Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

We have gone over a lot of the ground that we covered yesterday, which I sense that we shall go over at Report. To some extent, we are starting to rehearse arguments that will be heard then. The essential point that I should like to make is that the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and I are at one in one key aspect, which is that the Bill does not change the presumption about the allocation of time in decisions by courts on contact arrangements between parents after separation. It does not do that; it sticks with the 1989 Act and its requirements that the interests of the child should be paramount. It does not seek to do so—and we in no way seek to shirk from that fact. It is a point of complete agreement between us. The issue is whether a change of the kind proposed by the noble Earl would make a significant difference in resolving disputes, and whether that would be the right and appropriate thing to do when reconciling his proposal with the paramount interests of the child. We believe that it would not be in the paramount interests of the child to set a fixed proportion of time, which would be a statutory presumption, and we do not believe that having such a statutory presumption would facilitate of itself the making of effective contact arrangements. That would be our contention. After the Committee stage, I shall happily elaborate more on the case law, which will I hope enable a dialogue to take place between the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and ourselves on this issue. I was not quite clear what position she was adopting, and I believe that dialogue would help to elucidate that too. The noble Earl said very clearly—and I shall study his words carefully in the Official Report—that a simple change in the law would bring about the objectives that he was declaring. He went on to say that that simple change was a statutory presumption of one-third contact. Is that not what he was saying?