Major new rules planned for divorced and separated parents in the UK
The UK government has announced that children will be better protected from abusive parents as it moves to abolish the presumption of parental involvement in the new Courts and Tribunal Bill.
The presumption of parental involvement was introduced into the Children Act 1989 to help ensure children could maintain a relationship with both parents after separation. However, evidence shows that the current process can leave children at risk of harm.
While the current law contains safeguards that allow involvement to be restricted where it harms a child’s welfare, repealing this provision and legislating through the Courts and Tribunal Bill sends a clear message that the Government is putting children’s welfare and safety first.
The change means the courts will no longer start from an assumption that parental involvement is always in a child’s best interest, and instead adopt an open-minded inquiry into what is in a child’s best interest.
If parents are a threat to their child’s safety, they should expect to have their involvement restricted, for example, through courts ordering supervised contact, involvement limited to written communication, or by ordering that there should be no involvement at all.
The repeal will now go through Parliament and will be removed from the Children Act 1989.
“Every child deserves to be safe, every victim deserves to be heard, and every family deserves a justice system they can trust. We need to make sure that what happened to Claire and her children never happens again,” said Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy.
“This government’s priority is to bring our justice system back from the brink. That means making sure the safety and welfare of children remains at the heart of every decision, and that’s why we are repealing the presumption of parental involvement through the Courts and Tribunal Bill.”
Among the reforms included within the new bill are:
- New ‘Swift Courts’, which will see cases with a likely sentence of three years or less heard by a Judge alone, are estimated to take 20% less time than a jury trial.
- Handing courts the power to decide where cases are heard, no longer allowing criminals to game the system and torment their victims.
- Guaranteed jury trials for the most serious and almost all indictable offences – including rape, murder, aggravated burglary, blackmail, people trafficking, grievous bodily harm, and the most serious drug offences.
- Judge-only trials for particularly technical and lengthy fraud and financial offences, freeing up jurors who have to give up months of their lives to hear particularly burdensome cases.
- Giving magistrates the power to hand down sentences of up to 18 months so more cases can be heard by magistrates, freeing up Crown Court time for the most serious offences. This could go up to two years if needed.
The Deputy Prime Minister also announced plans for a new AI courts assistant and National Listing Framework to standardise listing and limit unnecessary delays for victims, and specialist ‘Blitz’ courts surge to tackle the backlog of assaults against emergency workers.
