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Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I am grateful for the comments of the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, that there is no prescription at all in the amendment and I challenge her to show me where in the amendment there is. It is only about asking parents to choose to access advice from organisations such as her own or from anywhere they like. We are not asking for that advice to come from any one place; nor do I believe that the Minister's comment about changing the relationship between the family and the state applies. Parents can get their advice from anywhere; it does not have to be from materials prepared by the Government.
Through this amendment we are trying to do something very simple: we are asking parents to accept that the first thing they must do is to focus on the child. The amendment is wide enough to enable them to do it in any way they like, getting advice from any legitimate source and coming to an agreement that suits them. There is absolutely no prescription in it at all. I welcome what the Minister has said about improving the quality of advice that comes from government departments. I accept that but there is nothing that tells parents, "You must look at it". There is nothing in the amendment that forces them to do anything about it either, but it would be nice if there were something that said to parents, "You must look at this advice, you must focus on your child's interest and you must make some sensible contact arrangements with the non-resident parent, unless there is a safety reason for not doing so". That is what I am getting at. Clearly I am getting nowhere tonight, but I am grateful for the Minister's comments and I look forward to receiving the information on the research that she mentioned earlier. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 1 [Contact activity directions and conditions]:
Baroness Morris of Bolton moved Amendment No. 4:
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, we are nearing the conclusion of what has been a spirited, thoroughly argued, but above all principled debate. From the beginning, our objection to the Bill has been more about what it leaves out than what it attempts to achieve. To all intents and purposes, as I said in Grand Committee, it is all stick and no carrot. Also in Grand Committee, my noble friend Lord Howe, who cannot be in his place this evening due to an important family engagement, said:
"There is a very simple truth associated with contact disputes. It is that if both parties to the dispute are content with the amount of contact that they have with the child, there is no longer any dispute".[Official Report, 12/10/05; col. GC 106.]
With the publication of the Green Paper and the Government's admission that things were not working as well as they could, hopes were raised that measures would be contained in the Bill to help to facilitate better contact.
Over the passage of this Bill, we have sought to highlight the problems that many parents face and to put forward solutions. With our two main amendments, we failed to persuade the Government on a presumption of co-parenting and reasonable contact, although I was somewhat amused when the day after Report stage, during the Committee stage of the Identity Cards Bill, I heard the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, say to my noble and learned friend Lord Lyell of Markyate:
"I know, as does the noble and learned Lord, that a presumption is . . . only a presumption".[Official Report, 16/11/05; col. 1138.]
I wish that had been said the day before.
Those two amendments were a large part of our desire to strengthen Clause 1. I know that those arguments are lost. However, I want to mention something that the Minister said during Report stage:
"As the Committee will know, the Florida situation is based on parents' rights and on children's welfare".[Official Report, 14/11/05; col. 873.]
That is the approach that they have taken and it is for them to decide what they want to do.
The 1982 Florida statute 61.13 is based on the rights of the child and the duty of parents to have regard to those same rights. It is based on the assumption that in the absence of good reason to the contrary, children from broken homes need both parents in their lives. The statute also assumes that the child has, again in the absence of good reason to the contrary, a presumptive right to frequent and continuing contact with both parents. Acts of that type are to be found in more than 20 US states.
Part of the objection to our early amendments was that they would place children in the way of harm. We have always asserted that a robust safety net must be in place. However, as the Minister is aware from a letter that she received from the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, which he copied to ushe also cannot be in his place tonightJudge John Lenderman of Florida is surprised that reasonable contact will put children at greater riskor is thought to put children at greater riskof child abuse or domestic violence. As he says, that,
I am sure that that is not what anybody is saying, but that is what comes across.
During Report stage, there was much media attention on the issue of safety. We take the issue of safety very seriously and have always said that where the safety of a child is not an issue, the best parent for a child is both parents. But we have grave concerns with some of the statistics used on safety and I urge the Government to take a robust look at the issue.
