Domestic Abuse Victims in Family Law Courts

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I want to start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), along with the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), and all the other hon. Members who have together secured this vital debate. I should also like to thank the Backbench Business Committee for affording Members this time in the Chamber to discuss this issue. Having listened to today’s discussions, I am sure we can all agree that the contributions have been powerful, moving, thought-provoking and well informed. I also want to take this opportunity to pay tribute, as other hon. Members have done, to Claire Throssell and to thank her for all her work with Women’s Aid in trying to ensure that other mothers are protected in a way that, tragically, she and her children were not.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) has mentioned, the issues that we have discussed today have been brought into focus in recent weeks and months by a storyline in “The Archers”, which has dominated the news cycle over the past week. It is inspiring that a charity appeal inspired by the storyline on that radio show has raised more than £150,000 for the charity Refuge. I read this week about the tragic case of Mary Shipstone, whose estranged father murdered her before taking his own life. She and her mother had fled a life of violence and were living in a safe house. It was an act described by the serious case review as a “spite killing”, cynically designed to take the child from her mother and leave an indelible memory of Mary’s death. Another high-profile case, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), was that of Ellie Butler, who was murdered by her father following her return to her parents. These are events that no mother and no family should have to endure.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge told the Backbench Business Committee when she applied for this debate, it is important that the voices of these women should be heard. I especially want to congratulate her on fulfilling her promise to the Committee in her speech today. She made sure that the voices of those women were heard and put on parliamentary record the words of Claire.

I also congratulate Women’s Aid on publishing its urgent and important work, “Nineteen Child Homicides”, 12 years on from a similar shocking report. Much time may have passed since that original report’s publication and, although progress has been made in respect of domestic violence and the family courts, much more needs to be done. That 2004 report influenced the landscape of the family courts, and there is every reason to hope, following the debate today, that the latest report will also have a big effect. As we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle), there needs to be a transformation of our family courts. They need to be an arena for justice, not a weapon with which those who have done wrong can seek to inflict further pain on those who have been wronged.

The case studies described in the report are truly shocking. All the perpetrators were fathers to the children they murdered, and all the murders took place in the context of child contact, whether informally or formally arranged between the parties. The cases to which the Women’s Aid report refer tend to show a deeply worrying pattern in which the fathers involved are actually known to agencies as perpetrators of domestic abuse. The reports’ findings show that a culture of “contact at all costs” has unfortunately arisen in our family courts. As long ago as 2006, however, the then Lord Justice Wall said in response to the first report from Women’s Aid on this subject:

“It is, in my view, high time that the Family Justice System abandoned any reliance on the proposition that a man can have a history of violence to the mother of his children but, nonetheless, be a good father.”

Against that background, it is particularly alarming that Women’s Aid found that the justice system still views the abuse of a mother by a partner or husband as somehow separate from the child’s safety. Anyone reading the report will agree that a review is necessary, but as shadow Justice Secretary I was particularly struck by the barriers identified in the report to ensuring that granting of child contact is safe.

Access to justice is no access at all if it does not also include access to advice and representation. As mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss), the coalition Government inflicted large cuts on the legal aid budget, and private family law cases were no exception to that damaging trend. Although the Government introduced interim regulations for family legal aid earlier this year, the picture has scarcely changed. Those seeking publicly funded legal representation must provide evidence. The time limit for submitting evidence may have been extended from two to five years, but many will wonder why there is a time limit at all. It may be more appropriate for an assessment of relevance to be made rather than to set an arbitrary period of time. It is the provision of evidence itself that causes difficulty and the report makes it clear that much of the required evidence is either “unavailable or unobtainable”. Practitioner groups I have met also report reluctance by some professionals to put the required evidence in writing. Those who do sometimes find their form returned because it is not in the prescribed format and so the process begins again.

At the time, the Government committed to review the effects of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 within three to five years. To date, not only has a review not been published, but no such review has started. It is alarming that some 38% of women were not in a position to obtain the necessary evidence to persuade the Legal Aid Agency that, as victims of domestic violence, they should be eligible for legal aid. More than a quarter of those women had no option other than to represent themselves in court as litigants in person. As outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), that can mean being cross-examined in court by the perpetrator of the abuse and the extra stress of having the sole responsibility for navigating the complex case law and legal processes. As mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley, when a defendant has no legal representation in the criminal courts they will be prevented, quite rightly, from cross-examining a complainant who alleges domestic violence. Instead, the court will appoint an advocate, paid for with public funds, to conduct cross-examination. If that is good enough for the criminal system, why is it not good enough in the family court system?

At her first Justice Committee appearance last week, the new Secretary of State for Justice stated that one of her three objectives was to realise a justice system that works for all, something with which we can all agree. If that is the case, she must turn her mind rapidly to the experiences we have heard today—the experiences of those in the family courts—because the clear evidence of this report is that this is not working for all. To that end, I was disappointed to hear that the all-party group on domestic violence has received no response to date to its “'Domestic Abuse, Child Contact and the Family Courts” report. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of the all-party group and its chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley. I hope the new Justice Secretary will do more. I hope that she will take on the task of responding directly to the work of the all-party group and consider carefully the seven recommendations its report makes. As with the Women’s Aid report, it emphasises the need for better adherence to practice direction 12J. As we have heard, that relates to protecting the child and the parent they are living with, and ensuring that the best interests of the child are elevated above other considerations when determining child contact.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) so eloquently said, combating violence against women and girls must be a priority for all parties. Labour’s general election manifesto committed to establishing a commissioner on domestic and sexual violence, to influence priorities across all Departments. We also said that we would publish a violence against women and girls Bill, and provide more stable central funding for women’s refuges and rape crisis centres. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley mentioned, we welcome the Government’s change of position on women’s refuges and changes to housing benefit. But, fundamentally, the Government should heed this motion and implement a review as soon as possible. I commend the motion to the House.