Commons Amendment (Hansard, 23 July 1969)

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1. The first Amendment, I think the only controversial one, is the Amendment by which your Lordships' House increased the age of marriage without consent from 18, as it was in the Bill, to 20. Your Lordships may remember that at the Third Reading in this House I pointed out that in Committee we had had a very good argument, in a well-attended Committee, when the majority for the Amendment was 77 to 71, a somewhat narrow one. I pointed out that if it was permissible for a moment to disregard the right reverend Prelates, on the ground that they were neither Life Peers nor hereditary Peers, if my arithmetic was right, had it not been for the hereditary Peers only some 26 Members of the House would have supported the Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor. I pointed out that it was understandable that if one had a title, and perhaps landed 983 estates as well, the question of whom one's eldest son married was of considerably more importance to one than it was to an ordinary person, but that we should have to see what the Members of the other place, who come from a rather broader social spread, might have to say.
I do not think your Lordships will want me to repeat the arguments which were used in Committee in this House. The only matter of interest which has happened since, although I was not aware of it then, is that there was a Committee sitting on the marriage law of Scotland. The noble Lord, Lord Kilbrandon, the Chairman of the Scottish Law Commission, is Chairman of that Committee. They reported in May. As your Lordships know, for generations it has been the law in Scotland that any young people aged 16 can marry without anyone's consent, and one of the matters the Committee were considering was whether the age should be raised to 18 or 20, or what. They have, in a sense, a good deal of experience of what happens in countries where consent is necessary, because of the increasing numbers of young people who go to Scotland from other countries to marry.
They say in their Report: During the past five years about 1, 750 marriages of young couples from the Federal Republic of Germany have gone to Scotland to marry. Another thing which I think is not without interest is their reference in the Report to the evidence submitted to them by the Scottish Marriage Guidance Council. They say in their Report: Their evidence was based upon an elaborate investigation into the circumstances of 350 young couples who had sought the advice of the Council. That is to say, young couples who had married and whose marriages were in difficulties. The Report goes on: Of the cases reviewed, 60 per cent. of the young men aged 16 and 17 had troubled backgrounds (i.e. coming from a broken home, an incomplete home, or a quarrelling home), and 59 per cent. of the young women aged 16 and 17 had troubled backgrounds. A similar pattern emerged in respect of young men and women in the sample aged from 18 to 20 at the date of marriage, the corresponding percentages in these cases being about 50 per cent. We felt it would be unreasonable to suggest that in such cases the parents are the right people to give or withhold consent. Parents who are already embittered by 984 their own experience of marriage may be poor judges when it comes to advising their children. No amount of legislation will make parents into good parents or wise parents and, keeping in mind that the Council were concerned with young couples whose marriages had already run into difficulties, we felt that the Council had not made out a case to the effect that such difficulties would in general be less likely to arise had parental consent been a condition precedent. The tenor of the Council's evidence really was that, of the early marriages which failed, the majority were of young persons who probably could not turn to their parents for guidance, and who might in all probability have been driven into early marriage simply because they could not find security and affection in their parents' homes. They could not be reasonably required to obtain the approval of the very people who had failed them. I thought that might be of some interest to your Lordships. As I have said, I do not propose to go through the arguments which were fully deployed before, and I hope that your Lordships will accordingly be content to accept the view which has been taken by the other place. My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS
My Lords, I agree with the noble and learned Lord that it would not be apposite to resurrect the arguments on this point, although I agree with him that it is interesting to note what was said by the Committee presided over by the noble Lord, Lord Kilbrandon. Accordingly, I would not advise those on this side of the House, or those who supported my noble friend Lord Brooke's Amendment before, again to send this matter back to another place.
The only thing I should like to say to the noble and learned Lord arises out of one point in the remarks he has just made. I think this must be about the third time that his arithmetic on the number of hereditary Peers who voted for this Amendment has been displayed before the House. At the time when the Amendment was passed, it may have been of some marginal importance and relevance to what was going on; but even then I should have thought the noble and learned Lord had been in this House long enough to know that not all the hereditary Peers necessarily have large estates. Quite a number of them have not, and quite a 985 number of them have not had for a very long time, and the question of whether or not they voted for this Amendment cannot conceivably be said to derive from their hereditary possession of large acres of one sort or another.
Although at the time it may have been of some importance to say that, I really think that since that time remarkable events have taken place as a result of the Government's attempting to deal with this very matter of hereditary Peerages; and, if it ever was relevant, it cannot now be relevant, in view of what the Government have done since the Committee stage in this House. We are here now not necessarily on our own account, but because the Government have abandoned their own legislation, and I hope that we shall not hear any more of that sort of argument from the noble and learned Lord. Nevertheless, that said I hope that the House will now accept this Amendment.

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
My Lords, I do not know the precise proportion of your Lordships who have landed estates, but I do know that all hereditary Peers have hereditary titles.

§ LORD STRATHCLYDE
My Lords, can the noble and learned Lord apply his mind to the number of hereditary Peers who took part in the recent Division in this House on the Redistribution of Seats (No. 2) Bill? If he will do so, I think he will arrive at a different conclusion from that at which he arrived in this case.

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
My Lords, this must be regarded in no way as an attack upon the hereditary Peers. But it is the fact that when one is considering marriage, or age, social class has a very great effect on practices, and the higher the social class the later the average age of marriage. The common practice now of marrying so very young applies largely, or mostly, to those who leave school at 16; and when persons like your Lordships think about young people of 18 they instinctively think about university students. But this is a small minority. All I meant to indicate was that people's views naturally depend on their own experiences, and that your Lordships diversities are somewhat less, perhaps, than those of the other place.