Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab) I beg to move, That this
House has considered the Children and Family Court Advisory and
Support Service and family court reform. It is a pleasure to serve
under your chairship, Mrs Cummins. Family breakdown is never easy.
Disputes are inevitable and often bitter. Children are caught in
the middle of a tug of war between parents. In those conflicts, the
Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, or
CAFCASS,...Request free trial
(Coventry North West)
(Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Children and Family Court
Advisory and Support Service and family court reform.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Cummins.
Family breakdown is never easy. Disputes are inevitable and often
bitter. Children are caught in the middle of a tug of war between
parents. In those conflicts, the Children and Family Court
Advisory and Support Service, or CAFCASS, plays a key role. Child
arrangements orders, prohibited steps orders and a host of other
key rulings in the family courts often hinge on the reports
provided by CAFCASS and the assessments carried out by its
workforce. CAFCASS is in desperate need of reform, and it
requires funding to protect children subject to care
proceedings.
The Criminal Justice and Courts Services Act 2000 stated clearly
the role of CAFCASS. First and foremost, it has a duty to
safeguard and promote the welfare of children affected by family
courts proceedings, yet it is falling far short of the standards
required. In 2020, the Ministry of Justice published a damning
report on the performance of CAFCASS. The findings were shocking,
including failures running deep into every area of the
organisation’s work, poor handling of domestic abuse allegations,
wilful disregard of children’s voices and an obsessive
pro-contact culture that puts unfit parents’ demands ahead of
children’s best interests. That was the Government’s own
verdict.
The reality is that that is simply an exacerbation of a problem
that has engulfed the family courts since 2010. The Government’s
cruel decision to remove legal aid from the majority of such
cases has led to ugly and disordered scenes in courtrooms
nationwide, as parents are forced to represent themselves without
sufficient support or understanding of how the system is supposed
to function.
Diminishing access to legal aid has only caused further delays in
the courts, and denies victims justice. To address the backlog,
the Government should properly fund civil legal aid and restore
legal aid for early advice for family cases, so cases can be
resolved more efficiently.
(Enfield, Southgate)
(Lab)
There is often a financial disparity between parties. Sometimes,
parties use the issue of parental alienation to drag things out
longer and to add more expense to the disadvantaged party in
those proceedings. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is time that
CAFCASS, the courts and judges were better trained in the issue
of parental alienation and how it is used as a tactic to prevent
court cases dragging on longer than they need to?
I absolutely agree, and parental alienation is an issue I will
come to later in my speech. Reform is desperately needed.
Will the Minister outline what steps the Ministry of Justice is
taking to increase the funding of legal aid? Will he update us on
when we can expect the civil legal aid review?
(Strangford) (DUP)
The hon. Lady is right to bring this debate forward and to
highlight the disadvantages of legal aid. Does she agree that
when it comes to ensuring that every person in this great United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has the same
opportunity of representation, the Government must step in to
support those people who do not have money and cannot pay for the
legal representation to which they are entitled? That should
happen not only in England and Wales; the Minister should
endeavour to have discussions with the devolved Administrations
in Northern Ireland and Scotland so that people there have the
same legal aid opportunities.
Absolutely. Proper legal representation needs to be available to
everyone in the United Kingdom.
The large backlogs in the family court are creating delays and
uncertainty for families and, most alarmingly of all, for
vulnerable children. No child should have to witness this sort of
conflict, anger and grief played out before a judge. The children
caught up in these cases are now suffering as a result of
constant failings in leadership from Ministers in this
Government.
The most damning aspect of our family court system is false
accusations of parental alienation. Too often, as my hon. Friend
the Member for Enfield, Southgate () says, a wealthy parent
can, in effect, purchase custody of a child through certain legal
loopholes. Denounced by the United Nations as a “regressive
pseudo-theory”, parental alienation is an argument whereby one
parent claims that another is making false abuse claims or is
otherwise manipulating the child’s view out of hostility towards
their ex-partner. The concept has little to no evidence to
support it, but is none the less often accepted, resulting in
children being placed with an abusive parent.
