DESERTED WIVES

HC Deb 05 February 1968 vol 758 cc85-107

5.50 p.m.

Mr. Gordon Oakes (Bolton, West)

I beg to move, That this House takes note of the plight of wives separated from their husbands and the urgent need to improve the enforcement and method of collection of maintenance orders. Any hon. Member who obtains a place in the Ballot for Private Members' Motions is fortunate. In this Motion, I seek to direct the attention of hon. Members on both sides of the House—because this is by no means a party poli tical Motion—to a section of the community which is desperately unhappy and desperately poor. It is a section of the community which is often forgotten because, although publicly and privately we have sympathy for the aged, the disabled and widows, very often little sympathy is given to wives who have been deserted by their husbands and who find themselves in the gravest financial difficulties.

We do not know exactly how many such wives there are or how many children they have. One can only assess the position, but the numbers are considerable. In a Report published by the Ministry of Social Security in the summer of last year called "Circumstances of Families", which goes somewhat intensively into the poorer-off sections of the community and their resources, paragraph 37 suggests that there are likely to be 100,000 such families with two or more children. That does not take into account those families with one child and those wives with no children who are deserted. So one can assess that the kind of figure in the United Kingdom with which this Motion is concerned is approaching half a million, if one considers the wives and all the children involved.

Since giving notice of my Motion, I have had many pathetic and tragic letters from wives who have been deserted and find that they cannot obtain the maintenance which courts of law have ordered to be paid to them. I do not want to deal with exceptional cases today, because this is a subject where there is no need to gild the lily. What I shall do is to mention a hypothetical but typical case.

The average wage of a man in manufacturing industry is about £22 a week. Let us suppose that he has two young children, which is an average family, and that he gives his wife £15 for housekeeping of that £22 a week, out of which she pays the rent and buys food, fuel, clothing for the children, and so on. Suddenly, that man deserts his wife. He may go off with another woman, he may just leave her, or he may have been cruel to her, with the result that she is forced to leave him.

First of all, there is the shock and numbness of the marriage suddenly ending. A widow, for example, knows that her marriage has ended because her husband has died. The deserted wife, however, lives in a sort of married widowhood. Her husband has gone, her financial resources have gone, and for some weeks she gets no money except that which the Ministry of Social Security may give her as supplementary benefit.

Then she gets an Order from a magistrate's Court. That is usually based on something between a third and half of the husband's earnings. That is the usual rule of thumb assessment which courts use in deciding the maintenance that shall be given to a wife and family.

A typical order for the wife would be £4 a week, plus £2 per week for each child. From £15 per week housekeeping, suddenly she drops to nothing, and then, when an order is made, to a figure which is just over half that which she received previously. However, still she has to pay rent and buy food, fuel and clothing for the children. All that has happened is that she has one less mouth to feed. The rest of the family has to be cared for still.

In my Motion, I suggest that this subject requires the urgent attention of the House. I do that, first, because of the desperate state in which deserted wives find themselves, where every day is another day's misery. It also deserves attention because we as a nation have been engaged in painfully pruning Government expenditure, and improved means of enforcement would save the Home Office considerable sums of money which are now wasted by committing to prison those husbands who do not maintain their families. In addition, it would save the Ministry of Social Security something in the region of £24 million a year which it pays to wives and their families whose husbands default on maintenance orders.

Another reason why the matter needs urgent attention is because of the excellent Bill introduced by the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) which increases the amount of maintenance which can be given to a wife, an illegitimate child, or the child of a family. However, that Bill is so much waste paper unless there is adequate enforcement machinery so that the money is paid to the wife and family.

At the moment, two Government Committees are considering related problems closely connected with this subject, which again points to the urgent need for this House to consider it. The Jean Graham Hall Committee has just reported on levels of maintenance, and the Payne Committee, is considering the enforcement of civil debt.

A great deal of attention is focused at the moment on the Bill dealing with the reform of our divorce law, which is to come before the House on Friday and will be promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South (Mr. William Wilson). However, this is the time to remember that although divorce might seem to be the end of matrimonial troubles, often it is only the beginning. Certainly it is frequently the beginning of financial troubles, and in fact very many High Court orders are enforceable through magistrates' courts, rather than through the High Court.

Let us consider now the wife whose housekeeping money was £15, and who finds that it drops suddenly to £8 on a court order. There are difficulties which she has to face if her husband complies with it, and even greater ones if he does not.

