§ Mr. Bishopasked the Attorney-General how many defended divorce petitions in England and Wales were successful in the last three years in each of the categories, desertion, cruelty, adultery, &c.; and if he will give the percentages of the whole.
§ The Solicitor-GeneralThe following table sets out the number of decrees granted in defended divorce causes in 1969 and 1970 in the categories of adultery, desertion and cruelty and various combinations of those categories. The table also gives the percentage of the total for each category in relation to the number of decrees granted for all the categories. No figures are available for 1968, when the transfer of undefended divorce jurisdiction to the county courts took place, as the statistics which were collected for that year did not differentiate between decrees granted in defended and undefended cases. Figures are also not available, broken down into grounds, for the number of defended divorce cases in which no decree was granted, but the total number of defended cases disposed of in 1969 was 2,896, including 176 cases in which double decrees were granted, and in 1970, 2,806, including 288 double decrees.
Following is the table: