Child Arrangements: Presumption of Parental Involvement

Emily Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Tidball]

I agree. As someone who has worked in criminology and criminal justice for over a decade, I think the need for us to move beyond siloed working can be no more important than it is in these sorts of cases.

Just yesterday, we learned that the man Kiena Dawes named as her killer when she committed suicide wants to launch a custody battle over their daughter, saying that

“I’m coming to get you baby girl”.

This man has been jailed for six and a half years for assault of and controlling behaviour towards Kiena. Our current law would allow this person to have unsupervised contact with their child.

[Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing such an important debate and for making such a powerful speech. Does she agree that the visitation presumption, custody presumption and all these sorts of things that happen in family law courts are a continuing perpetration of the domestic abuse that the women and mothers were fleeing in the first place? I will keep this case anonymous, but in my constituency I was meant to meet a woman on Saturday. The handling of the handover of the children on Friday had been so abusive and painful for her that she had to cancel her appointment with me because she was in hospital with heart palpitations. Can my hon. Friend address how we can ensure in the future that the presumption in the court service takes into account that this is continuing domestic abuse for both the mother and the children?

[Dr Tidball]

Absolutely. I will return to this later, but the harm report makes quite clear the re-traumatisation of both children and parental victims of domestic abuse that comes with repeated attempts at contact and the presumption that is currently in place. The consequence of that is a generation of lost voices like Jack and Paul Sykes and Sara Sharif, but there is no definitive way of knowing how many parents whose partner or spouse is a known domestic abuser have been persuaded into some form of shared care because of the presumption.

The harm report, published in 2020 by the Ministry of Justice’s expert panel on harm, found that presumption of contact must be reviewed urgently, because the principle

“put a misplaced emphasis on the child’s right to a relationship with both parents…above the child’s welfare and right to be safe from abuse and its effects”.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Sarah Sackman)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Dr Tidball) for securing this debate on an incredibly important subject. I am deeply sorry about what her constituent, Claire Throssell, has been through. The loss and trauma that Claire and her family have experienced is unimaginable and, frankly, unspeakable. If I can address you directly, Claire, the resilience you have shown in the face of the devastating loss of Jack and Paul is astounding. Your commitment to campaigning and advocating for children and adults who have experienced domestic abuse is inspirational, and you are shaping the national conversation on this issue. I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend and to you, Claire, for the time you spent with the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), back in November to discuss the presumption and the wider issues surrounding it.

There is no question but that protecting vulnerable children from violence and abuse must always be a first priority for the state, and the family courts have a vital role to play in that mission by protecting children and safeguarding victims of violence against women and girls. What does the statutory presumption we have been discussing do? As currently designed, it has two important aims. The first is to ensure that any parent who poses a risk to their child can be prevented in law from being involved in their child’s life. The second is to ensure that when it is safe, and only when it is safe, to do so, children are able to maintain some form of relationship with their parent after separation.

Under our current law, the child’s welfare is, as it must be, the paramount consideration. This is known as the welfare principle, and it is enshrined in section 1 of the Children Act. The presumption reflects an understanding that, where it is safe, and only where it is safe, to allow it, and where it would be in the best interests of a child’s welfare, both parents being involved in a child’s life is a goal of family justice.

The Children Act sets out this two-stage process, and it is important that we understand what that process is and how it works when family courts come to consider it. First, the court will consider whether a parent can be involved in a child’s life in a way that does not put that child at risk of suffering harm. If it cannot be assured of that, the presumption does not apply. If a parent can be involved in a way that does not put the child at risk of suffering harm, the child will move to the second stage, and the court will consider whether the parent’s involvement would further that child’s welfare. If there is evidence that a parent’s involvement would not further the child’s welfare, the presumption can be rebutted and will not apply to that parent.

My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge set out the history of how that came to be enshrined in our law. In 2014 the Children Act was amended to introduce the presumption of parental involvement, built on well-established case law in our domestic law and in law enshrined in the European convention on human rights. The intention was to recognise the benefits of both parents being involved in a child’s life.

[Emily Darlington]

I appreciate that the Act was amended in 2014, but our understanding of abuse has widened since then to encompass financial, emotional and coercive control—abuse is not limited to just physical violence. In the light of that, is it not time to review the law and change the definition of harm to the child to encompass the wider definition of what we now understand abuse to be?

