Criminal allegations feed into child protection

What it does

The Bill does not address how an allegation of an abusive conversion practice interacts with family law. That interaction arises in four places.

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Child protection. If a local authority has reasonable cause to suspect that a child is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm, it must make enquiries (Children Act 1989 s.47). The Bill’s own label, “abusive”, can supply much of the ground. Family barrister Sarah Phillimore has written that it is “very difficult to see how, if parents are facing charges of ‘conversion practices’ that a local authority would not consider this at least a risk of significant harm”. Enquiries can lead to care proceedings and, where the threshold is met, removal of the child and any siblings.

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Disputes between parents. Family courts already hear cases where separated parents disagree about a child’s gender treatment. In Re J [2024] EWHC 922 (Fam), the parents disagreed at different stages about testosterone prescribed to their teenage child by an online provider, GenderGP. The President of the Family Division urged courts to “proceed with extreme caution” before approving treatment from that provider. Under the Bill, either parent could have reported the other: the parent who opposed treatment as seeking to prevent a transgender identity, the parent who arranged it as seeking to cause one. Either report could prompt a s.47 enquiry, turning a welfare dispute into a child protection investigation running alongside a criminal complaint.

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Divorce and financial proceedings. Family courts have warned against using poorly particularised allegations of coercive control to gain advantage in financial proceedings (N v J [2024] EWFC 184). The Bill offers a broader allegation. Declining to release matrimonial assets to fund a spouse’s surgery could be framed as “economic pressure” (cl. 1(6)(d)). The threat of a complaint, or of a protection order, which a court can make of its own motion in existing family proceedings, can be used as leverage in negotiation.

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Bail. A parent who is arrested can be released on bail with conditions, including no contact with their child. Those conditions are set by criminal courts, often magistrates, without the welfare assessment a family court would carry out, and before any offence is proved.

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Effects: Parents who act protectively can face care proceedings as well as, or instead of, prosecution, with the risk of their children being removed. In separated families, a disagreement about transition becomes an allegation of criminal conduct, which makes it harder for courts to reduce conflict and reach agreement, as the President did in Re J. A parent can be separated from their child by bail conditions before any court has examined the allegation. The Explanatory Notes and impact assessments do not consider any of these routes.