Marie Tidball MP: speeches

Speeches

• 18 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I rise to support new clause 122, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor). In 2007, Fiona Pilkington drove herself and her 18-year-old daughter, Francecca Hardwick, to a lay-by near her home. She also took the family’s pet rabbit to soothe her daughter, who had severe learning disabilities. She then set the car on fire, killing them both. An inquest two years later heard how the family had been kept virtual prisoners in their home by youths who threw stones, flour and other objects and kept up a relentless stream of abuse. At the time, the Independent Police Complaints Commission concluded that one of the police’s main failings was in not identifying the abuse as hate crime. The case prompted wider concern that many police forces were failing to properly identify hate crimes motivated by disability, and thus treating them as low-priority antisocial behaviour—something disability campaigners say too often remains the case. I am proud that last year our Labour manifesto “committed to championing the rights of disabled people and to the principle of working with them, so that their views and voices will be at the heart of all we do.” I support my hon. Friend’s new clause 122, which would implement our manifesto commitment to protect LGBT+ and disabled people by making all existing strands of hate crime an aggravated offence. The new clause would finally place the Law Commission’s recommendations on a statutory footing. As the commission has said: “It is undesirable for the current law to give the impression of a ‘hierarchy’ of victims.” The Bill will be powerful in delivering the Government’s safer streets mission and plan for change. It will help to tackle the crimes that matter most to communities but that have been ignored for too long, after 14 years of the Tory dereliction of duty on law and order.

• 20 May 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill · Hansard source

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  Imagine a school night with a child being repeatedly asked by his father if he had completed his homework. The child replied, in an exasperated tone, “Yes”. His dad came towards him with his fist, ready to punch him, but the boy’s mum stepped into the space in front of that fist and pushed her son out of its way. The full force of that fist hit her so hard that she was spun around and fell down the stairs, bruising her arms, legs and back. From the top of the stairs, the child’s father shouted to his son, “Look what you made me do.” The boy’s mother left her husband, taking the children with her. Social services were aware that the same father made statements that he was capable of killing. Then imagine a situation where, despite knowing all of that, a family court permitted that father of those two boys five hours of unsupervised contact per week. My constituent Claire Throssell does not need to imagine this nightmare: she and her two sons, Jack and Paul Sykes, lived it. On a two-hour contact visit, permitted by that court and allowed to go ahead by the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, Jack and Paul Sykes were locked in the attic by their father. Using gasoline, their dad set multiple fires alight across their home. Paul, aged nine, died at the scene after his older brother tried to save him, and then Jack, aged just 12, died later in hospital. The father also killed himself in the blaze. Jack and Paul’s voices were not heard by social services, by CAFCASS or by the family court. The only time Jack’s voice was heard was when, as he was held in the fireman’s arms, he used the last of his strength to say, “My dad did this and he did it on purpose.” There must be urgent reform of the presumption of contact in law, on the basis of evidence, principle and to ensure children’s voices are put at the heart of our family courts system. Legal principle means that parents should always be given contact with their children, even in circumstances where there is a known domestic abuser. The harm report, published in 2020 by the Ministry of Justice’s expert panel on harm, was clear that the presumption should not remain in its present form. The Bill before us today presents the ideal opportunity to make changes to the family courts and to deliver for the victims of domestic abuse and violence against women and girls. It already ensures that the justice system serves victims, rather than subjecting them to further trauma on top of what they have already suffered. Labour’s important mission to halve violence against women and girls within a decade will require a national effort and the use of every single tool available to target perpetrators and address the root causes of abuse and violence. Now we need to do what the previous Conservative Government failed to do and hold family courts to the same standard by taking a child-centred approach and repealing the presumption of contact where a parent is a known domestic abuser. The Government must act now to save the lives of children for generations to come by ending contact at any cost. Let us not just imagine a world in which the voices of children are put at the heart of our family court system, where children such as Jack and Paul are listened to, not ignored, and no more towns such as mine are left to grieve—

