Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her detailed reply and once again express my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for his support and for sharing with us his wealth of knowledge on Florida. As I think I said in Grand Committee, whenever we discuss mediation, we get to that moment of saying, ““Oh yes, but what do you mean by that?”” The word means so many different things to so many different people. That is one of the reasons why we talked about dispute resolution. I think that it is in fact dispute resolution or mediation with some form of therapy attached to it, which is perhaps needed for some people with very deep wounds and scars. The Minister said that she was nervous about the parenting plans and about being prescriptive. As Conservatives, we also do not like to be prescriptive. I go back to what we are trying to achieve, which is clarity and confidence. In these parenting plans we are looking to have some anchor points so that people know a little more about what might happen. The noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, also talked about the empirical research of the early interventions project, which reminded me of the Civil Service mantra—it seems to be working very well in practice, now let us see if it stands up to intellectual rigour. The fact is that it is working. It is keeping lots of families out of the courts and resolving their disputes at an early stage before bitterness and rancour set in. That is surely what we are looking for. On early interventions, the difference between us and the Minister is that we were talking about the original early interventions project, which was designed by judges and those who practise in the family law world. It was adapted from America and put together in order that it would work here. It is somewhere in one of the Government’s departments. That is the pilot we would like the Government to look at to see whether it might work. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendments Nos. 10 to 12 not moved.]