I pay tribute to the team at the University of Manchester, whose
recent research has revealed the dark and rotten roots of that
commonly employed tactic. It was invented 40 years ago as a means
of aiding perpetrators to cover up the physical and sexual
violence to which they had subjected their spouses and children,
yet in Britain the strategy is being given free rein in our
family courts. Not only are utterly unqualified individuals being
allowed to testify as supposed experts in such cases, but CAFCASS
has overseen the rise in such false allegations.
I have spoken with many constituents about their treatment by the
family courts. One case summarises everything that is wrong with
CAFCASS: the dangers of parental alienation and the risks posed
by a blind insistence on contact even when a parent is evidently
unfit to have any responsibility over a child. My constituent
married a foreign national a decade ago. They had one son, who is
now eight years old. Until recently, he was being brought up by
his mother in the comfort of a loving, caring home alongside his
extended family. Having had the courage to escape the sexual and
physical domestic abuse inflicted by her ex-husband, my
constituent was granted sole custody of her son. Occasional
contact with the father was enforced by the court and complied
with by my constituent, despite the clear distress that those
sessions caused to the child, yet, when the arrangements broke
down, the father was able to launch false alienation proceedings
against his ex-wife to remove the boy from her custody. That was
supported every step of the way by CAFCASS. He has now succeeded
in depriving my constituent of her only child, despite the
rigorous investigations by social services at Coventry City
Council that concluded that she was an exemplary mother.
Thanks to the deeply imbedded pro-contact culture of CAFCASS,
long since identified but allowed to run unreformed for years, an
eight-year-old boy is now in the clutches of a man who beat and
sexually assaulted my constituent throughout their marriage.
Despite mountains of evidence proving his unfitness to have
custody of the child, everything was pushed and CAFCASS took his
side, placing the blame on the boy’s mother.
What is perhaps most concerning is that despite the child’s
distress, a litany of domestic abuse and the detailed reports
compiled by Coventry City Council in support of my constituent’s
parenting were all cast aside in the family courts. Deploying
parental alienation allegations as his chief legal tactic, the
boy’s father has now won sole custody, leaving my constituent
utterly bereft.
The interests of the child should be paramount—that was written
into the Children Act 1989, many years ago—but there seems to
have been a clear failure of that policy. Allegations of parental
alienation often cause great distress not just for the parent,
but for the child at the centre of the case. Does my hon. Friend
agree that in cases such as the one she describes, CAFCASS needs
to return to focusing on the paramount interests of the
child?
Absolutely. The role of CAFCASS is to protect the child during
family proceedings, but it seems to be failing in that role.
The tragedy is being multiplied in the thousands nationwide. A
self-reported survey suggests that allegations of parental
alienation are made in up to 70% of family court cases in England
and Wales. The scandal has been allowed to go on for far too
long. It is time for CAFCASS and the family courts to be held
accountable. When will the Government legislate to bar
unqualified so-called experts from the family courts? When will
guidance be published for judges on the admissibility of family
alienation allegations as evidence in these cases?
(Stroud) (Con)
I cannot thank the hon. Member enough for securing the debate and
I am only sorry that I cannot stay to give a speech myself. I had
a long career in family law. I have acted for mums and dads,
husbands and wives, and families where domestic abuse has ripped
them apart, and I have seen courts used not only to help people,
but to continue the abuse and control of some. What the hon.
Member’s constituents would have experienced, no doubt, is that a
lot of the delay plays into the hands of parents who want to use
the courts, in particular if they have the child living with them
at the time. One thing I have been campaigning for is to get the
Ministry of Justice and the Government to focus on keeping cases
out of court, especially where litigants are in person, where it
is safe to do so. That will free up court time to deal with the
more complex cases that she is talking about more quickly and
urgently, so that we have the resource and proper space for
CAFCASS and people such as that. Does she agree that that is
important, and will she join me for a coffee to discuss it? I
would love to get her on board.
