Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

My Lords, I support what the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said. My slight worry is that these amendments are channelling us too far down a mediation route and do not look sufficiently flexibly and widely at alternative forms of dispute resolution. In some of the very successful dispute resolution schemes that CAFCASS is running—I am sorry that I cannot resist saying that we would run a great deal more if we had more money—the new way of working allows the parties to focus on specific issues and allows children to be much more involved so that we can hear the voice of child in some of these ways of resolving disputes.