New Clause 13
Children and Young Persons Bill [Lords]
1:30 pm
Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister, Children, Schools and Families; East Worthing and Shoreham, Conservative)
It is slightly unfortunate that new clause 13 has been grouped with new clauses 17 and 18, which the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole will be speaking to in more detail; I will just touch on them.
New clause 13 is another new clause that was tabled and debated in the House of Lords; it was originally tabled by Lord Northbourne. He sought to clarify and embed in law the responsibilities that a person assumes when they accept the responsibility of caring for a child who will live with them as a result of a residence order. It is critical for the child and for the parents of that child, who the child is not living with, that the child receives the parenting that they need. So this is purely a probing amendment to engage in a discussion of what parenthood is all about and what the responsibilities of parenthood are.
The Minister and I can have—indeed, we have had—endless debates about over-nannying states and ill-equipped parents and so forth. Actually, however, it is fundamental to the Bill to establish what qualifies somebody to take on the role of a parent if the birth parents are deemed to be no longer capable of doing that.
The reason that I raise this issue now is that, at the end of the debate in the Lords, Lord Adonis indicated that the Government were prepared to look at it further and I just wondered whether there has been any progress since then. Therefore, the Minister will have the opportunity to update the Committee if there is anything to report back on.
New clauses 17 and 18, grouped with new clause 13, are in the name of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley and other hon. Members, and I have added my name to those of my hon. Friends who are supporting them. These new clauses address an issue that has been the subject of much debate in the press and on which we had hoped that there would also have been some movement in Government as a result of the consultation that took place on the transparency of the family courts. However, that consultation largely came to nothing, so they deal with the problems of transparency within the family courts.
I have strong reservations about the watertightness—that is not a good word to use—of the family court system. I have sat in on family courts and my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich may wish to make comments about his much greater personal experience. There is great pressure on the officers and agencies that are privy to family court proceedings, not least on social workers. There is a large turnover in social workers attached to cases. I have given the example of when I sat in court for a day and the judge told me that all the social workers he had seen were different from the ones who had started the cases he was judging. For those reasons, there is a propensity for mistakes to happen and for wrong records to be taken. That can easily happen, but often those wrong records are not corrected and erroneous information is resurrected later in proceedings. Because different social workers are often involved, that information is taken as gospel.
It is essential that we provide for far greater transparency in family court proceedings so that when mistakes are made they can be challenged. It is important that it is seen to be challenged and that the correct information is seen to be put on the record to the satisfaction of all parties involved. I recognise that that must be done sensitively. I am not coming up with a blueprint for how transparency in the family courts could be achieved. Such procedures would have to take account of the child’s right to anonymity and of whether members of the public should be allowed in to see the court proceedings. That raises all sorts of potential issues. For example, a vexatious neighbour might want to make mischief by sitting in on family court proceedings. That could cause problems.
Despite those problems, it should be possible to publish court proceedings for the appropriate people so that there is a greater chance for scrutiny. Connected persons might wish to say, “Hold on, that’s not true,” or “This was thrown out at an earlier stage,” or “It was pointed out that that was not true.” That would improve the system.
I understand why reform of the family court system was largely terminated when the Leader of the House was responsible for it. I had a private meeting with her when she was very keen to progress this issue. The confidentiality of children’s concerns was an important factor. That was an interesting angle that not many people had considered at the outset. However, the problem still remains. We see it as constituency MPs, when it is usually aggrieved fathers who come to us. Some of the more militant of them unhelpfully get involved with the organisations that we can all think of, but which we need not name. That escalates the matter, which is in nobody’s interests, least of all the children about whom we should care most.
The new clauses would lay down a framework for publishing court proceedings and for determining who had access to them. I thought that we had addressed part of this issue in the Children Act 2004. At that time, the sister of the Leader of the House was involved in a case where she unwittingly disclosed information about a family court case to her, which was deemed to be against the law. I thought that we amended the 2004 Act. I tabled an amendment whereby constituents could discuss their cases with their MP without falling foul of the confidentiality of the family courts. I understand that there are still problems.
The new clauses would start the ball rolling to improve the transparency of, and therefore the confidence in, the family court system. These are probing new clauses so the Minister can say why they may or may not be practical. Perhaps he might explain what it would take for changes to be made in the system to give greater assurances to the many aggrieved people who come to us because of the court proceedings.