• 19 May 2025 · Mental Health Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  One of the reasons I stood for Parliament was to work hard to create a society that values disabled people, that treats us with dignity and respect, and that ensures there is nothing about us without us. It is right that this Government will fix the broken system to ensure that we give mental health the same attention as physical health. I am pleased to see the four key principles from the independent review of the Mental Health Act at the heart of the Bill: choice and autonomy, least restriction, the principle of therapeutic benefit and, most importantly, treating people as individuals. After 14 years of a Conservative Government, over 2,000 autistic people and people with a learning disability are in mental health hospitals in England. Some 92% of those people are detained under the Mental Health Act 1983, and the average length of stay for in-patients is almost five years. This is a human rights scandal, as the Joint Committee on Human Rights concluded in 2019. The current situation is simply wrong. Autism and learning disabilities are not mental health conditions, and yet under the current Mental Health Act, autistic people and people with a learning disability can be detained in mental health hospitals indefinitely. In my 15-year career working with autistic people and those with learning disabilities, along with autism organisations up and down the country, including the National Autistic Society and the Autism Alliance, I have seen the tragedy of autistic people cycling through the mental health system because of those measures and the failure of public services to provide adequate social care on discharge from hospital orders. As an MP, I know from my constituency that too many people are still being detained who could be supported to live well in our communities by organisations such as Greave House Farm Trust and Action for Autism Barnsley which are on my doorstep. The most significant change in the Bill is the removal of autism and learning disability from the definition of mental disorder under section 3 of the existing Act. This vital change means that autistic people and people with a learning disability cannot be detained for treatment unless they have a co-occurring mental health condition that requires in-patient mental health care. The Government have said that “the proposed changes to the detention criteria for people with a learning disability and autistic people will only be switched on when systems are able to demonstrate a sufficient level of community support”. It is crucial for that to happen quickly, through the Government working closely with autistic people and those with a learning disability, as well with as advocacy groups, to publish a plan to build sufficient support in our communities up and down the country. My book on the treatment of autistic people in the criminal justice system demonstrated that ensuring that there is an appropriate level of services in the community is essential in preventing the needs of autistic people and people with a learning disability from becoming too complex, leading to admission to mental health hospitals. It also demonstrated the need to support safe discharge out of hospital. Critical to reducing the numbers of those currently detained in hospital under the current law are care, education and treatment reviews for adults and children who are autistic or have a learning disability, which will help speed up discharges, prevent admission and ensure that the person is being given appropriate care. I am delighted that the Bill will make those reviews statutory in in-patient settings. The responsible commissioner, clinician, integrated care board and local authority must have regard to the recommendations arising from them. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on autism, I am aware that recommendations are often not followed in an expeditious manner. Therefore, there is an opportunity to strengthen the duty on responsible parties to follow recommendations from those reviews. The Health Secretary has been moving mountains to work on our 10-year plan. I therefore hope that the Bill’s 10-year implementation period for the changes to detention criteria will align with his important work. He is also doing an incredible job to move to a prevention-led health system, and that provides an opportunity for an integrated approach to community support, including working with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to ensure there is adequate housing in every integrated care system. The exclusion and marginalisation of autistic people and those with learning disabilities through their institutionalisation in hospital perpetuates their exclusion from our society. I am proud that our Government are tackling these issues so early on in this Parliament, alongside their commitment to the mental health investment standard, the recruitment of 8,500 mental health workers, and work to deliver a long-term plan for the reform of adult social care. Society is an order of equality and non-discrimination. It is all the richer where autistic people and people with learning disabilities are included within it to fulfil their potential. I commend this Bill to the House.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Alex Ruck Keene’s sage words to me were that the problem with putting in more words is that it creates an opportunity for lawyers to find loopholes. In the example that the hon. Lady has just given, when we are talking about family relationships, I think we would all agree that, having thoroughly considered the evidence in this Committee, we do not want any interpretation of the offences set out in section 26 to exclude, for example, carer relationships. That is not a family member, but a carer might give close personal care to someone with a terminal illness. We do not want the courts to think that it was the parliamentary intention of the Committee to delimit it to only intimate or family relationships. There is a risk that the more we narrow it by example, rather than leaving the term broad, as it is currently—“person”—we risk delimiting it too far. We do not want to exclude a situation involving an offence that we hope would be brought before the courts for prosecution.