First, apart from the financial difficulties, there is the difficulty of collection if her husband pays the order regularly. The wife has to go to the court, usually at a fixed time during ordinary working hours. Many courts will not send the money by post, except in cases of special hardship or difficulty, and sometimes not even then. They will not even inform a wife who telephones whether money has been paid into court. When she goes down to the court, she has to queue with people, some of whom are paying fines, some of whom are reporting for probation, and many of whom are husbands—sometimes including her own—who are paying money in at the time she is taking it out. Meeting the husband at the psychological moment when he is paying money into court is hardly conducive to any good relationship or any desire on the part of the wife to go to the collecting office. For many wives, the moment of collection is a dread in their lives for the whole week. However, they have to do it because they need the money for themselves and their families.

With your permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I will quote the words of a very eminent social scientist, Professor O. R. McGregor of Bedford College, London University, who has recently conducted a very intensive study on the question of maintenance payments both for illegitimate children and deserted wives and their families. This is a quotation from a speech that he made at the Annual General Meeting of the National Council for Unmarried Mothers and their Children in September of last year, in which he said: If you wish to see misery and unhappiness queueing up before you in an abject parade, visit the Court Collecting Office. There are often very grave difficulties facing women who are collecting their payments. Some Courts, for example, will not allow them to telephone in advance to discover if there is any money there for them; they have to come to the Court. This is troublesome and expensive—particularly if it means losing half a day's work. Only a very small number of Court offices are open for payment or collection outside working hours. Some collecting offices open for only short periods on two or three days a week. Some Courts won't send money by post unless there are very special circumstances, such as illness, and in only a very small minority of Courts is there a separate collecting office for dealing with maintenance payments. Normally women and husbands and fathers have to go along and pay in the money or take it out by joining the queue with those paying fines and the rest. I am not reciting these details of the sort of administrative difficulty that it is very easy to forget about in order to criticise the Courts. It is not that the Court officers are unsympathetic or neglectful. It is very largely that they are desperately understaffed and have to restrict and impoverish the services that they supply because they have not got the staff to provide a better one. You may think that this sort of detail is trivial. It is not. These are the sort of trivia that measure for human beings—most of whom are very poor and most of whom are very unhappy—the difference between dignity and rejection, decency or squalor. They are the very stirring words of an eminent social scientist who has studied this problem deeply.

The first thing that I want my right hon. arid learned Friend to answer is: why cannot the method of collection at the court office itself be humanised and improved? Why, for example, where a husband is paying an order regularly, cannot that order be paid through a bank so that the wife can collect it from the bank and he can pay it in by standing order, if necessary, and the court can have proof of whether he is paying in by a copy of the bank account? It would relieve pressure on the courts, it would help the husband by saving him from having to take it in, and it would infinitely spare the wife the misery of queuing to take it out.

I have been talking about the fortunate wife whose husband pays regularly. What if he pays irregularly or not at all, as is the position in the vast majority of cases under court orders? She then has to take out a warrant. She often faces great delay in obtaining the warrant and there is delay in serving it because of difficulties in locating her husband or only on a Saturday.

Mr. Kenneth Marks (Manchester, Gorton)

If at all.

Mr. Oakes

If at all, as my hon. Friend said. A constituent of mine pointed out that she had been sent from the Ministry of Social Security to the court to take out a warrant. On arrival at the court and being asked where her husband was, she said, "I do not know", whereupon the court officer said, "How do you expect us to serve a warrant? You ought to know." But she did not know, and she had no means of knowing. Therefore, she had to go back to the Ministry of Social Security where she was asked why she had not taken out a warrant.

These are the sort of difficulties that a wife finds herself in—like a ping-pong ball going between one office and another almost begging for money and now knowing where her resources will come from.

As a result of this delay concerning warrants, many husbands owe hundreds of £s—sometimes over £1,000. These are the type of arrears which can accumulate and frequently do in magistrates' courts, because of the delays and difficulties in the present administrative system.

Suppose my hypothetical wife takes out her warrant and she and her husband appear in court. What then? There are three courses. The first is that the husband is ordered to pay the arrears—sometimes hundreds of £s—at a derisory amount of perhaps 10s. per week on top of the order. He probably will not pay it, because he did not pay the order in the first place. Sometimes the court will remit a large part of the arrears, not because the husband could not pay at the time, but because it seems too burdensome now. What ever the court does in that regard, the wife has lost that money forever, because it will never be paid to her.

