Government promises better child contact arrangements
Parents who refuse to let a divorced partner see their child could be electronically tagged, sent to do voluntary work while their partner spends time with the child or forced to pay compensation for missed holidays, under proposals launched today.
Constitutional Affairs Secretary Lord Falconer announced the results of a consultation on parents’ access to their children, which he said were proposals that put the child’s best interests “at the centre of everything we do”.
Also announced were new funding for child contact centres where non-resident parents could see their children and parenting plans that set out model cases of how divorced parents have handled their child access problems.
The Government’s proposals give the courts more powers to deal with those who flout their orders, make court-ordered mediation compulsory, and will allow child access cases to be handled far more quickly than before.
But they also emphasise ministers’ for as many cases as possible be settled outside court through the parenting plans and a wider focus on mediation.
Launching the reforms at a press conference today, Lord Falconer said it was widely accepted that the current system was not working.
“In the sometimes very difficult circumstances when parents are separating, finding justice can be difficult. We don’t think in these cases that justice has been working properly,” he said.
However, he rejected the suggestion of groups such as Fathers 4 Justice that courts should automatically assume that contact with children would be shared 50-50 between parents. That was not “what’s best for children”, he said.
A draft bill on parental contact – to be published in the next few weeks – will include the proposal that parents who disobey court orders to allow the other parent access could be tagged in order to ensure they are where they say they are.
Lord Falconer said he felt tagging might be “disproportionate” and he would be “unhappy” with the idea at the moment. However, it would be in the draft bill because it had not been adequately discussed in the consultation.
“Let there be a debate about that in the course of pre-legislative scrutiny,” he said.
He was also sceptical about fines or threats to withdraw passports and driver’s licences from recalcitrant parents, saying the whole point of the Government’s proposals was to promote co-operation, and those measures did not seem likely to do that.
For that reason, he expected the courts to remain reluctant about using their power to jail parents or fine them. However, under the proposals parents would be able to apply for compensation from the other parent if they caused a planned holiday with the child to be cancelled or other such costs to be incurred.
Community penalties – punishing parents by getting them to undertake voluntary work – were a better option as the work could be carried out by one parent when the other was seeing the child, and therefore did not interfere with the child’s upbringing.
He said child access cases took far too long to be dealt with at present and that slowness would be combated by the Government’s proposals, which would allow for cases to be heard within weeks and would ensure courts could “get a grip quickly” on difficult cases.
He said he hoped there would be a “significant reduction” in the number of cases going to court.
