Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

My Lords, I understand absolutely the sentiments behind the amendment. I believe that all sides of the House have the interests of children securely at heart, I simply think that we come at the issue from different positions. I shall outline why I cannot support the amendment. First, let us remember that we want all children to live in stable, loving families with both parents. We all want that to happen. When problems arise, we want them to have access to help that brings them back to that stability and contact when that breaks down. We want to think about the difference between safety and safeguarding. I know that we shall be talking about safety later on, but I want to talk a little about safeguarding. Safeguarding is to do with the whole development of the child. A presumption that a child’s welfare is best served through residence with his or her parents and the concept of equal involvement in the difficult situations we are dealing with is unrealistic, unhelpful and in my view potentially dangerous. That, if you like, is at the other end of the spectrum when we are talking about safety. Many of the problems that I see regularly in the court do not necessarily involve reasonable adults talking about safety, but unreasonable adults. All of us can be unreasonable, so there is nothing strange about people who find themselves in such situations, when powerful emotions are evoked. The most powerful emotions can be felt when people who said that they loved each other and have had children split up and face all the difficulties involved in breaking up. Noble Lords who have had that experience will know the power of those emotions, and those who have not have not will know what it is like to have normal household rows and what sorts of emotions are involved. In such situations, we are often dealing with families who also have other difficulties. Research has shown that they are families at the end of the spectrum—not all of them, but many of them—where there are other difficulties. Let us remind ourselves that most families find a solution to contact themselves. Most families are able to find help if they actually need it. Of the ones who come to court, CAFCASS can often find ways to solve the problem before the case goes before a magistrate or judge. A number of our projects are proving extremely successful throughout the country in doing that. However, 1 per cent of cases end up with no contact, and I see many of those cases. The child’s needs must remain paramount, and our courts and staff should put them first. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, talked a lot about the rights of parents. Yes, I believe that parents have rights, but the matter goes above and beyond the rights of parents who have decided to separate and have got themselves into such difficulties and have not decided that sticking together for life for the sake of their children is what they intend to do—there are many families who decide to do that, and I admire them. Those rights are not the ones that we should consider. The paramount responsibility and right at that moment is the need of the child who comes before the court. As I said, I believe that the child’s needs are met by contact with both parents when possible. In terms of their development, even when children are not at risk in a technical sense, there will be times when contact will be very difficult to decide on. I have had CAFCASS officers and judges distraught because they can see the need but find some cases difficult to take through. I should point out again that we are not talking about situations in which a contact order has been made and then broken or that we believe that the resident parent is being unreasonable. In those situations, we are dealing with the provisions about enforcement. Again, I know personally and professionally situations in which there are unreasonable parents—very often mothers but sometimes fathers—who, for their own reasons, not for the value or needs of the child, do not wish the child to see the other parent. That is when we need enforcement; that is when judges are asking us to take further action. But that relates to another part of the Bill; it does not relate to the part that we are discussing. A massive amount of scarce professional time, including court time, is used when judges and CAFCASS practitioners try to reason with parents who are hostile to each other. They must at the end of the day be able to focus on the one thing that matters and not be distracted by other issues such as terms like, ““reasonable contact”” or ““the presumption of contact””. We have seen in the report from Her Majesty’s Inspectors that that can affect the judgment of staff—and I believe that that happens. I welcomed enormously the speech made by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, whom I have always seen as a champion for children. It was heartening to hear her talking about the paramountcy of children’s welfare. I hope that she does not believe that it is because of staff attitudes that there are difficulties. The staff are seriously influenced by the culture that we create legislatively, in our newspapers and for certain groups who have made their life misery. That has been the difficulty.