Victims and Prisoners Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Oliver Heald Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th July 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Ellie Reeves]

I have spoken to countless people about this situation and frankly, when I say that a dad can retain from his prison cell parental responsibility when he has killed the kids’ mum, they look aghast. They cannot make sense of it; it does not make sense. That is why this new clause is so important.

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

I understand the general point that the hon. Lady is making. Surely there are powers in social services and in the courts to completely remove the parental responsibility in question here. Is that not something that should be exercised? Can the hon. Lady not imagine also that there could be a case where a mother who had been brutalised over a period lost control or perhaps just defended herself so vigorously that it became a manslaughter? In circumstances such as those, we could imagine that the mother’s parents might be looking after the child and she might want to see school reports.

[Ellie Reeves]

In relation to the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s first point, yes, families can go through the family court to get a special guardianship order. I will say a bit more about that later. However, it puts the onus on the victims’ families to go through protracted, costly and often opaque family law processes for that to happen. That can take years.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Or social services.

[Ellie Reeves]

But parental responsibility remains, so while that goes on, the dad still has a say.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Well, it is an urgent case.

[Ellie Reeves]

But they are not heard urgently; it takes years, as in the case of Jade Ward and other survivors and families I have spoken to.

In relation to the second point, I will go on to speak about how those people are specifically protected. Under the new clause, those convicted of manslaughter with a defence of loss of control or diminished responsibility and who at the time of the offence were subjected to coercive or controlling behaviour by the person they killed would not be caught, as there is specific carve-out. I will talk a little more about that as I go on, but I want to end what I was saying about Jade Ward by paying tribute to her family in highlighting the situation and trying to stop other families from facing the suffering they have faced.

I now want to talk about Mumtahina Jannat, known as Ruma, as her case also outlines the injustice that is occurring. Ruma was murdered by her violent ex-husband. On hearing the news, Ruma’s niece, the renowned children’s author Onjali Raúf, went straight to the house to find the children, but they had already been taken straight from school into foster care. She was not allowed to know where the children were or to make contact with them, while from his jail cell the killer was given the phone number of the foster parent and allowed to make contact with them, sending them letters. That is despite the fact that Ruma turned to Onjali and her mother for help when she fled with her children to a refuge five years earlier. Onjali said:

“We saw those kids every other day…Our home was a refuge for them. We would watch films with them and take them on holiday. They were part of our family…We didn’t see the children for over a year. After we were finally reunited with them, they asked us questions that gave us hints about the lies they were being told in those letters. Lies that tried to justify his murder of their mother…That youthful confidence was sucked out of them. And of course they had trouble trusting us again—why would they?”

Commenting on the current situation, Onjali said:

“Until it happens to you, you don’t know how broken the system is…You don’t know it’s geared towards this violent person, who has all the protections and all the rights…There’s no justice. ‘Justice’ isn’t the right name for this system.”

For Onjali’s family, new clause 21, which would change the law on parental responsibility, would be a step towards justice.

There is a school of thought that says that children always benefit from contact with their parent, but that is contrary to the available evidence. I met with Diane Clarke, whose mother was killed in 1978 when Diane was just 10 years old. Her father was charged with murder, which he denied, although he admitted manslaughter. He was sentenced at Birmingham Crown court to just three years in prison.

When her father was released, Diane was sent to live with him. She told me that at the time she felt that that was what she wanted, yearning for a normal family set-up, but as a child she did not recognise the domestic abuse she had witnessed for what it was or that she had been groomed by her dad to disrespect her mum. Only now, as an adult, does she realise the further harm inflicted on her by this living arrangement. She says that she realised she lived in fear that she would anger him and he would kill her too. Let us be clear: this was not an irrational fear, given that he had already killed someone he claimed to love.

New clause 21 would deliver protections for cases such as Diane’s, as it contains provisions for those convicted of voluntary manslaughter to have their parental responsibility suspended. That is necessary, as so many cases of domestic homicide result in a manslaughter rather than a murder conviction. This is often despite long histories of domestic abuse featuring in these cases.

Take, for example, the case of Joanna Simpson. She was killed by her estranged husband, Robert Brown, in 2010. The attack began when Brown was returning their two children, aged nine and 10, after a half term visit. Brown used a hammer he had packed in the children’s bag and bludgeoned Joanna repeatedly. He then put her body in the car with the children in it and took her to the site of a pre-dug grave, where he buried her. Joanna’s friends and family all describe the killing as taking place in the context of long-term abuse, but Brown was convicted of manslaughter rather than murder. It is vital that killers such as Robert Brown are prevented from causing more harm to their children, regardless of what the conviction for killing ends up being. New clause 21 would ensure that.

All the cases I have referred to involve men who have killed women. However, it is right to acknowledge that there are some women in prison for manslaughter having killed their partner after suffering years of domestic abuse—a point made by the right hon. and learned Member for North East Hertfordshire. We recognise the very specific nature of those crimes and that, in such circumstances, the risk to the children presented by the killer is not the same. Therefore, in new clause 21 we have included an exemption where a manslaughter conviction is made on the grounds of loss of control or diminished responsibility and the prisoner had, on the balance of probabilities, been a victim of coercive and controlling behaviour by the person killed at or near the time of the killing. In these rare cases, I do not consider that the mother should automatically lose their parental responsibility. That is why new clause 21 contains the exemption.

I turn to the current system. I appreciate that new guardians can already seek a special guardianship order over the children, meaning that their parental responsibility would trump the perpetrator’s, although they would still need to consult him on some things and would not be able to do certain important things without his consent. However, that still places an extra burden on the family in terms of legal proceedings. Given the abysmal court delays, that is another hurdle for a family that has already been through legal proceedings in the criminal court.

I also understand that the family can seek an adoption order, but that can feel uncomfortable for families as it legally alters the relationship between the children if they are with the family. For example, if they are adopted by their grandmother, she legally becomes their mother and their birth mother legally becomes their deceased sister. But that is beside the point. As Onjali says,

“Why do we even think murderers should have parental responsibility? They forfeited that ‘responsibility’ when they killed their children’s mother. It’s beyond logic.”

New clause 21 would remove the burden of lengthy, stressful proceedings in the family court and give children the security they so desperately need: that their new guardians have responsibility for them and that they are safe.

To conclude, the research is clear that adverse childhood experiences have a huge impact on how children grow and develop. New clause 21 is about doing what is best for the children left behind: safeguarding their rights, protecting them from abusers and trying to give them the best possible means to thrive. It is about valuing the rights of children over those of abusers.

One year on from the petition for Jade’s law, it is indefensible that men who kill their partners, often after long periods of abuse, are still able to exercise control over the surviving children and their guardians from their prison cell. I note the Justice Minister’s comments today outlining his support after months of campaigning from Labour. I also note his comment that he is looking to find a quicker way to cut off parental rights for killers. Today is that opportunity with new clause 21. By voting for it, we can end an indefensible situation and truly make this a Bill for victims. Failing to do so is a vote for more delay, leaving vulnerable children unprotected and victims’ families having to fight through the backlogged courts. I hope that Government Members will vote to support Jade’s law today.