Family Court Reform and CAFCASS

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service and family court reform.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Cummins.

Family breakdown is never easy. Disputes are inevitable and often bitter. Children are caught in the middle of a tug of war between parents. In those conflicts, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, or CAFCASS, plays a key role. Child arrangements orders, prohibited steps orders and a host of other key rulings in the family courts often hinge on the reports provided by CAFCASS and the assessments carried out by its workforce. CAFCASS is in desperate need of reform, and it requires funding to protect children subject to care proceedings.

The Criminal Justice and Courts Services Act 2000 stated clearly the role of CAFCASS. First and foremost, it has a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children affected by family courts proceedings, yet it is falling far short of the standards required. In 2020, the Ministry of Justice published a damning report on the performance of CAFCASS. The findings were shocking, including failures running deep into every area of the organisation’s work, poor handling of domestic abuse allegations, wilful disregard of children’s voices and an obsessive pro-contact culture that puts unfit parents’ demands ahead of children’s best interests. That was the Government’s own verdict.

The reality is that that is simply an exacerbation of a problem that has engulfed the family courts since 2010. The Government’s cruel decision to remove legal aid from the majority of such cases has led to ugly and disordered scenes in courtrooms nationwide, as parents are forced to represent themselves without sufficient support or understanding of how the system is supposed to function.

Diminishing access to legal aid has only caused further delays in the courts, and denies victims justice. To address the backlog, the Government should properly fund civil legal aid and restore legal aid for early advice for family cases, so cases can be resolved more efficiently.

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

There is often a financial disparity between parties. Sometimes, parties use the issue of parental alienation to drag things out longer and to add more expense to the disadvantaged party in those proceedings. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is time that CAFCASS, the courts and judges were better trained in the issue of parental alienation and how it is used as a tactic to prevent court cases dragging on longer than they need to?

[Taiwo Owatemi]

I absolutely agree, and parental alienation is an issue I will come to later in my speech. Reform is desperately needed.

Will the Minister outline what steps the Ministry of Justice is taking to increase the funding of legal aid? Will he update us on when we can expect the civil legal aid review?

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Lady is right to bring this debate forward and to highlight the disadvantages of legal aid. Does she agree that when it comes to ensuring that every person in this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has the same opportunity of representation, the Government must step in to support those people who do not have money and cannot pay for the legal representation to which they are entitled? That should happen not only in England and Wales; the Minister should endeavour to have discussions with the devolved Administrations in Northern Ireland and Scotland so that people there have the same legal aid opportunities.

[Taiwo Owatemi]

Absolutely. Proper legal representation needs to be available to everyone in the United Kingdom.

The large backlogs in the family court are creating delays and uncertainty for families and, most alarmingly of all, for vulnerable children. No child should have to witness this sort of conflict, anger and grief played out before a judge. The children caught up in these cases are now suffering as a result of constant failings in leadership from Ministers in this Government.

The most damning aspect of our family court system is false accusations of parental alienation. Too often, as my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) says, a wealthy parent can, in effect, purchase custody of a child through certain legal loopholes. Denounced by the United Nations as a “regressive pseudo-theory”, parental alienation is an argument whereby one parent claims that another is making false abuse claims or is otherwise manipulating the child’s view out of hostility towards their ex-partner. The concept has little to no evidence to support it, but is none the less often accepted, resulting in children being placed with an abusive parent.

I pay tribute to the team at the University of Manchester, whose recent research has revealed the dark and rotten roots of that commonly employed tactic. It was invented 40 years ago as a means of aiding perpetrators to cover up the physical and sexual violence to which they had subjected their spouses and children, yet in Britain the strategy is being given free rein in our family courts. Not only are utterly unqualified individuals being allowed to testify as supposed experts in such cases, but CAFCASS has overseen the rise in such false allegations.

