Parents: Separation

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I first thank the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for tabling this short debate. As my noble friend Lord Davies said, it has been a very interesting and well-informed debate. Secondly, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, for facilitating my recent visit to Bournemouth, where I saw the pathfinder project in action. I remind noble Lords that I sit as a family magistrate, a youth magistrate and an adult magistrate.

The family court system has experienced large case backlogs, delays and issues with judicial capacity for several years now. This includes delays for families and children involved in private law disputes. According to the Government’s latest family court statistics, there were 12,566 new private law applications made to court under the Children Act 1989 in October to December 2023. This was a decrease of 1% when compared to the equivalent quarter of 2022. These new applications involved 18,758 children and it took an average of 46 weeks for private law cases to be closed during this quarter. I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, said: this should be reduced to the public law limit of 26 weeks. That, of course, is a desirable aspiration.

The Government’s LASPO Act signalled the death-knell for family mediation. In 2012-13, there were 31,000 mediation assessment meetings and 14,000 mediation starts. By 2016-17, those figures had fallen to 13,000 and 7,700, which are reductions of 61% and 44% respectively. In 2021, cuts to legal aid led to more people representing themselves in the family courts. From 2013 to 2020, the percentage of cases where neither party had a legal representative almost trebled, increasing from 13% to 36%.

Before applying to court, parents are legally required by the Children and Families Act 2014 to prove that they have considered mediation. Parents can prove this either by demonstrating they have attended a mediation information assessment meeting, or MIAM, with a family mediator, or by showing the court they are exempt from mediation—for example, where domestic violence is involved. It is widely known that long-term conflict between separating parents can have a devastating impact on children’s well-being. The trauma has been linked to increased rates of anxiety, aggression and depression, and other serious consequences.

In January 2024, the Government announced new measures to seek to protect children from the impact of lengthy courtroom battles and had a consultation on their proposals. The consultation respondents said that a lack of free legal advice on family law was a barrier to early dispute resolution. To address this, the Government set out various actions they were taking to ensure that the court process remained a last resort when family disputes arose. This included launching a free family law legal advice pilot in specific regions of England and Wales by this summer, 2024, to see if this could assist families to resolve their disputes earlier. The legal advice pilot will be launched to help families agree child arrangements as quickly as possible, addressing barriers to early resolution. I hope the Minister will be able to update us on when this pilot is going to start.

There is also work with Cafcass, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, to help more families undertake in-court parenting programmes earlier in the court process, as well as making pre-court parenting programmes the norm for families trying to reach an agreement over child arrangements. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, spoke to these alternative approaches, in what was a very well informed contribution to the debate.

The role that mediators can play would be bolstered through improved domestic abuse screening and advanced DBS checks, meaning they have the right to vetting and can support children earlier in the process. This, alongside the existing mediation voucher scheme, which has already helped nearly 25,000 families, will mean more couples can resolve their issues without ever reaching court. I ask the Minister for an update on the voucher scheme and for his response to the proposal by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and her committee to have a wider range of courses which may be accessed through the voucher scheme. Again, I thought that was an imaginative proposal which needs serious consideration.

The Government stated that, for those who end up going through the court process, there has been the Pathfinder pilot scheme, which, as I mentioned, I visited in Bournemouth. I know it is being rolled out further, in Cardiff and Birmingham. It will be very interesting to see how beneficial it is in Birmingham, which is perhaps the most analogous city to London, if the rollout is to go further. I have some statistics from my recent visit to Bournemouth, and I have to say that they are very impressive. They show a large drop in the number of fact-finding hearings between 2022 and 2023. They show a large drop in the number of court reviews, Cafcass reviews and returns, which is where the arrangements break down and the matter comes back to court. The message I got from my visit to the Bournemouth court was that, by Cafcass doing its work early and getting the voice of the child in the report early, it speeds up the whole process. Speeding up the process means that the arrangements are more likely to stick and to be sustainable. The Government have obviously seen the same statistics, and it is right that they are rolling this out. Cafcass really bears the brunt of this improved process, and I hope that there will be money available for it for this process to be rolled out further.

I turn to noble Lords who have spoken in the debate. I recognise the work that the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, has done on family hubs. That is welcome in as far as it goes, and I listened with great interest to what he said.

I listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, who has great experience—I would say unparalleled in this House—on these matters. She spoke about seeing scales fall from the eyes of parents when she sat in on various programs. I think it must have been a separated parents information program—she is nodding her head. I have done that program as well; it was part of my original training. I have to say that, although I have seen and heard about the same thing, unfortunately what I see in court is where it has not worked, and the battle lines are more entrenched. Although we try to break down those battle lines, nevertheless some couples, unfortunately, want to fight their battles in the court. I recognise the point she made about the influence of Sir James Munby and Sir Andrew McFarlane, and how they want to try to keep private law cases resolved outside court where possible. That is very often a better way.

I remember the speech the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, gave a number of years ago during the passage of the then Domestic Abuse Bill and her very compelling advocacy for the importance of parental alienation. I have to be frank here. I hear these accusations in court fairly regularly, and as a lay magistrate I send them up to a higher level of judiciary. This is a fraught and very difficult subject. It needs to be handled with a great deal of care, and—I will use the word—a little scepticism. I can see the noble Baroness shaking her head, but we have these allegations made fairly frequently and we have to find an appropriate way of dealing with them.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby spoke about the Church of England Commission. One recommendation she spoke about was the need for child-appropriate information to be made available. I do not know whether she is aware, but Cafcass runs a children’s group which informs children going through the process. They are extremely impressive young people; they have presented to family magistrates more than once. It is a very good way of informing children, by other children who have been through the process.

This has been an interesting debate. My noble friend Lord Davies raised an interesting point on pensions. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the questions raised.