Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

First, I thank everyone who has taken part in this debate and the Minister for his response. I am pleased to tell the Committee that there is no difference between the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and myself. We both believe in the paramountcy of the welfare of the child. But she took me to task a little bit, and I think that she might have understood what I was trying to say. It is because these proposals are child-centred and are in the interest of the child’s rights that I believe that we need to give a right to a presumption of reasonable contact to the parent, so that the child should have its right to being in contact and allowed to make a reasonable relationship with both its parents. We come from exactly the same position on that point. The noble Baroness also misunderstood me when I mentioned the fact that she had asked what this thing meant in practice. I accept perfectly that it was an open question that gave me the opportunity of pointing out that a very wide range of contact would be possible. That was my only intention in that regard. She mentioned one particular case—but I must point out to her that it would not have been reasonable for the court not to allow contact between a child and its father, if the child would have been destroyed by not having that contact. Therefore ““reasonable”” becomes even more important in such a situation. To those who are doubtful about the need for ““reasonable”” in the law, I would ask them to note that all three of our amendments are rebuttable. If the CAFCASS processes are working properly, and there are good reasons—as we say in the amendment—for the presumption not operating, of course it will not operate and there will not be the sort of reasonable contact that we would all hope for. So more power to the elbow of all those who are trying to improve the operation of CAFCASS and the resources to do it. I take very seriously the concerns of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. We will come to the point about the voice of the child a little later in our discussions. I absolutely agree with him that in issues such as these, the opinions, wishes and feelings of the child must be taken into account. It will be reasonable of a court to take those into account when deciding on these matters. As to the comments made by the Minister, I got the impression that he feels that everything is working perfectly well in the family courts—and, therefore, I wonder why we need this Bill. However, I do not believe that the law is working perfectly in 100 per cent of cases. Perhaps only 1 per cent of cases are contested but, as the noble Earl, Lord Howe, or the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said earlier, there are probably quite a few people who do not go back to court because of the very high hill that they have to climb. But even 1 per cent means a lot of children, and, in some of those cases, the welfare of the child is not being paramount because they are not having reasonable contact with both parents. But it is for the court, under a set of proper processes and guidelines, to decide what is reasonable. The courts may be acting conscientiously, but the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, gave us a list of the failures of the courts in relation to the safety of the child. That in itself will give us an indication that, try as it might, courts are not always getting it perfectly right. That is why we feel that there is a need for change in that very basic principle about the presumption of reasonable contact. The Minister relies very heavily on the case law referring to a child having a right to the love and society of both its parents—but there is no definition there of the love and society of both its parents, so I do not believe that we can rely on something like that. We need to have this very basic change to the right of the child to have reasonable contact with both its parents. We do that by giving the parent the right to reasonable contact with the child, as long as there are no safety issues that we must be concerned about. I really do not believe that the proposals that we have made in these amendments override the paramountcy of the best interests of the child. I wonder if the Minister can give me any evidence that the welfare of the child is not promoted by reasonable contact with both its parents, unless there are sensible reasons that a court would take into account not to do so. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Amendments Nos. 12 to 14 not moved. Clause 1 [Contact activity directions and conditions]: