Family Justice System: Domestic Abuse and Safeguarding

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) for securing this debate on domestic abuse and safeguarding within the family justice system. Members in the Chamber will not be alone in having regularly encountered this issue in constituency casework. I expect all MPs across the House have constituents who are struggling with these issues, and perhaps even they are in their private lives.

This subject demands seriousness, sensitivity and honesty from all of us. Behind every statistic in this debate are children living in fear, survivors trying to rebuild their lives and families navigating court processes at moments of enormous stress and vulnerability. For too many people, the family justice system is not an abstract institution; it is the place they have to go to where decisions are made that will shape their safety, their relationships with their children and often the trajectory of their lives for years to come. That is why getting the system right matters so much.

As we have heard, domestic abuse is present in 73% of active family court proceedings and 87% of closed cases. One in five children in the UK experience some form of domestic abuse, and 78% of those children are directly harmed by the perpetrator. Those are sobering figures, and they remind us that domestic abuse is not something that exists separately from family justice proceedings.

We also know that children are too often affected directly by failures of the system. According to Women’s Aid, over the last 30 years 67 child deaths have been linked to unsafe contact arrangements, with 19 having occurred since 2016. When we discuss safeguarding in family courts, we are discussing not peripheral procedural matters, but the core responsibility of the state to protect vulnerable people—women, children and also men.

I want to acknowledge the work of survivors, campaigners and charities who have driven progress in this area through their extraordinary courage and persistence. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Wokingham for bringing representatives from Kaleidoscopic UK, who I understand are attending the debate. I would be grateful to catch up with them afterwards, if that is possible. Many other groups and individuals work in this area. For example, I recently worked with Paula and Tony Hudgell and their MP, my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and Malling (Helen Grant), to secure the establishment of the child cruelty register, so that parents and other individuals who commit child cruelty offences are monitored and tracked in the same way that child sex offenders are.

The Opposition also supported the Government’s measures to restrict the parental responsibility of serious child sex offenders. During the passage of that legislation, we successfully argued, alongside others, that the provisions should go further than was originally proposed. They would only have applied to parents who perpetrated offences against their own children, but with Members across the House, we persuaded the Government to change that to those who commit offences against all children. We agreed that, on balance, a threshold of “serious offences” was the suitable way to go, but that if that worked well and was effective, we should consider lowering that threshold. Why should anyone who commits any sort of offence against a child not automatically have to argue for their own parental responsibility?

It is important to recognise the work that was undertaken by the previous Government, which others have mentioned. In particular, the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 recognised as victims in their own right children who see, hear or experience the effects of domestic abuse. Dame Nicole Jabobs and others long advocated for those changes, and the Act made victims automatically eligible for special measures in court. Those changes and others reflect society’s growing understanding in recent decades of the importance of confronting and tackling domestic abuse and abuse of children.

The previous Government also commissioned the harm panel review in 2020, which was an expert-led review into how family courts handle domestic abuse and serious offences. We launched a review into the presumption of parental contact, and we piloted the pathfinder model, now the child-focused model, to improve information sharing, increase judicial continuity and ensure that children’s voices are heard more effectively throughout proceedings. Alongside that, we invested £3.3 million in the mediation voucher scheme, helping thousands of families to resolve disputes outside the courtroom where it is appropriate and safe to do so. There is still room for mediation and other measures to reduce the burden on our courts and save them for the most complicated and difficult cases.

Last year, the independent “Everyday Business” review painted a deeply worrying picture of how survivors often experience family court proceedings. Survivors described feeling that their abuse was minimised or treated as secondary to maintaining contact arrangements. Judges and magistrates identified serious pressures on them arising from limited court time, delays and lack of continuity. Only 21% of cases reportedly had judicial continuity—a striking figure that shows that even when cases as complex as these go through the court process, we cannot rely on a single judge seeing them through from start to finish.

The report also highlighted siloed working between different parts of the system. In many cases, there are overlapping criminal and family proceedings, yet delays and backlogs can mean that family courts proceed before criminal matters are resolved. That can have a huge impact. If an individual subsequently receives a criminal conviction, that may well unpick and call into question the original rulings.

These are not easy issues to solve. I recognise all of the work done and the arguments made by campaigners, but legislating in this area is incredibly challenging because the dynamics of families, particularly those experiencing breakdown, are very complex. There are also strongly held views in different organisations on, for example, the presumption of parental involvement and how family courts should approach contact arrangements.

Many campaigners argue that abuse has historically been minimised in decision making. In too many cases that is true, but whatever view people take, there should be broad agreement on one central principle: safeguarding and child welfare must come first. That includes ensuring that professionals throughout the system are properly trained to understand the dynamics of domestic abuse. Women’s Aid has argued that we need not just legislative reform but a wider cultural shift across the family justice system. There is real substance to that argument, because even the best legislation will fall short if victims feel that they are not listened to, believed, or welcomed and facilitated to participate. I will be grateful if the Minister says more about how the Government intend to deliver cultural change in practice.

