Children and Adoption Bill

I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson) say that he broadly welcomed the Bill. Although he followed his leader in getting outraged at the NSPCC, he did not follow his leader who said at various points in his speech that the Bill was a wasted opportunity and that it was woefully inadequate. He did not quite say that it needed pulling limb from limb and putting back together again, but his comments were not very far from that. If that is the considered view of the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton)—I do not know that it necessarily is—he is on his own. The Bill has been through pre-legislative scrutiny. There were a large number of eminent, distinguished, knowledgeable and experienced people from the Conservative side on the Committee and all agreed—there was no dissent, and there was no vote even on the Committee—that the Bill was a benevolent and good measure, subject to the odd caveat, as the hon. Member for Peterborough wisely said. I, in common with the Committee, of which I was privileged to be a member, and most of the Lords in the conversations that they had about the Bill, welcome it. The Bill’s emphasis on early intervention, support, re-tasking CAFCASS away from just reporting on the history and making recommendations to becoming more involved in resolution at an early stage, and the availability of a range of optional projects to help support the right attitude to contact is obviously the right model. Clearly, that must all be properly resourced or it will not work. The Bill offers a sympathetic and rational way forward. I have three areas of concern, one of which arises from comments from the Opposition, rather than from the Bill—that is, the suggested presumption that there should be joint parenting. I accept entirely that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham did not speak about an equal split, but if he is speaking about a legal presumption that both parents should be heavily engaged—co-parenting, as the hon. Member for Peterborough said—that worries me immensely. There is a very real difference between that and what Labour Members were discussing when he was speaking and graciously taking interventions—that is, an underlying assumption in the courts which, believe me, does exist and has existed as long as I have been involved in the family courts, that the welfare of the child requires as much contact with both parents as possible. That is a common-sense assumption which underpins what the courts seek to do. However, that is a far cry from a legal presumption in the Bill which states that it is presumed that there will be co-parenting. A legal presumption can be of two kinds. It can, for instance, be an absolute one, which means that it cannot be knocked over, whatever happens. On the other hand, a legal presumption can be rebuttable—the words are archaic, but we lawyers love them—which means that it can rebutted, but the onus is on somebody to unsettle what is otherwise an edifice of uncrackable law. If one gives such rights to parents, then one is giving rights to bad parents as well as to good parents, and one is also ousting the welfare of the child as the paramount principle. If we talked about the issue for a long time, nobody would disagree that both parents should be kept involved, if possible. However, if we were to drive the courts into a framework that disciplines them to say, ““These people have rights which we cannot easily get round””, we would subvert the paramountcy principle and might put children in danger.