Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

The Minister alluded to research by Professor Smart into the area of children’s voices. I received some information from it, as I said earlier. The end of the chapter on children’s welfare and children’s voices states:"““Although there is concern that children should not be asked to ‘chose between parents’ because this could impose an unfair burden on them, in the cases we read it seems clear that the agenda was clearly about children indicating a preference . . . We were left with the impression that older children seem perfectly competent in expressing their views. While there is no doubt room for improvement in terms of allowing older children to participate in decision making in courts, our main concern arising from our reading of the court files, was for younger children who often seemed caught between a rock and a hard place””." There is clearly concern about putting young children into a difficult position. It is a different point from that made by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, but it underlines the need to pay special attention here. We will come back to this, but it might be worth saying now, as my noble friend Lady Howarth said earlier, that private law cases such as these often go towards what happens in public law. There is a strong argument for thinking more about using the tandem representation model that is used in public law for children in some of these circumstances because that is a well tested and professional way of ensuring that the voice of the child is heard. It is difficult to get the balance right in these cases. Often the child is lost in the anger between the parents, and so hearing his voice and trying not to put him in a position of being seen to make the decision in the case is important. I hope that is helpful.