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. I rise to speak to amendments 518 to 520, which respectively provide definitions of coercion, dishonesty and pressure for the purposes of the Bill. In my speech on Second Reading, I said I would want to ensure that the final stages of the Bill define dishonesty, coercion and pressure. I have sketched out the definitions based on oral evidence given to the Committee, and am grateful for the extremely helpful input from Laura Hoyano and Max Hill, after the witness sessions, in establishing the content and parameters of the definitions. We have spent a considerable amount of time in Committee discussing the safeguards against coercion, for example, but I felt we had not spent much time discussing the content and parameters of the concepts. Although I will not be press the amendments to a vote, for reasons I will outline, it is important to ensure that our discussions of the concepts are on the public record. I will not press the amendments to a vote as I am convinced, after discussions with legal colleagues and having considered the issues very carefully, that the risks of setting the parameters on the face of the Bill are too great. It would risk ossifying the courts rather than ensuring that they use the full parameters of the concepts to encompass scenarios for the offences under clause 26 in circumstances that the Committee may not currently conceive of. In other words, I am convinced that to limit the definitions of the concepts in statute would create the risk of excluding criminal behaviour where the threshold of the offence would otherwise be met under common law. I believe that instead, mirroring the approach to coercion taken in the Serious Crime Act 2015—a point I will return to—the Ministry of Justice must draw up details of the concepts and examples of their application in the context of the offences set out in clause 26. Doing so will be helpful for the medical practitioners, along with other professionals, who use the Bill if it becomes law, and in the training to be provided for them under the Bill to enable medical practitioners to evaluate whether each patient has been subjected to coercion, pressure or dishonesty by another person in applying for assisted dying. In criminal law, definitions of coercion, dishonesty and pressure are not placed on a statutory footing. First, on dishonesty, Ivey v. Genting Casinos is the lead case because there is no statutory definition of dishonesty. The case provides not a definition but a two-stage test. The courts are familiar with the legal elements of dishonesty from case law: for a long time the part-subjective and part-objective Ghosh test was applied. That was amended in 2020 by the Supreme Court in the Ivey case, which disapproved the former test but retained the question: “Was his or her conduct dishonest by the standards of an ordinary decent person?” Similarly, “pressure” does not have a statutory definition in criminal law, but essentially means forcing someone to do something against their will. Having looked at this issue carefully, I am satisfied that the wording in clause 26 is enough to signal to anyone involved in a relevant application to bring a criminal prosecution what they should look for in terms of acts and intent. The common law is thus well placed to further develop the concepts in the context of the offences set out in clause 26.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for her speech. I think we are united in principle, but perhaps take different views on the best way to ensure that this happens in practice. To give an example, if the word “intimate” is used in those circumstances, were a court to interpret it, it might include a husband, wife or partner, but not a brother, sister or parent. So already, in using that one word, we have potentially created further risks. By defining it, in the circumstances set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft, we are excluding a relationship that we would want the court to look at, to weigh and judge whether there was potential dishonesty, coercion or pressure by that person, in that relationship with the person seeking assistance. I give that as just one example of the risk created by adding language, rather than leaving it more broadly for a court to interpret on the basis of the facts of the case.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Just to put this one to bed, which is where we all need to go at this stage, I did seek advice from those that have worked in this field, and it is not a concept used commonly in the criminal law. It is instead used in the law of equity and would not be as relevant in this context. There were other, sharper elements that could make up this concept of coercion that were better and more well understood in the context of the criminal law.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Clause 26 puts in place the elements of the offences under the Bill. It is right that it does that and draws the parameters very tightly and firmly. Under criminal law, those concepts are defined nowhere else on the face of a statute. My severe concern, having listened to the Committee and its worries about concepts such as coercion, is that we risk restricting our understanding of the concepts too tightly, and therefore excluding cases of the kinds that we want to include. By leaving them in the Bill but not defining them, we enable the common law courts to interpret the facts on the basis of the lives of the real people that come before them. I want to make sure that, where it is right and proper that those courts interpret the law on the basis of those facts, they are able to do so and are not restricted by too limited a definition in the Bill. I want to ensure that more, not fewer, cases can be encompassed. As I said in my speech, we have talked about these concepts in quite an abstract sense. I wanted us to ground that in the reality of what we might want guidance and further advice on those concepts to look like. That would follow the convention, as I have said already, in other areas of the law, such as domestic abuse, where the primary legislation does not define the concepts but secondary legislation provides further details and real-life examples for practitioners and the courts.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I supported the Bill on Second Reading on the basis of the High Court proposal, but then read very closely the evidence from Justice Munby on the need for a strengthened evidentiary process so that this is not just a rubber-stamping exercise. He said, secondly, that it would be better to replace the High Court with another system because of the position that it would place judges in. Having listened to 50 witnesses, I am satisfied with this proposal; I was persuaded through this cross-party process, which is an incredible example of deliberative decision making. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that our ability to amend the Bill where the evidence shows that we must do so demonstrates the strength of this process, and has enabled us to produce something much better and more in alignment with public opinion?