Violence against Women and Girls

Emily Darlington Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)]

Before I begin, I want to remind everyone that every woman—and some men—has a story. Some are awful; many are devastating, including those of women in this House, like myself. If anyone is feeling affected by this debate and the issues raised, either in the House or watching online, please reach out to the many amazing organisations; for people in Milton Keynes, MK-ACT is one partner. It is for women like me and the women of Milton Keynes that I extend my thanks to the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), and the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), because it is women like them who are making our lives safer.

Previous Governments have treated violence against women and girls as inevitable, or, more recently, a political opportunity, instead of the national emergency that it is. I feel sorry for the hon. Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield (Mims Davies), who I know feels strongly on this, but who is not in the Chamber today? There is not a single Reform MP, which shows how much they care. There is no show from the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), who said that he really cared about the issue, and no show from the shadow Justice Secretary, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), who also said that he cared about the issue. I guess they care about it only when they can put out Facebook ads afterwards.

We are sick and tired of seeing women and girls facing the same threats of violence and abuse generation after generation. After Sarah Everard was killed, women across the country demanded action, but too little changed. After Raneem Oudeh was killed, we expected major overhauls of policing and the criminal justice system, but barely anything was done. After the reports and the reviews, not a single recommendation was enacted. The passive response from previous Governments to those devastating crimes was hopeless. For those of us who care, the constant frustration, the mourning, the tragedy and the inevitability of male violence against women and girls in this country is exhausting, but we will never stop fighting.

Every new case that makes the news of a woman killed by a husband, killed by a boyfriend, killed by a stranger or killed by an ex is a gut-wrenching reminder that you are never safe. Your daughter, your mother, your friend and your sister may never be safe, either. It has to stop. It happens everywhere, in every corner of the country and in every community. Unfortunately, it happened on Christmas day in Milton Keynes when two women, Joanne Pearson, 38, and Teohna Grant, 24, were killed.

While the previous Government did not do enough, they did not create the crisis alone. How do we sort it? By understanding it. That starts with the House becoming the first white ribbon Parliament in the world. I am grateful to the Leader of the House, the Speaker and the Deputy Speakers for their support in that.

We have to understand online radicalisation. A generation of young men are being raised in radical anti-women spaces online. Those used to be niche places that would have to be searched for on some kind of Telegram or 8chan channel, but they have been mainstreamed. Growing up, our children heard those jokes only from the drunk uncle in the corner who everyone ignored; now, they are there every day and have become popular with young and older men with aspirational lifestyles.

I have spoken before in the House about Andrew Tate, but he is just one of an endless supply of misogynists repacking hate for women as standing up for men. The tactics and content used by these men to radicalise men in this country are the same psychological process used to radicalise Islamic extremists, yet the law, the press and the public do not treat it the same.

The harm is extreme, with one woman killed every week in the UK, and the average age for rape is now 14 years old. That has been compounded by violent pornography. One young man reported on by Laura Bates —for those who want to read more, she is fantastic on this issue—was asked:

“Why didn’t you stop when she was crying?”

He looked back, bewildered, and said:

“it’s normal for girls to cry during sex”.

That is what our young people—and older people—are facing.

We have to strengthen the Online Safety Act 2023 and ensure that the criminal law is robust and can keep pace with emerging technology issues, especially when we have social media tsars pushing their radical free-speech agendas that make our children less safe. We have to step up to prevent online radicalisation of our young men and boys and keep our women and girls safe online and offline. I believe in the Government’s mission to halve VAWG, I am proud of the work done so far, and I am proud of the women leading the effort to build a world where women can exist in online spaces without being exposed to sexist put downs and where we do not have to say, “This happened to me.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Emily Darlington Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for her bravery and for speaking out about her experiences as a victim-survivor, which has undoubtedly helped countless others. She is right that this will take every single Department across Government looking into how we stamp out violence against women and girls in our communities and society. She is also right about funding. We are currently looking through the funding we received at the Budget, and in due course I will be able to outline how we will support services. If she would like me to meet her to discuss this further, I shall be happy to do so.

[Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)]

Under the last Government, only 2% of reported rape cases made it to trial, because women did not feel safe about reporting rapes or did not think they would be taken seriously. How are the Government ensuring that more brave women who report their rapes are seen quickly and effectively in the court service and get the justice that they deserve?

[Alex Davies-Jones]

My hon. Friend has outlined the stark reality of what rape victims and survivors face in our criminal justice system. Not only are far too few cases getting to court, but 60% of rape victims are pulling out of the system, which is why we are committed to introducing independent legal advocates for adult rape victims. We will be working with the judiciary to fast-track RASSO cases through our courts, and support victim-survivors through every step of the criminal justice journey.

