Children and Adoption Bill [Lords] |
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Maria Eagle: The court already has the power in effect to order compensatory contact, although it may not call it that. It uses its sensible good judgment within its powers and on the basis of the individual circumstances of the case. I am concerned about packaging that as a sanction or punishment, with the non-resident parent getting to see the child more. I am not complaining about the fact that the court may wish to order some compensatory contact if the non-resident parent has been deprived of that by the actions of the misbehaving resident parent and, as a consequence, the court-ordered contact has not happened. Courts can and already do that. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham suggested that there was a lack of research. I have some sympathy with what he said about why contact breaks down. I can tell him that Jan Hunt’s compendium of
I suspect that we will never agree on these points, but I do not believe that there is a huge distance between us, in the sense that the court can already use its powers effectively to order more contact in appropriate places, but by considering cases individually and case by case in the context of the paramountcy principle. I am going to disappoint the hon. Gentleman by saying that, again, I will not accept his proposed new clause, but I hope he will not be too disappointed, even though a pattern has emerged during the Committee. At least I have been able to explain why we object to the new clause. It is not that we are opposed in practice to courts having the option to respond to breaches of contact by ensuring that some of that contact is made up. We are simply concerned about doing that as a sanction or punishment for the misbehaving resident parent in this instance. On those grounds I cannot accept the proposed new clause and I hope that, with my explanation, the hon. Gentleman feels able to withdraw it. 4.30 pmTim Loughton: Disappointment butters no parsnips, as they say in Peterborough, and the Minister has disappointed consistently throughout the Committee—although, at one stage, she was almost arguing our point. The problem is a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between a penalty and a deterrent. If the system that the new clause would impose were working properly, it would not have to be used, because it is a deterrent. We do not want the courts to have to award compensatory contact to a non-resident parent, but we do want the threat of its imposition to be sufficient—a clear and present perceived threat—to prevent a potential breacher of the contact order from breaching it. That is a deterrent. It is not about throwing an arbitrary penalty at a person who breaches an order. It is about trying to prevent him from doing it in the first place. That is where we disagree. The Minister said that the court already has the power to award compensatory contact, so what is the
The court might consider a financial penalty to be appropriate in terms of what is set out in the Bill, or that a community time order, during which time the child might spend time with the other parent, is more suitable. However, it might consider the order of magnitude of the breach of contact to be so great that compensatory contact should be awarded. The decision is left to the court. We are not trying to straitjacket the court; we merely want to make it explicit to a potential breacher of contact what will happen if he or she proceeds with that course of action. The Minister spoke in terms of the rights of parents. Like all hon. Members on this side of the Committee, I have been very careful throughout our deliberations to talk in terms not of the rights of parents but of the rights of the child. I said so on Second Reading, much to the pooh-poohing of the ever present, if not always physically, hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) who suggested that that was some kind of contrived formulation of law. I do not think that it is. We take the view that a child has a right to maximum contact with both of his parents unless there is a case proven that that should not happen and would be detrimental to his welfare. That is fundamental to what we believe. That is what is in the interests of the child. We are not talking about using the child as some kind of bargaining chip to take away from an offending parent as a penalty. Our purpose is to safeguard the right of the child to have a contact order that has been decreed on his or her behalf abided by by both parents. That should be an entitlement that a child can expect. The Minister has argued the case that we tried to make, but has fundamentally misunderstood why we are trying to make it, and has completely confused the concepts of deterrent and of penalty. Without the new clause, the Bill will be infinitely weaker. The Government’s failure to take that on board reinforces my view that they are not really serious about the Bill. That is why it lacks teeth. I have called it all along a toothless fudge. That is an appalling contradiction in metaphors, because no fudge that I have ever known has had teeth, but that is what the Bill will be—a limp, tokenistic measure, which will not address a problem that we have all acknowledged. It will fail to put in place proper deterrents to make it clear to any potential offender that such behaviour will not go unchallenged and that it is not in the interests of their child to allow it go unchallenged, which is one of the best deterrents to ensure that they do what the court has decided is in the best interests of the child. Column Number: 203 I am sorry that we have to end Committee on an antagonistic note, but the point is so fundamental that I should like to press new clause 6 to a vote to reinforce how strongly we feel about it and to find out the views of all parties. Question put, That the clause be read a Second time. The Committee divided: Ayes 4, Noes 10. [Division No. 4] AYES Jackson, Mr. StewartLoughton, Tim Miller, Mrs. Maria Wright, Jeremy
