Public Affairs

We recognise that women, men and children are often inadequately protected from abuse and support measures to manage such risks. However, we also seek to reduce the risk of collateral damage to children and abuse of parties through the misuse of new powers created by the Bill.

Written submissions from outside bodies and from individuals are circulated to MPs appointed to examine the Bill during the committee stage, which the Domestic Abuse Bill has just completed. You can click here to view all the written submissions sent to the Committee and the link below to directly to download our own evidence.

Our experience is that the adversarial nature of the family law system is often an unsuitable environment for putting the needs of children first – it promotes and escalates conflict in usually emotionally charged situations.

Domestic abuse is not FNF’s primary focus. Our overriding concern is for the welfare of children and the promotion of all the advantages of children having healthy relationships with both of their parents after family separation. However, almost all our service users report unjustified denials of their relationship with their children.  More than half report their experience of abuse as defined in the form of coercive control and financial/economic abuse.  Furthermore, a large proportion of our service users have themselves been accused of multiple forms of abuse which, upon in-depth investigation by the family courts, are determined to be unfounded or irrelevant to safe and beneficial parenting/contact arrangements.

Approximately two-thirds of service users report behaviours by ex-partners that undermine their children’s relationship with them, subjecting children to fear of upsetting their ex-partner (usually the main carer) should they continue to see or express their love for their other parent. We support the amendments proposed by Mr Philip Davies MP for the inclusion of parental alienation and false allegations within the definition of domestic abuse. We thank him for his valuable contribution to the debate and for raising these issues.

In our Newsletter of 12th June 2020 we summarised the main amendments proposed by Philip Davies and invited you to contact your MPs to urge them to back those amendments which address abuse through alienating behaviours, false allegation, and unjustified denial of children's relationships with their other parent.