Ms Stella Creasy
MP for Walthamstow · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“I thank the Foreign Secretary for his clear-sighted commitment not only to talk about a two-state solution, but to actually try to act to achieve it, as the only foundation of a safe Israel and a free Palestine.”
“Could he reassure the House that we will not acquiesce and bend to such pressure, and that the only action that could ever be acceptable to us to make us contemplate reversing this ban would be a halt on the E1 development and a permanent end to settler violence?”
“I start by paying tribute to the new Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), for all the work she did on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee on these issues. I know that she will do a brilliant job in this role.”
“I do not really understand the technology, but I know that he does, and I understand and share his fear accordingly. We come here today to debate this Bill because we all know that trust is a bygone issue in our politics.”
“We would welcome her having that conversation, which might be more illuminating than whether she is concerned about Zach Goldmsith’s leaflets. I add my support to the amendments tabled by my hon.”
“From today, if we do not take a stand with this Bill to tackle the ways that money has infiltrated our politics, the risk is that they will think we are acting in the interests of our own back pockets.”
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“Pregnant Then Screwed research of 20,000 mothers show that 15% of them had either already been made redundant or expected to be made redundant. It is a generational rollback of mothers in the workplace and of workplaces being able to work for mothers. We already know from data published on 15 September by the Office for National Statistics that the numbers of redundancies have increased by 45% this quarter. Of those affected by that increase, 79% were women. The high-level data that looks at men versus women does not capture the particular phenomenon we are seeing of the tsunami of unemployment coming towards mothers.”
“What is worrying me now—and I hope that the Minister will tell us they have an action plan for this—is that two thirds of women who want to return to work cannot do so because there is not any childcare. It is a very simple equation: when you have to socially distance three-year-olds—my goodness, I would not wish that on anybody—then clearly there are fewer places, which means that fewer people can put their children into childcare and so an already broken system in this country is now clattering to a halt. The Institute for Fiscal Studies reported that mothers were 47% more likely that fathers to have permanently lost their job or quit during the pandemic, and are 14% more likely to have been furloughed.”
“We know that it is women who have been doing the working from home in both senses. While the hon. Member was cycling, I am sure that his wife was looking after their three children and trying to home school them. That is not an unusual experience. The evidence that we have had shows that overwhelmingly it has been women who have been managing children in the home and trying to work from home. Their employers push them to be furloughed to be able to manage that situation, and then they find themselves at the front of the queue to be let go. That is why we know that during lockdown, for every hour of uninterrupted work done by mothers, fathers had three uninterrupted hours of work, according to the research. We know that it is particularly women who are suffering because our childcare and schooling facilities were closed.”
“Now, the evidence is before us that it is mums who are bearing the brunt of that approaching tsunami of unemployment. If, as the hon. Member says, he believes that both sides of the family should be able to work and come together as a family, I hope he will join me in calling for urgent action to tackle the reasons why it is mums who are much more likely to have been furloughed and are therefore much more likely to face redundancy. Indeed, the fantastic organisation, which I am sure he is a supporter of, Pregnant Then Screwed, has seen a 450% increase in calls to their helpline during the pandemic. Little wonder. The protections that many of us took for granted preventing women from being made redundant while pregnant have disintegrated in the past couple of months.”
“Member has already mentioned in terms of rising evictions and debt, and what we can do now that the defensive ring that he talks about is about to end, particularly when we know that we are about to face a tsunami of unemployment in this country. It has become increasingly clear over the last couple of months that within the family, it is the mums that are bearing the brunt of the pandemic. Before a child has even been born in this country in the last couple of months, we have had women who have gone to have scans on their own and found out their child would not live; they have had to give birth on their own and health visitors have been cancelled without anybody being told. As the hon. Member for Devizes mentioned, domestic violence has risen.”
“We know that supporting families reaps rewards, not just for those families, but for the entire communities that they live in. I agree with what the hon. Member says about the couples’ penalty and not penalising people for how they live, but I would gently encourage him to look at the penalising that currently goes on for those families who find themselves in the most awful situation: where one family member dies, but, because the family have decided that they do not wish to use marriage as a basis for their relationship, their children are pushed into poverty because, under our legislation, those children are not entitled to the bereavement support payment. If he wants to not just talk the talk but walk the walk, I am sure he will join me in raising that with Ministers. I come this morning to talk about the defensive ring that the hon.”
