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The Earl of Listowel: My Lords, can the Minister confirm that the group which was called together by the Department for Constitutional Affairs to examine the funding of contact recommended that £8 million a year be provided for the development of contact? The additional investment of which she speaks is very welcome, but can she say whether that is the correct figure and whether the Government are moving towards it?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I do not know whether that figure is correct because the group was before my time. In the year and a bit that I have been at the Department for Constitutional Affairs, no group has been convened or has reported to me on any figures. I will write to the noble Earl and ensure that a copy is placed in the Library of the House. I would not be surprised if there has been a request for more funding than we have made available—that is always the job of government. However, we have made £7.5 million available and I am keen to ensure that we develop the services effectively. I hope that we can do that in dialogue with noble Lords opposite, because there is much in what is sought in the amendment.
Baroness Morris of Bolton: My Lords, I thank the Minister for her detailed reply and once again express my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for his support and for sharing with us his wealth of knowledge on Florida. As I think I said in Grand Committee, whenever we discuss mediation, we get to that moment of saying, "Oh yes, but what do you mean by that?" The word means so many different things to so many different people. That is one of the reasons why we talked about dispute resolution. I think that it is in fact dispute resolution or mediation with some form of therapy attached to it, which is perhaps needed for some people with very deep wounds and scars.
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The Minister said that she was nervous about the parenting plans and about being prescriptive. As Conservatives, we also do not like to be prescriptive. I go back to what we are trying to achieve, which is clarity and confidence. In these parenting plans we are looking to have some anchor points so that people know a little more about what might happen.
The noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, also talked about the empirical research of the early interventions project, which reminded me of the Civil Service mantra—it seems to be working very well in practice, now let us see if it stands up to intellectual rigour. The fact is that it is working. It is keeping lots of families out of the courts and resolving their disputes at an early stage before bitterness and rancour set in. That is surely what we are looking for.
On early interventions, the difference between us and the Minister is that we were talking about the original early interventions project, which was designed by judges and those who practise in the family law world. It was adapted from America and put together in order that it would work here. It is somewhere in one of the Government's departments. That is the pilot we would like the Government to look at to see whether it might work. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 10 to 12 not moved.]
6 pm
Baroness Walmsley moved Amendment No. 13:
"PRE-COURT DISPUTE RESOLUTION AND MEDIATION
Before section 8 of the Children Act 1989 (c. 41) (residence, contact and other orders with respect to children), insert—
"7A DISPUTE RESOLUTION AND MEDIATION BEFORE MAKING A CHILD CONTACT ORDER
(1) The President of the Family Division must keep a register of mediators.
(2) The President may make regulations about the qualifications and conduct required for registration as a mediator under subsection (1).
(3) A person may not act as a mediator for the purposes of this section unless he is on the register.
(4) Before the court hears an application under section 8 about contact, unless the court is satisfied that considerations concerning the safety of the child make it inappropriate to make such a direction, the court shall give a direction requiring each party to attend a meeting with a mediator arranged in accordance with the direction for the purpose—
(a) of enabling the mediator to explain the facilities and options open to the parties regarding parent education, parenting plans, dispute resolution and mediation in relation to disputes over child contact, and
(b) of enabling a timetable for dispute resolution and mediation discussions with a mediator regarding reasonable child contact for both parents.
(5) The parties may attend separate meetings if either of them wishes.
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(6) The meeting with the mediator as described in subsection (4) shall be provided at no cost to either party.""
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 13, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 15 in the group. We now come to the version of mediation amendments proposed by these Benches. CAFCASS published a report entitled Every Day Matters: New Directions for CAFCASS, which is a consultation paper on a new professional and organisational strategy. Section 36—Relationship Breakdown Cases Without Significant Harm—states a number of things, which I would pray in aid in support of these amendments and Amendment No. 14.
