Family Court Reform and CAFCASS

Debate between Jim Shannon and Taiwo Owatemi

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Lady is right to bring this debate forward and to highlight the disadvantages of legal aid. Does she agree that when it comes to ensuring that every person in this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has the same opportunity of representation, the Government must step in to support those people who do not have money and cannot pay for the legal representation to which they are entitled? That should happen not only in England and Wales; the Minister should endeavour to have discussions with the devolved Administrations in Northern Ireland and Scotland so that people there have the same legal aid opportunities.

[Taiwo Owatemi]

Absolutely. Proper legal representation needs to be available to everyone in the United Kingdom.

The large backlogs in the family court are creating delays and uncertainty for families and, most alarmingly of all, for vulnerable children. No child should have to witness this sort of conflict, anger and grief played out before a judge. The children caught up in these cases are now suffering as a result of constant failings in leadership from Ministers in this Government.

The most damning aspect of our family court system is false accusations of parental alienation. Too often, as my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) says, a wealthy parent can, in effect, purchase custody of a child through certain legal loopholes. Denounced by the United Nations as a “regressive pseudo-theory”, parental alienation is an argument whereby one parent claims that another is making false abuse claims or is otherwise manipulating the child’s view out of hostility towards their ex-partner. The concept has little to no evidence to support it, but is none the less often accepted, resulting in children being placed with an abusive parent.

I pay tribute to the team at the University of Manchester, whose recent research has revealed the dark and rotten roots of that commonly employed tactic. It was invented 40 years ago as a means of aiding perpetrators to cover up the physical and sexual violence to which they had subjected their spouses and children, yet in Britain the strategy is being given free rein in our family courts. Not only are utterly unqualified individuals being allowed to testify as supposed experts in such cases, but CAFCASS has overseen the rise in such false allegations.

I have spoken with many constituents about their treatment by the family courts. One case summarises everything that is wrong with CAFCASS: the dangers of parental alienation and the risks posed by a blind insistence on contact even when a parent is evidently unfit to have any responsibility over a child. My constituent married a foreign national a decade ago. They had one son, who is now eight years old. Until recently, he was being brought up by his mother in the comfort of a loving, caring home alongside his extended family. Having had the courage to escape the sexual and physical domestic abuse inflicted by her ex-husband, my constituent was granted sole custody of her son. Occasional contact with the father was enforced by the court and complied with by my constituent, despite the clear distress that those sessions caused to the child, yet, when the arrangements broke down, the father was able to launch false alienation proceedings against his ex-wife to remove the boy from her custody. That was supported every step of the way by CAFCASS. He has now succeeded in depriving my constituent of her only child, despite the rigorous investigations by social services at Coventry City Council that concluded that she was an exemplary mother.

Thanks to the deeply imbedded pro-contact culture of CAFCASS, long since identified but allowed to run unreformed for years, an eight-year-old boy is now in the clutches of a man who beat and sexually assaulted my constituent throughout their marriage. Despite mountains of evidence proving his unfitness to have custody of the child, everything was pushed and CAFCASS took his side, placing the blame on the boy’s mother.

What is perhaps most concerning is that despite the child’s distress, a litany of domestic abuse and the detailed reports compiled by Coventry City Council in support of my constituent’s parenting were all cast aside in the family courts. Deploying parental alienation allegations as his chief legal tactic, the boy’s father has now won sole custody, leaving my constituent utterly bereft.

New Developments on Green-belt Land

Debate between Jim Shannon and Taiwo Owatemi

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of new developments on greenbelt land.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary, and I thank every single Member and my hon. Friends who have chosen to participate in this important debate and represent their constituents’ concern. The impact of new development being imposed on our treasured green belt is a burning issue for many of my constituents in Coventry North West, so I welcome this opportunity to highlight their frustrations.

From Eastern Green to Allesley, Keresley and Holbrooks, communities in my constituency have seen vital green spaces lost to new housing developments in recent years, with more of our local green belt threatened with the same fate if we do not change course. Campaigners in Coventry want to see a bold change of direction concerning planning and development policy, so I hope that securing this debate will force the Government to listen and take note.

I want to start by examining the process by which houses are built and how it favours big developers, who are not accountable to local communities and often ignore local housing needs. We all know that Britain has long faced a housing crisis. Waiting lists for social housing continue to grow to record lengths, while home ownership in the UK has fallen to 65%, with many struggling to get on to the housing ladder. It is a plight that stretches across all our constituencies, and it has been left unaddressed by the Conservative Government for over a decade. The Government have also failed to introduce any meaningful reforms to planning and development since I became the MP for Coventry North West in 2019. Serious change in this area is long overdue. The lack of action means that we are left living in a planning and development free-for-all, and the impact on our local communities is clear for all to see.

As things stand, it is private developers who hold the balance of power. They decide which type of houses are built, where they are built and the prices that they are sold for. They are not accountable to anyone but themselves—not to communities, not to local people, not to local government and not even to national Government. For years, my constituents have told me that the current planning rules are not fit for purpose. They serve developers’ greed and do nothing to allow local voices and those most impacted by new development to be heard.