NOES Cawsey, Mr. IanCoffey, Ann Eagle, Maria Grogan, Mr. John Johnson, Ms Diana R. Keeble, Ms Sally Kidney, Mr. David Moran, Margaret Russell, Christine Williams, Mark Question accordingly negatived. The Chairman: We now come to the conclusion of the Bill. Tim Loughton: On a point of order, Mr. Hood. I believe that we are supposed to vote on new clause 8. We reserved the right to return to it the other day. The Chairman: I was not advised of that, but I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point. New Clause 8 Presumption in favour of co-parenting
Brought up, and read the First time. Motion made and question put, That the clause be read a Second time:— The Committee divided: Ayes 4, Noes 10. [Division No. 5] AYES Jackson, Mr. StewartLoughton, Tim Miller, Mrs. Maria Wright, Jeremy
NOES Cawsey, Mr. IanCoffey, Ann Eagle, Maria Grogan, Mr. John Johnson, Ms Diana R. Keeble, Ms Sally Kidney, Mr. David Moran, Margaret Russell, Christine Williams, Mark Question accordingly negatived. Maria Eagle: On a rather more spurious point of order, Mr. Hood. It is time for me to hand out the usual pleasantries in what has been for this Bill a short, sharp but highly entertaining Committee stage. I am
I should like to thank you, Mr. Hood, and Mr. Hancock. Despite the potential awkwardness of having so many lawyers from all parties in Committee, and having to deal with some issues about which there has not been unanimity, our chairmen have conducted the Committee with a great deal of humour and firm resourcefulness to ensure that we have all been in order. I am sure that I speak for all Committee members when I pass on my thanks to you and to Mr. Hancock. I am grateful for the concern shown for my health when I was unable to attend the Committee’s sittings one day. That was a matter of great sorrow to me and, of course, I read the Hansard report as soon as it was published. A number of issues have caused us concern; there was perhaps more agreement on them than disagreement, but we managed to disagree in any event, in practical terms. One strange thing that happened during this Committee is that a bug or lurgy of some kind went around and appears to have disproportionately attacked those with the first name of Maria. It is the first time that I have come across that on a Committee. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Children and Families, who is absent today but who was very much present last Thursday when I was unable to be here. She stepped into the breach admirably and, from what I read in Hansard, it is clear that she dealt with all the things that I should have dealt with. I am also grateful to a very active, vocal and informed expert bunch of Labour Back Benchers, who have been excellent in making the jobs of both of us as Ministers a lot easier by dealing with some of the points before we even had to try to deal with them. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), who has a long association with the Bill and its predecessors, and who served on the Committee that considered the Bill in draft. She has brought considerable knowledge and expertise to her interventions, as has my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford, one of the lawyers on our Committee. He has also brought a great deal of experience and insight to the deliberations of the Committee. I know that there are also lawyers on the Opposition Benches and they, too, have shown that they understand the legalese as well as anybody else. They have contributed well to our deliberations. I thank the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, who has brought his usual good humour—and an occasionally vituperative way of looking at things—to our deliberations. He has his own views on some of the issues; they were formed as a result of his experience on various children-type Bills in his current post on the Opposition Front Bench, a post that he has held for some time now. Although some of his amendments were ruled out of order, those of us aware of all the deliberations of the Committee will certainly think of him in future as “Mr. Insert Reasonableness”. That seems to have been the tenor of most of his amendments. That is understandable, given where he