“It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship Sir Christopher, as it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger). Unlike with Caesar, I do not come to bury him but to praise many of the things that he has to say—and just for the avoidance of doubt, I am not on Valium while doing it. He and I agree on much of what he has just said. We agree that it is actually about the support for families. It is always interesting to hear the hon. Member’s perorations about etymological foundations. I come with a much more practical message this morning, because we know that our families are in crisis. The question is—and he and I would agree on this—what can we practically do, as communities and as the state, to support them?”
“The Minister needs to say, “Deeds not Words.” In 50 years, I hope that we have moved towards recognising that Barbara Castle was right. That discrimination is bad not just for those affected—it is bad for businesses and the economy as well. The measure now needs political will, so that we make sure that equal pay is not just a great fiction but a lived reality for everyone in this country.”
“We should never forget to pay tribute to her. Despite opposition from those in the Labour Government at the time to amendments on equal pay, she stuck her neck out for other women and forced that Bill through, but she was lost from the Cabinet as a result, prompting her to tell a sponsor of the Bill—and another legend when it comes to fighting for women’s rights—my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), “remember all Labour Prime Ministers are bastards”. I hope that that will not be true, and I certainly hope that the Prime Minister will not fall into that type. My right hon. and learned Friend has made the case that this is a pro-business measure—we should all support it—which is why I am proud that it has support across the House. That is not enough.”
“Axing the gender pay-gap reporting process sends the message that that does not matter, but it should matter to all of us, because of the impact on our economy and society. For nearly 200 years, women have been asking for parity, and with the pandemic bearing down on us, we cannot afford to wait any longer for action. I may be signing my own political death warrant if history is anything to go by in raising these issues. Like the anonymous case study that I cited, the history on this is not good. In contrast to that film, the strikers in 1968 were not looking for equal pay—they had been unjustly graded at work—and they did not get equal pay; they received 92% of the pay received by their male counterparts. The resulting investigation and fury from raising the issue led to the Equal Pay Act 1970—at the cost of Barbara Castle’s career.”
“If we continue just to ask nicely, nothing will happen and our economy will miss out as a result. The Minister for Equalities told me that she wanted more data before she improved the way we did gender pay-gap reporting and ethnicity reporting, but if we are not even asking for that, we will never get anywhere on this. Addressing this inequality could not be more timely. A survey by Pregnant Then Screwed shows that it was mainly mothers who faced redundancy and inequality in the workplace in the pandemic, partly because they could not secure childcare so that they could go back to work. As early as May, a study by PwC showed that 78% of people who had lost their job during the pandemic were women.”
“Restoring gender pay-gap reporting and expanding the principle to ethnicity pay-gap reporting will help to open up action on the barriers that mean that talent is denied throughout businesses and the public sector. The Government said that they would act on the ethnicity pay gap, but action has not been forthcoming. Indeed, it is troubling that in the pandemic the only bit of business reporting and accountability that the Government said that businesses did not need to undertake was gender pay-gap reporting. What happens when we remove that focus on tackling inequality in the workplace? Two weeks after this year’s deadline, having been told that they did not have to do it, 10,000 eligible companies had not submitted their figures. When we look at the figures, we see that the gap has increased.”
“This is something that is supported by the British public. A new poll from Savanta shows that 62% of people think that if a woman is not paid equally for doing the same job as a man, she should be given the information so that she can challenge the situation. The Bill is not just about equal pay. Women of colour, for too long, have been left out of the conversation about equality in the workplace. Without examining both race and gender we fail to understand the intersectionality of pay discrimination. The Bank of England estimates that the black and ethnic-minority pay gap is 10%. It has narrowed even less than the gender pay gap in the past 25 years, and is 25% in London.”
“The promotion that she had been promised was denied to her because she was told that she had been too pushy on equal pay. The Bill is about righting those wrongs. It has been drafted by a panel of legal and human resources experts, chaired by the amazing Daphne Romney QC. It seeks to break the culture of discrimination and the culture of secrecy that causes it. I pay tribute to Baroness Margaret Prosser, who has led this work in the other place and is a fearless champion of equal pay. The Bill implements a right to know, to give women the right to request the pay data of their male counterparts. If they suspect that an individual or group may constitute a comparator, they would have a right to know that information so that they could make the comparison without having to go to court and make a formal request.”
