Families need Fathers Scotland queries absence of family law from legislative agenda

Ian Maxwell of Families Need Fathers Scotland(pictured) said he hoped the absence of any family-related bills from the programme indicated that hte government was taking a thoughtful approach and not rushing into producing legislation.

He said: “Family law and the recognition of the value of both parents to their children is, as the Council of Europe asserted last year, fundamentally an equalities issue.

“We are also aware from the cases that come to us from non-resident parents - mothers as well as fathers - and grandparents that too often turning off and on contact with children has become a form of coercive control by the parent with most care. The legislation in England and Wales made it effectively impossible for a non-resident parent to invoke the protections of the coercive control domestic abuse law and we will make representations to the Scottish government that our legislation should not contain that loophole.

“But of course, our ambition for Scotland is to change the culture in family law that too often pays lip service to putting the interests of the children first while persisting with an adversarial system that does the opposite.”