Template letter to MP

If you are unhappy with the family Justice Report, I would urge you to write/email your MP, these are recommendations, as yet not law.

Here is a template letter/email for you to use. Personalise it by adding your own story and name,your constituency etc.

Dear INSERT NAME,

I am writing to you to register my profound disappointment and disgust at the recommendations made in the final report of the Family Justice Review.

The final report rejected not only a presumption of shared parenting following family breakdown in law, but also a statement to recognise the importance of the role of both parents in a child’s life. The report also failed to provide recommendations for strengthening the child’s right to contact with grandparents and the wider family.

It is stated in the report that the answer to improving outcomes for children in private family law is to ‘make parental responsibility work’. Parental responsibility was formally defined in the Children Act 1989; if parental responsibility alone were the answer, we would have seen improved outcomes for children over the past 20 years. Sadly, we see only ever increasing numbers of children becoming estranged from their parents through no fault of their own, to the detriment of their psychological, emotional and social wellbeing.

The family justice system is not in a state of crisis because people are unaware of the meaning of parental responsibility; instead, the problem is that it is all too easy for one parent to simply ignore this and omit the other from their child’s life, with a system which is unable and unwilling to take firm action to prevent it. Only a rebuttal presumption of shared parenting in law, where no risks to the child's welfare have been identified, will be enough to ensure that justice is served for children caught up in these most intractable cases.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Britain is a signatory, guarantees a child’s right to maintain a meaningful relationship with both parents following separation or divorce, where to do so would not put the child at undue risk. It should be a source of shame for all of us that our current family law system produces outcomes so diametrically opposed to this simple, yet laudable, aim. That the Family Justice Review has decided to sidestep this issue is an opportunity lost, and one which risks betraying a new generation of children.

The Family Justice Review does of course only provide recommendations; not law. I therefore urge you in your capacity as Member for CONSTITUENCY to make representations to the Secretary of State for Justice The Rt. Hon. Kenneth Clarke MP and Parliamentary Under Secretary for Children and Families Tim Loughton MP, and request that any legislation proposed on family law will ensure that a child’s right to a meaningful relationship with both parents and their wider family following divorce and separation are respected and supported.

I keenly anticipate your reply.


Yours faithfully,

Your Name

(Thanks to SteveGr)

www.bristolgrandparentssupportgroup.co.uk