Access Rights to Grandparents

Nigel Huddleston Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered grandchildren’s access right to their grandparents.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher, and I am grateful for the opportunity to introduce this debate. Since announcing that this debate was happening, I have been inundated with emails, letters and calls from grandparents and grandchildren from across the country expressing their support, and many colleagues from across the House have told me that they have been dealing with cases on this issue for many years. I extend a special thank you to Dame Esther Rantzen and to Jane and Marc Jackson from the Bristol Grandparents Support Group, who first brought the issue to my attention. I thank the Minister, as we have had several conversations about this issue over the past few months.

This is not the first time that this issue has been debated in the House of Commons. A similar debate took place about a year ago. Unfortunately, because of purdah rules close to the election, the then Minister was unable to give the full response that I think he expected to give. A Green Paper was mentioned. I hope that the new Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer)—will be able to give a fuller response today. We will ensure she has time.

As I said in a question to the Prime Minister late last year, divorce and family breakdown can take an emotional toll on all involved, but the family dynamic that is all too often overlooked is that between grandparents and their grandchildren. When access to grandchildren is blocked, some grandparents call it a kind of living bereavement. Unlike some other countries, grandparents in the UK have no automatic rights to see their grandchildren, and vice versa. I count myself lucky that I had a very good relationship with my grandparents when I was growing up—I went on holidays with them and saw them virtually every weekend—but I am well aware that not every family is fortunate enough to have that family dynamic.

The estrangement of grandchildren from grandparents happens for a wide variety of reasons: divorce, bereavement, marital breakdown or just a falling out between family members. However the estrangement has come about, rarely is it anything to do with the grandchildren. That is why I have deliberately worded the motion for the debate today so that the emphasis is on children’s rights as well as those of their grandparents. They are the innocent victims in family breakdown. The loss of the relationship with their grandparents is usually the result of a disagreement among the adults, and the children have had no say and no control over the matter.

[Edward Argar (Charnwood) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, for children going through the trauma and upset of a family breakdown or a divorce, access to grandparents can often provide the stability they really need?

--- Later in debate ---

[Nigel Huddleston]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. I have received volumes of precisely those sorts of comment in the emails sent to me over the past few weeks. It is a compelling point.

Large numbers of children in family breakdowns are left very sad and confused about the sudden loss of contact with their grandparents, which in many cases goes completely and utterly unexplained. The children are then left feeling that they have been unloved by their grandparents or believe that their grandparents simply did not want to see them anymore.

One grandson who was denied contact with his grandparents from the age of 10 said to me,

“as a child, you are powerless to insist that you see your grandparents, however much you may want to. I feel a sense of deep loss, guilt and regret. I truly hope that my grandparents still knew of our love for them, and that we were powerless to do anything.”

Another grandchild referred to their parents’ decision to sever ties with his grandparents after a family disagreement as “an abuse of power”. While grandparents may have friends, partners and support groups to turn to and lean on, young children, as my hon. Friend has said, are often left to deal with the emotional toll of the separation from their grandparents by themselves. The situation undoubtedly also has an impact on the family dynamic and the relationship between the children and their parents.

[John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is speaking passionately. My constituent, Issy Shillinglaw from Tweedbank, has been campaigning outside the Scottish Parliament for many years, every single week, for the law in Scotland to be changed. Does my hon. Friend recognise that the same issue exists in Scotland and that there is also a jurisdictional issue? Sometimes parents move south or north of the border and there is that extra challenge in ensuring access is achieved in different parts of the United Kingdom.

[Nigel Huddleston]

I am pleased that my hon. Friend has raised that point. I focus today on English and Welsh law, but the laws are very similar in Scotland and Northern Ireland. I know that campaigning groups have been set up to argue the same case as we are making in England and Wales. The jurisdiction element causes great confusion, which I hope the Minister will also address.

I have heard horrendous stories about children being put up for adoption despite the grandparents wanting to care for them. They cannot, however, afford the legal costs to pursue the issue through the courts, which I will come on to in a minute. There are cases where grandparents are denied access to their grandchildren for perfectly legitimate reasons and in the best interests of the child, and I am not seeking to block that. Safeguarding children should be paramount. As the Prime Minister said when I raised this issue in Prime Minister’s questions,

“when making a decision about a child’s future, the first consideration must be their welfare”.

She also stated that

“grandparents...play an important role in the lives of their grandchildren.”—[Official Report, 22 November 2017; Vol. 631, c. 1035.]