Secondly, the court may make an attachment of earnings order. In this House some years ago we thought that might end our difficulties. It does not, because if an attachment of earnings order is made the husband has only to change his job and the wife is back to square one. She has to start all over again by obtaining another order from the court against the new employer. So it goes on and on, with delay and worry and poverty for the wife during the interim.

The third remedy the court employs is probably the most ridiculous of all. It sentences the husband to 42 days imprisonment. When the husband comes out from serving his 42 days' imprisonment that debt is unenforceable against him. It is still an order against him, but it is unenforceable because he has served six weeks in gaol to cover that debt, and it costs the country about £16 a week to keep him in gaol for those six weeks, as well as the cost of social security benefit to his wife and family during that time.

These are the problems. What are the solutions that I suggest? First and foremost, something which will cost nothing, and I know will appeal to my right hon. and learned Friend at the present time: much more flexibility by court officers; more awareness of the problems that these deserted wives have to face; and certainly the consideration of collecting orders paid regularly through a bank instead of to the magistrates' courts, which should relieve the burden on the courts and also the anxiety on the wife.

Another thing that deserted wives desperately need is advice. Often orders made in the early 1950s, and sometimes before, are for what today are trivial amounts, but at the time were considered adequate—say, 30s. or £2 per week. If a wife has never applied to have the order varied, she still lives on that amount of maintenance, even though the husband's earnings have gone up twofold or threefold since the order was made.

I think that courts should advise wives who have old orders that they may have the right to vary them to a more reasonable and modern level. I think, too—and perhaps my right hon. and learned Friend will deal with this when he replies —that legal aid committees should grant wives legal aid for the variation of an order. They have power to do so, but rarely grant it because they argue that a variation is only a matter of figures, no law is involved, and therefore a wife need not be represented by counsel or a solicitor. But the husband often is represented, because he can afford a solicitor and counsel, and little justice is done when a wife appears herself and applies for a variation order when all the legal battalions are ranged against her on behalf of her husband.

The third thing which I would like my right hon. and learned Friend to consider is the more speedy issue of warrants so that vast arrears do not accumulate. A warrant shold be issued by the court, instead of the wife having to sign a warrant and take it out, where there are arrears of £10, in the same way as the court would recover a fine. This is, after all, a court order which has not been paid, and therefore it should be the clerk's responsibility, when a certain amount of arrears has accumulated, to enforce the order without bringing the wife to court to do it.

There should be closer liaison between the Ministry of Social Security and the court office. Somebody at the court, or at the Ministry, I care not, should be available to advise the wife of the many other benefits to which she may be entitled, such as free milk, free school meals, clothing, and so on. In other words, there should be someone to assist her generally, because she has no one to whom she can turn, and no one on whom she can rely. Someone ought to be appointed to do that job. Perhaps one of the Ministry's officers should have this responsibility, apart from the general responsibility of advising those who need supplementary benefit.

What I have proposed would not require legislation, and would not require a lot of money, but I suggest that there is an ultimate solution to this problem which goes much deeper. It is that when a husband defaults, and the wife is in receipt of supplementary benefit from the Ministry of Social Security, the magistrates should have power to make an order enabling the wife to collect the appropriate sum of money from the Ministry each week, and the Ministry should have power to deduct that money from the husband's employer. This would ease the burden for the wife.

It would save the Exchequer a lot of money which at the moment it spends on keeping a person in prison for, say, six weeks at State expense. It would relieve the Ministry of Social Security of a tremendous burden, about £24 million a year, which it now pays to the wives and families of husbands who have failed to meet their commitments under an order. It is true that the Ministry would not get back £24 million, because some husbands may be out of work, or sick, but the sum involved is not much less than that which the Government expect to save by the imposition of prescription charges. This would, of course, require legislation, and I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will consider introducing it to permit the Ministry to deduct the money at source, and to pay it to a deserted wife and her family.

I have spoken for longer than I intended. I would have liked to have discussed the problem of the unmarried mother and her child, which is akin to the issue under discussion today. I would have liked, too, to have discussed the ridiculous situation in which both the husband and the wife find themselves on the question of Income Tax. If we were to consider the income of the child, and not of the mother, we might ease many of the problems which exist today. There is, too, the problem of benefit where the husband is out of work, or is receiving sickness benefit, or wage-related benefit, and where this creates difficulty for the wife. Perhaps other hon. Members will discuss these issues.