I also want to talk about accountability. We have heard discussion of the Sara Sharif case. I have mentioned in the House before that I first encountered these issues as an MP through an amazing lady, a constituent of mine, who was fostering a young girl who had been removed from her family on a temporary basis. The wider family did not want that young girl to be given back contact with her immediate family, the foster carer did not think it was a good idea, and social services did not think it was a good idea—but the judge awarded custody back to her parents.

That young girl is now in a wheelchair. She is highly dependent and severely disabled. The exceptional individual I mentioned went on to adopt her in those circumstances, which is one of the most noble things I have ever seen anybody do. She approached me because she was aware of all the mechanisms of accountability that everybody else in the system has to go through, particularly teachers and social services. She simply wanted to know what accountability was available for the judge. I wrote to the Lady Chief Justice and said, “Obviously, you can’t comment on this case, but what are the systems, for a case like this where things have gone badly wrong, for a judge to have to account for the decisions they have taken?” There are none, outside of complaints about extreme behaviour, which none of us would consider to really test the issues, or if the judge makes a legal error, for which the threshold is, again, really high.

I think we have a lot to do. Certainly, in the Conservative party we are working on how we can introduce much more accountability in the judiciary—not to make them accountable to the Government, because the separation of the judiciary and the Government is very important. I draw on my experience as a doctor; we have done loads to improve the accountability of highly trained, highly specialist medical professionals who we would not want the state interfering with. It is simply about ensuring they are not a law unto themselves when it comes to making poor decisions. Previously, the test was pretty much whether a doctor had made a decision that any other doctor thought was reasonable. Now, the test is much more about whether that decision was objectively reasonable.

I also want to touch on the pathfinder courts. As we have heard, 10 of 43 courts have now been implemented. I would like to understand the Government’s timetable for the very welcome decision to roll them out more widely. The Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter), talked about the interdependencies around access to specialist services to make that a reality. I think requesting a timetable is not asking too much of the Minister.

Those are important things that we are all in agreement on, but at the same time this Government are taking what I think are catastrophic decisions in relation to the justice system. The Government have legislated for perpetrators of domestic abuse as serious as rape, child abuse, stalking and harassment—very many offences—to get out of prison earlier. Right now, there are people in prison for the rape of their partner, or sexual offences against their own children, who will get out of prison earlier because of the steps that this Government have taken. I will continue to press that matter with them, whatever else they are doing that is positive. People go to the court system because they want justice, and seeing rapists being let out early is not justice. That is something the Government should continue to reflect on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Mullan]

It is all very well to send people on training. As a doctor, I have sat in on training sessions. People can be in a training seminar together, and some will pay attention and some will not. Some will take it seriously, and some will not. If there is not a system of accountability at the other end, training can become a tick-box exercise if we are not careful.

[Catherine Atkinson]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. Of course, as he set out, we always need to be mindful of long-established principles of judicial independence in these matters. However, ensuring that we have the right training in place will go a long way towards ensuring that we have the family courts that we need, and towards ensuring that we have effective systems in place.

Collectively, these reforms represent a large body of work. We want to make sure there is clarity on what we are doing, which is why the Ministry of Justice is working with the Department for Education and partners across the family justice system to draft the family justice strategy. The strategy will be published later this year, and it will set out the Government’s plans to improve the family justice system, reduce court delays and ensure that all families get the support and the outcomes they need.

Alongside that, we must ensure that we support all victims of abuse to recover and rebuild their lives. Over £1 billion is being invested over the next three years to support victims of violence against women and girls, including domestic abuse survivors. That includes funding for safe accommodation, advocacy, counselling and specialist services. In particular, my Department is increasing funding for victim support services, year on year, from 2026 to 2029, recognising the need to meet the rising cost pressures of delivery.

[Dr Mullan]

I have asked the Minister about this before, and she did not answer. Maybe I will get an answer this time. One thing she might set those additional support services to do is let people know when perpetrators will get out of prison earlier because of the Government’s decisions. Can she at least commit to writing to victims to let them know in advance that their perpetrator is going to be let out of prison earlier?

[Catherine Atkinson]

Communication is absolutely essential, and a huge amount of work is being done to ensure it is in place. I am proud to be building on the work of my predecessor in that space. In relation to victim support services, it is important that, in total, the Ministry of Justice will invest £550 million in support services over the next three years of the spending review.

Many hon. Members raised the incredible and essential work that so many support services do. I thank Kaleidoscopic UK for being here, and for its work. Many other services were mentioned, including Your Sanctuary, IDAS, Glasgow Women’s Aid and Women’s Aid more broadly, Rights of Women and Refuge. I pay tribute to the work they do and the difference they make to people’s lives.

I hope my remarks have reassured the hon. Member for Wokingham and all hon. Members who spoke in this vital debate. I thank him for securing a debate on such an important subject. We all share a deep commitment to safeguarding victims of domestic abuse, to ensuring that they are fully protected and supported, and to making sure that the family courts cannot be used as an arena for perpetrators to continue their horrific acts.

The Government will continue to press forward with our reforms to the family courts. We will continue to work with operational partners, the courts and all the many groups that do vital work to support victims and protect children and families, and to make those important changes. The hon. Member said that children are at the centre of this, and I agree. They must be our focus, and they always will be.