does he seriously suggest that these facts are registered and can be compiled in any possible way?

Mr. Skeffington-Lodge

I have been supplied from the most reliable source with that information, and I can only repeat that I have no reason to doubt its strict accuracy.

Mr. Quintin Hogg (Oxford)

The hon. Gentleman has just said a terrible thing if it is to be taken seriously, and I think he ought to tell us how he arrived at it and what authority he has for using that figure.

Mr. Skeffington-Lodge

If my hon. Friend would care to consult the Marriage Guidance Council, I think he would find that the information as supplied to me by that body is correct. I cannot, unfortunately, deal more fully with the point now because there are other points which I wish to make.

As I have said, there are millions of people in our country without a philosophy of life. which only the Christian religion can supply for them. The confused sense of values existing among people in every walk of life results from the neglect of the faith of our fathers, but can partly also be traced to other factors. I refer to the tone and content of a large part of the Press, of which the "News of the World" is one of the worst -offenders; it is due to many films, to some plays and to much of the cheapjack literature which leads to the formation by its readers of a low estimate of their circumstances and destiny. All this has resulted in countless instances in the animal ousting the spiritual. A gigantic struggle for the survival of the spirit of mankind lies ahead of the world, and I deplore the ever increasing tendency for the world's inhabitants to become mere robots and automata.

I now come to the best means of coping with the problem of clearing away the divorces still pending. Here I want to put forward three practical suggestions to the Attorney-General. One has to do with what I regard as the over-rigidity of the conditions of annulment of marriages; the second lies in the sphere of reconciliation; and the third has reference to the machinery for speeding up divorce proceedings. It is hard, for me at any rate, to see many of these hasty and wartime marriages as real marriages at all. Is there here, I ask, a key to their subsequent treatment? There is little doubt that, in many instances, there has never existed any true interior consent between the partners, whether cohabitation has taken place or not. I have here some correspondence from a man who has served in the Royal Air Force throughout the whole war. He married in October, 1941, and, except for one week, he has scarcely seen his wife since. Today, he is facing a happy future with the same girl despite, in the meantime, having suffered constant rebuffs from her and having failed, after exploring every avenue, to get a divorce through on the grounds of his wife's admitted unfaithfulness. What is behind the reconciliation which has just taken place? The answer is, a sympathetic solicitor and his managing clerk.

I would like to see far more effort made at reconciling estranged parties and, for that purpose, I am going to suggest to the Attorney-General that regular reconciliation officers should be appointed all over the country as are probation officers. It would be better still if it could be arranged that Divorce Court judges should not be asked to deal with a defended or undefended case until a certificate had been provided by a reconciliation officer saying that reconciliation had been tried but was, unfortunately, unlikely to be effective. Probation officers are of inestimable value in police courts and reconciliation officers could prove of equal help, I believe, in the divorce courts. Thereby thousands of marriages might be saved from shipwreck.

In passing, I would like to pay tribute to the splendid work of chaplains and Service welfare officers for what they have done throughout the war in this matter of reconciliation. In order to hasten the purely mechanical process of dealing with things, I feel that all undefended cases might well be dealt with in the county courts. The appalling delay and holdup that now exist are, undoubtedly, resulting in many Servicemen using their gratuities and savings, and even borrowing money, to go privately to a solicitor in an endeavour to speed things up. The provision of married quarters for Servicemen and their wives at home and overseas, the possibility of increased leave now that the war is over, and the reduction of the term of overseas duty which was promised this week in another place will, of course, help to reduce the toll of divorces in the future as will, also, the fact that by the end of this year the bulk of the remaining non-regulars in the Army will be under 24 years of age.

For marriage to be successful, I believe it should be made more difficult of approach than it is at present. It is as easy to obtain a marriage licence as it is to buy a dog licence, and most young folk have little or no guidance as to the obligations and implications of matrimony. I believe that the scope and the activities of the Marriage Guidance Council might well be reviewed and extended. The lighthearted and reckless way in which marriages are arranged is, to me, a clear proof of the need of some definite scheme of training for marriage. In the words of Thomas Cranmer —I believe they can be ascribed to Thomas Cranmer: Marriage ought not by anyone to be enterprised nor taken in hand inadvisedly, lightly or wantonly. lies the key to this problem. It is one of the most difficult vocations, and the home-making which should follow marriage is one of the most worthwhile jobs in the world. Too many people are ignorant of the fact that under the Matrimonial Causes Act, 1937, they are tied to each other for at least three years.