• 5 Mar 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Forty-eight children that we know of have been killed by known domestically abusive parents during court-permitted contact visits, including Paul and Jack Sykes, who were tragically murdered at the hands of their father in a house fire. Their mother, and my constituent, Claire Throssell has campaigned against the presumption of contact, which allows such abusers to have unsupervised contact with their children. Will the Prime Minister meet Claire and me to discuss the urgent need to remove the presumption of contact in law?

• 12 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am delighted that the right hon. Gentleman has made that point. Inserting the amendment—and the language of, and focus on, “benefit”—in a paragraph that deals with the two criminal concepts of coercion and pressure, actually undermines the existing focus of the paragraph. Does he agree that it is better and stronger to keep the focus on the two criminal concepts, which would require the mens rea—which I think some colleagues are indicating—and the actus reus, and that that is not achieved by inserting the language about benefits?

• 12 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Tenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I appreciate the hon. Lady raising the need to use accurate legal language. Does she agree, therefore, that introducing “undue influence”, which is used regularly in the law of equity but not in the criminal law, would unhelpfully complicate matters, considering that coercive behaviour is defined in section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 where it provides for an offence of controlling or coercive behaviour in that context? We have 10 years of case law. The hon. Lady rightly pointed to the importance of looking at case law and at how courts have dealt with this; the understanding of coercion in the criminal law offences is well known and well rehearsed, whereas the use of undue influence in the context of criminal law offences, which is what we are dealing with in clause 26, is not.

• 11 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Eighth sitting) · Hansard source