The hon. Member speaks from her varied experience. Absolutely, I
am more than happy to support her in her campaign and to have a
cup of coffee to talk about it in further detail—[Interruption.]
I am sure everyone in the Chamber would love to have a cup of
coffee to talk about it as well.
I ask the Minister, why has CAFCASS remained largely unreformed
almost three year after its shameful shortcomings were exposed
for all to see? I wrote to the Ministry of Justice about my
constituent’s case on 2 September 2020. It is a damning
indictment that CAFCASS has failed to make any progress in the
matter. Will the Minister therefore meet me to discuss the case
further?
Until the promised reforms of CAFCASS are completed, until
parents can be sure of proper representation and support in the
courtroom, and until the family courts start to put the needs of
children ahead of the vanity of wealthy individuals who can rely
on expensive solicitors to exploit a broken and underfunded
system, the tragedies will only multiply. Inaction is no longer
an option—frankly, it never was.
4.42pm
(Birmingham, Yardley)
(Lab)
I stand here to give a general primal scream on behalf of what I
will say are thousands of cases that I have seen over the past
seven years of victims of domestic abuse being, not to put too
fine a point on it, abused by the family courts. We allow the
system to go on largely in secret, shrouded in total secrecy, but
it is opening up slightly now thanks to the efforts of some
incredibly good investigative journalism and some incredibly
brave victims of rape who allowed their cases to be the test
cases to enable that transparency.
I cannot sit in front of another mother who has been beaten,
raped, abused, coerced, and has had a court in our country take
her children from her and given them to the man who raped, beat
and abused her. It must be about five or six years ago that
Women’s Aid produced a report called, “Nineteen Child Homicides”,
which cites cases from the previous 10 years of 19 children
murdered following the decision of a family court to place them
with a violent and abusive father. I pay huge tribute to the
families who were involved.
We are two years on from the harm review—it might be longer, but
the covid years make it hard to remember how many years it has
been; I am really only 39, because I do not count the covid
years. Everyone working in this building was pleased to see the
harm review, which came out of a very extensive piece of work by
the Government. I take my hat off to them for doing it. However,
it dodged one vital issue, which was raised by my hon. Friend the
Member for Coventry North West (), to whom I am grateful for
securing the debate: the issue of a pro-contact culture. We need
fundamentally to undermine the idea that it is better for a child
to have contact with both parents when one of them is abusive and
violent. Often people will say to me, “These people aren’t
necessarily abusive and violent towards the children”, but I
think you are a bad father if you are abusive and violent towards
the mother of your child. That is fundamental for me.
In the vast majority of cases that I have handled in my lifetime,
which are into the tens of thousands, mothers want fathers to
have some form of contact with, or access to, their child. It is
not until we come to the family courts that that becomes
completely and utterly distorted, and women are cited for being
insane. If I had been raped, beaten and abused for decades, I
might take medication for anxiety. That has not happened to me,
but I do take medication for anxiety, which could be used to
remove a child from a mother. She will be called mad, hysterical
or bad in a family court, even though social services might
consider her to be an exemplary mother. In the family courts,
fancy lawyers—as suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for
Enfield, Southgate (), it is unfortunately
still the case in the world we live in that men have more money
than women—argue that women are mad.
We have allowed the situation to get to the point that any woman
who tries to protect her child from a violent and abusive partner
will be accused of parent alienation, which will work against
her, so what we are now asking women to do is not safeguard their
children in order to have access to them. There is a perverse
incentive in the system that says, “If you and your children are
being abused by this man, don’t mention it, because if you do,
you will have parent alienation thrown at you.” There is
absolutely no efficacy in what is being described as parent
alienation.
