Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

My Lords, I offer our support to the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. I do so principally because I watched a couple of television programmes on the subject that were some of the most harrowing that I have ever seen. I understand that, although PACT may not be the Government’s favourite organisation at this moment, it is important that people who may wind up in this situation are alerted as early as possible to that possibility. In Grand Committee, I asked whether the Minister could supply information about which countries and which jurisdictions were the main ones to which children had been abducted and not returned. I am pleased to say that the Minster supplied it. I am interested, as I have been throughout the Bill’s passage, in the extent to which practitioners and parents can be given information and resources to enable them to deal with the situation that emerges. As well as monitoring aspects of the convention, which the Government must do, do they provide resources, particularly to the voluntary organisations that are in touch with parents, to allow them to pass on information and experience to each other? I know a number of women—it is usually women in this situation—who, although they have not succeeded in getting their children back, have had limited contact with them in the country to which they have been abducted. That is not wonderful, but it is something, and it is better than nothing. If the experiences of individuals who have battled their way through different legal systems could be made available to people who one day find themselves in a horrifying situation that they never envisaged when they started out on life, that would be of enormous benefit. Just as we have been arguing on the domestic scene, on the international scene it is also about trying to enable good practice to be handed on between parents.