Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendment. I greatly admire the single-minded attention to the matter that the noble Baronesses, Lady Gould and Lady Thornton, have given on this occasion and in the past. I also remember how passionately the noble Earl, Lord Russell, felt about this issue. I first wish to refer back to when, due to a failure on my part, I did not ask the noble Earl, Lord Howe, about his response to an earlier amendment. In referring to the report, he said that he believed that the failure was in assessment. Clearly, the amendment will work towards addressing his concern, having read the report, that the assessment process was at fault. I wanted to ask him whether he recognised that that assessment failure will take a long time to remedy. It is not just about developing the new training programme; the courts need to be trained in it, as do the social workers. There is a culture in CAFCASS, which the report points to, of being hurried and not giving enough time to things, which is partly to do with resources, as noble Lords have said, and is partly to do with retraining. All those things take time to change. I would not wish your Lordships to believe that, simply because we now have a welcome start in ensuring the safety of children involved in these processes, we can therefore move forward with the other measures that we decided not to include earlier this afternoon. That is the main point that I wish to make.