“Members will understand why this is an anonymous case study—“In my previous role, I hired two junior staff members within six months of each other: one male, one female, both the same age, the same pedigree, the same salary expectations, hired to do the same role, sitting side by side. When I sought sign-off from my male boss to pay the female candidate the same salary, I was asked to offer her a starting salary at the bottom of the salary range. They told me in the business they pay people the least they think they can get away with, and they think she will accept less.” When the woman challenged that behaviour and pointed out the equal pay disparity, and that it could lead to a tribunal, she found her own career stymied.”
“As the Fawcett Society, which is working on this Bill, points out, six in 10 working women do not know whether they are being paid less than a male counterpart, and only three in 10 agreed that their employer would be honest with them and tell them if they were. Little wonder that some major household names, from the BBC to Tesco and Asda, have dragged their heels on these issues, making legal action the only option for women. That is why I pay tribute to women such as Carrie Gracie and Samira Ahmed, who have been prepared to stick their neck out on this, because it is really difficult to do so. When I introduced this Bill, one woman wrote to me—hon.”
“Pay discrimination is prevalent because it is hard to get pay transparency. Unless a woman knows that a man who is doing equal work to her is being paid more, she cannot know whether she is being paid equally. At present, getting that information all too often requires going to court because it is not available. Equal pay tribunals make up 12% of employment claims in this country, but 40% of claimants settle because it is more stressful to continue and a third withdraw their cases due to cost. Only 41% of claimants are legally represented at the tribunals. Little wonder that many companies have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach and never analyse the pay in the company or the pay gap for fear of generating the information that might assist a claim in the first place. That strategy works.”
“The Bank of England forecasts that ending the gender pay gap would add £600 billion to our economy by 2025, and ending discrimination against those from black and ethnic minority backgrounds in the workplace, as this Bill seeks to do, would add £24 billion a year to our GDP. Given that we are now facing an economic crisis, there has never been a better time finally to grapple with why, even in 2020, not everybody gets an equal day’s pay for an equal day’s work. It is not as if women have not tried to act through the centuries. Following the impact of the Dagenham Ford strikers, Barbara Castle’s legendary Equal Pay Act 1970 was passed before I was even born. The subsequent film, “Made in Dagenham”, may have won awards, but an equal pay award in this country is often much harder to come by, because it requires legal action.”
“Absolutely, there is a pay penalty for having a kid—I think we are all beginning to realise that—but it was there before the children were born. The evidence is also clear that women ask just as often as men for a pay rise, but men are four times more likely to receive it. The research shows that the impact of the gender pay gap comes from a mixture of things, including working for less productive companies, wanting to work part time, and good, old-fashioned discrimination. Even being a graduate does not help, as the pay gap begins early in many women’s careers. We all miss out as a result of those inequalities.”
“I am sorry to say, as a Co-op MP, that it was not answered positively—I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed) would feel the same. One hundred and eighty-eight years later, we are still waiting. Last year alone, 30,000 equal pay claims were made at tribunal, and this year we have seen that the gender pay gap is increasing, not closing. That means that, in 2020, nine out of 10 women in this country work in companies or organisations that pay them less on average than their male counterparts. I want to start by nailing the myth that it is the fault of the women themselves. It is not because they have kids or because they do not ask for pay rises. The evidence is crystal clear.”
“I beg to move, That leave be given to introduce a Bill to make provision for a right for employees to obtain information relating to the pay of a comparator; to reform remedies and time limits relating to equal pay; to provide a right to equal pay where a single source can rectify unequal pay; to amend the statutory statement of particulars to include equal pay; to provide for requirements on certain employers to publish information about the differences in pay between male and female employees and between employees of different ethnic origins; and for connected purposes. Members could be forgiven for thinking that we have been here before, because women have been asking for equal pay since 1833. The first recorded instance was in Robert Owen’s labour exchange.”