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  No, I will make some progress. To replace the established concept of mental capacity with “ability” would create more problems than it seeks to solve, and is not underpinned by a clear statutory basis. Furthermore, the language the hon. Lady uses in her new clause 1 only echoes the wording of the second leg of the two-stage test in the MCA, in its language of fully understanding, using and weighing the relevant information. It does not, however, have the scaffolding and clarity of the five principles set out in the Mental Capacity Act, and it is a pale imitation of the second stage of the test of capacity, which is already in section 3 of the MCA. Thirdly, the use and application of the Mental Capacity Act has been applied and litigated upon in our court system over the last 20 years, further nuancing its application in complex medical decision making and explicating, for example, the five principles in the MCA and the subsequent two-stage test for capacity. Contrary to what colleagues on the Opposition Benches have said already, it is used in cases where treatment is withdrawn. It is important to understand that in those circumstances, such withdrawal is not seen as an omission; it is seen as a deliberate act. It is therefore analogous to the usage in the Bill as proposed. Fourthly, I have deep concerns that the use of the term “ability” and the concept expounded in new clause 1 imports an ableist approach, which I do not welcome, as someone who has worked in disability rights and policy for more than a decade and a half. To return to my first argument, about the familiarity and usage of the Mental Capacity Act by medical practitioners, clinicians and the wider social care profession for two decades, many family members will be familiar with the term and used to using it as part of the wider care of people with learning disabilities, autism and mental health problems. The boundaries of those who are familiar with the concept go well beyond the walls of only medical practitioners. In oral evidence, chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty stated that the Mental Capacity Act “is used up and down the country by doctors and nurses every day; they know it and they understand it. Although…it is a large piece of legislation, it is one that people have worked through in practice multiple times. If you ask six or seven doctors, ‘Does this person have capacity?’, in almost all cases you will get six or seven identical answers, because people are used to using it.” –– [ Official Report, Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Public Bill Committee, 28 January 2025; c. 33, Q7.] To unleash the tiger of an unknown and untested concept of ability into a Bill that would benefit better from the well understood, measured and principled approach of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 does not best serve the patients that I know the hon. Member for Richmond Park seeks so carefully to protect. It is therefore worth laying out the paradigm that underpins the MCA and the principles it legislates for, and why it is so important to retain this at the heart of the Bill. The presumption of capacity in the Mental Capacity Act exists because it is considered a fundamental principle of respecting individual autonomy, meaning that every adult is assumed to have the ability to make their own decisions unless there is clear evidence proving otherwise. This protects against unnecessary interference in people’s lives and ensures that they are treated with dignity and respect, even if they may have a disability or medical condition that could potentially impact their decision-making abilities. I want also to reflect on the robust language in clause 2(3), which states: “For the avoidance of doubt, a person is not to be considered to be terminally ill by reason only of the person having one or both of— (a) a mental disorder, within the meaning of the Mental Health Act 1983; (b) a disability, within the meaning of section 6 of the Equality Act 2010.” That provision, the tightly drawn limit on the need for the person’s terminal illness to leave them with only six months to live, and the third stage of the test—using the Mental Capacity Act to understand their decision making—mean that we have a strong set of safeguards.

