Marie Tidball MP: speeches

Speeches

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

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  Q I want to follow up, because this is really important in strengthening the Bill. Based on your prosecutorial experience, what key elements should be present in the definitions of coercion, pressure and dishonesty? I also have a bit of a technical question, if I may. Do you think they would be better placed in clause 26 or in clause 40, under interpretation? I am asking what more you can say on the key elements of coercion, pressure and dishonesty, and I am asking about their placement in the Bill to make them as accessible as possible to medical practitioners and patients who will want to rely on it. Sir Max Hill: My inclination is that clause 26, which is part of the full body of the Bill, is the right place for this. As with the interpretation clause, clause 40, and as with the way we interpret statute as a matter of course, there are aspects of other statutory offences or Acts of Parliament that help us when we are seeking to determine what coercion is. The creation of the offence of coercion and control, now very commonly used in domestic abuse investigations and prosecutions, has brought us into this territory. It is not beyond the wit of anybody who seeks to use and interpret this Bill to also look for other parts of statute that deal with coercion. I make the same point about capacity. What is in the Bill is very slender, one might say, because clause 3 simply invites the reader to look across to the Mental Capacity Act 2005. But that Act is very clear on what mental capacity is and how it is defined. I think what I am saying is that it is a drafting point, and I am not a parliamentary draftsman, but I do not have a problem with the definitions of dishonesty, coercion and pressure being in clause 26, where they are. It is not the only place one would look, though; there are other sources.

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

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  I note that Laura Hoyano, who is giving evidence on Thursday, is a domestic abuse barrister. She has also been involved in inquiries on child sexual abuse, and has a great range of experience in that area. She will bring that to the table as a practising barrister working closely on such cases.

• 23 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Two weeks ago, my constituency was hit by the worst snow in 15 years, leaving vulnerable and older residents, schools and GP surgeries blocked in by the snow. I commend the Barnsley council team, who were out 24 hours a day, eight days a week solid, but because resources are stretched, their gritters can cover only the council’s primary and secondary roads. Does the Minister agree that much more should be done to improve national resilience in extreme and exceptional circumstances where snow is prolonged by cold temperatures, by giving local authorities that cover rural areas such as mine increased gritting resources and access to snow ploughs?

• 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 absolutely do. Furthermore, in response to my hon. Friend’s important point, the report specifically stated: “To the extent that the courts’ pro-contact culture operates as a barrier to addressing domestic abuse, it serves to reinforce that culture.” Indeed, section 6 of the report laid bare that children’s voices are being “muted or unheard” in domestic abuse cases because of the pro-contact culture.

• 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 absolutely do agree and will return to my proposals for reform later.

• 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.

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

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the presumption of parental involvement in child arrangements. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. There must be urgent reform of the presumption of parental involvement in child arrangements, known in law as presumption of contact, on the basis of evidence and principle, and to ensure that children’s voices are at the heart of our family courts. The de facto common law principle of presumption of contact was legislated for in the Children and Families Act 2014, which inserted sections 1(2A) and (2B) into the Children Act 1989. That legal principle means that parents should always be given contact with their children, even in circumstances where there is a known domestic abuser.

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

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  I certainly agree. To illustrate why, I want hon. Members to 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 stepped towards him with his fists ready to punch him. The boy’s mum stepped into the space between the fist and her son, and pushed him out of its way. The full force of that fist hit her so hard that she was spun round 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.” Imagine the same boy being driven to tears after his father made his brother eat peas until he was sick. The boy’s mother left her husband, taking the children with her. Imagine a scene, six months later, where the father barricaded a Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service officer in her office for 15 minutes. Social services were aware that that same father had made statements that he was capable of killing. Then imagine that, despite knowing all that, a family court permitted the father of those two boys five hours’ unsupervised contact per week. Claire Throssell, my constituent, does not need to imagine that nightmare. She and her two sons, Jack and Paul Sykes, lived it.

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

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  I do agree. I will discuss further proposals later in my speech. Jack and Paul would never have been in the reach of a known domestic abuser, were it not for the presumption of contact. Although schools have a statutory responsibility to report suspected incidents of domestic abuse, in contrast the presumption does not put the children of known domestic abusers first. Ten years on, this place must hear Jack’s and Paul’s voices reverberate loud and clear, because tragically their voices are not alone. Women’s Aid found evidence of 48 child deaths at the hands of a known domestic abuser that took place following a permitted contact visit between 1994 and 2015. The Domestic Abuse Act, as my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr (Steve Witherden) mentioned, recognises that children are victims of domestic abuse in their own right. Child contact is a known risk indicator for domestic homicide, yet we still do not know the true scale of the problem. The vast majority of court reports are not published, with only 10% of rulings coming to light. Only last month, the sentencing of Sara Sharif’s known domestically abusive father and stepmother for her murder showed all of us that action is urgently needed to change the law. Her life must not be forgotten.