Facts like this, as well as the cultivation of the right approach to matrimony, would, I feel, do much to eliminate the dangerous attitude which treats it in a prosaic way, almost in the attitude adopted, for instance, to the making of a will or to the taking of a partner into one's grocery business. If the new houses as they go up are to become homes, divorce should most certainly not be made easier. In this view, I believe I am supported by almost all authorities connected with the divorce courts. If we do away with the individual family as the pivotal element in our society then, I am certain, we shall be faced in this country with social catastrophe.

4.19 p.m.

The Attorney-General (Sir Hartley Shawcross)

My hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mr. Skeffington-Lodge) has certainly opened up a very wide field for discussion, but he has performed a useful service in keeping before this House and, indeed, before the country, the deplorable situation which exists in this matter. For it is a deplorable situation, of the gravity of which His Majesty's Government are fully aware, and not from one point of view alone. From the point of view of legal administration I do not think there is any matter which has caused more anxiety to my Noble Friend and to myself than this question of the delay in our divorce procedure. It is a shocking thing, and it would be in any matter, that tens of thousands of people should be delayed and tarried in securing the legal remedies to which the law pretends to entitle them. It is especially shocking that that should be so in this matter where we are concerned not with mere proprietary rights, but with the hearts, and souls, and the very lives of men. As the hon. Member has so well said, the results are obviously of the gravest kind.

Here we have 40,000, 60,000 or possibly more, as the hon. Member has suggested, anxious to get married again. For the most part they are people who have come back from the war, after fighting for their country, hoping to be able to settle down and to have a chance of building up new lives afresh, and they find themselves faced, as they are, with, it may be, 2½ years, it may be 3½ years, of delay in securing their divorces, and with the necessity, in many cases, of forming what the Victorian novelists called "irregular unions," with the probability of illegitimate children and all the other grave social consequences which result from that kind of situation.

It is clearly not in that way that we are going to secure useful and contented citizens, and the unhappiness and the discontent, and even, if you will, the immorality to which that situation gives rise, spread throughout the community and cause increasing disaffection amongst the whole of the people. Nor is it only the delay in securing divorce which must give rise to great anxiety. The very fact that there should at this moment be 40,000 people and more seeking divorce is disquieting enough. In part, no doubt, it is due to the war. In the last war the figures, which at that time were comparatively small, were doubled, and when the war was over they went down. But from 1922 onwards the figures showed a steady rise. In 1922 the number of people seeking divorce was limited to 2,400. In 1938, as the result of the legislation which had been passed, I believe, the year before, the figure was almost double that of the previous year and exceeded 10,000. In 1942, 12,000 people were petitioning for divorce; in 1944 the number was nearly 19,000; and in 1945 it rose to 25,000. In that year alone 20,000 decrees of divorce were actually pronounced in the Court.

Whilst I would not for a moment accept the figures as to immorality on the part of young girls which seem to have been put forward by some marriage guidance council, there is, I am afraid, no doubt that the state of morals in the country is not as it should be. Whilst one may hope that when the Forces are demobilised and the men and women have come back and attempted to settle down again we shall get some reduction in our divorce figures, it would be idle to shut one's eyes to the fact that far more people are seeking divorce nowadays than would be right in a healthy community.

Mr. Beverley Baxter

While the learned Attorney-General has rightly repudiated the estimated total of girls who are actually pregnant on their wedding day, unless there is a more vigorous repudiation, it will shock the communities in the Dominions and in America beyond question. If the Attorney-General could see his way to repudiate the figures even more strongly he would be doing a great public service.

The Attorney-General

I should have thought that this is clearly a matter about which it would be quite impossible to obtain any accurate statistics. I imagine this body has taken some sample group of quite abnormal cases, because one would expect that anyway it would be dealing with abnormal cases. I cannot think for a moment that the percentage of young girls who are pregnant on their marriage day approaches anything like the figure which has been given. I regarded the figure which was suggested by my hon. Friend as quite fantastic and I do not for a moment believe that the state of immorality in this country approaches those proportions.

