Access Rights to Grandparents

Andrew Lewer Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston) for organising the debate and for his excellent and moving speech. I thank the other contributors for their moving speeches too. At a time when politics and public opinion often revolve around Brexit and adjacent matters that are seen as huge, it is important to recognise that our constituents are directly affected by other, personal problems that require our attention, such as grandparents’ access to children.

The bond between children and their grandparents is an essential one, yet, as we have heard, the latter lack clear legal rights to the former. In the event of divorce or family dispute, grandparents need to make an application for permission to see their grandchildren under a court order. At the hearing, the court assesses the relationship between the grandparent and the child. It is heartbreaking that a bond between close relatives has to be deemed to be significant, or not, by a legal entity, especially when the two parties are usually victims of a family rupture.

I have been contacted by a number of grandparents in my constituency who have sought my help after being denied access to their grandchildren. Colleagues have related similar experiences. To that end, I met Marion Turner of the GranPart support group, which is based in Northampton and Milton Keynes. The group offers such grandparents help and support to deal with the pain and loss, and it provides free legal advice from solicitors. The information it provides online and via telephone about the complexities of application for leave of court, child arrangement orders and so on is of great comfort to grandparents at what is a hugely stressful time.

I am grateful for the support given by that group in this matter, but I believe that there is still a need for a justice reform to treat the problem at the root, instead of people having to try to ameliorate the consequences case by case. To that effect, a few months ago my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), whose constituency neighbours mine, with me and others, sent a letter to the Minister of State for Courts and Justice, who at the time was my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab), calling for a legislative change to allow grandparents to have legal access to their grandchildren. Since then we have awaited developments. I therefore join my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire in asking the Minister—who is now, I hope, of some standing—to produce a long-awaited Green Paper, treating the matter with the attention it clearly deserves.