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Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

I would not disagree with that for one second. I say to the noble Baroness that to build in a statutory presumption of reasonable contact would fetter the court only to the extent that it would prevent the court accepting a poor or bad reason to deny reasonable meaningful contact between the child and both his parents. That is the only sense in which it would fetter the court. It would certainly not override the paramountcy of the child’s needs. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, that it would be for the court to decide what was reasonable in individual cases, and that decision would be embodied in terms of units of time, as it typically is now. The strange thing about the position of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is that he said to us at Second Reading:"““We fully support the position established in case law that children normally benefit from a meaningful relationship with both parents following separation, so long as it is safe and in their best interests for that to happen””.—[Official Report, 29/6/05; col. 251.]" If that is not a presumption, I do not know what is. It is a presumption of meaningful reasonable contact. The noble Lord is arguing that that presumption should not be built into the Children Act. I cannot for the life of me think why he is resisting it—it is the goal that we all want to attain.