My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed and the Minister for his reply. When I tabled these amendments—I realise that they have not found favour in all corners of your Lordships’ Committee—my aim was simply to have a discussion that I thought had not happened since the Bill began. It had not happened in another place and, with all respect to the Government, it has not been happening in the kind of detail we need in the publications we have seen so far. We have at least now begun to have this conversation and I am delighted that we have.
The debate has established to so many people quite how important these family law provisions are. They are fundamental to the welfare of so many of our children, because issues of child abduction, child protection and child contact are caught up at the centre of this. Those points were made very well by my noble friends Lady Massey and Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. The importance of a single effective family law system was stressed very well by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, who also expressed how well-functioning and widely admired our system is. The need for it was underscored so well. I am hugely grateful to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. When I heard her speech I wanted, in the way children do nowadays, to say “what she said”. She expressed it so well that I should have walked away at this point, but I think convention prohibits it so I press on.
I will pick up two or three points that were in contention. I do not think I will take up all the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, but his most important contention was that the provisions in the Hague conventions and elsewhere are sufficient unto the day. I hope he will take the opportunity, when he can read Hansard, to reflect on the comments made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss,
and my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, and to look at how the weight of opinion in family law is clearly against him on this matter.
I would be happy to discuss this further outside the Committee, but to make a couple of specific points, Brussels IIa is distinctly better than Hague because it has a stricter timetable on abduction. There is a back-up mechanism—a second bite of the cherry—so that the child’s home country has another opportunity to overrule a decision by another court not to return an abducted child. The Brussels II recast will make that far better still.
The noble Lord, Lord Farmer, mentioned the provisions on divorce, which I found harder to understand. My understanding is that the 1970 Hague convention is much more restrictive than the current arrangements and that very few EU members are signed up to it anyway. It has no direct rules about jurisdiction, so we would be back to these forum conveniens arguments deciding expensively where which court should rule. Those things take at least two days in court, probably with a circuit court judge or above. I do not think there is a practical alternative on divorce, but I would be very interested if the noble Lord wanted to intervene or to talk to me later to challenge that.
I hope that we would all widely accept that the current EU provisions are the superior offering available. The challenge would be to find out how we can best salvage what is there. I take the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, from whom I dissent with great trepidation, that the Bill is doing what it can to replicate the current provisions. The problem is that, by importing those provisions, it is not replicating the current situation, because, by doing so in a context of no reciprocity, it is creating asymmetry between our obligations to the EU 27 and theirs to us. That needs dealing with very early on.
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I am grateful to the Minister for acknowledging some of the issues here. I am pleased to hear that the Government are aware that this matter needs urgent attention and that negotiations on it have begun this month. I am grateful for his reassurance that the Government are attending to the issue in respect of 2000 Hague convention and will, I presume, therefore look to give notice subject to permission of the EU. I am grateful to him also for agreeing to meet the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, to discuss this matter further, because that would give me considerable assurance.
I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, for inviting me to meet him. He quite simply asked me what I was looking to do with these amendments. I explained then exactly what I have explained to the Committee today: all I wanted was for the Government to come to the House and tell us whether they wanted to replicate as far as possible what we have now and, if not, what the alternative would be, how it would be implemented, under whose aegis and what would happen in the interim. From what I have heard today, we are a little step down that road. We have some time between now and Report. We should give the Government the opportunity to make more progress and, in discussion
with the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and others, to explain more about their thinking. I hope that we might then if necessary—maybe it will not be necessary—return better informed on Report.
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.