“Quite right, too! Question put and agreed to. Ordered, That Stella Creasy, Caroline Nokes, Neil Gray, Nadia Whittome, Chris Bryant, Florence Eshalomi, Anne McLaughlin, Chris Evans, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Christine Jardine, Caroline Lucas and Ms Harriet Harman present the Bill. Stella Creasy accordingly presented the Bill. Bill read the First time; to be read the Second time on Friday 13 November and to be printed (Bill 199).”
“As the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster knows, his earlier pessimism that the talks had broken down was misjudged, because in fact we know that, while he has been on his feet, the European Union has said that it is happy to talk about any legal texts. Therefore, his pessimism that we were headed towards an Australian-style deal was misjudged, but can he just confirm for my constituents why he would be so pessimistic about an Australian deal, because his own Brexit analysis in 2018 said that such a deal would cost 8% of GDP, or £2,500 per person in layman’s terms. Are those figures still correct? Is that the price of this failure?”
“What troubled me was that one of the other Ministers told the court that we should actually make more use of children in such circumstances—that they could be valuable because they were getting involved in criminal activity themselves. Again, let us take a step back and think that through. In other parts of our legislation, we recognise that when children engage in harmful practices it is our duty to stop that. Yet in that court case and this process with CHIS, Ministers are saying, “Actually, we might want to maintain that because it will help with an investigation”—the children would have “unique access” as “juvenile undercover agents”. They are children, Minister, and it is absolutely right that we act to protect them and see them as children first. That is what new clause 8 seeks to do.”
“Those are important investigations—nobody is suggesting otherwise—but the new clause recognises that there may be a conflict of interest between the investigation and the best interests of an incredibly vulnerable person. A young child drawn into county lines who knows the people organising things and has been given a gun—I can think of such cases—is still a child. We have a duty to that child to ensure that they are not exploited, even if people feel that the investigation is merited. The Minister will say that that happens very rarely. The Government’s own figures show that 17 children in 11 jurisdictions were used in this way in the past couple of years. One of them was just 15—a 15-year-old child being asked to continue a relationship that puts them at harm because that helps an investigation.”
“I am open to the idea that understanding what constitutes those exceptional circumstances is very difficult, but the new clause comes from the belief that the child’s primary interests should be, as a matter of fact, at the heart of any engagement with state services. Let us talk for a minute about the children we are discussing. For many of us who represent communities where issues such as county lines are a real problem, they are the children in the gangs and those who have been part of child sexual exploitation, who may have valuable information and have relationships with those exploiting them. For the police and the security services, they become incredibly valuable sources of information.”
“It is worth taking a step back at this point to reflect on that: we are talking about young people—children being asked to do what we previously envisaged James Bond doing. I hope that I am pushing at an open door with the Minister and the new clause, because that code of practice and the recognition at the High Court that there was a case to answer, reflect the fact that we need to get this right. Our first instinct may be that no child should ever be involved in intelligence work in this way, and I sympathise with that. But when we look into the cases where it has happened, we see that there may be exceptional circumstances in which a child may become an informant. It is right, therefore, that we should have incredibly strict guidelines that have the interests of that child at heart when that happens.”
“In most of our discussions about CHIS, we have envisaged those James Bond figures—the people from our security services or police conducting covert investigations. But I want to talk about those who are not the James Bonds: the children and vulnerable people who become covert human intelligence sources and who need us to make sure in this legislation that they are properly protected. For the last year, there has been a legal challenge to the Government about how children have been used as covert human intelligence sources. It was settled last week in the High Court, when the Government agreed to update their guidance and code of practice on how children could be involved in this legislation.”
“We are in a position of privilege in this House, so it is right and proper that we have oversight of those who do not share those same benefits. I rise to speak in particular to new clause 8—especially the issue at the heart of this legislation, which for me is about the people who can consent to be a covert human intelligence source. It is worth looking at the definition: “Someone who maintains a relationship for the covert purpose of providing information to another person”— that is, not just someone who has a one-off conversation with our security services or police about something, but someone who is asked to maintain what is potentially a position of harm to support an investigation. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden talked about the James Bond code.”