I conclude by reminding my right hon. and learned Friend that at the beginning of this Session, in the Gracious Speech, the Government promised that during the Session they would look into aspects of family law. I suggest that the topic under discussion today is an aspect of family law involving the forgotten poor, the desperately needy, and the desperately miserable, which urgently requires the Government's attention.

6.15 p.m.

Mr. Norman Miscampbell (Blackpool, North)

It is a pleasure to congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Oakes) on his choice of Motion. It is a particular pleasure to congratulate him on what those who have been here this afternoon have heard, a comprehensive speech lit by sympathy and obvious knowledge. The importance of the problem is surely recognised by anyone who has had occasion to go to the matrimonial courts, and I intend, in this short intervention, to confine myself strictly to a review of what we can do to make the collection of moneys due under these orders more efficacious and certain.

When one goes to a matrimonial court, one is impressed with the care with which the magistrates apply their minds to the decision about whether an order should be made, but one is also conscious that on other occasions, when they are discussing arrears of orders, or why money has not been paid, they show considerable reluctance in dealing with the problem, because they know all too well that they are trying to solve a problem which is almost insoluble, and they are trying to do something which they have little or no power to enforce.

On occasions one is awed at the amount of arrears involved. The husband may be earning £15 or £20 a week. and perhaps by this time keeping another family. The magistrates can do nothing but write off some of these arrears, perhaps by as much as £100, £150 or £200. This is all very well, but the poor deserted wife watches money being written off which could well come to her, and which she needs.

The other perhaps no less important facet of this difficulty of getting payment is that so often the original sum awarded is less than just. It is agreed to by the wife, or by her counsel or solicitor, in the hope that the lesser sum will be paid, rather than go for what she is really entitled to, in the certain knowledge that there will be default in the near future.

Reference has been made to the size of the problem. The figure that I have been given is between 300,000 and 400,000. The hon. Gentleman thinks that 500,000 people are involved. We know that it is costing £24 million a year in social security payments to those families who are not being properly supported by their husbands. The Ministry has to pay, and on Friday of this week we are to debate a divorce Bill which, if approved by the House, will mean that more and more payments such as these will become due under court orders.

How can we cope with the reluctant payer and, more particularly, how can we cope with the reluctant payer who reinforces his reluctance by making sure that it is very difficult to find him by moving from job to job? I have at least one temporary solution to the problem—and I emphasise that it is a temporary solution. I do not see why it is not possible to mark the employee's stamped card with a simple endorsement. This would move from employer to employer. The employer would simply be required to notify the court which was endorsed on the card that the man was employed in Bolton, Blackpool, Liverpool or wherever it might be. The employer would be asked to do no more than that. The court which was looking after the matter would receive immediate notification that the man had changed his job. We should not hide behind the undoubted reluctance on the part of the Ministry of Social Security and others to use that procedure, because a great deal of our money is at stake. It would help if there were immediate and up-to-date knowledge of the man when he moved from job to job.

But that must be a temporary expedient. The hon. Member for Bolton, West made some useful suggestions, and I shall echo some of them. but clearly the fundamental change which must come is that collection must be made by the State from the defaulting husband. I first considered whether it would be possible to use his insurance card by putting on an extra stamp or by so marking the card that the employer took the money directly from the man and sent it to the appropriate authority or the appropriate court, but eventually I came to the conclusion that this would not be the best way of tackling the matter for two quite simple reasons. First, we must recognise that employers do not welcome extra clerical work and do not welcome taking money from employees for matrimonial or other reasons. They do not want to be debt collectors. Secondly, there would be a clear disinclination by employers to take on men who were in those circumstances—and for the man who is paying for two homes, a job is vital. On balance, therefore, that method would be wrong.

It seemed possible not to ask employers to take money from the man but to see that higher contributions were made by the man by putting extra stamps on his card. The money would be recovered in that way. On reflection, however, that would mean that many different stamps of different denominations would be required, and that could lead to endless complications.

In the end, I concluded that by far the best solution was that on which the hon. Member for Bolton. West touched: once the order has been made by the courts, the payment should be made directly to the Ministry of Social Security either through its offices or through the Post Office or by whatever administrative arrangements appear to be the most convenient. It certainly should not be made through the court if we can possibly avoid it. I am reinforced in my view that this is the best arrangement by the fact that at present if the man does not pay, then in nine cases out of ten the Ministry pay, because they have to find any additional assistance which must be given to the family, who are often in financial difficulties. It is therefore not asking the Ministry to do something which they are not doing already. It is simply recognising the practicalities of the situation.