I have spoken with many constituents about their treatment by the family courts. One case summarises everything that is wrong with CAFCASS: the dangers of parental alienation and the risks posed by a blind insistence on contact even when a parent is evidently unfit to have any responsibility over a child. My constituent married a foreign national a decade ago. They had one son, who is now eight years old. Until recently, he was being brought up by his mother in the comfort of a loving, caring home alongside his extended family. Having had the courage to escape the sexual and physical domestic abuse inflicted by her ex-husband, my constituent was granted sole custody of her son. Occasional contact with the father was enforced by the court and complied with by my constituent, despite the clear distress that those sessions caused to the child, yet, when the arrangements broke down, the father was able to launch false alienation proceedings against his ex-wife to remove the boy from her custody. That was supported every step of the way by CAFCASS. He has now succeeded in depriving my constituent of her only child, despite the rigorous investigations by social services at Coventry City Council that concluded that she was an exemplary mother.

Thanks to the deeply imbedded pro-contact culture of CAFCASS, long since identified but allowed to run unreformed for years, an eight-year-old boy is now in the clutches of a man who beat and sexually assaulted my constituent throughout their marriage. Despite mountains of evidence proving his unfitness to have custody of the child, everything was pushed and CAFCASS took his side, placing the blame on the boy’s mother.

What is perhaps most concerning is that despite the child’s distress, a litany of domestic abuse and the detailed reports compiled by Coventry City Council in support of my constituent’s parenting were all cast aside in the family courts. Deploying parental alienation allegations as his chief legal tactic, the boy’s father has now won sole custody, leaving my constituent utterly bereft.

[Bambos Charalambous]

The interests of the child should be paramount—that was written into the Children Act 1989, many years ago—but there seems to have been a clear failure of that policy. Allegations of parental alienation often cause great distress not just for the parent, but for the child at the centre of the case. Does my hon. Friend agree that in cases such as the one she describes, CAFCASS needs to return to focusing on the paramount interests of the child?

[Taiwo Owatemi]

Absolutely. The role of CAFCASS is to protect the child during family proceedings, but it seems to be failing in that role.

The tragedy is being multiplied in the thousands nationwide. A self-reported survey suggests that allegations of parental alienation are made in up to 70% of family court cases in England and Wales. The scandal has been allowed to go on for far too long. It is time for CAFCASS and the family courts to be held accountable. When will the Government legislate to bar unqualified so-called experts from the family courts? When will guidance be published for judges on the admissibility of family alienation allegations as evidence in these cases?

[Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)]

I cannot thank the hon. Member enough for securing the debate and I am only sorry that I cannot stay to give a speech myself. I had a long career in family law. I have acted for mums and dads, husbands and wives, and families where domestic abuse has ripped them apart, and I have seen courts used not only to help people, but to continue the abuse and control of some. What the hon. Member’s constituents would have experienced, no doubt, is that a lot of the delay plays into the hands of parents who want to use the courts, in particular if they have the child living with them at the time. One thing I have been campaigning for is to get the Ministry of Justice and the Government to focus on keeping cases out of court, especially where litigants are in person, where it is safe to do so. That will free up court time to deal with the more complex cases that she is talking about more quickly and urgently, so that we have the resource and proper space for CAFCASS and people such as that. Does she agree that that is important, and will she join me for a coffee to discuss it? I would love to get her on board.

--- Later in debate ---

[Taiwo Owatemi]

The hon. Member speaks from her varied experience. Absolutely, I am more than happy to support her in her campaign and to have a cup of coffee to talk about it in further detail—[Interruption.] I am sure everyone in the Chamber would love to have a cup of coffee to talk about it as well.

I ask the Minister, why has CAFCASS remained largely unreformed almost three year after its shameful shortcomings were exposed for all to see? I wrote to the Ministry of Justice about my constituent’s case on 2 September 2020. It is a damning indictment that CAFCASS has failed to make any progress in the matter. Will the Minister therefore meet me to discuss the case further?

Until the promised reforms of CAFCASS are completed, until parents can be sure of proper representation and support in the courtroom, and until the family courts start to put the needs of children ahead of the vanity of wealthy individuals who can rely on expensive solicitors to exploit a broken and underfunded system, the tragedies will only multiply. Inaction is no longer an option—frankly, it never was.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mike Freer)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. I thank the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) for securing a debate on this important subject.

The family court must always act in the best interests of children. CAFCASS plays an integral role in England, both representing children in the family court and advising the court on what is safe and in children’s best interests. It is CAFCASS that ensures that children’s voices are at the heart of the family justice system. CAFCASS is the largest employer of qualified social workers in England and supports over 140,000 children each year, speaking up for those children at what can be an extremely difficult time.

