Access Rights to Grandparents

Darren Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston) on securing this important debate and championing this really important issue. He referred to my constituent, Jane Jackson, who set up the Bristol Grandparents Support Group and has been campaigning for a very long time on this issue.

I seek to make only a short contribution today, to share the words of Jane Jackson, because her story speaks for itself. She said:

“Ten years ago, I lost contact with my granddaughter after my son’s separation and divorce.

To not see our granddaughter was heartbreaking and, as is often said, a ‘living bereavement.’ Contact was stopped overnight. The last time we saw her, at the age of seven, she told us she had been told to ‘dump her family in Bristol.’ That was the last time we saw her. You go through the stages of grief as you do when you actually lose someone, except you are grieving for someone who is still alive.

Not being able to tell her how much she was loved was beyond words. I just had a constant knot in my stomach, a huge void.

She was my first grandchild, my first granddaughter, and she always will be.

She is the person I first think of in the morning and last thing at night. Does she think we don’t love her anymore?

I have a memory box for her, with all sorts of things in it—pieces of a jig-saw. It includes a tiny bear she gave me that says, ‘The best granny’. I certainly don’t feel that way. There are so many questions and no way to find answers.

The acid drip feed of alienation is a very powerful thing, and I have no doubt that a very bad picture of us has been painted.

The emotions felt when this happens are so destructive.

Because when you become a grandparent, it holds such promise of the future, you being able to watch the new generation growing, giving them your experiences of life and to be a support through the highs and the lows.

I decided I wasn’t prepared to go down a dark spiral of depression and so set up Bristol Grandparents Support Group. I had to turn a negative into a positive.

At my first meeting we had 6 grandparents. To date, I have now been contacted by over 6,000 grandparents across the UK, and we are now a registered charity with groups around the country.”

For Jane Jackson to turn that heartbreaking series of events, which for many of us is difficult to understand, into the positive of establishing a charity such as the Bristol Grandparents Support Group, engaging with those throughout the country suffering similar pain, and achieving such wide reach over so many years, deserves tribute from all of us. I have every confidence that the Minister will tell us how she and the Government in which she serves will seek to make the changes that so many people are rightly crying out for across the country.

I shall finish with an update, which I received from Jane only recently. She said:

“Our granddaughter contacted her Dad a couple of weeks ago and has been messaging me. She is coming to Bristol over the bank holiday weekend, which is going to be very emotional.

The little girl we last saw at age 7 is now a young woman of 17. We now start to build up trust and to start a brand new relationship. She has told me that she never forgot us and knows we love her—words I never, ever thought we would hear. It is early days and it could all change in the wink of an eye, but I have already told her how much she is loved, and that is the most important thing.”

I pay tribute to Jane and to people in her position throughout the country. I wish them the very best for this bank holiday weekend. I support the efforts of right hon. and hon. Members across the House in seeking to bring joy and love back to those who have suffered so much dark and pain in the past.