My Lords, that was a very powerful speech in favour of the aims of the amendment. At the end of the last debate in Committee when I spoke I said that I was somewhat ambivalent, although I totally supported what my noble friend Lady Meyer was seeking to do. That remains my position to a large degree, although I have come down—if it were a case of this amendment going to the vote, which I hope it will not—of probably being on the side of my noble friend. There is nothing more admirable in life than somebody who dedicates himself or herself to trying to ensure that others do not suffer as he or she has done. The noble Baroness’s campaign, over 20 years or more now, to ensure that other women and men should not have to tread the road she was obliged to tread is wholly admirable and commendable. There is nothing more wicked—and I chose my words with some care—than seeking to corrupt the mind of a child, particularly so that that child is turned against either their father or, more often, sadly, their birth mother.
We have devoted time recently to debating the importance of motherhood—there is nothing more important in the world. My noble friend Lady Meyer has clearly suffered greatly. She does not want others to suffer greatly in the same way, nor do any of us. It is a question of how we achieve her aim without making this Bill more difficult. As I listened to the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and to my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern, I thought that between them they had got it right. They both signed this amendment but they do not really want it to be necessary.
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It is crucial that, when my noble friend the Minister comes to reply, she recognises the enormity of the problem to which my noble friend Lady Meyer has
bravely drawn our attention—which cannot have been easy—and promises that we will have guidance to go with the Bill that will make it absolutely clear, beyond any shadow of any doubt, that anyone who indulges in the sort of behaviour indulged in by my noble friend’s former husband is falling foul of the law in a very real way. The corruption of children is beyond the pale in any civilised society, and this Bill—I refer to it again as a landmark Bill, which it is—needs to set the benchmark of how we regard these things for the next quarter of a century or more.
I hope my noble friend who will reply to this debate will be able to satisfy my other noble friend Lady Meyer that her concerns are truly understood and that those who put others through the ordeal which she was put through will be punished for it.