If the Ministry are to pay then, through their solicitors, or officials—and it need not be a solicitor—the Ministry should go to the court to enforce the order. One of the difficulties is that time and time again the wife goes to court, often at the instigation of the Ministry of Social Security, but on each occasion the case is heard by a different bench, there is no continuity, and no bench knows about the promises the man made last time and what he said about getting a job. It would be much better if the Ministry themselves conducted the case in court.

Lastly, the Ministry must take steps to get back the money due to them, and the most simple way would be to use the Income Tax procedure, which means an alteration in the P.A.Y.E. code so that it covers the amount awarded against the man. The employer would be asked to do no more than he does already. He would simply apply the code to the Income Tax. I know that it always is the objection—and no doubt will be the objection on this occasion—that we must not use the Income Tax system to enforce private debts or any debt which is not strictly between the taxpayer and the taxing authority. I entirely agree that if the Payne Committee suggested that this was a good system of collecting civil debts, I should oppose that suggestion, but we can make a clear distinction between debts arising from hire purchase and those arising from social obligations by a man to his wife and family.

I hope that a solution on these lines could be found, particularly because this is a time when matrimonial relationships are becoming more lax. I will not go into whether that is right or wrong, but it certainly makes it important that we should safeguard the results of these marriages by stricter financial discipline. Because of the Motion, the House has had an opportunity to debate this important matter, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton, West on bringing it before the House.

6.27 p.m.

Mrs. Lena Jeger (Holborn and St. Pancras, South)

Perhaps a woman may be allowed to get in a few words edgeways in this important debate. I am sure that thousands of women are deeply indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Oakes) for bringing this important matter before the House. The time is so short that I can make only two brief points.

First, it is time that we took the whole question of the payment of maintenance orders away from the courts. To the ordinary person the courts have an atmosphere of criminality. They are the places where one goes when one has done something wrong. It is outrageous, degrading and barbaric that we should attach to the tragedy of a broken marriage the criminality of these court procedures, which continue week in and week out, possibly through the whole lifetime of two people who have already gone through the trauma of a broken marriage. I agree very much with what has been said—that the money should be collected either through the Ministry of Social Security or through the Post Office. These women ought to have an order book like the family allowances book, which can be cashed and which entitles them to money over the counter without their having to hang around the courts. The present procedure is degrading to them and time-wasting, it is bad for their children, and it is most wasteful of the time of the officials concerned.

The situation is that, whether the Ministry of Social Security want to take on any extra work or not, in fact they are already doing a very large proportion of the maintenance work. The latest year for which I could get figures is 1965, and I should be glad of more recent figures. In 1965, the National Assistance Board, as it was then, paid out over £32 million to deserted and separated wives, and they managed to get back from the husbands concerned only £2,700,000. In other words, the Ministry's funds are being used to keep these families.

Why is that? One of the reasons lies in the simple economic fact of the situation that one wage packet does not divide into the maintenance of two families. Many magistrates know that when they make the order and they know that any attempt to increase the payments from the husband will lead only to the impoverishment of two families. Again quoting 1965 figures, the National Assistance Board helped 104,000 separated wives, of whom 43,000 had maintenance orders; 21,000 of those were being regularly complied with, 15,000 not complied with at all, and 7,000 irregularly complied with. These figures suggest that the whole system is breaking down and that we are continuing an illusion in maintaining the machinery of court orders and attempting the disengagement of the Ministry of Social Security from the heart of the matter. I know that my right hon. Friend does not wish to be regarded as running a Ministry which is mainly a debt-collecting agency, but to a large extent that takes place already.

A more fundamental question which I wish there were time to discuss this afternoon concerns the whole question of the married woman's insurance status. The Beveridge Report went to the heart of this when it said in paragraph 347: But from the point of view of the woman, loss of her maintenance as housewife without her consent and not through her fault, is one of the risks of marriage against which she should be insured; she should not depend on assistance. There are other references in that Report to insurance against the ending of marriage, whether through the disaster of widowhood through the kind of separation and breakdown which we are discussing.

There will be no sense in this situation until we reconsider the Beveridge proposals for the recognition of housewives as a distinct insurance class of occupied persons, with benefits adjusted to their special needs, including widowhood and separation provisions. That is essential, We are just toying with the periphery of the problem unless we recognise that the breakdown or ending of a marriage through widowhood or other circumstances creates a new relationship of a woman to the National Insurance arrangements which we make.

