Clause 4 - Enforcement orders
Children and Adoption Bill [Lords]
1:15 pm
Beverley Hughes (Minister of State (Children, Young People and Families), Department for Education and Skills; Stretford and Urmston, Labour)
I obviously did not make myself very clear. The welfare checklist deals with things that the court needs to consider which contribute to the welfare of a child: physical, emotional and educational needs, background and how capable each parent, or any other relevant person, is of meeting those needs. The latter factor in particular refers to parents. However, the checklist does not prejudge whether a particular circumstance relating to any one of those factors is beneficial or not. The court has to make that judgment, so it will consider an individual child and decide in relation to all prevailing circumstances whether, for example, contact will contribute to the emotional well-being of a child.
By inserting “contact” and “reasonable contact” on the checklist, the court would have to make an a priori assumption in the case of every child that contact would contribute beneficially to emotional development. There will be children for whom that is not true and for whom contact would be undesirable. [Interruption.] We have a fundamental difference of position about whether that is the right way to go about things. The inclusion of “contact” would introduce to the checklist a qualitatively different factor from those that are included already, because it would force the court to assume that in terms of the factors on the checklist, a certain outcome is a priori beneficial. We do not agree with that.