• 11 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Eighth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I will make some progress. The concept set out by the hon. Member for Richmond Park is the bare bones of what is needed in the complex decision making required across various stages of the Bill. In such decision making, the MCA has a wide and well-used toolkit to determine capacity. That leads to my third point. The Mental Capacity Act has been applied and litigated in our court system over the past 20 years. The chief medical officer, Professor Sir Chris Whitty, said in his evidence that the Act “has the advantage of being tested in the courts. That has gone as far as the Supreme Court, and the various ambiguities that were inevitably in the legislation have been clarified by senior judges. Therefore, to practitioners like me, it feels like a piece of robust and predictable legislation.” –– [ Official Report, Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Public Bill Committee, 28 January 2025; c. 33, Q7.] He continued later: “If there were no Mental Capacity Act, there would be an argument, which has been used for a long time, that the Bill would have to define what was meant with a fair degree of clarity.” –– [ Official Report, Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Public Bill Committee, 28 January 2025; c. 36, Q14.] I do not see sufficient clarity in the hon. Lady’s concept as set out in the amendment. At a later evidence session, Yogi Amin, a solicitor and partner at Irwin Mitchell, augmented Sir Chris Whitty’s argument by saying: “I wholly recommend and support the idea…to defer to the Mental Capacity Act for capacity assessments. I have been working in this area for over 20 years, before and after the Mental Capacity Act came in, and I have done cases all the way up to the Supreme Court, as well as day-to-day different cases around the country. It is well understood how capacity assessments are done, and it is ingrained into the practice of practitioners generally and of legal practitioners in the courts.” –– [ Official Report, Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Public Bill Committee, 29 January 2025; c. 140, Q176.] He continued: “It is a well settled and understood approach to the law, and producing a new one would throw up a whole new conundrum, where people would be questioning how to approach it, etc. It is not broken—it works well.” –– [ Official Report, Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Public Bill Committee, 29 January 2025; c. 141, Q177.] Finally, for further clarity, I will vote against the amendment because of the ableist assumption in both language and concept. Ableist language assumes that disabled people are inferior to non-disabled people and perpetuates deficit discourses about such groups. I believe that this does not take the approach that we see in the paradigm of the Mental Capacity Act, which puts disabled people’s choices, autonomy and control over their choices at the heart of this legislation.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Dr Graham, thank you for your written evidence, which was very helpful and stated your view that the strength of the clauses in the Bill make it compatible with the European convention on human rights in relation to article 2 on the right to life and article 14 on freedom from discrimination. Can you explain why you hold that view? What has been the view of the European Court of Human Rights in relation to assisted dying laws in other signatory states? Dr Graham: There are two main challenges to this legislation, and to legislation like it, in relation to the European convention. As you say, one relates to article 2 and one relates to article 14. The article 2 challenge can be dismissed fairly quickly, because we have authority from the European Court saying that “the right to life enshrined under Article 2 could not be interpreted as per se prohibiting the conditional decriminalisation of euthanasia.” As a matter of precedent, that is fairly clear. The trickier argument comes with article 14, which is the anti-discrimination right. There is an argument that goes something like this—I hope that those who hold this view think I am giving it a good airing. By allowing some groups to access assisted suicide, but not other groups—in this Bill, allowing terminally ill adults who meet the criteria in the Bill but not non-terminally ill adults who do not meet those criteria—you are treating two different groups in different ways, and that is discriminatory. There is an argument that, because of that, the courts would find that the Bill is unlawful and needs to be expanded—that groups outside of the terminally ill that meet the criteria of the Bill need to be given access to assisted suicide. I think that argument does not work for a few reasons, chief among which is that in our jurisdiction treating different groups differently is not unlawful. Treating different groups differently without good justification is unlawful. The question of justification, while it is for judges and the courts, is a question on which judges have deferred heavily to Parliament, especially in areas that involve difficult social, ethical or moral issues. If I may be forgiven for reading from a court’s judgment one more time, in the case of SC the Supreme Court said: “The ordinary approach…gives appropriate weight to…the primary decision-maker”— the primary decision maker being Parliament— “a degree of weight which will normally be substantial in…matters raising sensitive moral or ethical issues.” We can all agree that this Bill involves sensitive moral or ethical issues. My point is that when it comes to justification, courts are very deferential to Parliament. Courts think that Parliament should be deciding whether treating two groups in different ways is justified or not. That is why, in my view, there is no real truck to the argument that article 14—the anti-discrimination right—will be operative and cause the Bill to be declared incompatible with the convention in any way. I hope that is an adequate summary of my view.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q To pick up on your important point about advocacy, how would your members detect coercion, undue pressure or dishonesty by family members or other supporting parties on which the patient was relying in relation to seeking assisted dying? At what point would there be a report to the police by your members? Professor Ranger: Safeguarding is part of our professional responsibility now. Whether it is for a child, an adult or an elderly person, part of our role is to be vigilant against financial misconduct, physical abuse and mental health abuse: any of those things is a responsibility of every nurse now. It is a very good and simple process. You do not have to investigate or give a judgment; you need to refer it to be investigated. That takes the pressure off an individual clinician. Our job is to be vigilant and to refer safeguarding anywhere we think that there is any form of abuse. I think that that process would remain and could be part of how we do things now.