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During our discussions, the Minister said that one of the difficulties of legislating is finding the words to put on paper. She also acknowledged that more could perhaps have been done to explain what is happening outside the Bill. She has alluded to some of that tonight, but in order to give her the opportunity to provide the House with the full picture, I beg to move.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for the spirit in which she moved the amendment. As I have already indicated to her and to the House, I understand her desire to try to address an important issue around contact. I am not going to go into the details of why, in our legal system, I have difficulty with accepting the presumption in question. I take nothing away from the work that is going on in Florida. Indeed, I had a copy of the letter sent to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. We are missing our noble Lords this evening! We wish them well, and I know that they are suitably engaged on other important tasks, particularly on family commitments, which are pertinent this evening.
Having consulted as widely as I could, I was unable to accept the amendment, but that does not mean that I do not understand the issue that lies beneath it. I recognise the concern at the heart of many of the issues; that is, those parents, often non-resident fathers, who do not get a fair deal. I repeat the commitment that I gave to the noble Baroness during the previous stage of the Bill: I intend to commission new research to establish a proper evidence base. I will go further: if the research recognises the problem that noble Lords have raised with me anecdotally, I will take action to address it. I will come back to noble Lords who have participated in the Bill to demonstrate that I recognise that there is an issue and to say what action will be taken. I am at one with noble Lords in recognising the critical importance of establishing the evidence base.
I also accept what the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said about statistics and information around questions of safety. Noble Lords will know from the amendments that I was very pleased to accept in previous stages that we are concerned that issues of safety are addressed properly within the court system. Noble Lords will know from the work done by my noble friend Lady Scotland and her ministerial team, of which I am fortunate to be a member, on domestic violence that we are concerned to ensure that cases where children are at risk and where there are issues of domestic violence that could affect contact are addressed properly and promptly by the courts. We have taken steps to do that, and we will review them. But I accept that sometimes, in order to make a case, statistics are wheeled out in a way that does not recognise that they have an impact on the generality of cases where violence and safety are not an issue. In government, and in this House, we have to be cautious not to use statistics inappropriately. I am proud that we do not do so in your Lordships' House. I accept the point that underpins what the noble Baroness said.
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We understand the issues being raised. We want to make sure that we do the work necessary to support those parentsparticularly fathers, in this contextwho feel that they do not get the best deal. We will do the research with the courts and will come back to noble Lords on it.
We also want to make sure that we provide parents with better information and advice about their options at the earliest possible stage. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said in our previous discussions, we will focus on children to make sure that parents think about what is in their best interests and we recognise the general, although not universal, desire of parents to love and support their children to adulthood and beyond.
We want to do this, in part, by working closely with colleagues in the voluntary sector who are looking at the way in which we might develop new provision. As noble Lords will know, we have set aside £7.5 million over the next two years to support child contact services, which we think is an important contribution to this work. We want to make sure that, in all the work we do before the court process and beyond, we are able to support parents better.
Perhaps I may briefly outline the work we are doing. It is about better information services; it is about better information through solicitors; it is about making sure that when people get to court they have other options than appearing before a judge in a court process; it is about ensuring that parents recognise that if a court makes an order, it is a real order and is to be followed because it is in the best interests of the child; it is about the sanctions in this Bill that might be appropriate beyond that; it is about the role of CAFCASS in supporting families to ensure those contact orders are followed through; it is about providing support for parents in the conflicts that they may feel; it is about looking at the research to ensure that the courts are operating this system in the way we would wish them to do, and to act upon that; and it is about making sure that in our work with contact centresparticularly the work my noble friend Lord Adonis is doing in the contact centreswe are supporting those organisations in providing that support.
What I am trying to suggest to the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, is that while I recognise that I have not fulfilled what she specifically would want through legislation, I do accept the principle of trying to ensure that children have a good strong relationship with both parents, where it is safe to do so. We want to offer parents the best possible advice and support in what is often a very difficult and traumatic time for them, to enable them and their children to have the best possible relationship for the future. All I would say to the noble Baroness is that I wish I could have done this through legislation in a way that would have achieved what she wanted. The problem is that it would have achieved something different and would have caused us some difficulty in what has been a well established and well loved principle of the paramountcy of the child's interests. It does not mean that I do not accept there is work to be done. I hope in what I have said that I have been able to outline the work that we intend to
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do. I will of course commit to keeping the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and, indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, informed as this work progresses and ensure that, should our research identify action that we need to take, I inform noble Lords of that action and, indeed, take it. On that basis, I hope the noble Baroness will be able to withdraw her amendment.
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