“I also want to put on record my support for amendment 13 and for the Front-Bench amendments from my own party. We recognise that there are genuine concerns about the Human Rights Act. In other debates in this place, people have talked about rewriting the Act, and I hope the Minister will deal with that issue. Also, it is a circular argument to suggest that the practices set out in amendment 13 and the amendments from my own Front Bench are already covered, if the Government will not accept amendments to ensure that they are part of how this legislation is dealt with. I also hope that the Minister will talk about the equalities impact of the legislation. I represent a community that has, at best, a tangled relationship with many of the agencies that will have these powers.”
“I recognise that covid and the speed with which this legislation has been brought through militate against our doing our job properly on this, because we are doing it so quickly, but today I want to flag up one particular issue of concern. I suspect that it will be in the other place that we will see progress on these issues. We know that this is a narrow Bill with a specific role around criminal conduct. I also recognise and understand the concerns that my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) raised—I am sorry that she is no longer in her place—about the ongoing inquiries and the timing of this legislation. I hope the Minister will address those points in his comments and tell us what the Government would do, should those inquiries come back with further requirements for support.”
“It is an honour to follow the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), and I agree with much of what he has said. I think there is agreement in this Chamber that we need this legislation, because the hallmark of a grown-up democracy is that it does not shy away from taking the necessary actions to keep a country safe, and nor does it say, “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” This legislation puts on a statutory footing those practices that are part and parcel of security in this country. The question for all of us is whether it also provides the necessary accountability and oversight to ensure that they are just.”
“The reality is that if it is just in a code of guidance, it will not always be followed. Let us send the message that children should be children, not child spies.”
“The Minister may say that he cannot accept the new clause in this format, but I ask him to look seriously at this issue and to ensure that when we pass necessary legislation to formalise such powers, we take a step back and see the person we might be drawing into criminality. These people are not all James Bond and can consent freely to being involved in criminal activity and then be held accountable by RIPA. Some of them will be very vulnerable people who need us in this place to stand beside them and ensure that their interests are protected and that they have an appropriate adult to act for them. I hope the Minister will listen to the concern that has been expressed across the House—the new clause is signed by Members from across the House—and introduce that protection into the Bill so that we put it beyond doubt.”
“New clause 8 does not say that there will never be a circumstance in which we might work with children, but it does say that it is right to see them as children first and to have a second pair of eyes to uphold that principle. The Minister will tell me that that is written into the guidance, but the new clause puts it in the Bill so that it is beyond doubt that somebody would take responsibility for a vulnerable person’s welfare. It also extends to vulnerable people who might have been trafficked, for example—people who may not see themselves as vulnerable but who, we would recognise, could be exploited. It is right that we have that check and balance of the appropriate adult—somebody who looks at that vulnerable person and gives an alternative perspective on what is happening to them, independent of the investigation.”
“I recognise what the Minister says. The challenge is that we already know of children and vulnerable young people who have been in this position under that legislation, but the paramount needs of the child or vulnerable person have not always been at the forefront of the minds of those involved in these investigations. What am I talking about? I am talking, for example, about a 17-year-old girl who was in a relationship where she was sexually exploited, but she continued in that relationship because it was beneficial to the police investigating the person she was in a relationship with. She ended up witnessing a murder and being party to destroying evidence about that murder. We would be responsible for the situation that she was in.”
“We have lost a vital week in the fight against the spread of this virus in our country because of a problem with spreadsheets that the Health Secretary tells us was known about in July. We are paying £12 billion to these private companies to run this service, yet the Health Secretary has told us there are no penalties to them for poor performance. Who is going to get our money back, and who is going to take responsibility? Can the Health Secretary tell us: where on earth does the buck stop?”
“If she will relocate a number of unaccompanied refugee children affected by the recent fire at Moria refugee camp on Lesvos from Greece to the UK.”
“I have some numbers to put this issue in context. Some 13,000 refugees are without any shelter as a result of the recent fires in Greece, and 3,800 of them are children. There are 21 confirmed cases of covid in the camp, which has a quarantine capacity of just 30. Ten countries, including France, Germany, Croatia and Portugal, have already agreed to take some of the hundreds of unaccompanied young minors in the camp. At present, we have taken just 16, but this place promised to take 3,000 under the Dubs scheme. Will the Minister give me and others who are concerned about this issue just one meeting to discuss what more we can do in respect of our obligations to those vulnerable young children?”