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I have a question for Sir Max Hill and Alex Ruck Keene. Your insight on clause 12 has been helpful. What procedures would you recommend be adopted for testing and, if need be, challenging the evidence as part of an evidentiary process linked to the panel that you set out? Alex Ruck Keene: This is, for the moment, predicated on the fact that we are still in the High Court, as opposed to slightly making up policy on the fly about a panel. Assuming it is the High Court, it seems to me the Court has to be discharging a properly inquisitorial jurisdiction, which means it has to be armed with the tools to do that, which includes arming it with the tools to call for its own evidence. It also seems to me that the High Court would have to be armed with its own ability to not just receive evidence from one side and have someone testing it. That then brings you to the only player in town who could possibly do that, which would be the Official Solicitor as advocate to the Court. I do not want to emphasise too much the question of resources, because if Parliament thinks this is sufficiently important, the resources will be voted through. But it is vitally important to note that the Official Solicitor is completely overloaded, and we would be asking the Official Solicitor to act as advocate to the Court in every single one of these cases. You could not have it be optional; you cannot say that it is some and not others. If it is going to be inquisitorial, the High Court has to have the ability to say, “This is one-sided; someone needs to tease it out,” so the Official Solicitor would have to be funded to be advocate to the Court and, if necessary, instruct lawyers in every single case. Sir Max Hill: The model that I was espousing would not necessarily involve the Official Solicitor at all. It would make no draw on the administration of the Court or any officer of the Court, still less full-time judges. It would allow the appointment of recently retired judges, as we have in a number of scenarios—surveillance commissioners, for example—and a fresh administration. With that, as with the High Court model at the moment, there is the primary set of provisions, which Parliament must impose, and it is important that that is sufficient for what Alex called an inquisitorial function. Those are in part mandatory—those things that the panel must be satisfied about, which are set out in clause 12(3). Then there are those that are discretionary, which are set out in clause 12(5). What sits between the two is very important. That is currently expressed as “Rules of Court”, but it would be the rules of the panel, or the commission that appoints the panels. In a court scenario, we are all familiar with criminal procedure rules and civil procedure rules; that is the secondary stage that is reached once the primary legislation has been fixed. That, too, would apply to the commission or panel process, but I do not necessarily think that it would involve using existing, paid judicial resources at all.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q You have helpfully acknowledged the link that we need to make on coercion to strengthen this, but on the other two elements—dishonesty and pressure—is there anything else that we need to look to in order to make this more robust? Sir Max Hill: “Dishonesty” is a term of art in common use, but it is also a term of statute. Anyone investigating or, still more, prosecuting would understand what dishonesty means. I accept that there is a wider point—not so much for interpretation but for understanding—that this Committee may want to consider, of how much of that existing definition needs to be imported into the Bill. As with mental capacity, I would suggest that, beyond perhaps the odd footnote, it is not necessary for you as a Committee to define again what dishonesty means, because we have it elsewhere. Alex Ruck Keene: On pressure, I think the Committee would be really assisted by having a look at the learning of the High Court judges exercising their jurisdiction under the inherent jurisdiction in relation to people who are said to be vulnerable. They have developed an awful lot of tools, where they are trying to look at people in complicated situations—potentially, but not necessarily, with impairments—who are caught up in what one person brilliantly described as being caught in a spider’s web. Those are the sorts of sets of tools used when judges are trying to work out what is going on, and whether it is the side of the line we consider to be acceptable or the side of the line we consider unacceptable—because “pressure” is doing a lot of work there.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q It is extremely helpful to understand the opportunity for scrutiny before death. Building on that point, are there any safeguards around those practices that are not currently included in the Bill but should be, particularly around detecting coercion and exploring alternative care options? I also have one follow-up question, if I may. Sir Max Hill: I think that coercion and the coercion clauses in the Bill should be read alongside the capacity clauses. What we are looking for, as required by clause 1(1) and clause 1(2), is a clear, settled and informed wish, voluntarily made without coercion or pressure. Those aspects were taken, at least in part, from the Crown Prosecution Service guidance on 1961 Act cases. Capacity involves understanding information, retaining it, using it and communicating it. If those hallmarks are not there, you may be in a situation where you should be considering coercion. I think you read the two together. To answer your question directly, the criminal liability clauses—clause 24, and the new offences in clauses 26 and 27—are robust. As a matter for your scrutiny, they are aspects that we do not have in the law at present. There is, of course, the addition of clause 36, under which you cannot be a witness or a proxy to the procedure that is enshrined in the Bill if you are too close to the terminally ill person. That is another hallmark of the Bill that will hedge against coercion.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Child Arrangements: Presumption of Parental Involvement · Hansard source

