My Lords, Clause 8 is also about contact: contact post-adoption. Subsection (5) sets out the points which a court must consider when there is an application for an order for contact by any person who has obtained the court’s leave to make that application. The court must consider: any risk of the application disrupting the child’s life to the extent that he or she would be harmed; the applicant’s connection with the child; and representations made to the court by the child or any person who has applied for, or been granted, an adoption order. I am quite prepared to be told I have misread this, because the amendment comes
out of my own head: it has not been raised by anyone else with me. If I have got it completely wrong, I apologise to my noble friend who has put her name to it.
There must be a place for considering the welfare of the child. Section 1 of the 1989 Act states that when the court determines any question with respect to a child’s upbringing, the child’s welfare is the paramount consideration. Is that the answer in the sense that it would apply in any event? If so, why do we have the new subsection (5)(a) about the risk of disruption to the child’s life, because welfare of the child would clearly cover that? It seems to me that the balance of the clause as drafted, the presumption, is that if the risk of disruption to the child’s life is slim, you should not take account of it. I am curious—to use a term used earlier in a different context—about what has and what has not gone into the clause. I beg to move.