It is a pleasure to follow the former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), who brings not only working experience in the field but very illuminating personal experience that is relevant to several aspects of the Bill. That gives his comments an authority that we should take note of.
I shall refer briefly to the family justice elements of the Bill. The Justice Committee report on the draft family justice clauses has been cited several times this afternoon. It was published on 14 December 2012, and we had previously reported on the issue in July 2011. We broadly welcomed the draft clauses, which covered a wide range of public and private family law, and largely followed the Norgrove recommendations. However, we had significant concerns about the clause on “parental involvement.” Those words represent a change; the original term was “shared parenting”, which we disapproved of because it implies the carving up of the child’s time in the interests of the parents. That point is fundamental to our arguments about the Bill, and I shall return to it in more detail.
Relationship breakdown and the family justice process are highly emotive topics, producing strongly held views, many based upon personal experience. We bore that in mind during our inquiry, and in addition made sure that we considered the proposed changes in the light of other changes that are taking place in the family justice system. I should place it on record that the Government accepted a number of our detailed recommendations on the drafting of the Bill, and I much appreciate the work of the Committee’s legal adviser and the Government’s ready response.
On the public law clauses, we welcomed the Government’s commitment to reducing delay in the care process, which is absolutely essential. Lost time is lost opportunity in a child’s life, and cannot be returned or repaid. We praised the work being undertaken by some local authorities and courts on a shorter timetable. We were impressed by the changes we heard about in social worker training and management, and by the work being done in Hampshire and the three London boroughs engaged in the tri-borough project. We welcome the Government’s involvement, although we have some concerns about how it will be pursued.
We argued that when it is in the child’s best interests, it is important that the child’s wider family and family friends are not excluded from the care process. We recommended that the Government undertake to review the practical effect of the 26-week time limit to ensure that kinship carers are not excluded from the local authority or court decision-making processes because of the rush to comply with the timetable.
We recommended that the draft clause on judicial scrutiny of care plans be revised to make express reference to contact by the child with the birth family, including the wider family. We are pleased that the Government have committed to considering whether further guidance on the importance of kinship contact is required in advance of the legislation, and to review the general impact of the clause on an ongoing basis. We are also pleased that clause 15 on care plans now makes express reference to section 34(11) of the Children Act 1989, which considers parental contact with children in care. These are often difficult cases, but parental contact can remain important even when a decision has been taken to put a child in care.
We are glad that the Government removed the word “exceptional” from the test for extensions to the 26-week limit. It created the odd and rather unhelpful impression that some children’s cases are more important and more exceptional than others, whereas the test should be whether the extension is necessary for the case to be resolved justly.
On the private law clauses, we heard evidence about the training received by mediators for mediation, information and assessment meetings—occasionally I have to remind myself that is what MIAMs stands for. We were concerned to ensure that the Government gave help and assistance to mediators. As has been pointed out in interventions, there will be a large demand for skilled mediation, so quality standards are important. The Government told us that they have asked the pre-proceedings working group of the Family Justice Council to look at the issue, and the Justice Committee looks forward to seeing the results of that work.
The Government disagreed with the Committee on only a small number of the recommendations, but particularly on whether the 26-week limit should be set out in primary or secondary legislation and how flexible it should be. I welcome the support we heard today from the Opposition Front Bench on that issue. The big disagreement was about how the parental involvement principle is applied. It is not really about the principle, as there should be no disagreement that it is in the interests of the child to remain in contact with both parents, unless the risk of harm seriously outweighs it. We fully support that principle. The adoption of the Committee’s recommendation to change the title of the relevant clause is welcome. It represents a change from sharing out parenting to recognising parental involvement, and we want wider and more careful consideration of those parts of the Bill. The Government have expressly stated that the courts already operate on the basis that both parents should be involved in a child’s life, unless of course it is not safe or not consistent with the child’s welfare. They say that they do not intend to change outcomes, and cases will not be judged differently as a result of the legislation, so why is the provision there? What is it intended to achieve?
The Government say that
“the purpose of the clause is not to promote the equal division of a child’s time between parents…it will encourage the resolution of agreements outside court by making clear the basis on which courts’ decisions are made and by ensuring that parents’ expectations are realistic when deciding whether to bring a claim to court. The Government anticipates that over time, this change will contribute to a societal shift towards greater recognition of the value of both parents in a child’s life, and to a reduction of the perception of bias within the court system.”
As I indicated earlier, that is a pretty optimistic claim. It would be very good if it were the case, but the danger is that false expectations are created by the inclusion of those words, and much harm could result, as we see from some of the press coverage. For example, The Daily Telegraph reported:
“The new legislation states that judges should ensure that fathers are given the legal right to spend time to develop a meaningful relationship with their sons or daughters.”
Actually, the Government expressly excluded the words “meaningful relationship” from the legislation. If an expectation has been created by press reporting, perhaps encouraged by some briefing, we risk disappointing many non-resident parents, most but not all of them fathers, who feel that their case has not been properly considered, and that in future courts will look at the issue in terms of sharing out time.