Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

I do not wish to gainsay anything that the noble Baroness has said, and I have very high regard for the work done by CAFCASS officers in mediating and bringing about settlements in situations that have often looked hopeless at the outset. The force of the word ““reasonable”” is not to oblige absent fathers to do anything that they do not want to do; it is merely to indicate to the court that any decision it reaches has to be reasonable and that bad reasons should not be sufficient for denying both parents meaningful contact. Meaningful contact is the goal that the Government want to see achieved, that I want to see and, I am sure, the one that the noble Baroness wants to see as well. We are not arguing about what is desirable. As the Minister rightly pointed out, we are arguing about how best to get there. ““Reasonable”” is a word that is well understood by lawyers. The word that we might use is ““meaningful””, because I think that we understand what a meaningful relationship is. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, has given us a good example—the fact that a child has his or her own room in the house of a non-resident parent and enjoys a richer relationship with that parent than he would do if it were simply a birthday card once a year or a meeting once a month in a park. So we know what we mean by ““meaningful”” and we know what we mean by ““reasonable””. So nothing in the amendment is intended to cut across the kinds of situation cited by the noble Baroness or is designed to oblige a court to arrive at contact arrangements that put a child at risk—heaven forbid. No court would find it reasonable to put a child at risk; and no court would find it reasonable to force a child to see an absent parent who had no interest in him or her. We are not in disagreement here. I just hope that the force of the points that I have made about the current legal position can be absorbed, perhaps after the Committee sitting is over, even if the Minister is not prepared to concede that what I have said is right. At the moment, I am sure that he will not concede that what I have said is right. I assure him that what I have said is the result of painstaking research and legal opinion.