Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

May I say how very strongly I support the principle that the noble Baroness is putting forward? She perhaps will recall what Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, the president of the Family Division of the High Court, said on 22 February to the scrutiny committee. In response to the question:"““Do you think the courts need more powers to push, if you like, people towards mediation?””," she replied:"““I would like the power to push them. Also I would like the power to push them to therapy to a greater degree, particularly to some medical assessment””." One of my concerns about this Bill is that there has been a significant rise in recent years in the numbers of families going into private law proceedings. On the one hand that may be a good thing, because it means more children having contact with both parents. On the other hand—we will probably come to this later—the bad consequences of the adversarial system of law, which is in process in these settings, will tend to ratchet up the ill will between the two parents even if they have good, well meaning lawyers. Inevitably, that will be a drawback to that process. The cost, which the noble Baroness referred to, may be incurred by the non-resident parent or the resident parent. There are good reasons to keep families out of the court proceedings if we possibly can. Obviously we want to respect the right of parents to go to court to assert their right to see their child, but we must also accept the concern about the interests of the child and reducing that conflict as best we can. We should think where that money might be spent in supporting families. The idea of waiving any fee seems such a good to society that it is hard to argue against it. I look forward to the Minister’s response.