Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Coghlan Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

Our plan to halve knife crime seeks to give young people the best start in life, to stop those who are at risk of turning to knife crime from doing so, and to ensure that perpetrators are caught and brought to justice. I have been out with a number of community groups over the last few weeks to see that work in action. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is good to see the numbers beginning to fall, but there is more work to do over the coming months and years.

[Chris Coghlan (Dorking and Horley) (LD)]

My constituent is here. Her ex-husband sexually assaulted her children, and attempted to murder them and her by removing the brake pads from her car, yet the court appeared to listen more to the abuser’s allegation of parental alienation syndrome, a concept discredited by the World Health Organisation, than her evidence. The abuser today has unsupervised access to the children. What steps will the Government take to prevent discredited concepts from obstructing criminal justice, leaving children at risk of rape and murder?

[Sarah Sackman]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for raising such a moving case, and I pay tribute to his constituent, who is here today. Let us be absolutely clear: the Government’s position is that parental alienation has no evidential basis and is a totally discredited concept. We are working carefully with the Family Procedure Rule Committee to limit the instruction of unregulated experts, including those who hold that they are parental alienation experts. I hope that will ring the changes and prevent this sort of thing in future.