Child Contact Arrangements

Debate between Will Forster and Alison Hume

Wednesday 10th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Alison Hume]

I thank my hon. Friend for her work on the issue. I completely agree that unfortunately we are seeing far, far too many mothers who are disbelieved and have had their children removed from them without any basis for doing so at all. Lives are being destroyed.

If a parent complains, there is a very significant risk that that will be used against them. Ultimately, it should not matter whether an expert is regulated or unregulated if regulated and unregulated experts both rely on the same harmful pseudoscience and inflict equally devastating consequences, particularly on mothers and their children. The advice provided by experts can have a significant influence on the judge’s decision about child contact arrangements: the Ministry of Justice’s 2020 harm report highlighted the fact that allegations of parental alienation are often accepted by the family court without robust scrutiny. Evidence from survivors continues to show that counter-allegations of parental alienation are taken more seriously than those of domestic abuse. In many cases, claims of alienation can lead to the child being removed from the survivor parent, despite existing evidence of abuse. A constituent of mine had her children removed in an alienation case when the theory was introduced after she alleged domestic abuse.

The non-profit Right to Equality has conducted a large-scale survey of mothers whose children were removed from their care in private law proceedings. The survey reveals concerning patterns around child removal, including the role of parental alienation allegations, limited fact-finding on abuse and the influence of expert recommendations. In total, the 217 mothers had 342 children removed from their care. That is quite clearly not in the best interests of those children and is deeply traumatic for their mothers.

I have heard countless seriously concerning stories about children put into high-risk arrangements by the family court. Julia Margo, the co-founder of the charity Fair Hearing, with which I have been working closely, had a traumatic experience with the family justice system. After discovering that her former partner had been convicted of child sexual abuse, she endured years of legal battles, during which he took her to court 37 times demanding access to their children. Meanwhile, she felt dismissed and disbelieved by the system. She said that the court seemed more concerned about the risk of parental alienation than about the safety of her sons being left alone with a paedophile.

In another case, a child was taken away from her mother without warning at 10 years old. That day, a social worker came to the house and told her that she had half an hour to pack her things. The child recalled:

“I stuffed my favourite outfit in a bag—this blue shirt and leggings—along with a photo of me and mum. And then I got this bunny, my favourite soft toy, and I left it on her bed. It is what mum would do for me if she ever had to go away.”

The young girl later discovered that that simple goodbye had been used to criticise her mother, who had been her main carer since her parents had separated two years earlier. She said:

“The social worker said to my mum that no child should be worried about their parent’s feelings, and it was a sign of abuse.”

At 12 years old, the child wrote to the president of the family division, England’s most senior family judge, seeking the representation that she was previously denied. A district judge had found abuse from her father and found that her mother harboured a great deal of anger against him. A consultant psychiatrist, Dr Mark Berelowitz, was then brought into the case and claimed that the reason she was opposed to seeing her father was that she had been subjected to her mother’s

“unresolved angry feelings about the breakdown of their relationship.”

The judge then ordered that the child should move to live with her father, as her mother was not giving her emotional permission to enjoy a relationship with her father.

It is clear that in this case, as in so many others, parental alienation allegations represented the complete disregard of a child’s wishes during the court process. In the child’s words:

“I was removed from my mother’s care within hours of a court order being made…I spent the ensuing five years faced with professional after professional who refused to believe me. They said I was repeating my mother’s words and that, despite findings of domestic abuse, it was better to have a relationship with the person who frightened me.”

Parental alienation is a harmful ideology that profoundly impacts children. However, there are signs that the winds of change may now be moving through the family courts. In February this year, the president of the family division handed down a landmark judgment dismissing findings of so-called alienation against the mother. She had been prohibited from seeing her children for five years after alleging abuse in private family law proceedings. Lawyers have since characterised the initial ruling as draconian and extraordinary.

In December 2019, the court ordered that the children, who were then aged nine and 12, be removed, and it granted the father sole custody. The evidence was given by an unregulated psychologist, Melanie Gill. In overturning court findings informed by Gill’s reports, the president of the family division’s ruling could open the door for other families assessed by Gill, who has acted as an expert witness in up to 200 cases. Guidance published by the Family Justice Council in December 2024 says that experts should not be appointed to look for alienation; instead, judges should take a factual approach to identifying specific alienating behaviours. It was this new information that enabled the mother to bring her case back to court.

