My Lords, I rise briefly having attached my name to Amendment 147, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, was just speaking so powerfully. I will not repeat anything that people far more expert legally than me have already said, but will just make a couple of small points.

I start by agreeing with the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. I have met many 10 year-olds who have a very clear-eyed vision of the world and their place in it, and they should certainly be given a voice. This is something that I have spoken about in other Bills. I think particularly of the Domestic Abuse Bill, now an Act, where there was a strongly minded debate around alleged parental alienation and the way in which children’s voices have sometimes not been listened to and they have been forced to do things strongly against their will and desires.

It is important to say that it is not just morally right that children who have the ability to do so should have a say about what is happening to them and a say in all the other ways that the noble Baroness just outlined. That moral rightness is powerfully and importantly attested to in the fourth part of this amendment, which refers to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is important that we keep referring to such conventions, but it is also important for people’s health and well-being to have a sense of agency and a sense that this is their life in which they are able to live and make choices. We heard in the earlier group from the noble Earl, Lord Howe, about Blooming Change and how people experience life being done to them and treatment being done to them, rather than it being something in which they actually have a say.

Stressing that I am not a legal expert, I was really attracted by the way in which this amendment is drafted, particularly subsection (3), which rightly puts an onus on professionals to make sure that they explain this in ways that are accessible to the child. We all know that medical and legal terminology may not be accessible to adults, let alone children, but the suggestion of simple language, visual aids or other means is a real direction to professionals to say that they have to facilitate, by any practical means possible, the chance for that child to have agency. That should be at the core of the Bill, particularly for the children who were drawn to our attention on the other group, who are some of the most vulnerable people in our society and who face potentially being locked up against their will. We have to give them as much voice as possible, which is what this amendment would do.