Criminal Law

Emily Darlington Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. If we do not act today, we face a total collapse of law and order in this country. If we are forced to enact Operation Brinker, it will be a one-in, one-out system and we are then days away from the total collapse of the criminal justice system. It is a shocking state of affairs that the previous Government are entirely responsible for, and it has fallen to our Administration to start to put these matters right with the decisive action we are taking. This is the only option on the table. I remind the House again that we have no choice other than to pass this measure to deal with the crisis we have inherited.

Even once we have passed the measure, we will not yet be out of the woods. Our prisons are still in crisis. The last Government ran the prisons system on the basis of luck. They hung on by their fingernails until they could hang on no longer, and then they called an election. This Government will never run that risk. We will always take the necessary action.

[Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for her reassurance on the exclusion of sexual and domestic violence sentences. While prisons are about punishment and keeping our communities safe, one of the main ways we can keep our prison population down is through rehabilitation, rebuilding lives and reducing reoffending. Does she agree that education is central to that rehabilitation, and will she meet me and Milton Keynes college, the biggest provider of education in prisons, to discuss how we can take it further?

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend is right that, ultimately, one of the long-term solutions to the capacity crisis must be to reduce reoffending; I am just coming on to that point in my speech. I will happily arrange for her to meet the Prisons Minister and I will take a close interest in what is happening in Milton Keynes.

Let us be under no illusion. The measure I have set out today is not a silver bullet. It does not end the prisons crisis. It is not the long-term solution. Instead, it buys us the time we need to take further measures that can address the prisons crisis not just now, but in the future. Later this year, we will publish a 10-year capacity strategy, which will outline the steps that the Government will take to acquire land for new prison sites and will ensure that building prisons—infrastructure that we deem to be of national importance—is a decision placed in a Minister’s hands.

We must also drive down reoffending. Currently, all too often our prisons create better criminals, not better citizens. Nearly 80% of offenders are reoffenders. A stronger Probation Service will be crucial to driving down reoffending, and we will start by recruiting at least 1,000 new trainee probation officers by the end of March 2025, bringing forward an existing commitment to address the immediate challenges we face today. We will also work with prisons to ensure that offenders can get the skills they need to contribute to society on release, as well as bringing together prison governors, local employers and the voluntary sector to help them into work, because we know that having a job makes offenders less likely to reoffend.

The last occupants of 10 Downing Street left our prisons in crisis.

Prison Capacity

Emily Darlington Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank the hon. Member for his question. May I gently say that this is part of the problem? I am not going to get into the specifics of his particular constituency or those particular planning proposals—those proposals are already within the planning system, as the shadow Lord Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Melton and Syston (Edward Argar), alluded to in his remarks—but prisons have to be built in this country. We have to do more building, we have to do it more quickly, and we have rightly said that we will always treat prisons as of national importance. That was actually a change brought in by the previous Government to unlock the delays that they had faced for many years, particularly when concerns were raised by their own Members of Parliament.

We take too long to build any kind of infrastructure in this country. That will not be the approach of this Government, so while I am very happy to consider any proposals that any Members of this House have about specifics in their constituency, the reality is that prisons will always be deemed by this Government to be of national importance, and they will be built.

[Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)]

First, I congratulate my right hon. Friend on her new post, and thank her for reassuring us that this scheme will not apply to sexual violence, domestic abuse and stalking—that will really reassure survivors in my constituency. Will she review how the scheme will affect those with learning disabilities who are in prison without support, and ensure that there is good communication with local councils on the housing of ex-offenders, with early notification that is not on a Friday afternoon?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I welcome my hon. Friend to her place. This change is designed in part to allow probation to do the job that it would normally do when it comes to prisoner releases on licence. We will have an eight-week implementation period; that is one of the big differences between this scheme and the previous Government’s end-of-custody supervised licensing scheme, which was pretty chaotic and opaque. Things moved very quickly, not allowing probation the time to do its job. I am not going to pretend that the eight weeks is ideal, but it is better than where we might have been: it allows the sentencing calculations to be redone and some planning to then happen in the normal way, so that we can make sure that, when those people are released into the community, they have a proper release plan in place. Once we are into the prospective element of the change, I believe that the process will be much smoother, and probation will be able to do a much more effective job of managing those prisoners as they are released into the community.