"CAFCASS (and other agencies) frequently intervene too late, long after parents' attitudes have hardened against one another, or long after one parent has created a new household, excluding their former partner. Indeed, many attitudes have hardened long before the first court application, hence the need for even earlier intervention where possible. Arguments about the fine detail of contact arrangements occupy huge amounts of scarce professional time, often unproductively. Once a court application is made, there is a clear risk of an adversarial model of law being started up before all attempts to resolve disputes on a basis of shared, co-operative parenting have been attempted".
Our amendments in this group attempt to make that even earlier intervention and to provide services which will assist parents to come to an agreement without the need for a court order at an even earlier stage.
"No application may be made for a contact order under section 8 unless the applicant has attended a meeting with a mediator and the mediator has certified that mediation is not suitable to resolve the issue which is the subject of the application".
By "not suitable", we would anticipate that a professional mediator would say that in cases where he or she has determined during the meeting that there is no agreement to be found between the couple through mediation and that the court will have to intervene. At those meetings, a professional mediator will probably be able to prevent quite a lot of parents having to ask the state to make decisions about the contact arrangements for their children. Through that early mediation, one would hope that some cases would be prevented from darkening the doors of the court.
I am sure noble Lords will agree that an agreement people have made themselves has a much greater chance of sticking and being complied with by both parties than even the most reasonable order made or imposed on them by a court. Very early mediation would be a service of enormous advantage to the children, who have our top priority; to the parents; and, of course, to the state. Every court case costs a great deal of money, particularly if it is publicly supported, and takes a lot of the professional time of court officers. It would be much better if that time could be devoted more to the cases where there has been an allegation of domestic violence in order to sort out the situation.
Noble Lords will notice that Amendment No. 13 is similar in some respects to Amendment No. 10 brought forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton. It is important to have high quality mediation. That is why both Benches believe
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that there must be a register of mediators and that there must be regulations about the qualifications and conduct required for registration as a mediator. This should not just be done by a list that is held by any body—or even a professional organisation. It should be monitored externally and someone separately should reach a conclusion about the level of quality of such people.
But there are some differences between our Amendment No. 13 and Amendment No. 10, which we on these Benches believe are significant. First, subsection (4) of Amendment No. 13 refers to the court being,
"satisfied that considerations concerning the safety of the child make it inappropriate to make such a direction".
We believe that our wording is better than the comparable wording in Amendment No. 10, which says,
That represents an opportunity for much clearer analysis by legal people.
Additionally, there is no compulsion in our amendment. We agree with the Minister that you can take a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. There are cases in which mediation will not work because the parties have set their faces against it. In that case, you have done your best and will hope to have helped some couples, but every couple cannot be helped by that means. We also believe that if the couple want—or if either of the couple wants—the mediation meeting to be separate, they should be able to make that decision. It should not be left to the court to decide whether it is appropriate for the mediation meeting to be conducted separately.
Finally, we believe that the meeting should be at no cost to either party. Noble Lords will notice that subsection (6) of our Amendment No. 13 provides for that. If the Government are so convinced of the benefits of mediation—I believe that the Minister is—why put any barrier whatever in the way of a couple who are willing to attend a meeting at least to find out the benefits of mediation? I would ask noble Lords to bear in mind that during that meeting the couple can be directed to advice about things other than child contact that might be concerning them, which might be getting in the way of decisions about child contact, issues about financial advice and housing, and so forth. Of course, the couple can also be presented with materials and information on how other parents have solved that same problem. Although every case is different, there are many similarities between groups of cases. It could be enormously helpful for parents to be shown case studies of how parents like them have addressed the matter in the interests of their children and how successful it has been in the past.
Such a meeting should not have any barrier of cost. What would the Government do if there was a charge and one of the parents simply refused to pay? If a person was not entitled to legal aid, the couple would not be able to have that valuable meeting if someone refused to pay. The small amount of money that it would cost to have such meetings would be a very good
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investment, giving opportunities to present parents with helpful and valuable materials which I believe are in preparation. Therefore, it seems perverse to suggest that a barrier of cost should be put in the way of anyone, however wealthy. It is a very small amount of money. I beg to move.
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