COMMONS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 29 June 1982)

§ The Lord Chancellor

My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 12A. With this I group Amendments Nos. 26 and 44. Amendments Nos. 12A and 44 remove provisions which would make domicile in the sense required by the Bill the basis of jurisdiction in certain domestic proceedings to which the 1968 convention may not apply. An example is affiliation proceedings. These provisions would have introduced a measure of simplification into the law, and the operation seemed reasonably straightforward since the main ground of jurisdiction at present is the residence of one of the parties, a test which is not very different from domicile as defined in the Bill. However, apart from residence, some other conditions are employed in the laws concerned and these cannot be replaced without further consideration. 176 The difficulty is compounded because there is some doubt as to whether certain proceedings are within the 1968 convention or are excluded because they concern status or legal capacity. Affiliation proceedings, again, are a case in point. However, we are at least proposing to ensure—by Amendment No. 26—that if the European Court should hold that such proceedings are within the convention it will be possible to make any consequential changes in our law by an Order in Council framed under the powers given in Clause 45.