The Lord Chancellor, David Lammy
The Right Honourable Sir Andrew McFarlane, President of the Family Division
Baroness Levitt KC, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice)
27th October 2025
Dear President, Lord Chancellor and Baroness Levitt,
Re: Request to review cases of child removal where unregulated expert psychologists have been instructed
Earlier this year, in February 2025, Right to Equality wrote to the President and the previous Lord Chancellor and Minister responsible for Family Justice. We wrote to request an urgent review of all private family law cases involving a transfer of residence where an unregulated expert psychologist was instructed.
Our letter was prompted by revelations made in The Bureau of Investigative Journalism regarding an unregulated expert, Melanie Gill. It was clear from this reporting that Gill’s comments and conduct were evidence of a failure to meet the standards of fairness and independence required of an expert witness and were contrary to family court law and policy, including Practice Direction 12J, the Family Procedure Rules 2010, the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and the Family Justice Council guidance on alienating behaviours. Our letter was supported by over two dozen signatories.
In light of the case of O v C, we are writing to ask that you urgently reconsider this request. This judgment relates to two children who were transferred away from their mother on the basis of so-called “alienation” diagnosed by Melanie Gill. Three days after Melanie Gill submitted her report, the mother was called into an urgent online hearing, during which she was told she had two hours to get the children ready to be transferred to their father’s care. The mother has subsequently only had fortnightly supervised contact sessions with her children.
Five years later and the mother has now won a landmark appeal to overturn this decision. During the appeal, Mrs Justice Judd said that any findings of alienation, which relied upon the evidence of Melanie Gill, could no longer be relied upon in light of new guidance and family procedure rules. Justice Judd granted the mother unsupervised contact with the children and a new assessment of the children to determine what is in their best interests.
If findings of so-called parental alienation made by an unregulated expert can no longer be relied upon, the Government and the Family Division must take steps towards a review of all such unsafe decisions. As in O v C, many of these findings resulted in the forcible separation of mothers and children. All of these children and mothers deserve consideration of their cases, not only the resourced few who can return the case to court.
The need for this review will grow increasingly urgent as more separated children and mothers come forward to seek redress through the courts. The decisions judges in those cases are causing untold harm to children. We have evidence to show that a generation of children are being failed. This is a ticking timebomb.
We urge you to act swiftly to rectify miscarriages of justice by enabling procedures for the review of all cases in which children have been removed from their primary carer on the basis of parental alienation and on the opinion of an unregulated psychologist. We understand this would be an unprecedented step, however we believe it is required to address miscarriages of justice done in our family courts and in the name of those addressed in our letter.
We would welcome the opportunity to meet with you to discuss the necessary steps to address this urgent matter.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Charlotte Proudman & Dr Adrienne Barnett
Directors, Right to Equality