Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for the spirit in which she moved the amendment. As I have already indicated to her and to the House, I understand her desire to try to address an important issue around contact. I am not going to go into the details of why, in our legal system, I have difficulty with accepting the presumption in question. I take nothing away from the work that is going on in Florida. Indeed, I had a copy of the letter sent to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. We are missing our noble Lords this evening! We wish them well, and I know that they are suitably engaged on other important tasks, particularly on family commitments, which are pertinent this evening. Having consulted as widely as I could, I was unable to accept the amendment, but that does not mean that I do not understand the issue that lies beneath it. I recognise the concern at the heart of many of the issues; that is, those parents, often non-resident fathers, who do not get a fair deal. I repeat the commitment that I gave to the noble Baroness during the previous stage of the Bill: I intend to commission new research to establish a proper evidence base. I will go further: if the research recognises the problem that noble Lords have raised with me anecdotally, I will take action to address it. I will come back to noble Lords who have participated in the Bill to demonstrate that I recognise that there is an issue and to say what action will be taken. I am at one with noble Lords in recognising the critical importance of establishing the evidence base. I also accept what the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said about statistics and information around questions of safety. Noble Lords will know from the amendments that I was very pleased to accept in previous stages that we are concerned that issues of safety are addressed properly within the court system. Noble Lords will know from the work done by my noble friend Lady Scotland and her ministerial team, of which I am fortunate to be a member, on domestic violence that we are concerned to ensure that cases where children are at risk and where there are issues of domestic violence that could affect contact are addressed properly and promptly by the courts. We have taken steps to do that, and we will review them. But I accept that sometimes, in order to make a case, statistics are wheeled out in a way that does not recognise that they have an impact on the generality of cases where violence and safety are not an issue. In government, and in this House, we have to be cautious not to use statistics inappropriately. I am proud that we do not do so in your Lordships’ House. I accept the point that underpins what the noble Baroness said. We understand the issues being raised. We want to make sure that we do the work necessary to support those parents—particularly fathers, in this context—who feel that they do not get the best deal. We will do the research with the courts and will come back to noble Lords on it. We also want to make sure that we provide parents with better information and advice about their options at the earliest possible stage. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said in our previous discussions, we will focus on children to make sure that parents think about what is in their best interests and we recognise the general, although not universal, desire of parents to love and support their children to adulthood and beyond. We want to do this, in part, by working closely with colleagues in the voluntary sector who are looking at the way in which we might develop new provision. As noble Lords will know, we have set aside £7.5 million over the next two years to support child contact services, which we think is an important contribution to this work. We want to make sure that, in all the work we do before the court process and beyond, we are able to support parents better. Perhaps I may briefly outline the work we are doing. It is about better information services; it is about better information through solicitors; it is about making sure that when people get to court they have other options than appearing before a judge in a court process; it is about ensuring that parents recognise that if a court makes an order, it is a real order and is to be followed because it is in the best interests of the child; it is about the sanctions in this Bill that might be appropriate beyond that; it is about the role of CAFCASS in supporting families to ensure those contact orders are followed through; it is about providing support for parents in the conflicts that they may feel; it is about looking at the research to ensure that the courts are operating this system in the way we would wish them to do, and to act upon that; and it is about making sure that in our work with contact centres—particularly the work my noble friend Lord Adonis is doing in the contact centres—we are supporting those organisations in providing that support. What I am trying to suggest to the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, is that while I recognise that I have not fulfilled what she specifically would want through legislation, I do accept the principle of trying to ensure that children have a good strong relationship with both parents, where it is safe to do so. We want to offer parents the best possible advice and support in what is often a very difficult and traumatic time for them, to enable them and their children to have the best possible relationship for the future. All I would say to the noble Baroness is that I wish I could have done this through legislation in a way that would have achieved what she wanted. The problem is that it would have achieved something different and would have caused us some difficulty in what has been a well established and well loved principle of the paramountcy of the child’s interests. It does not mean that I do not accept there is work to be done. I hope in what I have said that I have been able to outline the work that we intend to do. I will of course commit to keeping the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and, indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, informed as this work progresses and ensure that, should our research identify action that we need to take, I inform noble Lords of that action and, indeed, take it. On that basis, I hope the noble Baroness will be able to withdraw her amendment.