My Lords, I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. I am most grateful to the Minister for his reassuring response concerning the additional training for social workers to enable them to produce the right reports without additional expert support.
I seem to remember it being put to me in the past that the involvement of expert witnesses has been particularly difficult for family courts dealing with these very complex cases. There has been a sort of arms race, with one side appointing an expert witness, then another side appointing an expert witness, and the judges—those making decisions—have sometimes lacked the confidence to say, “No, we do not need so many reports”. What the Government are doing now under Lord Justice Ryder, which will also be helpful, is the bringing together of the family courts into one place, with opportunities for greater training and support for those who make these difficult decisions, and therefore less risk of this sort of arms race of expert witnesses.
As my noble friend Lady Howarth has said, it is crucial that these decisions are timely, and what is encouraging about Dr Brophy’s report is that these expert witness reports have been found to increase the speed at which decisions are made. In the past the concern has been that they have delayed decisions, but the judges are saying that they can make speedier decisions because they have the expert information that they need. Therefore I am grateful for the Minister’s reassurance on these points, and I do not think I have to say anything more.