My Lords, as I indicated in Committee, I fully recognise that the provision of child contact centres is extremely important to supporting families and enabling parents to have contact with their children, while at the same time providing a safe environment that protects children and adults from potential harm. As the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, put it, there is no agenda here, in the sense that we all have the same aim. The question is the best means of achieving it.
It is essential that all children experience the same high level of care and safeguarding where circumstances have necessitated their involvement with the family justice system and child contact centres or services. I thank noble Lords and the National Association of Child Contact Centres for their engagement with me and my officials since Committee. I have met, on a number of occasions, several noble Lords who have spoken in support of this amendment. I have found those discussions extremely helpful and I am grateful to them for the time that they gave to discussing the issue with me in more detail.
This amendment differs from the amendment debated in Committee, because it provides that the child contact centres should be accredited in accordance with national standards to be specified in regulations laid by the Secretary of State. The amendment in Committee did not specify who would set the accreditation standards. I continue to question whether the statutory accreditation proposed in this amendment is required or would provide a more effective form of regulation than that which currently exists through the NACCC accreditation framework and the statutory regulations governing local authorities.
I extend my sincere thanks to the NACCC for the useful overview of the current landscape of unaccredited child contact centres and services in England and Wales that it produced following Committee. That review was conducted at some pace and has been used to inform further discussions on this matter. While I accept and take on board the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, and the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, that it is hard to identify evidence in this area, it is fair to say that the work that was done was at a somewhat high level.
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Since the last debate, and following meetings with the noble Lords sponsoring this amendment, I committed to writing to the President of the Family Division and
the CEO of Cafcass, requesting that they raise awareness among their colleagues and officials of the judicial protocol and memorandum of understanding that has been agreed between the NACCC and Cafcass. The protocols that are in place require the judiciary, magistrates and Cafcass family court advisers to refer parties to accredited child contact centres only. I have shared the draft text with relevant Peers and I will send letters to the President of the Family Division and the CEO of Cafcass after this debate.
Again, as I detailed in Committee, local authorities are able, in limited circumstances, to commission unaccredited child contact services. However—and this is an important point—any services that they commission in discharging their statutory duty to allow reasonable contact between a child in their care and parents fall within Section 22(3)(a) and Section 34 of the Children Act. Those provisions require local authorities to ensure consistency with safeguarding and promotion of the child’s welfare. Therefore, respectfully, I do not agree that there is a legislative gap in this area or, to use the word used by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, a loophole. Rather, the Government remain convinced that, given the regulatory and compliance mechanisms already in place with regard to local authorities, a requirement of mandatory accreditation for such services would impose an additional layer of costs and bureaucracy on local authorities, which already face significant resourcing pressures.
As I indicated in Committee, the Government continue to be willing to work with the NACCC and other interested parties to keep the situation regarding child contact centres and services under review. The work undertaken by the NACCC provides a good starting point from which to build a more robust evidence base around this issue, which would cover both public and private law. However, I am not persuaded, despite the rapid and, as I have said, informative work of the NACCC following Committee, that we today have enough evidence on which to legislate for the accreditation of child contact centres and services at this time.
Given what I have said this afternoon and my clear commitment to follow up on this debate with the President of the Family Division and the chief executive of Cafcass, I hope that, despite the comments that she made in her speech introducing the amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, will be content to withdraw it.