With this debate, I am trying to draw attention to the growing number of cases where grandparents are denied access to their grandchildren for apparently little or no legitimate reason.

I have focused on the impact of family breakdown on the grandchildren. I turn now to how the breakdown of relationships can impact on the grandparents. As I said earlier, some of the grandparents who have contacted me have said that being cut off from their grandchildren is like a living bereavement. One grandparent poignantly said that the grief does not have

“the closure or finality of death”.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept and agree that time is not a healer? The cases I have dealt with have gone on for decades and the hurt grows rather than diminishes.

[Nigel Huddleston]

I do agree. Unfortunately, in the letters and emails I have received the stories go back years and years, and in some cases decades. They are absolutely heartrending. Many hon. Members will have received similar and seen people in surgeries over the past few years. The length of time is horrendous.

Another common feeling is, of course, guilt. Many grandparents feel that they must have failed their children somehow for the relationship to have deteriorated to such an extent, and they are ashamed that they were not able to hold their family together. One grandfather said:

“I have been to the blackest places you can imagine and felt total despair and loss of confidence in myself as a father.”

Hon. Members could be forgiven for assuming, as I perhaps did when I first started hearing about these cases, that some drastic event must have taken place for family breakdown to have happened, but that is often not the case. Too often, the family rift arises from a simple tiff that snowballs out of control. As one grandfather said,

“there is an inevitable feeling that no one cuts people off for no reason but it can happen for the slightest thing, it doesn’t take a full blown argument, just a wrong word or a badly timed comment”.

Another said that,

“a lot of the time, the grandparents have no idea what the problem is”.

I have heard some truly heartbreaking stories from grandparents detailing how their emotional anguish has led them to consider, and in some cases attempt, suicide. One grandmother who considered suicide said that

“the only thing that stops me is hoping that my daughter will have a change of heart and let me be part of my grandson’s life again”.

Sadly, three grandparents known to the Bristol Grandparents Support Group felt unable to continue their lives without seeing their grandchildren. I was shocked to hear from one grandparent who told me that seven members of their support group had committed suicide.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is right to raise this very important issue. Does he agree that when parents divorce, they do not divorce their children? The law now has a supposition that the parents should both be as involved as possible in their children’s upbringing when cases have to go to court because they cannot be agreed in mediation.

Does my hon. Friend not think that it would be equally appropriate to have a presumption that grandparents should be involved as much as possible in the upbringing of those children, unless—and only unless—there is a problem with the welfare of that child?

--- Later in debate ---

[Nigel Huddleston]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point—he is very knowledgeable about these issues. I will come on later to the asks and the potential resolutions. He has absolutely hit the nail on the head—that is exactly what we need. That also involves safeguarding. I hope the Minister will respond to that point.

That this is a growing issue is evidenced by the growing number of grandparents support groups across the country. One has been recently established in my patch, in Worcestershire. The Bristol Grandparents Support Group has dealt with more than 6,000 grandparents in the 11 years since it was formed. Unfortunately, one experience that many alienated grandparents have in common is that they have sometimes had a visit from the police. I have heard from a number of grandparents who have tried to send birthday cards or Christmas gifts to their grandchildren and found themselves being visited by the police and accused of harassment. As Jane Jackson of the Bristol Grandparents Support Group said,

“grandparents are living in fear that if they drop a present at the door, then officers will come and march them to the cells”.

Of course, genuine cases of stalking or harassment are extremely serious and need to be dealt with accordingly, but it seems that our anti-harassment laws are being used as a weapon in family disputes. I hope the Minister will tell us how we can overcome that.

What can grandparents who have been cut off from their grandchildren do? If appealing directly to the parents’ good will does not work, the first step is to go through mediation. If that does not work, the next step is for grandparents to apply for a child arrangements order. Increasing numbers of grandparents are taking that route. Ministry of Justice stats show that 2,000 grandparents applied for CAOs in 2016, up from just over 1,600 in 2014. Unlike parents, most grandparents must take the additional step of seeking leave of the court before they can even make the application for the order. I know that is not intended to be an obstacle for grandparents, but clearly it is. I urge the Minister to consider introducing an automatic right for grandparents to seek contact through the courts.

As well as being emotionally draining, the whole process can be time-consuming and costly. Some grandparents have told me that they have spent three years and thousands of pounds going through the process. Time is not always on their side, and many are on fixed incomes and are dipping into their savings and pensions to pay for legal costs, as legal aid is rarely available in those cases.