In a historic part of the judgment, the president of the family division has recognised the significant barriers that mothers face when seeking to appeal and has asked the Family Justice Council to consider an alternative procedural approach proposed by the legal team representing the mother and her son. I urge the Family Justice Council to consider that proposal as a matter of urgency, so that children and their parents who have been wrongfully separated because of pseudoscientific claims can finally have their cases reviewed.

However, there is still more work to be done. Hundreds of children and mothers have been wrongfully separated by family courts in England and Wales. This is a matter of national shame. Although the 2024 guidance and recent judgment from Sir Andrew McFarlane are clear and consistent, there is a risk that by themselves they will not be able to prevent the underlying error. As a route to justice, such judgments depend on the protective parent securing legal representation, identifying the procedural defect and bringing a part 18 application to set aside, years after the original order.

As I have mentioned, the president of the family division himself has acknowledged that mothers in this position face significant barriers to appeal. That is why I have been working on an amendment to the Courts and Tribunals Bill; I am grateful to Baroness Levitt KC, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, for the time she has taken to discuss it with me. Through the amendment, I propose to introduce a statutory presumption operating at the front end of proceedings, before findings of fact are made and before residence is disturbed. That would effectively prevent harm, rather than relying on a remedial route that few will successfully be able to navigate. We need to ensure that the family justice system is reformed so that the voice of the child is always put at the centre of proceedings, and so that allegations of alienation never take precedence over allegations of abuse.

I welcome the fact that, thanks to timeless campaigning by the indomitable Claire Throssell and by my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Dr Tidball) the Courts and Tribunals Bill will repeal the presumption of parental involvement set out in the Children Act 1989. This is a long-overdue correction to the pro-contact culture identified in the 2020 harm report and will address what the court must presume about contact in general. I also welcome the Government’s rolling out of child-focused courts nationally, which will put children at the centre of proceedings and resolve cases quicker.

An important question remains unaddressed, however: when a child resists or refuses contact with a parent against whom abuse is alleged, what weight should the court give to that response as evidence? That gap is currently doing significant harm. Too often, in current practice, the answer has been to reframe that resistance as the product of so-called alienating behaviour by the protected parent. Doing so risks reinterpreting the child’s voice not as a possible indicator of harm, but as evidence of manipulation.

I am also aware of cases in which a child discloses abuse by their father, particularly child sexual abuse, and those disclosures are then used as evidence of alienation against their mother, meaning that when a child makes a disclosure it can work against the mother, who risks losing the child. My simple amendment would effectively prevent the use of counterclaims of alienation to undermine or distract from allegations of domestic abuse, and would ensure that the child’s evidence has the weight that it deserves.

Does the Minister agree that for many of the hundreds of children and mothers who have been forcibly separated, the route to justice through appeal is hard to access? Does she agree that further reform is urgently needed to ensure that children’s voices carry the evidential weight that they should carry in family court proceedings? Does she support strengthening the Courts and Tribunals Bill further so that if a child has experienced or witnessed abuse, the child’s not wanting to see the perpetrator is first assumed to be a reasonable reaction in the family courts?

[Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)]

I completely endorse the hon. Lady’s calls. I have talked about how we need reform to the family courts. Will she support my calls for the Government to support family contact centres? In my constituency, the Woking Family Contact Centre has been run by volunteers for 25 years, which is an amazing achievement. We need to ensure that children are well supported after a traumatic incident. Does the hon. Lady agree that the Government need to do much more to support family contact centres?

[Alison Hume]

I have raised with Baroness Levitt not only the lack of access to child contact centres but the cost of access. It appears that many of them are unregulated, so I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that issue.

To conclude, everybody wants to see the family justice system evolve to better recognise children’s lived experiences, support safer and more effective participation, and make decisions that promote long-term recovery and healthy outcomes. I ask the Government to seize the opportunity presented by the Courts and Tribunals Bill to totally discredit the use of experts who subscribe to parental alienation and to enshrine the rights of the child in law, to ensure that those speaking their truth are properly heard.