Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, that I shall discuss how children change over time. I have talked to many practitioners. Some of them are excited by our proposals whereas others are mildly sceptical. I repeat what I said when discussing an earlier amendment: of course, many of the contested cases involve safety issues. However, I am talking about cases where safety is not an issue. I go back to those 90 per cent of cases in which the parties, we all assume—apart from the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth of Breckland—are satisfied with the arrangements that have been made. However, many decisions cause much heartache; I am speaking also about those people. Many of the practitioners to whom we talked said that there might be merit in judging cases against a set starting point to avoid the situation where someone says, ““You may go to this court and this may happen or you may have that judge and that will happen””. That would enable people entering the process to know exactly where the compass marks were. Later we shall discuss a pilot scheme, but the measure that I have described might focus people’s attention. If they consider that they cannot just walk away with everything and that there has to be frequent and continuing provision regarding contact for a third of the child’s time, that may concentrate their mind on the other areas that we need to discuss with regard to mediation. I take on board what has been said, but simply saying that every case is different results in there being no consistency whatever. For the sake of children going through the trauma of their parent’s relationship breakdown and adults caught up in all the emotional baggage that a marriage break-up or a partnership break-up entails, we must try to bring a little certainty into the argument.