Family Justice

: The hon. Gentleman is right about the nature of contact, although I am not sure that the courts generally interpret it so narrowly. It would certainly be contrary to the public understanding of contact if such a minimal level was all that was meant. For most people, contact means quality time spent with their son or daughter. That is what it is all about. The situation that the hon. Gentleman describes may arise in cases where acute safety considerations lead, in effect, to a denial of contact and the maintenance of a minimal link by Christmas cards and so on. I have come across tragic cases where letters have not been delivered and Christmas cards have not reached people. That goes back to the early days of the problems at CAFCASS. I am particularly worried, as are many of us, about the fact that if delay occurs it is not merely an inconvenience—the life of a child is directly and drastically affected. There is a risk of delay being used tactically by the other parent in the proceedings. The professionals all insist that tactical delay is not practised and that it is contrary to the principles on which they work. However, the perception is so widespread that we asked for more research. Until now, such research has been restricted by the closed nature of family court proceedings, but it is necessary. As regards general court delays, we have asked for more effort to recruit specialist judges, continued improvement in case management, and a change in the way that CAFCASS operates. I should be interested to hear a progress report from the Minister on those points, especially in the light of a newspaper report that appeared just before Christmas using Law Society research to show that 70 per cent of relevant cases in London are held up by a lack of judicial staff. It said:"““The Law Society said that delays were due to insufficient ““judge hours”” being allocated to family matters and inadequate staff recruitment and training in family courts.””" The Department for Constitutional Affairs admitted—I do not know whether it is news to the Minister—that"““there was a problem in London, which it blamed on a higher than forecast increase in cases. However, a spokeswoman said it is addressing the issue through initiatives such as the appointment of a case progression officer to the Principal Registry to improve case handling.””" Clearly, we all want the problem of delay to be dealt with. Central to our report was a recommendation about mediation, which we saw as a better way of resolving disputes in many cases. Anyone who is claiming legal aid can be required to consider mediation, but there is no such requirement on non-legally aided parties. We recommended that where it is safe to do so, all parties should be required to attend a preliminary meeting with a view to mediation. That is not the same as compulsory mediation, but it requires the possibility of mediation to be explored. The witnesses whom we saw said that such a process quite often leads to people accepting, at first reluctantly but after discussion more willingly, that mediation could help them. Our view was endorsed by the Joint Committee on the draft Children (Contact) and Adoption Bill, which commented:"““We recommend that the Government include within the full Bill a provision giving the Court discretion to refer parties to a mediation service in order to explore whether this could be a viable option in their case.””" The Minister can advise us as to whether the powers in the Bill are sufficient to make this happen and, if so, will be used to make it happen. The Government have been piloting a form of mediation with the family resolutions pilot project, but that seems to have been singularly unsuccessful in terms of the number of people taking it up, probably because of the lack of compulsion. Last summer, The Guardian carried a report with figures that must now be completely outdated. It said that nine months after the pilot started, only 47 couples had entered it, against an estimate of 1,000, and only 23 had completed the programme. That was pretty disappointing, and the figures cannot have improved all that much since then. Many people have argued that the Government should pilot what is loosely called the Florida model, which involves an element of compulsion. Judge John Lenderman of Florida says:"““I'm totally convinced mediation should be mandatory. Every judge that I've talked to around the United States says mandatory mediation is the way to go.””" Far fewer cases go to court in Florida. The US is not the only country that has compulsory mediation. Neither we nor the Joint Committee went so far as to recommend compulsory mediation, but we did recommend a compulsory meeting, at the court's discretion, to require people to consider the option of mediation and to be taken through the possibilities it could offer.