Clause 1 - Contact activity directions and conditions
Children and Adoption Bill [Lords]
4:00 pm
Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing and Shoreham, Conservative)
Welcome to the Chair, Mr. Hancock. I hope that our deliberations will be as amenable as they were this morning under the chairmanship of Mr. Hood, if perhaps not quite so strict.
The major part of the Bill deals with child contact. As I said to Mr. Hood this morning, a lot of general principle is involved with those provisions. Without wishing to criticise the Chairman’s selection of amendments, I have to say that the way in which they have been ordered results in the lead amendments to clause 1 dwelling on relatively ancillary matters. When it comes to later parts, especially clause 4 to which we have tabled many amendments that go to the heart of the Bill, you will perhaps allow us to talk more about general principles, Mr. Hancock, when presumption and reasonable contact needs to be aired more fully.
Amendment No. 46 would change the wording of subsection (3), which refers to the promotion of contact with the child and the nature of the contact activity directions that the Bill enables the court to give. The amendment and the clause make provision for the courts to make contact orders for contact activity directions, such as programme classes, counselling or guidance sessions, to promote better understanding between the parents involved to go forward for a formal contact arrangement with the children. We are in favour of that general principle. We must all agree that we need to pursue anything that will avoid long drawn-out, acrimonious legal wrangles between separating partners, which often result in their children being used as pawns.
However, if, as part of that exercise, a court directs that parents should attend a certain course in order to deal with some of the problems that may have given rise to the acrimoniousness of a relationship, it is absolutely essential that the course is relevant and appropriate. As someone said, it is no good instructing a non-resident parent to attend a course that will teach him or her how to change nappies better if nappy-changing was not the fundamental problem between the two parents and the children.
Similarly, if the court directs that a parent or parents need to take certain action, the course must address all the outstanding problems. We do not want a parent to get help for a particular problem, only to be then told that there is another problem, as a result of which the whole thing drags on. That is often a criticism of such courses. All the time that the prearrangement settlement is going on, a non-resident parent loses contact with the children, and the relationship is gradually diluted. It becomes a Catch-22 situation, so that when the parents have supposedly addressed all the outstanding problems that they may have, they find themselves remote from the children to whom they are desperately trying to become closer.
The amendment says that a direction the court gives must be relevant and pertinent to the problem that the court and its officers have identified, and that it should be based on fact. It should not be based only on an accusation—without any facts—that a husband or wife has, for example, an anger problem or a tendency to violence, because we all know that when relationships go wrong accusations can flow thick and fast.
On other parts of the Bill, we will push the case that people are innocent until proven guilty, and if accusations are made about a partner’s behaviour, they should, when possible, be backed up. I know that there are difficulties with domestic violence issues—we shall come to them in a later clause—but such claims should be substantiated. They should be backed up with research by the court officers so that the court is apprised of the facts—or should get as close as it can to them—when it makes its direction.
The amendment would insert the phrase “reasonable contact”, and we shall keep coming back to that because it is fundamental to the Opposition case. There is a claim that courts currently act on a presumption of contact, and we want that to be apparent in the Bill, but a presumption of contact in principle is different from one in practice. More significant is the point that contact should be reasonable, because contact could amount to an exchange of Christmas or birthday cards, or seeing a separated child for one afternoon every month or every three months.
Each case is unique, but in many cases such limited contact cannot possibly be construed as reasonable on any justifiable definition. As I shall argue in more detail in relation to other amendments, we want the Bill to be worded to achieve reasonable contact for non-resident parents unless there is, for want of a better phrase, a clear and present threat to the safety or welfare of the child. Welfare is paramount, and we have no disagreement with the Government on that. Everything must distil down to the safety and protection of the child and what is in the child’s best interests. On that we are at one with everyone who has an interest in the Bill.
As well as the requirement of reasonable contact, the amendment seeks a factual finding by the court on the problems that are required to be addressed. Paragraph (b) would require that what
“is stated by the court”—
must—
“constitute a specific and significant impediment to a higher level of contact”.
That is all about relevancy and pertinence. We need to make sure that the findings of the court are appropriate to the parents being dealt with and to their children.