On efficacy, I wish to point out that the people on whom we rely
to make the judgment of parent alienation might as well be my
milkman. That is literally how qualified they are. My milkman is
a lovely fella who has six kids, and I would trust him more. We
have specialists being paid huge amounts of taxpayers’ money, and
operating in courts across our country—with a specific focus, it
seems, on the south, which I presume is because people have more
money to spend on such things down here—who are not
psychologists. It might as well be my milkman, but they are
saying, “Yes, we’re seeing signs of parent alienation”, and there
is no regulation of this. The head of the family courts division
has made it incredibly clear that it is up to the Government to
deal with this issue. It is up to the Government to ensure that
there is regulation of expert milkmen—I feel like I am taking
milkmen down now, but they are perfectly good people—and expert
witnesses in our family courts.
It is always important to listen to the hon. Member. One of the
things that the president of the family division, Sir Andrew
McFarlane, has done recently is open up the family courts for
reporting pilots. That is an incredibly good step, because it
will shine a light not only on what is going on with people
having representation or not having representation, but on the
experts who are being put forward. Even though there is work to
be done, there is active effort from the top of the family
division to make changes, and I hope she can see that.
I absolutely agree. Sir James Munby, in his final year as head of
the family division, seemed to do a sort of swansong in which he
said, “I am going to do something about this, recognising that
the many brilliant legal minds who work in the family court know
where the problems are.” In fact, it is not just victims I am
representing and speaking for in this primal scream, but the
hundreds of solicitors and judges who get in touch with me all
the time to tell me about the terrible, broken problems in our
family court system.
As McFarlane has laid out, the Government have to undertake a
piece of work. The family court’s hands are tied, and it is for
the Government—the ball is in their court—to say what they are
going to do about unregulated experts. Members should bear in
mind that I am a genuine expert on domestic abuse, with years and
years of training, and I have been refused entry to family courts
when I have sought to attend with victims—maybe I would get in if
I did a milk round.
I am fairly certain that, in my time in this building, I will,
alongside others, advance changes around domestic abuse. I feel
confident about that, but I am starting to lose confidence that
we will ever do enough to change the family courts. The hon.
Member for Stroud () mentioned the pilots,
which I am sure the Minister will address. They are just pilots
at the moment, and they seem to be working well, but I think that
they need to go further. There needs to be a change into the
gladiatorial; there needs to be much more sense of ongoing
inquiry throughout such cases.
Practice direction 12J, which states that there is no presumption
of contact in cases of domestic abuse, is not worth the paper
that it is written on because it is hardly ever used. If it is
not being used in cases involving convicted rapists, we have to
ask ourselves serious questions about whether the situation that
we have at the moment is working.
I just want to know from the Government when we can expect the
outcome of the review into a pro-contact culture, and what the
hold-up is. Why has a single point, on pro-contact culture, taken
two years in the harms review? I have written to the Justice
Secretary about this, and I have not yet heard back—I will cut
him some slack, because it was only about two weeks ago, when
McFarlane said it—but I also want to know when we will stop the
use of unregulated experts in our family courts.
My point, which my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West
began with, was about legal aid. Although the Government
have—through an amendment that I moved initially—stopped the
cross-examination of victims by perpetrators in the family court,
I am afraid that the roll-out of advocates who are meant to be
doing that work seems to be underfunded, and the work is an
unattractive prospect, meaning that, from what I can tell—from
the cases that I have seen and reviewed, and from the members of
the Family Law Bar Association I speak to—the system is faltering
at the moment.
I want to know and feel that there is some progress, and that I
will not get another email— inevitably I will tomorrow, but maybe
not next week or next year—about a mother who has been beaten and
abused, has just had her child removed, and is allowed only
supervised contact because some man has managed manipulate the
systems in our country to make them feel as if she is mad and
bad, and that he is an absolute angel. If I had a penny for every
such case that I have seen, I could rebuild the family
courts.
