Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting)

Joe Robertson Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 25th March 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Linsey Farnsworth]

Having been a Crown prosecutor for 21 years, I find it very disturbing that you take that view.

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

Q As a former family solicitor, I want to focus my questions on the proposal to remove the presumption that involvement by a parent in a child’s life is in the child’s best interest or good for the child’s welfare. Given that, in children’s proceedings, it is already the law that the child’s welfare shall be paramount, and given that, sometimes, children can be used as tokens between warring parents, I wonder, Samantha Hillas, whether you find it strange that we are going to hear evidence today only from parent groups, and not from groups representing children’s interests. Is that odd to you, as it is to me, given that we are dealing with changes to children’s proceedings, where a child’s welfare is paramount?

Samantha Hillas: I have not made the arrangements for who is attending, so I do not find it odd. Whoever has been asked to attend is attending. I can talk a little bit about the repeal of the presumption—

[Joe Robertson]

Q Given that there is no one here representing children, as a children’s lawyer, can you help the Committee understand what a presumption of a parent’s involvement in a child’s life is, as compared with the overriding concern for a child’s welfare that must be uppermost in the court’s mind? Can you help the Committee understand what that means?

Samantha Hillas: I am not quite sure I understand the question, so I will answer it like this. From the practitioner perspective, we have always found the insertion of the presumption fairly odd, because it goes without saying that it is usually in children’s best interest to have a relationship with both parents. Where there are circumstances in which it is not safe for a child to have a relationship with both parents, the child’s welfare is protected and is paramount under section 1(1) of the Children Act 1989.

The insertion of section 1(2A) into that Act in 2014 came on the back of quite a lot of protest and demonstration by certain pressure groups for the amendment to be made, to try to promote a presumption of involvement that really is tacitly always there. For practitioners, it was probably something of an otiose insertion. The difficulty with it is that even though a review has demonstrated that it has not been the basis for judgments—the welfare principle has not been subordinate to it; the welfare principle has still been paramount—it has created a sort of pro-contact culture.

You have to remember that when it came in, that coincided with basically the eradication of legal aid in family cases. Even though lawyers would advise that the welfare principle is paramount, if you are a litigant in person without the funds to afford legal fees, you might read that presumption and read a pro-contact culture into it, and might then be agreeing to situations that are not safe for a child.

I have not answered your question, but—I am sorry that this is taking quite a long time—practitioners thought that it was a fairly redundant insertion, and it is sensible for it to be repealed.

[Joe Robertson]

Q My questions cannot be answered because there is no one here representing children’s groups, but that part of the Children Act 1989 is not about presumption of contact, is it? It is about presumption in favour of involvement in a child’s life.

Samantha Hillas: Yes. Well, there is a presumption that a child’s best interests would be served, as I said in the first place, by having a relationship with both parents. It is only where there would be a risk to that child that there would not be involvement.

[Joe Robertson]

But the Government want to remove that.

[John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)]

Q Thank you for coming today. My question is for Claire Davies. The open caseload is 80,000 and is projected by some potentially to rise to 200,000. In your evidence so far, you have not been able to identify a timeframe for the measures that you would prefer to be the focus at the moment. Do you think that victims would view that with concern, given that we have all agreed that justice delayed is justice denied?

Claire Davies: Of course they are going to view it with concern—it is common sense that anyone would be concerned—but we need to have the opportunity, which we have not been given, to demonstrate that in fact it will not reach that high with the measures that we support.

Efficiency in our system has long been lacking, despite repeated efforts, and this Government have shown that they will invest, and substantial investment is what is needed. We are not afraid of change—we make that absolutely clear. A lot more use could be made of technology in our courts; remote courtrooms could take the shorter hearings away from the trial courts so that they can concentrate on what they should be doing and have the full use of a court day to maximise that.

It is a combination of features in the trial, but the matters that we have proposed—you heard this morning, as well, that we encourage the use of specialised courts—would have a dramatic impact. You have to remember that new sentencing provisions came into force on 22 March, and we believe that they will also have a dramatic impact on the current caseload. The ability to give suspended sentences for a longer period of up to three years will have an impact, as will efficiency measures and, most importantly, the investment that the Government have made in relation to uncapped sitting days. All of that, combined, will have a dramatic impact, to the point that losing, or curtailing, the right to jury trial—because we are not losing it completely. We make that clear and accept it. We say that it is not necessary to lose the legitimacy that juries bring to our court system.

The judiciary have made great strides in their diversity, but they are still not representative of the communities they serve. The equalities statement makes clear the way that people elect those of different ethnic backgrounds. Given all of that combined, we would urge that clauses 1 to 7, which deal with repealing or restricting the right to a jury trial under certain circumstances, are not brought into force. There are many more ways in which action can be taken.