Family Justice

: I can only agree that mediation or conciliation is needed at the earliest possible moment. The effect of being involved in a court process can often harden attitudes the further things go on, and we want to counter that. It was the theme of the Green Paper that we published in July 2004, which focused on resolving matters before people are at daggers drawn in court, and as the hon. Gentleman said, on ensuring that an even smaller minority go to court because issues are satisfactorily resolved otherwise. There is no instant solution and no single way of doing things. We must look at international experiences, as the hon. Gentleman advised. That is a good suggestion; we must consider practice and pilots. We all agree what the outcome should be, but we must keep looking at what actually works. The capacity of CAFCASS was raised and the Chairman of the Select Committee spoke about the changes in CAFCASS and the work of his Committee in highlighting the problems that exist. I join the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) in acknowledging, as the Committee does, that it is a really important area of work. There are some extraordinarily dedicated people working in this difficult field and they have to take a great deal of responsibility. However, we cannot just say, ““This is important work and people are doing a heroic job”” and not ask ourselves whether the system is as good as we know it must be for the sake of children and families. The question of resources has been raised. I am glad to hear that the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire is in full-on spending mode. Clearly the new broom of the Tory Leadership—[Interruption.] I thought that the hon. Gentleman was arguing for reduced court fees and increased spending on conciliation and CAFCASS. Clearly I got that wrong.