Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

My Lords, I do not think that any noble Lord who has spoken is terribly far away from any other noble Lord who has spoken on this amendment. I accept that mediation is very important and can prevent people ending up in court, but I also accept that there are other methods and other players who need to be involved and who can also do a fantastic job in preventing that. I take the point about the voice of child perhaps being more easily involved through CAFCASS than it would be through traditional mediation methods. I have already indicated that we will think more carefully about the question of a register of mediators. As a Minister, I work in Europe on European civil justice and I know that within the European Union we are looking at the question of mediators and mediation. I need to think again about how we reconcile the different issues while not putting an onus on the president of the Family Division that I do not think would work. I have a slight difficulty because the amendment requires compulsory information sessions in every case. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, says that the Bill already allows for these information sessions to be made compulsory in that the contact activities may include,"““sessions in which information or advice is given as regards making or operating arrangements for contact with the child, including making arrangements by means of mediation””." I do not want to put on the face of the Bill that this should be done in every case because it will catch cases where parents were able to reach agreement without needing mediation. Furthermore, it would not give the courts flexibility to decide that an information session was not appropriate in particular circumstances. I do not think that we are very far apart, but I do not want to go the extra mile and say that we should do this in all circumstances at all times. The difficulty with Amendment No. 15 is the European Convention on Human Rights. While I can see the logic of saying that no application can go forward unless a mediator has pronounced it mediation-unsuitable, it would be successfully argued that that would prevent access to the courts if a person were to refuse to undergo mediation. I do not think we could do that. If somebody did refuse to participate, it is, in theory, contempt of court. The reality is that if the court believed that an information session and mediation was important and that the parents had come because they wanted to sort out contact disputes, it would take very seriously the issue of whether somebody did not participate. Although on an individual basis I can see that this would not cost very much, in 2004–05 the cost of 14,355 publicly funded family mediation was £14.2 million. Each individual case is not very much money, but I do not have a back pocket with extra money that I could put into this for parents who might be profiled like me or other noble Lords, who could afford to pay and who should do so as part of the process of trying to sort out their contact arrangements. Although I take the sentiment very well, the reality would be different. While I have enormous sympathy with the amendments, I do not want to go as far as saying that we would do this in every case. New Section 8A provides that cases can only go forward after mediation, but we run straight into the difficulty that that would, in theory, deny people access to the courts, and cause me difficulties in the European Court. On that basis, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw the amendment.