Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

I added my name to these amendments because I felt it was important to have this debate on parental responsibilities raised by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. I feel strongly that children have a right as far as possible to have their parents’ responsibilities and duties to them properly fulfilled. I am not sure what the law can do to encourage parents to do that but I know, as someone mentioned in Grand Committee yesterday, that what most upsets children in separation situations is when, for some reason, parents are unwilling or unable to fulfil the contact time that has been agreed between the parents. That must be extremely disappointing to children and they must feel fundamentally that, because the parent does not spend the allocated time with them, they do not care and therefore the children are not loved. For that reason, from the child’s point of view, it is vital that the absent parent fulfils the contact arrangements. To that end, when the courts set out the contact arrangements, it is important that they bear in mind all the factors and that they are workable. In particular, I think of situations that have come to my attention where there is a great geographical separation between the formerly married parents and where the contact arrangements are unworkable. Usually the father simply finds it impossible to fulfil the arrangements and therefore disappoints his child. He does not want to do so but, one way or another, it is not possible for him to do otherwise. Unless the matter goes back to court, so far as I know there is no way of varying that. We shall come to the matter of monitoring later, but no one checks whether all the arrangements are working. Therefore, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for raising this issue because this duty and responsibility to the child is something that we must consider at every stage. Are we making it possible for the parent reasonably to fulfil those? There is one other little thing. How would the amendments affect sperm donor fathers? Perhaps I should have given the noble Lord notice of that question, but we have to bear it in mind. He mentioned parents who have taken on parental duties and those who, for one reason or another, have not. We have to think about how his amendments might affect sperm donors. It is important that right from the start we think about the welfare of the child in terms of how it feels about the duties and responsibilities of its parents. Its feeling for its parents can be easily undermined when it feels let down.