4.54pm
(Stockton North) (Lab)
It is an extra special pleasure to serve under your chairmanship
this afternoon, Ms Cummins. I apologise to you and the House for
arriving a few minutes late for this debate. Similarly, I
apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West
(), but I congratulate her on
securing this important debate.
We have had a couple of powerful and persuasive speeches today
that demonstrate the urgent need for further reform to the family
justice system so that victims of abuse and the children at the
centre of proceedings are given the protection from harm and risk
of harm that they both need and deserve. My hon. Friend the
Member for Birmingham, Yardley () spoke in her usual strong
and blunt fashion in defence of the victims and the pleas for
change. I do not know if my speech will add any additional value
to what we have heard this afternoon, but I say to her that she
should not lose confidence in the work she has championed in this
place, because she needs to be doing it. I never thought I would
manage to make my hon. Friend blush, but today I have
succeeded.
It has been more than two years since the Ministry of Justice
published the harm report, “Assessing risk of harm to children
and parents in private law children cases”. The panel that wrote
the report said that the extensive evidence submitted to it
“unveiled deep-seated and systemic problems with how the family
courts identify, assess and manage risk to children and
adults.”
While we of course welcome the changes brought in by the Domestic
Abuse Act 2021, including the ban on cross-examination of victims
of abuse by their perpetrators in the family and civil courts, it
is clear that much more needs to be done.
Women’s Aid conducted research with specialist support services
and survivors of abuse who have been involved in private child
proceedings since the Government’s implementation plan for the
harm report recommendations was published in 2020. It found that
the optimism and hope that the publication of the report had
brought have been destroyed by Government inaction and that lack
of progress on the report’s findings has left them disillusioned
and disappointed.
Women’s Aid also found that for many family court practitioners
and professionals, their understanding of coercive and
controlling behaviour and how perpetrators can and do use family
court proceedings as another form of post-separation abuse is
still insufficient. Survivors of domestic abuse are left feeling
as if their experiences are ignored. The report from Women’s Aid
notes that they feel that
“as mothers they are trapped within a continuum of blame, facing
contradictory accusations both of failing to protect their
children from the perpetrator, and failing to facilitate contact
between child and perpetrator.”
The report also identifies serious concerns with parental
alienation, and my hon. Friends the Members for Coventry North
West and for Birmingham, Yardley have addressed that this
afternoon. Indeed, several of the survivors Women’s Aid spoke to
in its research have had their children removed from them as a
result of accusations of so-called parental alienation or
alienating behaviours when they raise concern about unsafe
contact arrangements for their child.
As we have heard today, this apparent belief system has come
under increased international scrutiny. Indeed, several countries
now refuse to recognise it as a result of the risk it poses of
placing a child with an abusive parent. Following a recent survey
of more than 4,000 court users in England and Wales, it is
estimated that allegations of parental alienation are made in
nearly 70% of family court cases in England and Wales. That
astonishing number underlines the necessity for immediate
Government action. In these cases, unregulated, self-declared
experts, such as milkmen, are invited to give evidence, even
though they have little to nothing in the way of formal
qualifications to do so. In fact, they may have a vested
financial interest in diagnosing so-called alienation, which they
may then be paid to treat. Only last month, Sir Andrew McFarlane,
the president of the family division, commented in the case of Re
C that there was a “need for rigour” and “clarity” when
instructing psychologists to give expert evidence in family
cases, but claimed that stricter regulation was ultimately for
Parliament to take action on.
I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West on
bringing this matter before the House, and I am aware that she
has made other representations to the Ministry of Justice on the
matter, to which the Minister has responded, claiming:
“It is a matter for the judiciary to determine which experts may
be instructed to provide evidence in family law proceedings.”
This impasse is totally unacceptable. There is a potentially high
risk to already vulnerable children in this area. Loud alarm
bells are being sounded, and the Government should be taking
action now to investigate. Instead, they are once again
demonstrating the dangerous inaction and lack of forward planning
that have become their hallmark.
