I am not sure that the Minister has shed much light on things. I am now even more confused. Surely if there is going to be an eight-week extension, people have to meet every eight weeks to decide whether or not it should be further extended. You could say as a one-off, “We’ll allow a further eight weeks”, but then you will have to keep meeting every eight weeks to review that, if it is intended that there will be more than one eight-week extension. No doubt we can talk about this outside the Room and the noble Lord can clarify that further.
There is a serious point at the heart of this: what do we want to get out of the 26-week deadline? I hope that we all want children to have a chance to stay with their birth family, if possible. I feel that we will find over time that if courts are under pressure because of the 26-week timescale, the default position will be that children are taken into care because there simply will not be enough time to do the work with the birth parents. That is the real sadness behind what is being proposed here, because it is too stringent and lacking in flexibility.
Our position is that we want something that is absolutely and justifiably in the interests of the child and its welfare, and I still believe that what we are proposing would achieve that. For the time being, however, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.