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  I do indeed, and I will return to that point later, not least because Jack and Paul Sykes told their social workers that they were scared of their dad. The youngest told them that he was “pure nasty”. Their secondary school was so concerned about the domestic abuse at home that it also alerted social services. Yet, on a two-hour contact visit permitted by a family court and allowed to go ahead by that same CAFCASS officer, Jack and Paul were locked in the attic by their father. Using gasoline, their dad then set multiple fires alight across their home. Paul, aged nine, died at the scene after his elder brother tried to save him. Jack, aged just 12, died later in hospital. The father also killed himself in the blaze. Jack and Paul Sykes were supposed to return to their mother Claire that night. Instead, the boys died at the hands of a known domestic abuser. Their voices were not heard by social services, nor by the court. CAFCASS never heard their voices either. In fact, the day that Jack was supposed to speak to CAFCASS for a welfare assessment was the same day Claire cradled him in her arms as he died. The only time Jack’s voice was heard was when he was held in the fireman’s arms as he used the last of his strength to say, “My dad did this and he did it on purpose.”

• 22 Jan 2025 · Child Arrangements: Presumption of Parental Involvement · Hansard source

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  I do agree, and those factors have a cumulative, additive effect on those young people, silencing their voices even more so than those of other victims. That is one of the reasons why the harm report was clear that “the presumption should not remain in its present form” and recommended that it be reviewed “urgently in order to address its detrimental effects.” Today we are focusing on presumption of contact, but there is much more that could be done to make the family court system child-centric. We can be bolder by changing the language in the Children Act 1989 to say explicitly that a presumption of contact should not be given to a known domestically abusive parent. Further, protections could be strengthened by incorporating practice direction 12J in primary legislation. We also need to ensure that no interim contact takes place before assessments are fully completed by CAFCASS. Additionally, we must legally recognise children as victims of financial abuse under the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. Shockingly, there is currently no definition of rape or consent in the family court system.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Child Arrangements: Presumption of Parental Involvement · Hansard source

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  I do agree, and I thank my hon. Friend for her powerful statement. That is why we must urgently spell this issue out in primary legislation, alongside having a more tightly drawn definition of domestic abuse towards children in section 3 of the 2021 Act. Over four years have passed since the UK Government launched a review of the presumption, as recommended by the harm report. The Conservative Government made no response, but now there is an opportunity for our new Government to take action, look at what other countries are doing and embed child-centred approaches in the family courts. Australia has repealed a similar piece of legislation, and the US is rolling out a law to incentivise states to ensure that their child custody laws properly protect children. We must show leadership and be a beacon of light for children’s rights around the world by changing the law so that family courts prioritise children’s welfare and safety over the privilege of parental contact rights. Our Government must do what the previous Conservative Government failed to do, by taking a child-centred approach and changing the law on presumption of contact. No more towns such as mine should be left to grieve. No more parents should have to make the ultimate sacrifice of the life sentence of losing a child at the hands of an abusive spouse or partner. No more parents should ever have to send their child on a court-ordered visit and hold them tightly in their arms hours later as they die. This Government must now act to save lives for generations to come by ending contact at any cost. Let us not just imagine a world where the voices of children are put at the heart of our family court system, where children such as Jack and Paul are listened to, not ignored, where children have a childhood free of fear and oppression, and where children such as Jack and Paul live the lives they deserved to live. Minister, I urge you to do all you can to make that world a reality.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Child Arrangements: Presumption of Parental Involvement · Hansard source

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  I do agree. Our court system should be one where justice is achieved for vulnerable victims of abuse, rather than an additional and secondary means of victimising them.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Child Arrangements: Presumption of Parental Involvement · Hansard source

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  Absolutely. I will return to this later, but the harm report makes quite clear the re-traumatisation of both children and parental victims of domestic abuse that comes with repeated attempts at contact and the presumption that is currently in place. The consequence of that is a generation of lost voices like Jack and Paul Sykes and Sara Sharif, but there is no definitive way of knowing how many parents whose partner or spouse is a known domestic abuser have been persuaded into some form of shared care because of the presumption. The harm report, published in 2020 by the Ministry of Justice’s expert panel on harm, found that presumption of contact must be reviewed urgently, because the principle “put a misplaced emphasis on the child’s right to a relationship with both parents…above the child’s welfare and right to be safe from abuse and its effects”.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Child Arrangements: Presumption of Parental Involvement · Hansard source

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  I agree. As someone who has worked in criminology and criminal justice for over a decade, I think the need for us to move beyond siloed working can be no more important than it is in these sorts of cases. Just yesterday, we learned that the man Kiena Dawes named as her killer when she committed suicide wants to launch a custody battle over their daughter, saying that “I’m coming to get you baby girl”. This man has been jailed for six and a half years for assault of and controlling behaviour towards Kiena. Our current law would allow this person to have unsupervised contact with their child.