Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment with his Cabinet colleagues of the health impact on survivors of domestic abuse of participating in the family court process.

The Government recognises the impact family court proceedings can have on children and adult survivors of domestic abuse. In the Government’s Implementation Plan, published in response to the 2020 expert panel report ‘Assessing risk of harm to children and parents in private law children cases’, we made a number of commitments to improve the experiences of domestic abuse survivors in the family court. We have made good progress against those commitments. We have implemented a prohibition on cross-examination of domestic abuse survivors by their abusers, improved safety at court and provided automatic eligibility for special measures for victims of domestic abuse in the family courts. We have also launched the Integrated Domestic Abuse Court pilot in Dorset and North Wales to reduce the re-traumatisation of domestic abuse survivors and enhance the voice of the child in private law proceedings.