Family Law Terminology

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Siobhan Baillie]

I agree. It is not a good use of magistrates’ time, either. This is not easy for parents—nobody should suggest that they rush to court, because often that is not the case. At the moment, parents think that court is the only place to go to get disputes resolved. That change in society and culture would help to free up the court’s time, which is incredibly important to my hon. Friend and other magistrates. His Honour Judge Wildblood went on to say this, directed at parents and lawyers:

“If you do bring unnecessary cases to this Court, you will be criticised, and sanctions may be imposed on you. There are many other ways to settle disagreements, such as mediation.”

I am looking to the Minister to help me and other parliamentarians to change the family law system to, in turn, help the Ministry of Justice to achieve its goals to ensure that people can access justice and court time in a timely way when they really need it.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I agree with what the hon. Lady is saying. The problem is that there are insufficient resources in mediation services, but if we invested in them, we could make savings further down the road within the court system and the Ministry of Justice. Is that something she would encourage?

[Siobhan Baillie]

It is absolutely fantastic to hear the hon. Gentleman talk about mediation. There has actually been a lot of investment in mediation. The demand went up an awful lot when we had a voucher system, which we may hear about from the Minister. Where demand has gone up, we need to meet that demand, because those parents will end up in court if we cannot get them into mediation services. It is absolutely great to hear the hon. Gentleman champion mediation in that way, and we will look to the Minister to hear more about the options.

I am asking for a few things today. Will the Minister confirm that the Ministry of Justice’s much-needed focus on family law reform is continuing, now that the Lord Chancellor is back in his post? It went quiet for a bit, and the Lord Chancellor previously did an awful lot on this issue. What has happened to the demand reduction plan? I know the Department was looking at that very carefully, and it was designing the plan to keep families out of court wherever possible. Does the Minister agree that the FSG should receive a formal response from the Government to its “What About Me?” and “Language Matters” reports?

Can the Minister please confirm that the Ministry of Justice is working across Departments to embed support for separating families in services such as family hubs, and to learn from the Department for Work and Pensions’ successful reducing parental conflict programmes? Will the Government confirm that they will investigate extending family law projects and pilot schemes? We know that they are working really well and teaching us better practice for cases involving children, so we would like to see more of them. Finally, will the Minister get representatives of the FSG to meet officials in the Department in order to discuss their proposals?

I genuinely believe that changing the options available to parents, re-educating society about the impact of litigation on children and changing the legal language of separation will help millions of parents and, importantly, the life chances of children. I hope we can work together to make that happen.