International Parental Child Abduction

Lisa Smart Excerpts

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dr Murrison. I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) on securing this important debate. I am very grateful for the opportunity to speak on an issue of such importance to many families across the country and beyond.

Since being elected to this House, I have been approached by constituents whose situations have made it impossible for me to look away. I have met parents who have written to me asking for support so that our legal system will protect them and their children. Some parents have had their children moved by the other parent; others have fled violence. That includes two of my Hazel Grove constituents whom I will not name, because they are going through active legal cases. One of those parents fled Australia, and the other Poland, with their children because of domestic abuse and coercive control from their partners. In one case, the abuse was proven in court and it was so substantial that the other parent’s parents—the grandparents of the children—intervened. They felt that the children should be removed from that country for the safety of the children and this parent. Yet these families have found themselves caught in a legal framework that has not accounted for what they were living through and fleeing.

The 1980 Hague convention on the civil aspects of international child abduction was built on a sound principle: that a child who had been wrongfully removed from their country of habitual residence should be returned promptly. In the vast majority of cases, that is absolutely the right outcome, and the convention has served many thousands of families well over the decades. But the convention was drafted in 1980, and in the intervening 46 years our understanding of domestic abuse and many circumstances that had not been considered in the initial drafting of the legislation has changed enormously.

I am very grateful for the work of the Hague Mothers, who have helped me to understand some of the issues around these cases. They are campaigning to end injustices caused by the 1980 Hague convention on international child abduction, particularly for mothers fleeing domestic abuse. I am also very grateful to constituents who have been to see me—both the “abductor” and the other parent, whose children have been abducted. The convention was originally aimed primarily at abducting fathers and was designed to ensure the quick and safe return of the child. However, there has now been a shift, and about 75% of the parents who are brought before the courts are mothers, with at least 75% of cases involving allegations of domestic abuse. No two families are the same, and no two cases can be identical, but it cannot be beyond the wit of humanity to find a way through with the interests of the children at its heart.

The convention provides three defences against returning a child, one of which is that doing so would expose the child to “a grave risk” of

“physical or psychological harm or otherwise place the child in an intolerable situation.”

On paper, that sounds like an adequate safeguard. In practice, it has not always proven sufficient. If the abuse has been targeted not at the children, but at the other parent, that is where the legal wrangling can come.

It has long been argued—the evidence bears this out—that one of the convention’s most significant shortcomings is that it failed to anticipate that some so-called abductors could be domestic abuse victims fleeing their abusers. A parent—often but not always the mother—who escapes to this country to protect themselves and their children from violence should not find themselves faced with a legal mechanism that treats them as a wrongdoer. Yet that is precisely the situation too many find themselves in.

The challenges do not end there. When a child is taken to a non-convention country, which has not signed up to the Hague framework, the remedies available are even more limited. In those cases, it may be necessary to pursue legal proceedings in the country to which the child has been taken. For any parent, that prospect is daunting.

Under section 1 of the Child Abduction Act 1984, it is a criminal offence for a connected person to take a child out of the UK without the appropriate consent, but there is no equivalent offence when someone takes a child abroad with consent and refuses to return them. That was identified by the Law Commission in 2014 and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead mentioned, it has taken until the Crime and Policing Bill to begin to address it. I welcome the legislation before Parliament to close the loophole, but the delay is worth noting because it has caused real harm to real families.

I also want to raise the situation in Scotland, because the law there operates differently and creates significant disparities in the support available. Due to differences in criminal law, many parents whose children are wrongfully removed from Scotland cannot access the same assistance from the police as those in England and Wales. Police Scotland’s powers to prevent abduction are more limited, and some individual cases demonstrate with painful clarity the human cost of that inconsistency.

I will turn briefly to the family court, because any discussion of international child abduction must acknowledge the domestic legal backdrop against which such cases are heard. A report published last year by the Public Accounts Committee made it plain that family court services were not operating as they should. Regional disparities are wide, waiting times are excessive, and too many children endure prolonged uncertainty when what they need is resolution.

The Liberal Democrats have long called for meaningful reform. We are heartened by the results of the child-focused courts pilot, which saw significantly faster resolution of cases, with the backlog in pilot areas more than halved. The child-centric approach of the courts focused on the best interests of the child, rather than on adversarial process. That is exactly what the family court should embody. We welcome the decision to expand those courts across England and Wales. We will continue to hold the Government to account to ensure that roll-out is effective and that the benefits of the pilot are reproduced nationally.

International abduction cases do not remain neatly within domestic borders; they require international co-operation, diplomatic engagement and, where the Hague convention does not apply, a willingness to pursue legal routes in foreign jurisdictions. The Government should ensure that resources, legal aid and consular support are in place to help families navigate those processes. Too many parents are left to do so without adequate assistance.

The Liberal Democrats are therefore calling for the Crime and Policing Bill’s provisions to close the “consent to retain” loophole to be passed into law without delay. We want a serious review of the disparities between Scotland and the rest of the UK, so that all children receive the same standard of protection. We want to see the expansion of child-focused courts delivered with the rigour and resources needed to realise their potential. We want to see the Government ensure that parents facing international abduction—in particular those fleeing domestic abuse—have access to proper legal support and are not left to navigate complex cross-border legal systems alone.

The law exists to protect children, and when a child is taken from a parent, or when a parent is forced to flee violence with a child in tow, our legal framework should be capable of reaching the right outcome. That means being honest about the limits of international conventions, updating domestic law where it has fallen behind, and ensuring that the family courts are fit for purpose.