I hope that, in spite of the shortage of time and the pressures on the Government, consideration will be given to changing the insurance status of the married woman. I hope also that maintenance orders, separation orders and payments can be taken away from the courts and given to the Ministry of Social Security where they belong.

6.34 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Buck (Colchester)

The whole House is grateful to the hon. Member for Bolton, West(Mr.Oakes)of having moved this Motion, and he knows that probably all of us on both sides of the House share his strong feelings on the subject. No one has stronger feelings about the matter than my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg), who sends his apologies to the hon. Gentleman and the House for the fact that pressing Paliamentary business of a different kind prevents him from attending.

He at any rate has been able, as the House knows, with the help and co-operation of both sides, to take practical steps to do something about this problem. His Maintenance Orders Bill, which has been through Committee, will assist here by increasing the amounts which can be awarded so as to enable the courts, in dealing with the hon. Member's first category—the fortunate ones for whom an order is made, which is found to be enforceable and is paid by the huband—to make more adequate orders where the financial circumstances of the man permit.

Where I quarrel with the hon. Gentleman slightly is that it is being found that courts are making more considerable orders where the money exists than in the example he quoted. They are moving from the one-third rule, and this is desirable. Perhaps we should consider laying down in legislation a formula to guide the courts; but it is my experience and that of other hon. Gentlemen that the courts are awarding more than a third of the joint income, which used to be the almost invariable rule.

I am particularly grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because all of us involved in the courts and those of us who have constituency surgeries and advice bureaux come across this problem very often. It is a pitiful situation for many of these women. I would like to hear the Solicitor-General's views at the end of the debate. We cannot in this short debate formulate all possible alternatives, though some interesting suggestions have been made.

However, perhaps the Solicitor-General can give us some information about the Payne Committee. It has been sitting for a long time. No doubt he will tell us exactly when it was set up. Before tackling this problem, we need the benefit of the close consideration which presumably it has given this subject. The whole tenor of the debate has shown the complexity of the issues involved.

The hon. Lady the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Lena Jeger) suggested that this should be taken out of the ambit of the courts. One has sympathy with this, and my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North (Mr. Miscampbell) made some interesting suggestions also. These are difficult matters which demand detailed research and it is clear that something must be done. Let the Solicitor-General call upon the Payne Committee, as a matter of urgency, to submit an interim report containing its views. It must by now have a plethora of information and should be able to make up its mind. It should give its ideas on this most important branch of debt enforcement which is causing so much distress. The position in some cases is near breakdown, so I would urge the hon. and learned Gentleman to call upon the Committee for an interim report as soon as possible, in the next few months, so that we may have proper and detailed information.

Similarly, I hope that he will give us some information on the details which have been raised. The staffing of court offices which deal with the problem is in a serious state. I would be grateful for figures showing to what proportion they are understaffed, since the position varies greatly. Some courts, because their staffing is somewhat more favourable, can deal with the problem with more humanity and flexibility, but I was alarmed to hear that others will not respond to a telephone call. This appals me. Those of which I have had experience are willing to respond to a telephone call from a wife to see if money is available, although I accept from hon. Members opposite that there are court offices which cannot respond even to this. We should hear about the staff position. If it is desperate, as it must be in some areas, what is proposed to be done about it'?

We would like to hear the Government's general thinking on this matter. It is a nonsense that the ultimate deterrent is to send a man to prison for 42 days so that he can purge his contempt. It may be all right for the State but it is of little assistance to the wife to have her husband sent to goal for 42 days, but this probably costs over £100. The wife is thereafter unable to enforce the arrears of maintenance. This situation cannot be tolerated for much longer.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpoll, North raised the fundamental question of husbands who seek to evade responsibility by going to another part of the country. He had some interesting ideas to deal with this. But there is one category of deserting husband who makes his position even more secure than the man who goes to another part of the country to earn his living, namely, the man who goes abroad. At the moment we have a degree of reciprocity with certain other parts of the Commonwealth, but it is a cumbrous system and is not working very satisfactorily. I shall not lab our the House with the details.

If a man deserts his wife and goes to another Commonwealth country he is liable to have these enforcement proceedings brought against him, but increasingly, with the mobility of lab our within Europe, the problem arises of people who desert their wives and go to the Continent. I have had two cases in my constituency. This may be happening at a quite high level. Now that we have more and more international companies a man can obtain a considerable position on the Continent —perhaps earning £3,000 a year. If such a man deserts his wife and children, as far as I know there is no way of enforcing the upkeep of his wife against him when he is abroad and she may be forced on to what used to be called National Assistance.

