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Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I support the amendment. I remind the Minister that I took part at an earlier stage of the Bill. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, and to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, for taking up this issue on my behalf, as I was involved in the transatlantic airline bombing trial and was not able to be here. However, previously I spoke of my concerns about domestic violence and how elements of it could be addressed in the Bill. I thank the Minister for his sensitivity to the issue and for having addressed some of my concerns. In light of the concerns expressed by noble Lords in Grand Committee, we looked again at how we could address their fears. Concern was expressed that vindictive mothers could block willing fathers from taking paternal responsibility. We wanted to find a formula that could address that, because such women exist and it would be silly to deny that. It is right and proper that the Government should seek to embody in law the responsibility that parents, especially fathers, must take for their children. Indeed, there is growing concern that insufficient attention has been paid to paternal responsibility in the past; we agree with that. However, our concern, and that of some major charities and organisations that deal with domestic violence, is the small number of cases in which violence is clearly involved. Research shows that domestic violence often rears its head when women are pregnant and that it often accelerates in the months before the arrival of a newborn. We are concerned that a new mother who has just delivered a baby is expected to go through the courts to seek to remove the paternal responsibility, which is automatically inserted if the father has registered the birth. We are asking that the opposite should apply—namely, that a father against whom there is evidence of abuse has to be proactive in securing paternal rights. He should have to go to the court to obtain a remedy and to have his paternal responsibility invoked. The amendment would secure that. The father would automatically be given parental responsibility, but not if the mother made an independent declaration supported by an appropriate professional. Therefore, safeguards would be in place and the provision would be invoked only where the woman who had given birth really feared for her safety and that of her child and perhaps other children if the parental responsibility was automatically conferred on the declaring father. I endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, said. No one imagines that this measure would be used in many cases, but in serious cases where there is a particularly controlling and abusive father one has to ensure that these steps are taken to prevent his using his declaration as yet another metaphorical stick with which to beat his partner. I ask the Government to look again at this measure. I say immediately that I am very conscious of how alert the Government are to domestic violence issues, but those of us who deal with these cases in the courts know that abusive partners and fathers often try to secure rights that perhaps should be limited. The amendment would put the burden on the father, rather than on the mother, to go through this process.