Child Arrangements: Presumption of Parental Involvement

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Marie Tidball (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the presumption of parental involvement in child arrangements.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. There must be urgent reform of the presumption of parental involvement in child arrangements, known in law as presumption of contact, on the basis of evidence and principle, and to ensure that children’s voices are at the heart of our family courts.

The de facto common law principle of presumption of contact was legislated for in the Children and Families Act 2014, which inserted sections 1(2A) and (2B) into the Children Act 1989. That legal principle means that parents should always be given contact with their children, even in circumstances where there is a known domestic abuser.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for raising this massive issue—well done for bringing it forward. In the world we live in, it is always the most innocent—the children—who suffer the greatest in a family breakdown. Does she agree that we must do more to ensure that, where there are doubts about safety, we should utilise supervised parental visits? Getting this right is an essential part of the battle against violence against women and children.

[Dr Tidball]

I certainly agree. To illustrate why, I want hon. Members to imagine a school night with a child being repeatedly asked by his father if he had completed his homework. The child replied in an exasperated tone, “Yes.” His dad stepped towards him with his fists ready to punch him. The boy’s mum stepped into the space between the fist and her son, and pushed him out of its way. The full force of that fist hit her so hard that she was spun round and fell down the stairs, bruising her arms, legs and back. From the top of the stairs, the child’s father shouted to his son, “Look what you made me do.” Imagine the same boy being driven to tears after his father made his brother eat peas until he was sick. The boy’s mother left her husband, taking the children with her.

Imagine a scene, six months later, where the father barricaded a Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service officer in her office for 15 minutes. Social services were aware that that same father had made statements that he was capable of killing. Then imagine that, despite knowing all that, a family court permitted the father of those two boys five hours’ unsupervised contact per week. Claire Throssell, my constituent, does not need to imagine that nightmare. She and her two sons, Jack and Paul Sykes, lived it.