We need to be able to hold developers to account. Developers will claim that they are helping to fix Britain’s housing crisis by building new developments, but the truth is that until they start listening to the needs of local people, they will only make the problem worse. Indeed, the new Prime Minister’s suggestion that we should simply hand more power to property developers risks permanently changing our communities. The voices of residents and their elected representatives will be virtually wiped out of the planning process if the Prime Minister ignores their objections and presses ahead with these changes.

But is it any wonder that this Conservative Prime Minister wants to hand even greater power to wealthy developers when property developers were responsible for 20% of all donations—more than £60 million—to the Conservative party between 2010 and 2020? While Conservatives in Coventry conveniently pretend to care about saving our green belt from development, the same political party is lining its pockets with donations from the very housing developers that they claim to be standing up to. This is unacceptable. We need our Government to stand up for local people, not those seeking to maximise their profits at the expense of our precious green belt.

Our planning system is completely broken, and the answer cannot be to hand more power to a few greedy developers. Instead, a complete overhaul is required, with local communities and local government in the driving seat. That way, they can set the direction of travel concerning new development in their neighbourhoods, delivering affordable homes for families exactly where we need them.

A survey of my constituents that I carried out recently unsurprisingly revealed that a clear majority wanted more affordable homes to be built in Coventry, but that they wanted those homes to be built on the existing brownfield sites across the city instead of on our treasured green spaces. The survey also showed that residents were overwhelmingly against any proposed changes to planning laws that would make building on green belt easier. A majority of residents were also worried that the rule changes would mean local people had even less say when a new development was proposed where they live. I call on the Government to take action to ensure developers are accountable to local people, communities and elected representatives.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing this debate, and I apologise for the fact that I will not be here later on, because I have another thing to go to. Does she agree that in urban and rural development, as with much in life, there is a delicate balance to be found? Current planning does not find the common-sense balance, and community planning takes a back seat to the interpretation of the law. We need to ensure that future planning is flexible enough to protect both urban and rural development, and that communities have a full say in what happens. I know the rules are different in Northern Ireland, but in many cases back home I find that local people do not have the input that they should.

[Taiwo Owatemi]

The hon. Member makes an important point, and he is absolutely right that local people need to be able to have a local say on developments in their area. Developers should not be dictating to people in Coventry North West, who have often lived in the area for generations, what is in their best interests.

I will take a moment to look at the statistics, which are often used to estimate how many homes should be built and where. With the 38 new investment zones that have recently been announced, Whitehall is taking more and more control over the planning processes in our towns and cities. This approach is often predicted using census projections, but in Coventry the predictions have turned out to be way off. Our population has not grown anywhere near as quickly as was anticipated. The Office for National Statistics estimated Coventry’s population would be over 379,000, but recently released census results show that our city’s population actually stands at just 345,000—more than 30,000 less than predicted. This means that green-belt land may be torn up unnecessarily for houses that are not actually needed. It is now clear that the Government projections were plain wrong, and that top-down imposed house building targets are widely inaccurate.

The outcome in Coventry is that some of the most beautiful green spaces in my constituency have been needlessly taken away from green belt and allocated for house building instead. The figures do not stack up. For the short term, I would like to see a halt to building on any green-belt land around Coventry while accurate figures are calculated. I have repeatedly joined campaigners across Coventry in calling for these figures to be reviewed, but our pleas are falling on deaf ears. The Government have refused to take any action to remedy the situation, so the decimation of our green belt is poised to continue. Plans are still ongoing to build new developments that few people want. An overwhelming 92% of residents who took part in my survey thought that those elected to represent them on the city council must have a proper say on new development proposals in our city, but local government has little power over the matter.

HS2

Debate between Jim Shannon and Taiwo Owatemi

Monday 13th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Taiwo Owatemi]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that point. I will come on to connectivity later in my speech. However, I have my own reservations about HS2. As somebody whose constituency contains woodlands at risk of increased pollution from HS2, I harbour concerns about the environmental damage that the railway will bring locally. I therefore intend to use my remaining time to expand on the petitioners’ key contentions, which beg the question: should the Government continue to fund HS2’s construction?

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

There is no direct advantage for my constituents in Northern Ireland. However, if the Government follow their levelling-up process, suppliers in Northern Ireland should have a chance to feed into the process. Does the hon. Lady agree that, when the Minister replies, there should be a commitment to jobs in Northern Ireland?

[Taiwo Owatemi]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that point. I know he is a champion for his constituents in Northern Ireland.

There are many reasons to be vocal about the benefits of HS2 if it is built as initially promised. In many ways HS2 should be a green and environmentally friendly new railway. It should present an important asset in achieving net zero carbon in the UK, creating an alternative to an emission-heavy mode of transport. By shifting more commuters to rail travel, not only will carbon emissions be 76% lower than those of an internal flight, but it would compete on journey time and cost.