On the other hand, Labour wholeheartedly supports the calls for
an urgent inquiry into the use of unregulated psychological
experts in the family courts made by the Victims’ Commissioner
for London, Claire Waxman, alongside lawyers, academics and
charity leaders. My colleagues, the shadow Minister for victims
and youth justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North
(), and the shadow Minister
for domestic violence and safeguarding, my hon. Friend the Member
for Birmingham, Yardley, have co-signed those representations to
the Ministry of Justice.
In government, Labour will put Jade’s law on the statute book,
ensuring that men who kill their partners will automatically have
parental responsibility removed so they are not able to have a
say in their children’s lives. That will prevent them from
continuing to perpetuate controlling and coercive behaviour on
their children and the victim’s family, who are likely to be
caring for those children. Will the Minister introduce that
law?
The Minister’s Department has been active in addressing concerns
regarding post-separation abuse through the family courts in
recent years, as evidenced by the publication of the harm report
in 2020 and the Domestic Abuse Act, which received Royal Assent
in 2021. Why is the Department stopping there when it was
beginning to take some really positive steps forward? Will the
Minister commit today to action that will help to begin to
resolve the ongoing crisis in this area?
I now turn to the wider challenges faced by our family courts. As
across the rest of the courts system, the backlog in family
courts is unacceptably high and, as a result, vulnerable children
are left in precarious situations for months on end. The most
recent data shows that private children’s law cases are taking on
average 45 weeks —nearly a year—to reach a final order. Cuts to
legal aid, which others have raised today, in family cases have
led to a huge increase in the number of litigants in person, who
have been forced to represent themselves and end up costing the
Government a significant amount because they take up much more of
a judge’s sitting time than a represented individual normally
would.
Back in November 2021, I was pleased to hear the Lord Chancellor
and Secretary of State for Justice, when he appeared before the
Justice Committee say that he was
“in the market for something quite drastic and bold”,
particularly in private law family cases, but I am sad to say
that ambition appears to have disappeared. Instead, the backlog
in the family court continues to rise, creating substantial
anxiety and stress for families and, most importantly, for
vulnerable children, at what is already an extremely difficult
time in their lives.
I have spent a lot of time recently reflecting on how we can
reduce the pain and suffering of going through the family court
process. The debate we are having feels particularly timely, as I
have met a number of family court practitioners, including at the
north-east family drug and alcohol court, which I visited on
Monday. I was hugely impressed by the work it is doing. I saw at
first hand the value and benefit of a greater use of
non-adversarial and problem-solving approaches in the family
court.
I also had positive feedback regarding the pathfinder pilots in
Dorset and north Wales, which are exploring a more inquisitorial
approach in private family proceedings. An additional strength of
the pathfinder model is that CAFCASS does substantially more
up-front work in the process, which the court benefits from as it
moves through the proceedings, but we have heard today about the
resource challenges for CAFCASS that would currently prevent this
positive work from being rolled out nationally.
Finally, many experts I speak to stress the importance of access
to early legal advice in these cases, to ensure they end up in
the most appropriate part of the system. One arm of that is
ensuring that cases that do not need to go to court are kept out
of it by early referral to mediation services and alternative
dispute resolution. The other arm is ensuring that those cases
that do need to go through the legal process are referred to it
at as early a stage as possible.
These cases deal with challenging and highly emotive
circumstances. Even the most straightforward family separation
causes pain and anxiety. The impact these cases have, especially
for the children involved in them, can last a lifetime. I hope
the Minister will provide reassurances that the urgent issues
raised today are being worked on by his Department, but also I
hope that campaigners can take confidence in the fact that Labour
takes these issues extremely seriously and fully supports the
call for an urgent inquiry into the regulation of experts in the
family courts.
5.04pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice ()
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. I
thank the hon. Member for Coventry North West () for securing a debate on
this important subject.