I should like to know the Government's thinking on this matter. There ought to be treaty arrangements with European countries. There would have to be reciprocity, but I can see no objection to that. I should like to know whether anything has been done to get this under way. British companies are forming subsidiary branches in France, Germany and Switzerland to an increasing extent, and many people from Britain go there for employment. If they desert their families to do so no one can touch them.

I should welcome an assurance from the Solicitor-General that he will have talks with his right hon. Friends the Lord Chancellor and the Foreign Secretary with a view to making treaty arrangements, with reciprocity, so that we can deal with this increasing category of men who are outside any Act. Under the procedure in this country we have some hope of getting something from a deserting husband, but when he goes abroad there is no hope. This matter should be rectified. It is urgent.

Everybody would feel that the first charge on a husband's income should be the upkeep of his wife and children. At the moment too many people are able to evade their responsibilities. The mechanism to deal with the problem is, to say the least, creaky. The system is not working well. I should like an assurance from the Government that something will be done about it quickly.

6.45 p.m.

The Solicitor-General (Sir Arthur Irvine)

1 am sure that I speak for the whole House when I say that my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Oakes) has done a service by bringing forward for our consideration the problem of deserted wives. As I listened to him I felt that the quality of restrained eloquence in his speech made it most agreeable.

My hon. Friend has drawn attention to a group of people in our society which is specially subject to hardship and which deserves special attention. He has made clear his view that all too often the existing machinery enables a wife to recover only a small amount of money from the deserting husband, and that such money as is recovered is often colts collected only with undue difficulty. My hon. Friend suggested that the existing machinery of enforcement, by means of attachment of earnings orders and committal to prison, was broadly much less effective than it should be, and that the machinery of collection aggravated the misery of the deserted wife.

In the latter connection my hon. Friend referred to an address on the subject recently delivered by Professor 0. R. Mc-Gregor which, by its content and character, attracted the sympathetic attention of the House. My hon. Friend's basic proposition was that orders should he based on family needs and paid, where-ever possible, by the Ministry of Social Security, which would be responsible for collecting equivalent sums from the deserting husband. I propose to deal with that question at a later stage.

This concept obviously attracted my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Lena Jeger) and the hon. Member for Blackpool, North (Mr. Miscampbell), but first I want to deal with some of the rather narrower administrative points which have been raised. In doing this I am conscious that it may appear that I am not as responsive as my hon. Friend would like me to be to some of the points he has made and the criticisms he has leveled about the existing system. I can assure him and the House that I am responsive on these matters. If I bring forward certain factors which rather go the other way, my purpose is to try to give a balanced picture of the way in which this procedure operates, so that the situation can be seen as a whole. Although I do not underestimate the tragic situation in which many deserted wives find themselves, I can say that efforts are made in a variety of ways to mitigate their difficulties, and it is right that in order to present a balanced picture I should refer to some of them.

My hon. Friend proposed that there should be more flexibility in the arrangements for payment by postal cheque. He spoke of the need to improve the method of collection. Under the existing law this is a matter for individual courts. Under Rules 32(2) of the Magistrates Court Rules, 1952, it is provided that a clerk to a magistrates' court may send by post any periodical payments to the person entitled to them at the request and at the risk and expense of that person. Under these provisions a number of payments by post are made, but the House will realise that the courts are not necessarily acting unreasonably if they refuse to make use of this provision. It often happens, in their experience, that a woman who has no bank account finds it difficult to encash a court cheque near her home, or to do so without embarrassment as to its origin. This matter gives rise to highly personal factors which it is right to bear in mind. Moreover, it is important for accounting purposes to ensure that the money is being received by the right person and that receipts for payments are obtained.

It has been found that the making of payments by post involves complicated administrative machinery. The House will appreciate that the burden on the staff of a court, which may be administering as many as 2,000 maintenance orders, is considerable. I understand that courts are increasingly experimenting with schemes for payments to be made by cheque, but it must be remembered that this entails new record systems and other facilities, for which accommodation may not be readily available, and that in some instances the lack of adequate accommodation at court houses and justices offices causes difficulties.

Mr. J. T. Price (West Houghton) rose—

The Solicitor-General

Only a few minutes remain and I have a number of points to answer. I trust, therefore, that my hon. Friend will not mind if I do not give way.