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

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  I agree, and nowhere is that clearer than in the cases of my constituent’s sons, Jack and Paul. Not only was their father known to be abusive, but the boys did not want to see him—all while he was demanding 50:50 contact in the family courts. Claire promised her sons that she would not rest until the law was changed to prevent more children from dying like they did. When I was elected last year, I promised to help her. Labour’s important mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade will require a national effort, and require us to use every tool available to target perpetrators and address the root causes of abuse and violence. Last week’s Second Reading of the landmark Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill marked a transformative change to child protection in education, and now we need to hold family courts to the same standard by repealing section 1(2A) of the Children Act 1989.

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

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  I agree. We have said that we will take a mission-centred approach in Government, particularly to halve violence against women and girls, and I will return to that point. As a reference for Hansard , I mention that Claire Throssell MBE is with us in this Chamber today.

• 20 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T2. Constituents of mine in High Green were told that a social housing repair project for their home would take 12 weeks. The project has now been ongoing for 64 weeks, with contractors leaving the works in a disgraceful condition. I welcome the Government’s boost to the building of more social housing and the extra £350,000 of homelessness funding announced for Sheffield this week. How does the Minister plan to empower local authorities to ensure that contractors deliver social house building and repairs to a high standard and on time?

• 8 Jan 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  No, I will make progress. The Bill will implement child-centred government, emphatically embedding it in education and children’s social care, and there must be parallel work to put children first in the family courts. That important piece of the jigsaw puzzle will complement the Bill. I commend the Bill to this House. It takes a landmark approach to safeguarding children at risk, and I am proud to support it.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  I first met my constituent Claire Throssell at a remembrance service at my old secondary school in Penistone. Every year, the headteacher marks the deaths of Claire’s sons, former pupils Jack and Paul Sykes, who died at the hands of their father, known to be domestically abusive, in a house fire that he started while on a permitted contact visit. The names of most of the children who have been murdered at the hands of their domestically abusive parents in the decades since Claire’s boys were killed remain unspoken, but we must not forget them. Women’s Aid research found that between 2005 and 2015, 19 children, including Jack and Paul, had been killed as a result of unsafe contact with abusive parents. Those children have to remain nameless to avoid causing further distress to their families. Many more deaths will have followed, uncounted and unrecalled. The number of children at risk may be on an even higher scale; in the year to March 2024, in England and Wales, 215,640 “child in need” social care case assessments identified that either a child or parent was experiencing domestic abuse. One name is sadly known to us only too well: Sara Sharif. Her tragic death makes the need for action on this issue all the more poignant, the sentencing of her murderers having taken place just before Christmas. The Bill will help protect children like Sara. It will create a safer, higher-quality education system for every child, and will introduce a register of children who are not in school, to help ensure that no child falls through the gaps when home-educated. Our Government are taking strong action in response to Sara’s death through the Bill’s establishment of a single unique identifier for children, and the introduction of new duties that will improve information sharing across and within agencies, bringing together multi-agency child protection teams from education, social work and the police. I commend the Secretary of State for Education for bringing forward a Bill so transformative of child protection, and so powerful in strengthening regulations on the use of agency workers in children’s social care. My constituent Claire Throssell promised her two boys that no other children would die in the same tragic circumstances. I am proud that our mission-led Government have a mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, and recognise the need to use every Government tool available to target perpetrators and address the root causes of abuse and violence. Achieving this mission and fulfilling the promise that Claire made to her children will require us to connect the incredible strategic work in the Bill with the urgent need to change the law to remove the family courts’ presumption in favour of contact. This principle, added via the Children and Families Act 2014 to the Children Act 1989, allows known abusers to have contact with their children, putting their lives at risk.

• 19 Dec 2024 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  I take this opportunity to wish all colleagues in the Chamber and beyond it a very merry Christmas. Ten years ago, my constituent Claire Throssell promised her sons, who had died at the hands of their domestically abusive father, that no other children would die in the same tragic circumstances. This week has seen the sentencing of Sara Sharif’s father and stepmother, who murdered her. Too many children have died at the hands of known domestically abusive parents who have been granted unsupervised contact in the family courts. Will the Leader of the House make time for a debate on changing the law on presumptive contact in order to prevent further child deaths at the hands of known domestically abusive parents?

