Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

Perhaps I may deal with each of my noble friend’s amendments in turn. I believe that I can offer her complete satisfaction on one amendment. It gets worse thereafter, but at least I shall start well. Amendment No. 88A, which refers to the financial well-being of parents in breach of orders, would require the court, in making an enforcement order, to obtain information about the effect of any loss of income on the person concerned and any children living with them. We agree that it should do so. We believe that the Bill already provides for that fully in new Section 11L(3) and (4), which require explicitly that the court must obtain information about the times when the person concerned normally works before making a contact order. The aim of this is to give the courts the information that will enable them to avoid orders being made that would conflict with the person’s work and so lose them much needed income, unless they regard this as a simply unavoidable requirement in order to ensure an adequate penalty. I hope I have reassured my noble friend on that point and that she is now content that we will meet our 2010 targets. As to Amendment No. 87A—I am afraid it gets worse from here on—this would require the courts, before making an enforcement order for unpaid work, to be satisfied that the order is to the benefit of the child about whom the contact order has been made. Our view is that the enforcement should, of course, ultimately benefit the child, as I described earlier. The court will have already decided, through the contact order, what will most benefit the child’s welfare—that is, contact with the person named in the order—but when considering an enforcement order the court is faced with a situation where the order has been breached and, because of that, the child is not getting the contact which the court determined he or she needed in the first place. However, there is a need for proportionality, which is why the Bill requires that the order must be proportionate and no more than is required to ensure compliance with the contact order. This latter point is particularly important as it prevents the court making an enforcement order that is not essential if the needs of the child identified in the contact order are to be met. Amendments Nos. 88B and 111A would require courts, in making enforcement orders or financial compensation orders, to have regard not only to the welfare of the child concerned but also to the welfare of any other children living with the person affected by the order. We well understand the concerns raised by my noble friend. After all, the impact of sanctions for breaching a contact order will be felt by other children, not only the child with whom the contact order is concerned. However, we believe it important to keep the Bill itself focused, in line with the rest of the Children Act, including the paramountcy principle in Section 1, on the child who is the subject of court proceedings. The court is being asked to make an order as regards the best interests of particular children, or a particular child, and must therefore operate on that basis. But, of course, the effect on any other children is relevant, and we fully expect that the courts will in practice take into consideration that factor as part of obtaining information about the person concerned before making an order, which they are required to do under the Bill. However, we do not feel it right to put into primary legislation the requirement to take account of the interests of other children, because we feel that that would deflect from the central purpose of the Bill in respect of the children who are the subject of the orders. I hope that I have been able to give my noble friend some satisfaction.