“I am delighted to have just heard the Secretary of State’s previous answer, because, in a former life, he and I both served on the Public Accounts Committee, so I know that he will understand that every taxpayer living in a community facing a lockdown or unable to get a test deserves a straight answer on whether his Department has imposed a financial penalty or withheld payments for the many voided tests undertaken by Randox. Will he give an answer to that question today?”
“There are multiple private companies involved in running the track and test system: Serco, McKinsey & Company, Deloitte and Randox, to name but a few. Can the Secretary of State tell us whether there is a financial penalty written into their contracts for when citizens cannot get tests, and what that penalty is? Or is it only our constituents who will pay the price for this mess?”
“The Minister has told us today that he is confident that there is no need for an investigation into any potential Russian interference in the EU referendum, because if there had been any, it would have been detected by existing processes. Given that this report sets out that there was Russian interference in other referendums and that the Russians continue to be involved in British politics, why does he think that the Russians chose to sit that one out?”
“Given that the United Nations Refugee Agency reports that, over the past five years, more than 3.5 million people in Yemen have been displaced as a direct result of the civil war there, the Minister will understand the concern about the resumption of arms sales. He tells us that he cannot share with us the specific details on which the Government have made the assessment to resume those sales, but he could set out for us what he means by the “genuine intent” that he believes is behind the Saudi Arabian decision on human rights, and what might change that. Will he do so?”
“One word that has not been mentioned so far is childcare, yet we know that two thirds of women who want to return to work in the next couple of months cannot because they cannot get any, and that 71% of our voluntary sector childcare agencies are already operating at a loss, risking their closing in the coming weeks. So can the Chancellor set out what funding he is providing now to make sure that parents can get back to work?”
“The Secretary of State has set out how important data is to his strategy. Can he therefore explain why his Government have a contract with Deloitte to cover the testing for covid-19 which does not require Deloitte to report positive cases of covid-19 to Public Health England or to local authorities?”
“It is never right to tell a child that the sins of the father should be prosecuted on them, and yet by default the way we treat marriage in public policy will do that to these children.”
“I ask the Minister—I recognise that he may say the Bill is not the right place for this debate—not to forget those children in this debate. Will he go to the Department for Work and Pensions and say, “It’s been two years since the courts said that this was a human rights breach. That’s thousands more children who have been left out and left in destitution, who have missed out on that money, which their families need at a crucial, vulnerable time.” Whether their parents would choose not to get married because the law is changed to make it easier to get divorced, or whether that would not make any difference, they deserve to be heard in this place, they deserve an answer, and they deserve our support.”
“If only 1.7 million of the 4.2 million families who are entitled to the married couple’s allowance claim it—one question the review could consider is whether the ways in which the Minister is changing access to marriage and divorce might affect that—then the £20 million we estimate it would cost to put this right could come from that budget and we would not be asking little children who face the loss of a parent to deal with a double financial blow because their parents were not married. After all, when their parents are alive we recognise their relationship in the tax credit system. It is a hangover from a previous era in how we dealt with benefits and marriage. It is right, when we are looking at legislation on marriage, to ask whether there will be a further consequence.”
“If my new clause is about anything, it is about understanding the true effect of everything that we are doing. The Minister may say to me, “Well, it would not just cover bereavement support payments.” That is true. We would probably have to look at the married couple’s allowance, which is our previous attempt to promote, encourage and sustain the concept of marriage. I am very mindful that that is not claimed by the vast majority of people who are entitled to it. This is a small change to protect bereaved families. We are not talking about hundreds of thousands of people: a few thousand people every year could be covered by it.”
“They explicitly say, “However strongly we may feel that we want to promote marriage and however strongly we may feel that divorce in itself should not be something that the state is propagating, we do not punish the child for the decisions of the parent. We do not push the child into financial destitution. Whenever we change the law on marriage or divorce, we seek to put the child at the heart of the decisions we make.” If the Minister wishes, he can read the stories of women like Laura Rudd or Joanna Niemeyer from my community in my constituency, or the examples raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North about the human consequences of talking about marriage and divorce to the exclusion of all concerned for children who may have to deal with the aftermath.”