Once a child arrangements order has been granted, enforcement can be an issue. One grandmother told me that she and her husband spent nine months going through the courts, had three court hearings, and were finally granted an order of contact, but as her daughter chose to ignore it, she had still not seen or spoken to her granddaughter.

What else can be done? I am calling for the Government to introduce an amendment to the Children Act 1989, to enshrine in law the child’s right to have a relationship with their grandparents by adding the words “and extended family” or “and any grandparents” to the section on parental involvement in relation to the welfare of the child, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said.

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this debate. As he is aware, on 31 January 2017, my constituent, Lorraine Bushell, held a lobby day here in Parliament. I welcome the right of the child to see their grandparent, but is my hon. Friend aware that such a procedure already exists in France? We can learn from that country and make it happen for our constituents.

[Nigel Huddleston]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. That is a good precedent. Changing the law also changes the culture so that deliberately restricting the access of one family member to another becomes socially unacceptable. The legal change that France has already pursued is very important, as is the social tone that comes with it. That is a very important point.

[Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)]

I, too, am very grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this debate. It is clear from the number of hon. Members here to support him that this issue affects not just his constituents but the constituents of every single Member of Parliament. He mentioned the law. Going through a court process is painful, time-consuming and costly. Will his proposal ensure that families will not have to go through that painful and costly procedure?

[Nigel Huddleston]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that important point. One of the important considerations is the need to ensure that children’s welfare is paramount. Some kind of court action is probably required, but we can make it a hell of a lot easier. I am calling for an amendment to section 1(2A) of the Children Act to provide for the court to presume that the involvement of a grandparent in the life of the child concerned will further the child’s welfare, unless the contrary is shown. It is important to note the phraseology. That kind of amendment would not grant grandparents the right to involvement in the child’s life if a case be made that it would bring harm to the child in question.

[Ross Thomson (Aberdeen South) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this very important debate. I have been supporting constituents in Aberdeen South who have been denied access to their grandchildren, and I have been struck by the role of social media. Facebook posts can be used as a weapon, and grandparents sometimes feel punished by them. Will my hon. Friend join me in calling for UK Government action not just in England and Wales but in Scotland to address these points?

[Nigel Huddleston]

I will indeed stand united with my hon. Friend in calling for similar action in Scotland. This issue affects all nations of the UK, and I hope we can act with one voice.

There are unintended consequences to any change in the law. In the previous debate on this issue, questions were asked about what a change in the law would mean, in terms of clarity about who had the ultimate right over children and grandchildren. The Minister is extremely capable and is surrounded by a very capable team at the MOJ, so I am fairly confident that we can find a form of words that will work. I do not want every single iteration of unintended consequences to prevent us from doing the right thing.

I hope that this debate will raise awareness of the anguish that grandparents and grandchildren across the country feel, and that my brief summary of just a fraction of the cases I have come across demonstrates to the Minister that the status quo is simply not acceptable. I wish to conclude with the words of a grandparent who sent me an email just last night. She very eloquently said:

“My story has been going on for 15 years…The pain I have and still feel is indescribable and affects every aspect of my life…dreading Christmas, Easter, birthdays, mother’s day, summer breaks…all the times when you would hope to see the grandkids. Instead, just pain and heartache—a life sentence. So although at 70 years of age I will probably die before I’m forgiven whatever it is I’ve done, you may be able to help the hundreds of poor souls suffering the same torment.”

I wish to say to that lady that I will indeed do what I can to help, and I call on the Minister to do the same.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nigel Huddleston]

I thank the Minister for that response. Her tone is appreciated across the whole House. I know that she is diligent and that she is looking at a range of things, but I would like this to be quite high on that pile. I am sure she knows I will continue to hassle her until we get a response.

I appreciated several comments the Minister made, in particular the recognition that the system could work better. I recognise that family law is horrendously complex and that therefore there are no easy answers. We will be very willing to work with her and anybody else on ensuring that we look very carefully for any unintended consequences, because we all want to avoid those. We would all love to have a situation where we did not have to have such debates, or to have family breakdowns ending up in court, but the reality is that that does happen, so we have to deal with it. As parliamentarians, we need to ensure that we can help make the processes as easy and painless as possible for all involved.

Finally, I thank many of those in the Public Gallery who are here today, some of whom I know have travelled a considerable distance to be here, and who include representatives from all over the country. I thank them and I thank colleagues. I look forward to making progress on the issue.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered grandchildren’s access right to their grandparents.