Children and Adoption Bill [Lords]

I want to make some brief comments about amendment No. 19. Liberal Democrat Members welcome the new risk assessment that clause 7 proposes, but we believe that there is room for clarification. At the moment, there is a lack of detail about what a risk assessment would involve. Clause 7 simply says that a risk assessment is an assessment of risk. I abbreviate slightly, but that is what it boils down to. Subsection (3) states:"““A risk assessment, in relation to a child who is at risk of suffering harm of a particular sort, is an assessment of the risk of that harm being suffered by the child.””" That lacks clarity. Surely there is scope for saying a little more in the Bill or perhaps I could tempt the Under-Secretary to offer some guidance—I realise that that is a favoured medium for clarification. Amendment No. 19 would ensure that risk assessments included analysis of the impact on the child of the different options that the court could choose—for example, ascertaining how a child would fare if a court ordered one sort of contact order rather than another. That could provide a useful tool to improve the court’s decision making in cases in which the child may be at risk, and make the court’s decision that much more likely to be safe and in the child’s interests. The amendment would make risk assessments more valuable in that they would contain information to guide the courts to make better contact arrangements. I would be interested in the Under-Secretary’s response and whether he could at least say that clause 7 requires more guidance.