Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

I will of course treat very seriously what the noble Baronesses have said, as they would rightly expect me to, as everything they have proposed is, in their view, geared to making outcomes better. So I shall give very serious consideration to what has been said. Let me say at the outset that the issue is not whether it is proper to put a requirement such as this into the Bill—it would be perfectly proper to insert the word ““reasonable”” and the requirements referred to—but whether it would lead to better outcomes. It is because we are not convinced that it would lead to better outcomes that we do not support it. Let me deal, first, with the issue of the Family Law Act 1996. As the noble Baroness said, Part 2, Section 11(4)(c) lays down the general principle that,"““in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the welfare of the child will be best served by . . . his having regular contact with those who have parental responsibility for him and with other members of his family; and . . . the maintenance of as good a continuing relationship with his parents as is possible””." I should make it clear that that part and that section have never been commenced because the Government do not agree with them and do not believe that it would be right to bring them into being. Indeed, we considered repealing them in this Bill so that we would not have what appears to be a countervailing set of presumptions to the paramount interest of the child as set out in the 1989 Act. But we were advised that to repeal the whole of Part 2 of that Act in this Bill would be too wide to be within the scope of the Bill. So we do not regard that as a valid precedent because that piece of legislation has not commenced and we have no intention of commencing it.