I appreciate that Members wish to raise cases where things do not go right, but it is also important to pay tribute to the work that CAFCASS does, as well as the hard-working social workers who support 140,000 children. It is wrong to suggest that the whole of CAFCASS is failing children in this country. That is simply not fair on the organisation, and the social workers who have a very difficult job to do. That is not to say that mistakes are not made or that things do not go wrong, but to paint the whole service as a failure is simply not correct.

[Taiwo Owatemi]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mike Freer]

I will make some progress. I point Members to the recent Ofsted inspection in January this year. Ofsted said that CAFCASS was “highly effective”. The service has meant that the children at greatest risk continue to be promptly allocated a children’s guardian or family court adviser. I do not take issue with the problems that hon. Members have raised, but I wanted to put on record that the description of CAFCASS as a dystopian organisation getting everything wrong is simply unfair. There are many people there working in very difficult situations, doing a lot of good work for children.

I will move on to some of the things that we are doing to ensure that CAFCASS has capacity and funding. On additional funding and coping with the pandemic backlogs, we have ensured that the CAFCASS budget was increased by over £8.4 million, to a baseline of £140 million. We are also ensuring that the sitting days for both elements of the family court are increased.

I do not want to dwell on the particularly dry bits of what the family courts have to do. I appreciate that Members have raised specific questions, which I will do my best to answer. Where I cannot answer them, I will see that my colleague, Lord Bellamy, who covers this portfolio, provides more detailed answers. If hon. Members wish to meet Lord Bellamy to go through the issues in more depth, I am happy to facilitate that. I appreciate that I do not have the depth of knowledge that other Members or Lord Bellamy have.

We spend £813 million on civil legal aid. In the last couple of months, we have increased the amount by £30 million, just to support those people who need legal aid in a situation of domestic violence. It is not true to say that we are leaving victims of domestic violence without legal aid.

I recognise that long-term reform of the family court is needed, and that many of the issues are wide-ranging. Ensuring that vulnerable court users, such as those who have experienced domestic abuse, continue to be supported is complex. We want to continue to build on the response to the 2020 report on the risk of harm in private law proceedings. We have delivered on all the short-term commitments in the harm panel report. The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 prohibits the cross-examination of victims by perpetrators, and gives victims of domestic abuse automatic eligibility for special measures in the family courts.

In December 2022, the Family Procedure Rule Committee agreed rule and practice direction changes to ensure that independent domestic violence advisers and other specialist support services can accompany a party into court. Those changes are expected to come into force on 6 April. The Government continue to work closely with the domestic abuse sector to ensure that survivors’ voices remain central to family court reform. I look forward to the upcoming launch of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s monitoring and reporting pilot, which will ensure that we continue to understand the impact of family court proceedings on children and families.

I will touch on a couple of issues raised.

--- Later in debate ---

[Taiwo Owatemi]

I would like to start by acknowledging the point made by the Minister. I do not think that anybody in this debate was saying that those working for CAFCASS are not trying their best, or that they get it wrong all the time; we are acknowledging that there are issues that need to be urgently addressed and are causing severe harm to women and the children CAFCASS is meant to protect. Those failures are due to Government inaction. Reforms need to happen, and there needs to be proper funding of the judicial system.

I thank everybody who participated in this debate, beginning with my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), who has detailed the problems with parental alienation and unqualified experts. She has long campaigned on that important subject, and rightly calls for reform. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), who is no longer in his seat, for highlighting the importance of protecting vulnerable children. A lot of Members spoke or intervened, and I thank the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie), who raised concerns about the lack of access to legal aid in the court system, parental alienation and unqualified experts, and the courtroom backlog. No mother should be penalised for safeguarding their children, so the Government desperately need to address the failures of CAFCASS and reform the family courts system.

I end by noting two key points. First, I notice that the Minister did not answer all my questions; I look forward to receiving a written response from him on those that he did not answer. Secondly, I look forward to meeting the Minister—hopefully very soon—to discuss some of the issues that I raised today. I look forward to reviewing the review that he spoke about, once it is published. Finally, I stress that after 13 years of failure, the criminal justice system is on its knees and in desperate need of funding and reform. Only then can victims such as my constituents get justice.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service and family court reform.