Equal Parenting Alliance News – October 2006
© 2006 The Equal Parenting Alliance
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The Department of Constitutional Affairs would like to hear what you think!
Many people are convinced (including some members of the judiciary, the legal industry and Parliament), that family courts need to be more open.
The Department of Constitutional Affairs (DCA, which is the Government department responsible for family courts, headed by Harriet Harman) is conducting a public consultation into how the openness of the family courts can be improved.
The public, or any interested body, can comment on the DCA’s proposals for opening the courts by the 30th October 2006.
The Equal Parenting Alliance will be formally submitting a response, and we hope some of our members will submit their own as well.
We’ll be sending a ‘template’ response to you all in the next few weeks, based on our formal response. This will make it easier for you to respond yourself even if you haven’t got time to start from scratch.
You can download the DCA consultation document from:
http://www.dca.gov.uk/consult/ courttransparencey1106/cp1106.htm
We often get asked this. The best answer is that we are both these. Although, of course, we are a political party, there are major differences between us and the other parties.
The main aim of a traditional party is to win enough votes (or seats) to form a government. They do this because they want power.
It’s not their aim to change people’s minds - it’s just so much easier for them to change their message until they think it will appeal to as many people as possible. (Clearly, looking at New Labour this seems to have been a winning strategy to date).
Unfortunately, we don’t have this luxury.
We exist because we believe that family courts are failing tens of thousands of children a year largely due to their lazy and inept procedures and policies.
We exist because we believe the existing campaign groups are not getting the message across alone.
We exist because - for many of us at least - we were given no choice but to sit back and watch as our children were needlessly harmed — all
meanwhile the family courts ignorantly postured around their best interests.
Don’t let anyone dismiss us as no more than a single issue party — we are a single issue party like no other.
Our single issue encompasses changing the minds of a nation, taking on a massively profitable legal industry, challenging a century’s wobbly thinking on sexual politics, persuading an easy-riding media that there is a real problem – but with solutions available now – and (as an aside), changing the law!
Compared to our single issue, I think stopping a bypass through Neesdon would be the work of a mere Wednesday afternoon!
So, while of course we want people to vote for us, we want their votes not so we get elected, but so we show the strength of feeling about our dysfunctional family law system and hence gain influence.
It is a hard task we set ourselves. Make no mistake.
But our children deserve nothing less.
Equal Parenting Alliance – campaign group or political party?
It’s not that we are suggesting family courts are a joke, but the following conversation was overheard in the Mad Hatters family court last week :-
Litigant - This family court has completely ignored the evidence before it and I cannot see how it has even begun to put the best interests of
the child first. In my opinion this court is a farce and total pantomime.
Judge - Oh no it isn’t.
Litigant - Oh yes it is.
Judge - Oh no it isn’t.