Children and Adoption Bill [Lords]

Perhaps my few comments, with the support of other speakers, will take us past the 9.45 pm watershed after which it will be safe to summon colleagues back for a debate that may or may not happen. I, too, thank the various Members and staff who have aided our deliberations. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs. Miller), who has performed a tour de force on the Front Bench throughout the Bill’s passage. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright) and for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson), both of whom served on the Committee, and of course to our assiduous Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Evennett). To be fair, I should also congratulate the new Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda), on dealing single-handedly with the entire Report stage, apart from two minutes before 9 pm. For him to do that after being thrown in at the deep end was no mean feat, given that this is a complex and controversial Bill that has been around for a year, since well before the hon. Gentleman’s promotion. He had a very quick dinner, but some of us did not have any dinner at all. There are those who did not have any lunch either, but that is another matter. This has been a long journey. Back in 2004, we saw the Green Paper ““Parental Separation: Children’s Needs and Parents’ Responsibilities””. Back in January 2005, we saw the next steps progress report. Soon after that, we saw the draft Bill. Before the last election, the draft Bill was presented to a pre-legislative scrutiny Committee in a rather truncated form. On 29 June 2005, almost a year ago, the Bill started its passage in the other place. It came to this House on 14 November, and ended its Committee stage at the end of March. Three months later, we are finally finishing Third Reading. It seems to take rather a long time for some Bills, particularly those dealing with children, to progress through both Houses, and there seem to be large gaps between the ending of their Committee stages and the start of their Report stages. This is not the first time that that has happened. Meanwhile, there has been an extraordinary development in the shape of early-day motion 128, which has been mentioned several times today and which was signed by a majority of Members of Parliament of all political persuasions. The signatures of 345 Members appear on that motion, which supports us on the principle and presumption of reasonable contact being in the child's best interests.