Confusing though it may be that the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs. Miller) is also called Maria, she is obviously getting into the swing of things, despite being relatively new to her post. She has been very clear in her contributions to the Committee. I thank hon. Members of all parties who have attended. The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), who unfortunately is not with us today, always contributes in her very particular way to deliberations, and did so on this Committee, too. The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mark Williams) stepped nobly into the breach in her absence and dealt succinctly with some of the points that she would no doubt have made. Finally, I thank the Officers of the House who, as ever, have kept us well served with water when we were choking and needed sustenance. They made sure that Divisions were dealt with properly under your guidance, Mr. Hood. I also thank the Hansard reporters, without whose efforts I would not have known what on earth happened on Thursday. It was very helpful to read that in plenty of time for our deliberations today. Finally, I must say what a pleasure it has been to deal with the Bill so succinctly and sharply. It has been a relatively short Committee stage, but I think that we have gone into many of the issues in some detail. No doubt we will come back to them in the remaining stages on the Floor of the House. I look forward to that. 4.45 pmTim Loughton: Further to that point of order, Mr. Hood. As is traditional, I add my thanks and comments to those of the Minister and I concur with everything that she has said. I thank you and Mr. Hancock for the very balanced way in which you have chaired the Committee, even if you did not select a lot of our amendments. However, we shall not bear a grudge about that. I pay tribute to my very active hon. Friends, who have all participated in the Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth was the only lawyer among my hon. Friends during our proceedings and he certainly merited his selection in the Committee with his in-depth legal analysis of what was a very legal Bill. I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson), who came as a Committee virgin and is a virgin no more. He certainly acquitted himself very well with his knowledge of these matters, which has been voiced in other parts of the House. I thank our Whip, who has kept us in order so well to the extent that he missed more votes than all of my other hon. Friends. However, that was for perfectly understandable reasons: we need to be multi-skilled. I particularly pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke, who, as the Minister says, has come
As usual, the Minister and I have conducted proceedings in a reasonable fashion and our debates have been measured. She has certainly soldiered on through the adversity of her illness and, as she said, her right hon. Friend the Minister for Children and Families took up the reins the other day. It is also a rare pleasure to see Labour Back Benchers contributing to the debates and risking voicing their own views on certain subjects. It was particularly good to hear the contributions from the hon. Member for Stockport, who has long-standing knowledge and experience in this area, and the hon. Member for Stafford, who brings a great wealth of expertise, as do other Labour Members. It is also worth mentioning the hon. and learned Member for Redcar, who, like Banquo’s ghost, has not been physically part of our proceedings, but her name has been on the amendment paper more than certain Government Members who have attended our proceedings. Such is her influence on these matters. I also thank those who have helped me and my hon. Friends. We do not have an enormous civil service—it is getting more enormous all the time—to help us in our deliberations, so we have to rely on the good will and efforts of certain people who bring their concerns and points of view to us. In particular, I would like to thank Oliver Cyriax, a lawyer who has great expertise and has been a great advocate for reform of the family courts in this area. As the Minister said, we will not agree on the Bill because our disagreement deals with some fundamental issues of principle, about which we argued long and hard in the other place. We will continue to argue long and hard about them on Report and I cannot see my hon. and right hon. Friends wanting to agree to the Bill in its present form. The amendments that we have tabled were designed to make the principle behind the Bill, about which we all agree, workable in practice. That is where I fear it falls down. For me, the biggest blow I have taken is the Minister’s refusal to entertain the idea of changing the short title of the Bill, which is fundamental to the way in which we approach the legislation. I have taken that particularly badly. However, we have many points to return to on Report, and I am sure we will. We have done the Bill a good service in our deliberations in the Committee. It was certainly right to have additional time, and I am grateful that the Government Whip was able to give us time beyond that originally granted by the House. The length of our deliberations has certainly been justified. We have had
The Chairman: I thank the Minister and hon. Members for their kind words during their points of order. I now rule that they were not points of order
Bill, as amended, to be reported. Committee rose at ten minutes to Five o’clock. |
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