Difficulties are created by a lack of sufficient accommodation, especially where the clerk has been unable to arrange for the bulk of payments to be made by post.

In advising local authorities on the pl inning of new magistrates courts, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is always concerned to see that suitable accommodation is provided to facilitate th,3 payment of maintenance moneys to deserted wives and those entitled under affiliation orders, but the House will recognise the bearing which existing economic circumstances have on a matter of this kind. I assure hon. Members that my right hon. Friend fully realises the strength of the case presented by my hon. Friend, but I ask that it be appreciated that difficulties stand in the way of doing all that we would wish. We have no power to require courts to adopt a system of payments being made by pest or cheque to a greater extent than they do at present. No undertakings can, therefore, be given about Government action on this proposal. All that I can say is that the courts will, no doubt, be taking note of what is being said in the House on this matter. My hon. Friend suggested that wives should be advised by collecting officers of their rights to vary orders or that they be given more advice than they are under existing processes. 'There is no doubt that advice of this kind is often given. There is also no doubt that wives are frequently ignorant of their rights, and I undertake that consideration will be given to the question of whether improvements may be made in the methods of informing parties of their legal position.

The position concerning legal aid affecting applications to vary maintenance orders is that such applications are entitled under the law to legal aid if they are regarded as eligible by the examining local committee. There are one or two anomalies affecting a small number of cases where legal aid is not available. One is the case of a High Court maintenance order registered for enforcement in the magistrates court. If anybody seeks to vary an order of that kind in the magistrates court, then, by an anomaly, that application is outside the ambit of legal aid. However, this matter has been referred by my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor to the Legal Aid Advisory Committee.

My hon. Friend referred to the question of automatic warrants and I believe that he had in mind using the word "warrants" in the sense of summonses. He seemed to favour the automatic issue of summonses to bring a defendant before the court as a means of enforcement. The position under Rule 33 of the Magistrates Courts Rules, 1952, is that already there is an obligation on the clerk to give the beneficiary of a maintenance order notice that the order is in arrears by an amount equal to four weekly payments, unless it appears, because of special circumstances, unnecessary or inexpedient for that to be done. Section 52 of the Magistrates' Courts Act, 1952 provides that where payments are being made through a court … the clerk shall, if the person for whose benefit the payment should have been made so requests in writing, and unless it appears to the clerk that it is unreasonable in the circumstances to do so, proceed in his own name for the recovery of those sums … This is often done. The House will acknowledge that this is another example of the methods that are adopted to try to help these people—some of these methods being of considerable flexibility and requiring, and receiving, initiative and consideration.

I fear that I do not have time to answer all the points that have been raised in the debate and I will have to gloss over some matters briefly. There is the overall point that if the Ministry of Social Security were to expand its responsibility for the collection and payment of maintenance to all persons subject to maintenance orders, that would be a radical departure from the law and practice, would involve vast administrative difficulties and would really constitute the Supplementary Benefits Commission into something quite different from what its legal and existing purpose properly is.

The hon. Member for Colchester (Mr. Buck) wanted to know when the Payne Committee was set up. It was established in May, 1965. Thus far, the expectation has been, as stated in the House by my right hon. and learned Friend, that its Report would be received by Easter of this year. However, this is now regarded as being a somewhat optimistic forecast. It is now expected and hoped that, at the best by Easter and, failing that, very shortly afterwards, the Report will be available. It must be remembered, however, that it will deal with a vast number of matters—indeed, with the whole subject of the collection and enforcement of civil debt—and will go far wider than maintenance. In view of the time scale I have put forward, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will recognise—if the full Report is expected so soon as I have indicated—that there is no occasion here for an interim report to be presented.

The hon. Member for Colchester raised the question of deserted spouses going abroad. It is true that whereas by virtue of the Maintenance Orders (Facilities for Enforcement) Act, 1920, provision is made for the recovery of maintenance in Commonwealth countries, there is no equivalent provision where persons go abroad to other than Commonwealth countries. This is because the reciprocal enforcement of judgments treaties do not apply to maintenance. I readily appreciate the importance of this matter, however, and, to answer the hon. Gentleman's inquiry. I assure him that we will give thought to what he said. This may be an appropriate subject or theme for an international convention, and I assure him that we shall have regard to that.

It being Seven o'clock, the Proceedings on the Motion lapsed, pursuant to Standing Order No. 5(6) (Precedence of Government Business).