• 17 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I draw your attention to my declaration of interests, Mr Mundell. I am a member of the Community union, Unison and GMB. I found it difficult to hear, in anything the shadow Minister just said, any rationale for getting rid of this body all those years ago. I missed three years of school as a child because of the surgeries I needed. Incredible classroom teaching assistants helped me to build my confidence and learn to mix with other children again when I returned—making education and learning an escape, a way to express myself, to overcome people’s assumptions about my disability and to feel free. I stood in my constituency because I wanted to use my skills and experiences to give back to the communities that gave me so much. To know that, because of this Bill and the clause before us now, teaching assistants and other school support staff like the ones who made school a less daunting place for me will once again have a collective bargaining system for pay and conditions—which will ensure that those staff are finally valued and recognised for their vital work—is a very great privilege indeed. The reinstatement of the school support staff negotiating body in England, previously scrapped by the coalition Government for reasons that still remain unclear, will be key to providing professional recognition for a group of staff who have been overlooked for far too long. As Unison, of which I am proudly a member, has highlighted, the proposals in this clause “demonstrate that the Employment Rights Bill isn’t just tackling worker’s rights—it holds the key to tackling long standing public policy failures that have been ignored because they affect workers and service users whose voices are too often neglected by decision makers. Tackling this neglect and allowing trade unions to engage in constructive social partnership and better represent their members is long overdue”. This clause therefore empowers that group of working people, who have been so long overlooked by the Government, to have a better life at work. It will help trade unions to raise standards and pay across the labour market.

• 17 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under you, Mr Mundell. I have fought to break down barriers to equal justice, opportunity and dignity without discrimination for women and disabled people at every stage of my personal, professional and political life. I know that our Labour Government’s work on our missions for 10 years of national renewal has the purpose of changing lives across our country. This clause will be an important part of achieving that change for women in the workplace, ensuring that no matter what their background or where they live, women can thrive in the workplace. I am standing here because of the difference that world-class public services made to my life chances. This Bill creates a culture for world-class employers to break down barriers for women employees. The requirement to develop and publish equality action plans showing the steps that employers will need to take in relation to gender equality will be a significant move forward to improve equality, alongside collecting and publishing figures on the gender pay gap. In an evidence session for the Bill Committee, Jemima Olchawski from the Fawcett Society said: “We have a gender pay gap of just under 14%. On average, women take home just over £630 a month less than men. It also has a detrimental impact on our economy, because it is a marker of the ways in which women are not fully participating or contributing to the economy at their full potential. Estimates indicate that that means we are missing out on tens of billions of pounds of GDP. We strongly support the measures as an important step towards redressing that balance. In particular, we are pleased to see the inclusion of equalities action plans as an important way to get employers to drive forward progress on the gender pay gap.” –– [ Official Report, Employment Rights Public Bill Committee, 26 November 2024; c. 81, Q76.] This is helpful. The clause makes an important contribution to advancing gender equality by including the requirement to develop and publish equality action plans, which address the gender pay gap and support employees going through the menopause. I am pleased to be a member of the Committee seeing this go through today.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Steel Industry: South Yorkshire · Hansard source

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  1. What steps he is taking to support the steel industry in South Yorkshire.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Steel Industry: South Yorkshire · Hansard source

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  Stocksbridge Speciality Steels in my constituency is a world-leading plant, with specialist capability to produce cleaner and stronger high-grade steel for our aerospace industry. The plant supports hundreds of jobs and has an exceptional on-site skills training centre, with links to local universities. Will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss the future strategic significance of Stocksbridge Speciality Steels and its fundamental importance to our national steel industry?

• 3 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham Northfield and for Gloucester for their ably made speeches outlining the very good and pragmatic reasons for the measure. They made points about ensuring that there is a good preliminary process to prevent litigation and laid out all the evidence with regard to the Law Commission. The shadow Minister asked the Minister about principle, which my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham Northfield and for Gloucester also touched on. It is clear that, after 14 years of Conservative Members not considering principle when it comes to access to justice, we are making these changes particularly for disabled employees and women who often have very complex lives. Disability is not static—it is dynamic, and health conditions fluctuate—so three months is a very short time period for people to put a case together if they have complex and fluctuating health conditions. It is right that the measure brings that time period up to the level of other equalities cases. It is also fair to say that many working people have a huge amount to juggle in their day-to-day lives. For me, it is a point of great principle that this Government want to make it easier for them to access their rights and to access justice by giving them more time, being cognisant, as we are, of the many challenges that they might face just to keep a roof over their heads and to keep their family in a stable and supported situation. The need to strengthen access to justice in such circumstances is important. We heard a great deal in the evidence presented to us about the many barriers for various groups and about the effect of the measure on women. It will give women an opportunity to have a longer period of time at the most challenging and complex moments of their life, such as during pregnancy and post birth, which seems to be eminently sensible and principled.