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Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

In that case the key issue, which we can debate fully on Report but can discuss before, is what the noble Earl believes constitutes ““reasonable””. That is going to be the absolutely central issue. And I detected a difference between Members of the Committee on that issue. Among the amendments that the noble Earl and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, moved yesterday, which had terms such as ““co-parenting”” and had implications of going to a 50-50 split, the noble Earl moved an amendment yesterday saying that the statutory presumption should be one-third. We cannot have this both ways—we have to define what reasonable is. The noble Earl has made a good attempt to define what he believes that reasonable should be. This is an incredibly important area, because if we are going to start changing the law in a way that fundamentally affects the interests of hundreds of thousands of children, we shall have to explore the issue of what we shall tell the courts is reasonable. I did not detect that the noble Baronesses on the Liberal Democrat side thought that one-third as a statutory presumption, which would need to be taken account of before courts found countervailing reasons why it should not be the case, was reasonable. I did not detect that they thought that that was reasonable.