Right to Equality’s Letter to Minister Davies-Jones and Lord Ponsonby
Dear Ministers Davies-Jones and Lord Ponsonby,
We would like to congratulate you on your appointments as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Violence Against Women and Girls and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Family Justice. We look forward to seeing your contributions to justice reform in the UK, particularly those that support the Government’s ambitions to halve violence against women and girls.
We write following Minister Davies-Jones’s response to a parliamentary question raised on the 5th of September 2024 by Rosena Allin-Khan regarding the presumption of parental involvement. We were pleased to hear you confirm that the Government is currently
considering the outcome of this long-awaited review and will publish a response in due course.
In May 2024, Right to Equality published a report, “Ending the Presumption of Contact in Family Court”, which includes a detailed history and analysis of the legislation and practice on the presumption of parental involvement. The report provides ten recommendations to address the current exploitation of the family court system in England and Wales by abusive ex-partners and better safeguard adult and child victims of domestic and sexual violence. Our first recommendation is that Section 1(2A) of the Children Act 1989 should be repealed. This report was supported by the former MP for Burton, Kate Kniveton, who has lived experience of domestic abuse and the family justice system.
Reform to the legal presumption of contact is urgently needed. Last week, our Director, Dr Charlotte Proudman, represented a client in family court who was successful in her request to remove the parental responsibility from her abusive ex-partner and father of her child, Kristoffer White (report from the Observer here). Mr White had previously been convicted of raping a teenage girl in 2008 and was found by a family court judge to have raped his ex-partner and mother of the child on multiple occasions. This suspension of parental responsibility was the result of a lengthy appeal following a previous decision in February to grant him unsupervised contact with the child in the community. In the judgement where unsupervised access for the father was granted, the judge cited section 1(2a) of the Children’s Act as a key legal consideration. The judge stated, “Section 1(2A) of the Children Act requires the court to presume, unless the contrary is shown, that involvement of each parent in [the child’s] life will further her welfare.” This is one of several recent examples we have of how the legal presumption of parental contact obscures the risks posed to children and victims.
After the hearing, the mother in the case said “I am not naive to the fact that this outcome would never have happened if I had remained a litigant in person. If I hadn’t had legal representation, it could have been a very different result for my daughter…I really hope my case can help other families in similar circumstances and shine a light on the family court system and Cafcass. We really need professionals to be adequately trained in domestic abuse and its impact on victims”. Unfortunately, we see many women who are unable to fund or find suitable legal representation and therefore challenge such findings.
We are sure that you have well in mind the UK’s obligations under the Istanbul Convention. Of concern is the compatibility of the statutory presumption of parental involvement with Article 31. It requires State parties to ensure that the exercise of ‘visitation or custody rights’ does not jeopardise the rights and safety of the victim or children. It is our view that the statutory presumption of parental involvement, which places the onus on the alleged victim to prove that involvement of the other parent will cause harm to the child, is incompatible with the positive obligation imposed on states to ensure the safety of the victim or children.
We would welcome the opportunity to meet with you to further discuss these examples, and our recent report findings and recommendations. Please do not hesitate to contact us with any further queries regarding our work and experience and we look forward to hearing more regarding the Government review in due course.