New clause 8 - Mandatory risk assessment checklist
Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill [Lords]
4:00 pm
Mr Dominic Grieve (Shadow Attorney General, Home, Constitutional & Legal Affairs; Beaconsfield, Conservative)
I have listened carefully to the debate and I am grateful that it has taken place. I have also listened with great care to the words of the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre; in due course, he might press the new clauses, as he has suggested.
As a result of listening to the debate, it seems to me that there is a distinction between new clause 8 and new clause 33. They are aimed at achieving slightly different things. The Minister has persuaded me that it is undesirable to be as prescriptive as these proposals are, particularly in respect of new clause 33, which would effectively deny a party who had been involved in any act of violence—in the break-up of a marriage, for instance—the possibility of having contact or residence with their child. That is going too far.
I have had professional experience as a barrister of marital and relationship breakdown, in which people act in ways that they subsequently regret. If their behaviour is wholly out of character and is not particularly directed at the child, but at another person, to say that there is effectively an entire presumption against there ever being residence is to lay down a rule that could turn out to be harmful to the child concerned.
On the checklist, I was partially reassured by what the Minister said. At the same time, it strikes me as an innocuous addition, but he considerably reassured me about how the courts are operating. I therefore beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.