MARRIAGES (PROHIBITED DEGREES OF RELATIONSHIP) BILL. (Hansard, 30 July 1928)

§ VISCOUNT ULLSWATER
My Lords, I beg to move as an Amendment to insert at the end of the Motion the words "this day six months." This Bill has been sprung upon the House. I do not know what hour it is, but it is a very late hour. This Bill has never been discussed this Session in the House of Commons at all. There was no public discussion of any sort or kind in the House of Commons. The Bill slipped through by inadvertence and was sent to a Standing Committee. We have no report whatever as to what happened in that Standing Committee. I know from private information that opinion was not all one way, and that there was a division of opinion upon it. I would humbly submit to your Lordships that it would be really something in the nature of a scandal if we at this time of night and at this stage of the Session passed a Bill which completely alters the law of marriage in this country without any more discussion than we had last week, a discussion which lasted for about fifteen or twenty minutes. The Bill came unexpectedly before the House. I do not think a great many members even knew what was in the Bill. I suggest that the Bill will not suffer by being delayed until next Session. There has been no public demand for the Bill. I venture to say 1479 there is not one in a hundred of your Lordships who has received any letter asking him to support the Bill or to press it on. In the circumstances I venture to submit that no possible harm can be done by postponing it until next Session. I therefore beg to move.

§ LORD WRAXALL
My Lords, I am afraid the noble Viscount is not correct in what he said about the Bill not having been before the country. It is true that during the present Session there has not been much discussion in the other House on the subject, but that is largely due to the fact that last year this Bill was discussed at considerable length and agreement was come to on the subject. As far as my information goes opinion on the subject in the other House was almost unanimous, and though I have no more detailed information than my noble friend possesses as to what happened in Committee I am assured there was complete unanimity when it actually passed the House in its last stages. I cannot agree with the noble Viscount that letters are any criterion about anything. Those of us who have been in the House of Commons know how much we can rely on letters. Over and over again we have had letters from dozens and dozens of people on a comparatively unimportant measure. On an important measure you very often get no letters whatever. I do not suppose that noble Lords would get letters on this subject unless they were in my position of having introduced the Bill. Since I took up this Bill I have had many letters on the subject. I know that those who were responsible for its conduct in another place also had many letters. They have received letters for many years past from people who were waiting, as I said the other day, for this Bill to pass. I must resist the noble Viscount's Amendment.

THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY
My Lords, I venture to support the Amendment of the noble Viscount. The state of this House at the present moment is sufficient answer to those who say that we should pass a measure which really makes a gigantic change in the whole Christian law of marriage. The law of affinity is practically abolished by this measure, and 1480 the law of affinity has been from earliest times part of the Christian law of marriage. I am not trying to say that there are not arguments to be urged in favour of this measure, but I have tried in vain to discover the demand that is said to exist for it. Since the debate of a few days ago I have been making further inquiries and I find that nobody seems to realise that the thing is going on. The absence of demand is most emphatic, and I feel that to try, at this stage of the Session with a House which I ask your Lordships to look round and observe, to pass a measure of this kind after the very brief discussion that it has had here before and the absence of discussion in the House of Commons, is really an unfair thing to do to the people of this country. We are not called upon, and we ought not to be called upon, to make so drastic and far-reaching a change, which will so greatly affect the homes of the country, without a great deal of quiet consideration and examination of the whole subject.
I should be perfectly ready—I should be perfectly ready were I here—to discuss the matter on any future occasion fully and honestly, but I want to see whether or not there is adequate demand for it and to know what is to be said for or against it. I cannot but feel that we should be acting to the discredit of this House were we now to make so large a change at this stage of the Session, at this hour of the night and with the numbers that I see in the House at this time. When people speak about this Bill they forget how far-reaching it is. It is changing something that comes from the very beginning of the Christian marriage laws, and something that goes far beyond that in its origins and character. I will not go into that point, but it is a tremendous change and this is not the way or the time to make it.

