Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

moved, as an amendment to Amendment No. 2, Amendment No. 3:"Line 8, leave out ““reasonable”” and insert ““child-centred””" The noble Lord said: My Lords, we are making a mistake in trying to define contact in terms of the benefit that it brings to the parents. If we really mean that the welfare of the child is paramount, any attempt to give guidance to the courts and CAFCASS about how much or what kind of contact they should encourage should be worded in such a way as to make it clear that it is child-centred. The Government will say, ““Why give guidance at all? Why not just leave the presumption of Clause 1 in the Children Act and let the courts make all the decisions through case law?”” I understand that that is the Government’s position. I believe that they are wrong. The courts have now been in the driving seat for six to eight years and the outcomes for children are not yet satisfactory. Parliament is responsible for this legislation and for what is going on. Therefore, Parliament should make clear what it wants. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, quoted someone saying that the system requires ““radical revision””. Perhaps that is what we should be trying to do. The noble Earl’s amendment about reasonable contact introduced this difficult word ““reasonable””. Neither he nor anyone else has been able to tell me what reasonable means. It seems that reasonable is what a person thinks is reasonable. What I think is reasonable may be different from what you think is reasonable. We could turn this round by including some words that made it clear that what matters is that the policy is child-centred, so I propose adding ““child-centred””. I do not know whether that works well, but my Amendment No. 17 would insert ““child-centred”” before ““contact””. On reflection, I hate the word ““contact”” because it implies the sort of uncomfortable sessions to which the noble Earl referred. The phrase ““child-centred parenting”” should be included. That is what I would like to see. Moving on boldly, I thought that I had better try to define ““child-centred contact”” or ““reasonable contact””, but then I thought that my amendment would not be accepted so I had better define ““reasonable contact”” as well. I have done that in Amendment No. 16, where I have drawn attention to two or three things. They may not end up in the Bill, but it is tremendously important to make the point that one of the essential features of the relationship between a child and its parent is attachment, as we all know. Attachment means love and trust. One of the things that very often breaks down when a parental partnership breaks up is that one parent—usually the father—goes away. That is perceived by the child as abandonment and desertion, and sometimes it is, although sometimes he is driven away. The word ““trust”” should be included as well as ““love””. Also included are the obvious things such as the ““care, support and education”” that the child needs. I leave those amendments on the table for discussion. The noble Earl made an extraordinarily good and rather frightening case. Is it really true that the onus in court is on the non-residential parent to show that they should have more time for contact with the child? Can it really be the case that contact can be ended for no good reason? If so, the noble Earl is surely right in saying that the scales are too heavily weighted against the non-resident parent. I beg to move Amendment No. 3.