Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 28:"After Clause 7, insert the following new clause—"    ““REMOVAL OF CHILD FROM JURISDICTION    The Secretary of State shall lay before Parliament proposals to strengthen the efficacy of the Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction agreed at the Hague on 25th October 1980.”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, as your Lordships know, the Hague Convention is a multilateral treaty that seeks to protect children from the harmful effects of abduction and retention across international boundaries by providing a procedure to bring about their prompt return. I have retabled the amendment to discuss in more detail some of the responses that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, provided in Grand Committee and in his letter of 24 October, for which I thank him. In Committee, I raised concerns that had been expressed about the effective implementation of our duties under the Hague Convention and the use of the International Child Abduction and Contact Unit (ICACU)—concerns about whether we really are addressing the scale of the problem. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, argued in Grand Committee that the convention,"““is generally recognised as working well and we play a full part in it””.—[Official Report, 17/10/05; col. GC 165.]" I would suggest that only with the true statistics will we be able to clarify if that is indeed the case. I understand the need to protect vulnerable children who may be involved in cases, but surely there must be a way to publish the figures separately from case details. As it stands, we have no idea exactly how many children are abducted by a parent every year. Have the noble Lord, Lord Adonis or the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, seen a copy of PACT’s report Every Five Minutes—indeed, they have, it is available—which is a review of the available data on missing children in the UK? It highlights the fact that every five minutes a child is reported missing in the UK. Alongside the human and social cost, missing children must be one of the urgent social issues of our time. Will the Minister’s department respond to the report and, if so, when will that response be published? The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said in Grand Committee that the International Child Abduction and Contact Unit in the office of the Official Solicitor, as well as processing applications for return and contact, provides information to parents. I wonder whether the Minister can clarify that information. Does it include legal advice, or just a list of practitioners to whom parents can go for advice? What happens if parents cannot afford legal practitioners? In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, discussed the Child Abduction Co-ordination Group. Will the Minister explain the most recent suggestions on new ways to prevent abduction and say whether the Government will be implementing them? We were glad to hear that the convention was kept under review by the Hague Permanent Bureau through a series of regular special commissions. As the Minister highlighted, the second commission in 2002 concluded that improved contact arrangements could reduce the risk of abduction. Indeed, in the current Hague Project on Preventive Measures, the background document states:"““Orders or agreements may be sought during, for example, divorce or custody hearings, which prohibit the unilateral removal of a child from a jurisdiction. Such pre-emptive prohibitions at a stage when the parents have possibly never even contemplated abduction may alert them to the potential illegality of any removal. Thus abductions may be averted as a parent is made aware of the need to contact the other parent in order to discuss potential removals””." I wonder whether the Government have responded to the Hague questionnaire on preventive issues. Did it respond last year to the one on enforcement? As a solicitor has highlighted to us, the arrangements for contact in the family law system often make parents unreasonable, thus contributing to the possibility that one will resort to abducting their child. That is why we strongly propose the inclusion of co-parenting and reasonable contact, both of which proposals have been defeated. We need to focus on prevention rather than cure, although we recognise what the Government are trying to do with contact activities and enforcement. Abduction is the most dramatic strand of parent alienation, which has critical effects on the child’s welfare and mental well-being. I do not know whether this is the right amendment. I do not know whether there is a right amendment to be made to the Bill. We just felt that the matter was of sufficient importance to debate. I beg to move.