I attach no term of indignation to that at all; I purely comment that there are an awful lot of lawyers on the Labour Back Benches. They seem to suggest that it is the norm for courts both to assume   that it is in the interests of the child to have contact with both parents and to issue directions for reasonable contact. If that is the case, which I doubt, what is the problem with putting “reasonable contact” in the Bill, so that reasonable contact—rather than a vague reference to contact, which can be interpreted in a range of ways—becomes the default?

We are not asking for an artificial 50:50 split of time, with a stopwatch running, so that the minute little Johnny leaves the house with mum, the stopwatch for the father starts ticking, and vice versa. It would be wholly impractical and a completely artificial reflection of what happens in households where parents are still together. Much to my regret, the amount of time that I am able to spend with my children is rather less than the amount that my wife can spend with them, simply because of our lifestyles. I am sure that that is true of most, if not all hon. Members. It is highly regrettable, but it is a fact of life.

In what I hope are the unlikely circumstances of my wife and I parting, although with the pressures of this job one never knows, it would be crazy and completely artificial to try to impose a 50:50 split that was never reflected in our married life. My colleagues and I are not trying to do that. We are using “reasonable contact” to make matters as flexible as possible, so that people would not have to argue to obtain contact with their children, but to respond to arguments against their having such contact. That is the way it should be. One is innocent until proven guilty. One is a good parent entitled to have maximum contact with one’s child until and unless it is proven not to be the case.