The family court must always act in the best interests of
children. CAFCASS plays an integral role in England, both
representing children in the family court and advising the court
on what is safe and in children’s best interests. It is CAFCASS
that ensures that children’s voices are at the heart of the
family justice system. CAFCASS is the largest employer of
qualified social workers in England and supports over 140,000
children each year, speaking up for those children at what can be
an extremely difficult time.
I appreciate that Members wish to raise cases where things do not
go right, but it is also important to pay tribute to the work
that CAFCASS does, as well as the hard-working social workers who
support 140,000 children. It is wrong to suggest that the whole
of CAFCASS is failing children in this country. That is simply
not fair on the organisation, and the social workers who have a
very difficult job to do. That is not to say that mistakes are
not made or that things do not go wrong, but to paint the whole
service as a failure is simply not correct.
Will the Minister give way?
I will make some progress. I point Members to the recent Ofsted
inspection in January this year. Ofsted said that CAFCASS was
“highly effective”. The service has meant that the children at
greatest risk continue to be promptly allocated a children’s
guardian or family court adviser. I do not take issue with the
problems that hon. Members have raised, but I wanted to put on
record that the description of CAFCASS as a dystopian
organisation getting everything wrong is simply unfair. There are
many people there working in very difficult situations, doing a
lot of good work for children.
I will move on to some of the things that we are doing to ensure
that CAFCASS has capacity and funding. On additional funding and
coping with the pandemic backlogs, we have ensured that the
CAFCASS budget was increased by over £8.4 million, to a baseline
of £140 million. We are also ensuring that the sitting days for
both elements of the family court are increased.
I do not want to dwell on the particularly dry bits of what the
family courts have to do. I appreciate that Members have raised
specific questions, which I will do my best to answer. Where I
cannot answer them, I will see that my colleague, , who covers this portfolio,
provides more detailed answers. If hon. Members wish to meet
to go through the issues in
more depth, I am happy to facilitate that. I appreciate that I do
not have the depth of knowledge that other Members or have.
We spend £813 million on civil legal aid. In the last couple of
months, we have increased the amount by £30 million, just to
support those people who need legal aid in a situation of
domestic violence. It is not true to say that we are leaving
victims of domestic violence without legal aid.
I recognise that long-term reform of the family court is needed,
and that many of the issues are wide-ranging. Ensuring that
vulnerable court users, such as those who have experienced
domestic abuse, continue to be supported is complex. We want to
continue to build on the response to the 2020 report on the risk
of harm in private law proceedings. We have delivered on all the
short-term commitments in the harm panel report. The Domestic
Abuse Act 2021 prohibits the cross-examination of victims by
perpetrators, and gives victims of domestic abuse automatic
eligibility for special measures in the family courts.
In December 2022, the Family Procedure Rule Committee agreed rule
and practice direction changes to ensure that independent
domestic violence advisers and other specialist support services
can accompany a party into court. Those changes are expected to
come into force on 6 April. The Government continue to work
closely with the domestic abuse sector to ensure that survivors’
voices remain central to family court reform. I look forward to
the upcoming launch of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s
monitoring and reporting pilot, which will ensure that we
continue to understand the impact of family court proceedings on
children and families.
I will touch on a couple of issues raised.
Before the Minister continues, could we go back to the issue of
legal aid? Not everybody in family court proceedings can qualify
for legal aid, but will he conduct an assessment of the time that
has been wasted in courts because litigants in person take up so
much more of judges’ time? It would save time, and the Government
money, if those people had access to legal aid.
As always, I will give very careful consideration to any request
from the hon. Gentleman, and I will report back to him on what we
can do on that issue. He mentioned family mediation. Obviously, a
big driver of the reform is the desire to keep families out of a
court process that is not helpful, and away from an adversarial
process. The investment of about £7.3 million in providing
mediation vouchers has been a success; it is working.
Would the Minister enter, or want anyone in his family to enter,
into mediation with their rapist?
