HC Deb 18 April 2000 vol 348 cc820-1
33. Mr. Gareth R. Thomas (Harrow, West)

What steps have been taken to increase funding for mediation in family-related matters. [118159]

The Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department (Jane Kennedy)

The Government are committed to encouraging the greater use of family mediation. The provision of public funding for family mediation will be fully implemented throughout England and Wales by the latter part of this year. That will provide a significant source of income for many mediation services. In 1999–2000, approximately £5 million was spent by the Legal Services Commission on publicly funded mediation.

Mr. Thomas

Is my hon. Friend aware that magistrates courts in Middlesex—my area—have just withdrawn from a scheme providing mediation in disputes with children? I understand that that is not an isolated example. Will my hon. Friend assure the House that she and her Department have a strategy to tackle that problem?

Jane Kennedy

I certainly hope to reassure the House on that point. Mediation services receive funding under the partnership arrangements that allow probation services to spend a proportion of their budgets in conjunction with voluntary organisations that are working to achieve similar objectives. The Middlesex probation service has reviewed its partnership funding arrangements to ensure that such funding is directed to those projects that contribute most to the service's objectives. Obviously, when those reviews take place, there are occasionally changes in the funding.

Miss Anne McIntosh (Vale of York)

When the law is clear that it is for the parties to a marriage to bear the responsibility for saving that marriage, and when no children are involved in a divorce, why should public money be used for a mediation service to retrieve what is, in essence, a private relationship between two individuals?

Jane Kennedy

The Government support the institution of marriage and believe that it is the best way for children to be raised. However, on the specifics of the question that the hon. Lady asks, very often mediation is funded through charities and we fund a national family mediation service through public funds. Local mediation services are not funded by central Government funding, but the fact that we fund the national service relieves the local services of some of those central costs.