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Baroness Morris of Bolton: My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, regarding default contact arrangements, although we would prefer the amendment to provide for the court to define the arrangements rather than the Secretary of State.
The amendment provides a practical solution to the principles of co-parenting, reasonable contact and parental responsibility that we on these Benches have been calling for since well before the election in May.
As all sides of this House have recognised, it is vital that a child's well-being is maintained by maximum contact with both parents during and after a separation where the safety of the child is not an issue. Keeping that contact link is vital. We feel the amendment will go a significant way to addressing our concerns and maintaining the flexibility that Her Majesty's Government insist our amendments to date would preclude.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, explained, the amendment will allow the Secretary of State by regulations to establish a range of contact arrangements, to be known as the "default contact arrangements", appropriate for children of different age groups. We have continually pointed out that there is enough case law and experience within the family law system to draw up guidelines, or, in this case, arrangements regarding contact for different age groups.
Am I doing something wrong? I would not be surprised if I was.
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These arrangements will provide a basis which parents themselves can alter, depending on the individual situation.
Subsection (3) states that if a parent decides to apply for an order limiting or excluding contact of the child with the other parent,
I take the opportunity once again to raise the issue of resources. Good resources, available contact centres and quickly implemented contact activities will aid the courts in processing each case as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Lord Northbourne: My Lords, I should like briefly to support the amendment. If we are to persuade parents to settle early between themselves the future arrangements for parenting their children, they need to have some idea what will happen if they do not. There is a need for parents to know what they can expect if they do not settle these arrangements themselves. The amendment seems to me to fulfil that objective without having any other great objections to it.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, I admit to now being totally confused. I should be grateful for some clarification from the Minister about what the amendment intends. Clearly, parents should be given as much information about what happens in court and the possible outcomes. Indeed, there are real efforts to ensure that that happens at court, both face to face as well as with information sheets. If we are talking about having a set of criteria whereby we decide what is the best outcome for a child—and that is what is difficult to understand from the debate, and what I thought the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, implied might be the outcome—we debated that in Committee. I thought we had debated it here and suggested that that might affect the paramountcy in looking at each case. So, I would be grateful for clarification. I was not going to speak on the amendment because I did not understand it, but I felt I needed to seek clarification.
6.30 pm
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I think I have lost the plot as well. I am with the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth. I apologise if that is the case. Let me explain what I am having trouble with. I apologise that I was grimacing at the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and therefore put off the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. I do not like to grimace at the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, because I usually agree with her, but not always.
The difficulty that I have with this amendment is that it is suggested that the Secretary of State should come up with a default contact arrangement, presumably in the form of some kind of list that says—I am guessing—"If a child is eight years old and has these parents who live 50 miles away, the arrangement may look like this, but if they live 120 miles away, it may look like that". I am not quite sure how many
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variables one would have to build in to that. I therefore have a problem with lists, and I cannot work out the variables; namely, that if the child is six months old, it is like this, and if it is two years old, it is like that. That is not because I am against giving parents advice and support. That is what the parenting plans are meant to do. However, I have difficulty with trying to establish it by reference to problems for children of different age groups. Age is only one factor in a myriad of different matters that need to be taken into account in regard to contact with children.
We then go on to say, "That has been agreed unless you agree something else". Therefore, in the case of violent and abusive parents who disagree, it is suggested that unless they agree to something else or the court decides otherwise, it will be deemed to have been agreed. We therefore end up with the parties going to court and the court not having to take into account these default arrangements at all. It can simply override them. In the case of a bullying partner who says, "I want this, according to the law, I get this, I am not going to court and I am not going to let you go to court, so these are the arrangements that follow and I am going to intimidate you into agreeing them". I cannot quite work out how it will work.
I am not against the idea of giving parents a good deal of information. Before the noble Baroness was in her place, we were talking about the need to do more before cases reach the courts. I agree wholeheartedly that parents should receive information that explains that the courts act in a child's best interests and that, in the absence of a valid reason to the contrary, both parents can expect to have good contact with their child. I do not disagree with the end; the Bill negotiates the means. However, I have a problem with trying to set this up in the particular way suggested, both because I think that the criteria will be complicated to work out and because we are saying, "That applies unless the court tells you otherwise". If the court was not involved, how would you know whether it applied? How would you know that that was what you should do? It moves us away from the guidance and support for families that states, "You may want to think about these different issues, you may want to think about how close you live to the child, whether the child plays football on Saturdays" and so on, which is a parenting plan idea. It takes us a little too dangerously close to a principle that I would not want to invoke. It does not allow for the fact that, because they will be in real dispute, families should have advice that states, "You can expect that if your child is four years old, the arrangement should look like this". We are not taking account of the danger in that for dysfunctional families that are out of control and are relying on the courts to put matters right.
That is my problem with this amendment. Perhaps we have misunderstood it. I am certain that the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, is not trying to do what I have just suggested, but that is the effect of the amendment as I read it and according to the advice that I have received. I therefore hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw the amendment. Meanwhile,
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perhaps we can have a conversation about what lies behind it, which fits better with what the parenting plans attempt to achieve.
Baroness Barker: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for their support.
The first point to make to the Minister is that paragraphs 2(b) and (3) of this amendment deal with precisely the kind of case that involves violent and abusive parents. This amendment seeks to ensure that parents who have split up are encouraged by seeing the law, without having to dig out parenting plans, good practice and case law, which says, "It is likely that in the case of your child the court may come to the following kinds of arrangement. You both have the power to vary that, in the best interests of the child as you see fit, but that is what is likely to happen". That gives a basis on which, where there is no issue about violence and where there is agreement, parents themselves can go ahead and make those arrangements at that very early point. That is crucial, in that it sets patterns of behaviour for later.
The noble Baroness asked what kinds of variables there are. There are many: how old a child is; where the parents live; whether the child goes to school; whether the child has extra-mural activities on certain days or particular interests. We would know about all those issues because they are contained in the parenting plans. I therefore do not believe that there is a problem about that. The first part of the clause refers to establishing a range of contact arrangements. It tries to set a normative framework under which people who have to deal with such issues can begin to agree arrangements. I do not accept the noble Baroness's analysis that people in violent relationships will be forced into that situation. If she reads the amendment, she will see that, as with the rest of the Bill, there is within it provision for safety. We have not yet reached the amendment tabled in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Gould. When we do, it will have our utmost support.
It is not about compromising safety in any way. It is about encouraging that group of parents we have already identified during our debate, who probably want to come to an arrangement and who, in all likelihood, once they have been through the court process, will wind up coming to an arrangement that perhaps could have been predicted from the start. It encourages them to do that from the outset, thereby avoiding much of the disruption to children's lives where one, usually the resident, parent holds out contact as a means of settling other issues involved in the process of splitting up. It also releases the time of the courts, and that of CAFCASS, to get on with the necessary work in other cases.
That is what this amendment is about. I would like the noble Baroness to re-read it. I very much welcome the opportunity to discuss it with her, because I believe that this amendment will enable us to achieve what we are striving for; namely, to enable people to come to
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arrangements without in any way establishing principles and putting children's interests at a lower level. It does not do that.
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