Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

The amendment introduced by my noble friend proposing a one-third split as a minimum was a means of airing this whole issue of what a court might find as reasonable. The Government’s own Green Paper spoke of 100 nights of contact for the non-resident parent. That figure is not plucked out of the air. The Government themselves came up with the notion of 100 nights a year. If the noble Lord cares to look at the Green Paper, he will see that there is a reference to it. This was one way of focusing the Minister’s mind on the idea of reasonableness. Do not let us get hung up on the idea that it should apply in every single case or that the Opposition think that it should. Every case will be judged on its merits. The point is that if you have a presumption of reasonable contact, you need a good reason to deny the non-resident parent meaningful contact. The Minister told us that the Family Resolutions pilot had now ended and would be evaluated. The original intention in the Bill was that the contact activities provided for in Clause 1 would be dependent on the new infrastructure which Family Resolutions would have set up nationwide. Family Resolutions will not now do that, so where does that leave Clause 1? What can the Minister tell us about these programmes, classes, and information and advice sessions? Does he have a list of what they will comprise? Are plans for any contact activities in preparation and, if so, which ones? Does he have a list of accredited providers of contact activities? In other words, does anything yet exist to give substance to the Clause 1 provisions? Perhaps I could ask him to expand on that area.