---

Children and Adoption Bill

The explanation why such an approach would undermine the paramountcy principle is straightforward. In a situation in which it is not the child but the parents who are battling, the parents are obviously expressing what one might conjure up as the right of the child to have contact with dad, but it is dad who is fighting for that right, so it is his right. Once one makes that the presumption, the welfare of the child cannot be paramount, so the presumption must be ousted in some other way. In that case, one must bring to the surface the danger to the child in order to rebut the presumption, which self-evidently means that the presumption of paramountcy is not coming first. I would never agree to that proposal, which is not only technically nonsense, but wrong. It could be extremely dangerous, too, because it would oblige courts to give too many rights to bad parents, which is not what any of us want.