My Lords, I say to the Minister that I am perfectly prepared to be wrong; I often am. However, I think that on this occasion I am probably right and I shall be very interested to see the research. I would very much like a copy of the draft rules. I used to be the chairman of the Family Procedure Rule Committee. I have to confess that I tried not to attend that committee if I could avoid it as it is quite the most boring committee I have ever sat on. However, I should like to see the draft rules and would be most grateful if they could be provided.
The noble Lord knows that it is the practice in the Moses Room to withdraw the amendment and I will, of course, do so, but before I do so I should like to make one or two points. I am extremely indebted to the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, for making the point that the title should be neutral. That was what I was searching for, although I did not use that word. The neutral title could be “family information meetings” or, as has been sensibly suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, “family meetings”. Family information meetings might be slightly better as people would know that that was what they were going to get.
I am entirely supportive of mediation in the right cases, and in all but 5% of cases it will be right, if they ever go to court at all, which most of them do not. Where neither party is legally aided, they will both battle through the real difficulties of making their applications and so on in the county court or magistrates’ court and try to cope with something which is completely unfamiliar to them. Therefore, the information meeting, and a requirement to have one, seem to me entirely admirable.
The only problem is that there are in a sense two stages to this because mediation is different from information and assessment. It imposes upon people a requirement to try to settle. You cannot have compulsory mediation. You can have compulsory information and assessment, but you cannot require people to settle. That is something I was taught as a young barrister and I have learnt all the way through my legal and judicial career that people cannot be made to settle. The purpose of mediation is to get them to settle or to try to tackle the issue in a better way, but that could be achieved through the provision of information and an assessment. One has to understand that mediation is in a different class from information and assessment.
I throw out my next point as a possibility for the Family Procedure Rule Committee and the Minister’s experts to look at. I am not suggesting that this is necessarily a good idea but I throw it out for consideration. I would be content if the forms that the parties receive put the words “information”, “assessment” and “mediation” in brackets. Parties could cross out the word “mediation” to show that they are prepared to opt for information and assessment but are not prepared to go through a process of trying to make them settle. That might just do the trick if you want to keep the word “mediation”.
However, I am very concerned about the small number of people who are most likely to go to court. You do not go to court if you can reach agreement. Some 90% do not go to court or go to court only to obtain an agreed order, 5% can be persuaded to go through mediation, and probably mediation is just what they need, but 5% cannot. What could happen if there is a requirement for mediation is that particularly the man, although sometimes the woman, will get to the meeting with the trained mediator and the minute the mediator starts to say, “Well, could you not agree to this?”, he will storm out and not listen to what he needs to understand as to how the court proceedings will go. That is my real worry. However, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.