Mr. Skeffington-Lodge

I referred only to girls under 20, and not to all young women who are getting married. I still have reason to believe that, as far as girls under 20 are concerned, the figure is correct.

Mr. Turner-Samuels (Gloucester)

Is it not a fact that there are no statistics and that the figure cannot be verified?

The Attorney-General

If it is the position of girls under 20 that has been referred to, I should regard the matter as even more terrible, but it is impossible to obtain any accurate statistics, and I hope no undue reliance will be placed on those which have been produced by the organisation in question. At the same time, it would be quite wrong to shut our eyes to the fact that the very high divorce figures with which we are faced at the moment are a symptom of a general lowering of the standards of morality. It will take us some time not merely to wipe out the existing arrears, but to correct that lowered moral standard of which I suggest these figures are a symptom. I am not for a moment introducing any political factor into this matter. I know we shall all completely agree about these matters, although we may take different views as to how they are to be put right. There are two important factors which will play their part in building up again the high standards of family life on which we used to pride ourselves in this country. One is the better education of our young people in the responsibilities and duties of citizenship, of which the responsibilities of matrimony form an important part. The other is the provision of those amenities which themselves conduce to better family life: better housing, freedom from anxiety from unemployment; better recreational facilities and matters of that kind.

Meanwhile, what is to be done about the situation which actually faces us? My hon. Friend has referred to reconciliation. I may deal with that in passing. There are two views about it. Some people would say that for a complete stranger to intervene and interfere in their most intimate relationships would be impertinence. On the other hand, experience shows that reconciliation by skilled and tactful workers has met with remarkable success. The welfare officers in the Army and the officials of the Soldiers', Sailors' and Airmen's Families Association have done most splendid work. One cannot record it in statistics, but there is no doubt that their work has resulted in saving from shipwreck an untold number of marriages. Even when the cases have got into the hands of lawyers, the departmental legal officers have done most valuable work in bringing about reconciliation between parties who were seeking divorce. As to the future, in regard to the matter of what extension might be brought about, I can only say that this is a question to which we have been giving something more than active thought and consideration.

In regard to the actual disposal of cases, in the first four months of 1946 the Service divorce departments have handled 1,000 cases. The Law Society was then operating six separate units or teams, amongst whom the pending cases were distributed. They were then dealing with cases at the rate of 4,000 a year. By 1st July this year, there will be 17 of those units, many of them in the provinces. That should step up the rate to 12,000 a year. By the end of the year there will be 35 such units, a great many of them in the provinces. We hope then that the rate of progress will be stepped up to 20,000 a year. I think the House will realise that although there may be many difficulties in rapidly expanding this new machinery and we may have setbacks and disappointments, we are making real progress towards the disposal of the very heavy arrears which exist at present. New cases are coming in all the time. We hope, in regard to those cases which have already been entered and petitions filed, by the end of the year to be disposing of them at the rate of 20,000 a year or thereabouts. We have made arrangements that the existing machinery of the courts will be able to cope with the greatly increased intake of divorce petitions.

What long-term plans should be made for trial might require legislation and is a matter into which I cannot go. So far as it is necessary to appoint commissioners under the existing powers in order to deal with the increased number of divorces ready for trial by the courts, commissioners will be appointed, and there will be no delay. The delay is in preparation for trial. We hope that the increased number of teams established by the Law Society, to whose initiative and energy in this matter I desire to pay the warmest tribute, will result in arrears being wiped out in measurable time and in these people being able to start their lives afresh.

4.29 p.m.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton (Brixton)

In the half-minute that remains, may I put one point to my hon. and learned Friend for his consideration? It is not much use speeding up the Services Divorce Department unless, at the same time, some attempt is made to speed up the grant of poor persons' certificates. In the Poor Persons Committee itself, where there are at the moment some 18,000 cases awaiting submission to the Committee, only 50 certificates are being granted weekly.

It being Half-past Four o'Clock, Mr.DEPUTY-SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order