Children and Adoption Bill

The hon. Gentleman is not comparing like with like. I am unaware of any legal system that includes a legal presumption of the type to which he has referred. The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) discussed the ability to put a presumption into the welfare checklist, but that is not a legal presumption. Most family law systems in societies resembling ours will be based on such a presumption, which is not a legally binding presumption of the kind mentioned by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham—I hope that he eventually gets why he is wrong. Child contact is a child-protection issue, and there are dangers. This Government, more than any previous Government, have recognised domestic violence as a serious issue that has been hidden for many years, that is very hard to get the measure of and that is seriously under-reported. That point applies to male domestic violence, too, which the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham and I have discussed before. I talk about domestic violence against women because the vast majority of domestic violence involves women, but there is domestic violence by brother on brother, father on brother, brother on father, gay partner on gay partner and women on men. In every situation it is a hidden problem that needs teasing out, because, as it is wrapped up in a relationship, it is not easy to speak freely about it. In this connection, though, it mostly concerns women. The statistics suggest that 750,000 children witness domestic violence annually. Seventy-five per cent. of children who are on the at-risk register for their own safety live with domestic violence, and up to 66 per cent. of children suffer physical violence from a perpetrator who is attacking the mother but also at some point attacks the child. In the criminal justice system, the point where the parties separate is now well recognised as being one of enhanced danger when the violence tends to increase because the perpetrator appreciates that he is losing his grip and tries to use even greater force to bring the person back into the fold. However, that is not half as well recognised in the family sector. When domestic violence is recognised in family courts, it is generally regarded as having come to an end when the couple has split, not as a continuing issue. It is often undervalued because it is perceived as a tactic in a fight. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, whom I know does not think as his words suggest, talked about the need to be rigorous and punitive about false allegations in court. Everybody agrees with that, but he cited only false allegations of domestic violence. That is a slightly partisan view. Of course, in heated situations where there is a child to play for, more unscrupulous parents make all sorts of allegations against one another, but there is not a high incidence of false allegations about domestic violence, although there is a great deal of it. Those of us who sat on the Joint Committee that scrutinised the draft Bill had the benefit of the scrutiny unit statistician’s figures about a whole range of related issues. In the year for which he gave us figures—I think that it must have been 2003–04—out of 40,000 contested custody cases, 13,000 concerned issues of safety, of which 5,500, or nearly half, concerned child abuse or neglect and the other 7,000 or so domestic violence. It is therefore utterly vital that the child’s welfare is paramount and that that cannot be changed. I am pleased that the Government cling to that position and will continue to do so. The question is whether the Bill goes far enough to guarantee the safety of the large number of vulnerable children and domestic violence victims who are present in the statistics. The Government would say that those worries are adequately addressed by the welfare checklist in the Children Act 1989, the extension of the definition of ““harm”” to include impairment due to seeing or hearing ill-treatment of another, and the new family court application forms that try to ensure that domestic violence is put at the top of the list so that cases can be verified and dealt with at the outset. However, the joint charities grouping, which consists of a large number of pressure groups concerned with children, including the NSPCC, suggests that there is no clear requirement to ensure that contact is safe. We recommended—