§ EARL BEAUCHAMP
My Lords, I confess that I find myself in a very considerable difficulty with regard to the Amendment which has been moved. I am anxious to vote for the Amendment that has been put upon the Paper by the noble Viscount upon the Cross Benches (Viscount Ullswater) for consideration in Committee. It seems to me perfectly impossible in these matters to make a distinction between the two 1481 sexes and, if you give liberty to the man to marry a number of his relations, you ought to give the same permission to the woman. I have too keen a recollection of the disagreeable things that I suffered in the old suffragette days to take any step that is likely to make me undergo experiences of the same kind once more. Accordingly, if we go into Committee, I shall certainly vote with the noble Viscount. Meanwhile, however, there is the other point that has been raised both by the noble Viscount and by the most rev. Primate. I think it is very difficult, if we look at the emptiness of the House, to pretend there is any great keenness in favour of this measure and, because I do not like your Lordships to be asked to consider measures of this kind so late in the Session, I for my part shall vote for the Amendment and, if the Amendment is not carried, for the reasons that I have given I shall vote for the Amendment that will be proposed in Committee by the noble Viscount, Lord Ullswater.

EARL RUSSELL
My Lords, the noble Viscount who has moved this Amendment was for many years the distinguished guardian of order in another place. I confess that, in view of that fact, the course that he has taken surprised me. Your Lordships have a perfectly well-settled—

§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY
It is not out of order.

EARL RUSSELL
I did not say that it was out of order. I was going to say that your Lordships have a perfectly well-settled course of procedure in regard to Bills. The principle of a Bill is properly discussed upon the Second Reading. This Bill was put down in the ordinary way for a Second Reading and it was available in the ordinary way before the Second Reading for all members of your Lordships' House who were interested in it. The usual course, when there is a strong feeling against a Bill, is to put down an Amendment to the Motion for the Second Reading in which you challenge the principle of the Bill and upon which, if you so desire, you take a Division. Nobody took that course. This Bill came up here for Second Reading without any one having put down an Amendment. There was a discussion on the Second Reading and, even in that discussion no one moved the rejection of the Bill and no Division 1482 was taken. Your Lordships must therefore be taken to have assented at that time to the principle of the Bill on a Second Reading.
That is the regular and constitutional practice in this House, and now to come to the Motion to go into Committee, when there is on the Order Paper only one Amendment to be moved in Committee, to make on that Motion Second Reading speeches and to treat that Motion as if it were a Motion for the Second Reading, seems to me to be in the highest degree inconvenient. I take up the challenge that there are not many noble Lords here. Why should there be? They had no reason to suppose that any Amendment of this sort was likely to be moved. They had no Notice of it. As to the idea that we cannot pass this Bill in Committee, I have seen much more important Bills than this pass through Committee without many more noble Lords present than there are now, and sometimes a good many fewer, at this stage of the Session. I really hope that, in the interests of order and of the reasonable way of conducting our business, your Lordships will reject this Amendment now whatever steps you take when the Bill reaches Committee. To agree to it would be setting a bad example of order in your Lordships' House, and I hope that the Government will officially oppose it.

§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY
My Lords, I am afraid that I interrupted the noble Earl in the middle of his speech to say that, in my humble judgment as a member of your Lordships' House, there is nothing out of order in the Motion that my noble friend on the Cross Benches has submitted. He is perfectly entitled, when the Question is put from the Woolsack, to vote against it if he thinks fit, and the ordinary form in which to negative the Motion is to move to insert the words "upon this day six months." Accordingly the Amendment is completely regular in point of order. As regards the matter of procedure, the noble Earl is entitled to his opinion and upon that I do not desire to express on my part any judgment. I really rose to say that this is not a Government Bill. It is not a Bill that was introduced by the Government in another place, nor was it introduced by the Government in this House. So far, therefore, as we on this Bench are 1483 concerned, every member of the Government is entitled to take whatever course he thinks fit.
There is a great deal to be said on both sides. It is perfectly true, as was said by my noble friend on the Second Reading and, I think, again to-night, that this Bill follows consequentially upon legislation that has already passed. That is true, and the Bill does appear to be consequential. On the other hand it does raise very important issues, and it is very inconvenient, as we always hear, as the noble Earl says and as I have said over and over again, to deal with important issues in the condition in which your Lordships' House is, without any time for elaborate consideration. It

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
My Lords, I have received the figures of the Division. It appears that there are fewer than thirty Peers present. Therefore under Standing Order No. XXXIII I declare the Question not decided, and the debate thereon adjourned to the next sitting of the House.