Written evidence to be reported to the House

Part of Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 4:15 pm on 16 October 2007.

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Christine Lawrie: I can only give you a personal response. Our association would not have an official view on that. It feels like a good thing to do, but I would be sceptical about whether it will have the sort of impact that people expect it to have. You would have to take each case on its own merits, and there is a danger of the state wanting to step in too quickly to intervene in people’s lives. But I think it is a very difficult issue, because each case is very individual and has its own particular merits. I suppose personally, based on my experience as a probation officer, I feel slightly uncomfortable about the state taking more and more powers away from individual people to manage their own lives. It is extremely difficult and there are individual cases where children really ought to have been taken away and fostered more quickly. I can see both sides of the argument.