Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords]

Louise Haigh Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 12th December 2018 Commons Chamber

This is an important matter, but I hope that the House will not be lured into setting an undue restriction that, with every respect to the intentions of the hon. Member for Bolton South East, could give the impression that Parliament did not trust the independence of the judiciary, because that would certainly not be correct, or that it sought needlessly to circumscribe the way in which judges operate their courts. It is fundamental that we as party politicians—that is effectively what virtually all of us are—should not interfere in the way in which judges organise their workload and the staffing of the courts. As well as being impractical and unhelpful, that could also set an undesirable precedent in which Parliament, as well as setting the statutory framework in which judges operate, sought to delve too closely into the control of the everyday operations of an independent judiciary and court system.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

I rise briefly to speak in favour of the amendments tabled by my Front-Bench colleagues. I believe that safeguards need to be in place to ensure that people are properly qualified to make decisions and particularly that contentious decisions should be reviewed by a qualified judge. I want explicitly to address concerns about how this might transpire in the family courts. Several of my hon. Friends raised the concern in Committee that the family courts could be the most affected by potential delays and the perverse consequences of the measures in the Bill.

This is particularly relevant given the recent exposure of the case of Sammy Woodhouse. I am sure that colleagues will be well aware of her case. I know that the Minister is, and I am grateful to her for meeting Sammy and me last week. Mr Speaker also welcomed Sammy to Prime Minister’s questions last week. Her bravery in putting herself forward, in risking being held in contempt of the family court and in waiving her anonymity to speak about her experiences, so that we in this place can drive change, is inspiring. We owe it to her and to the many other survivors to ensure that we drive change and ensure that what happened to her and to too many other young women and girls never happens again.

Those young women and girls were failed by the state. They were failed by our legal system, by the police, by the Crown Prosecution Service, by local authorities and by government at every level, and now they are being failed yet again by our legal system. Our entirely permissive system, which allows anyone to make an application through the family courts, means that men who have been convicted of rape—in Sammy’s case, the father of her child, Arshid Hussain, is serving a 35-year prison sentence—can apply to the courts for access or visitation rights. Sammy’s case shocked the nation, but unfortunately it was not unique. Just yesterday, I spoke to another woman who had to respond and attend court after the man who was convicted of raping her and fathering her child had applied through the family courts from prison.

This could be prevented through a simple ban on any man convicted of fathering a child through rape applying to the family courts. I know that the Government are reluctant to bring this forward, out of concern for the convicted rapist’s article 8 right to a family life, but I am afraid that that simply is not good enough. I will always defend our human rights as enshrined in the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European convention on human rights—I say this on the day of the 70th anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights—but article 8 is a qualified right and not one that should override the rights of women and children and their safety. Surely, we should be starting from the presumption that if a child has been conceived through rape, the man should have no parental rights to that child and that we should allow such rights only in exceptional circumstances, not the other way round.

When I speak to victims of rape and survivors of child sexual exploitation in situations such as Sammy’s—women who have an almost uniformly terrible experience of the family courts—their feeling is one of betrayal and despair that every day is a battle in which they have to fight for their most basic rights. They are often forced to relive their traumatic experiences and justify themselves over and over, yet they are so often told about the rights of the men who have abused them and who can now click their fingers and drag their victims back through the courts to traumatise them all over again. Women such as Sammy, who have already given evidence, spoken out in criminal trials and been to hell and back, should not then live the rest of their lives trying to bring their children up in horrendously difficult circumstances with the threat of being dragged back through the courts once again to face the man who raped them. It may be the case that no judge would allow such access in any circumstances, but it is surely intolerable for women in this situation to have to face the man in court all over again, and I believe that we as a Parliament should make that crystal clear.

The family procedure rule committee met earlier this week to discuss the consequences of Sammy’s case and to consider amending practice direction 12C. I hope that the committee will be able to bring much greater clarity, but this is likely to be in relation to local authorities’ duty to notify in the case of a care order. That will not solve the problem, and I worry that, combined with the measures introduced in the Bill, it could bring greater uncertainty to the process and leave victims with even greater uncertainty and fear that their abusers might be able to weaponise the courts against them. As I have said, I am grateful to the Minister for meeting Sammy and me last week, but we were both really disappointed that the Government were not willing to take more immediate action to address this thoroughly intolerable situation. I hope that the Minister will be able to update the House on what action they have now considered and on the implications of the Bill for this important issue.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Lucy Frazer)]

It is an honour to take this Bill through its final stages. I should like to start by addressing some of the key points raised today by the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi). She suggested that we were sneaking the Bill through the House. However, it was introduced seven months ago. Not only that, but it forms part of the Prisons and Courts Bill, which was introduced in this House in 2017 and which fell at the general election. The provisions in this Bill have been well known for some time. They have been debated in this House, and they are not being sneaked anywhere at all. The thrust of the hon. Lady’s speech was that this is a Bill about cuts, but it is certainly not. The Bill is part of our £1 billion court reform programme.