I will tread very carefully here. I grew up in a home with
domestic violence, so I understand the issue quite closely. I am
very careful to ensure that victims of domestic abuse are able to
get justice, but I also accept—[Interruption.] No, hang on a
moment; the hon. Lady should let me finish, before she judges
what I am going to say. I personally would not want that to
happen. That is not my decision. Unfortunately, as the hon. Lady
knows, the justice system is never fair. It is often too
“processy”. The point she makes has been well landed, and they
are points that we will continue to discuss with the judiciary.
The process, as she knows, is not always balanced, and it is our
job to try to remove imbalances. The point has been well made,
and I will ensure that it is conveyed to the judiciary.
I turn to the other issues that the hon. Lady and other Members
have raised. On the use of experts, we clearly have a difference
of opinion. First of all, the regulation of experts is a matter
for the Department of Health and Social Care, and I am more than
happy to take the matter up with the relevant Minister.
The ability, or inability, to refuse a so-called expert is a
matter for judicial discretion. If the judiciary does not believe
that a person is an expert, it is up to them to say, “We do not
accept them as an expert.” Regulation is a separate issue; as I
say, I am more than happy to take that up with colleagues in
DHSC. However, the judiciary can reject what we would call, in
common parlance, so-called experts.
I turn to the presumption of parental involvement. This is an
important and complex issue, and we want to ensure that any
recommendations resulting from the review are based on a solid
understanding of the way that the presumption is applied, and how
it affects both parents and children. The review will be
concluded later this year, and a publication date will be
announced in due course.
Parental responsibilities can already be limited by the courts.
On Jade’s law, my understanding is that the Minister of State,
Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for
Charnwood (), and have already met the right
hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside () to discuss the case and how
these issues can be pursued. If hon. Members want to know more,
then I am very happy to write, or to ask to write. However, that issue
is being explored with the right hon. Member, who has raised it
in the House several times.
I do not want to diminish the complexity of the issues raised
today, but I did want to put on record that all the issues raised
are being dealt with. I appreciate that Members will raise
individual cases where they feel that the system is failing, and
I cannot diminish individuals’ experience of that, but we need
some balance; 140,000 children are supported by CAFCASS in
difficult circumstances, and to suggest that it gets it wrong all
the time is not fair. However, the points raised by Opposition
Members have landed well, and I will ensure that and I sit down to review the
issues that have been raised. If hon. Members wish to have a
meeting with , I am more than happy to
facilitate that.
5.15pm
I would like to start by acknowledging the point made by the
Minister. I do not think that anybody in this debate was saying
that those working for CAFCASS are not trying their best, or that
they get it wrong all the time; we are acknowledging that there
are issues that need to be urgently addressed and are causing
severe harm to women and the children CAFCASS is meant to
protect. Those failures are due to Government inaction. Reforms
need to happen, and there needs to be proper funding of the
judicial system.
I thank everybody who participated in this debate, beginning with
my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (), who has detailed the
problems with parental alienation and unqualified experts. She
has long campaigned on that important subject, and rightly calls
for reform. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for
Enfield, Southgate (), who is no longer in
his seat, for highlighting the importance of protecting
vulnerable children. A lot of Members spoke or intervened, and I
thank the hon. Members for Strangford (), and for Stroud (), who raised concerns
about the lack of access to legal aid in the court system,
parental alienation and unqualified experts, and the courtroom
backlog. No mother should be penalised for safeguarding their
children, so the Government desperately need to address the
failures of CAFCASS and reform the family courts system.
I end by noting two key points. First, I notice that the Minister
did not answer all my questions; I look forward to receiving a
written response from him on those that he did not answer.
Secondly, I look forward to meeting the Minister—hopefully very
soon—to discuss some of the issues that I raised today. I look
forward to reviewing the review that he spoke about, once it is
published. Finally, I stress that after 13 years of failure, the
criminal justice system is on its knees and in desperate need of
funding and reform. Only then can victims such as my constituents
get justice.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the Children and Family Court
Advisory and Support Service and family court reform.
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