Family courts in England and Wales ‘not good enough’ for women and children, minister says
Family courts are “not good enough” and have treated women and children unfairly for decades, a government minister has said.Announcing a major overhaul of the family justice system in England and Wales that will play a central role in “rebalancing” the family courts, Alison Levitt said often brutal legal showdowns will be replaced with a “problem-solving”, child-focused model.Part of a move across the Ministry of Justice to tackle court backlogs, the department said child focused courts – which centre on child welfare and seeks out-of-court resolutions – have reduced child trauma, cut a backlog of cases and reduced waiting times.They will now become the standard model for all section 8 cases, which involve child arrangements including where that child lives, who they have contact with and how long they spend with each parent.The Labour peer, who was Keir Starmer’s principal legal adviser when he was the director of public prosecutions, said that she had been repeatedly accused of sexism since she became a minister last autumn, including as a result of the proposed repeal of the legal presumption that both parents should be involved in their children’s lives in the Courts and Tribunal bill, which passed its second reading earlier this month.
Levitt said: “It is historically so obvious that women have been victims [in the justice system], that there is a justification for putting in measures to bring them up, to make it fairer for them,” said Levitt,Change had to come “throughout the justice system, including in the family justice system, to make sure that [victims] are not, for example, being retraumatised by going through the family courts”, she said,Asked if she believed the justice system treated women fairly from what she had observed since being called to the bar in 1988, Levitt said it was “more complicated” than the system being sexist, but added: “I think that women have not received fair treatment, but things have been improving,And do I think that it will be fairer still by the end of this parliament? Absolutely,”Campaigners for family court reform have long argued that abusers use the family courts system to control their ex-partners, including by making counter allegations in an attempt to “alienate” the child.
After a series of scandals about unregulated and sometimes unqualified “experts” in parental alienation, Levitt said the concept was “not something that’s capable of definition or of scientific proof in any way, shape or form”.Asked about the treatment of victims of domestic abuse in the family courts, she said: “It is just not good enough … Whenever we leave office, the situation in terms of violence against women and girls will have improved because it’s an uncivilised way to behave.It’s just unjust.You can’t care about justice if you don’t care about this.”Giving the example of “fact-finding” hearing where victims were “cross-examined up hill and down dale”, Levitt said: “I don’t see [stopping] that as being sexist.
I see that as rebalancing.If you’ve got an injustice to start off with, it’s not sexist to try and put that right.”Levitt said further measures in the Victims and Courts bill – which remove parental responsibility from those convicted of a serious sexual offence against any child, and where a child is born of rape – would also give greater protection.Ministers say the child-focused courts pilot, which was introduced under the last government in Dorset and north Wales in 2022 and has expanded into 10 more of 43 court areas, will now be rolled in a further 13 with the remainder to follow before the end of this parliament.The justice secretary, David Lammy, said the new model would help families and children in disputes more quickly.
MoJ figures show that the average time a court took in Birmingham dropped from 53 days in the three months to August 2023 to 23 days in the same period in 2025; the open case load fell from 1,456 in August 2003 to 648 two years later.“For a child, every additional month waiting to find out where you will live can feel like forever,” he said.“This approach has delivered striking results in pilots, cutting backlogs in half and resolving cases up to seven-and-a-half months faster.For a child living through family breakdown, and for victims of abuse, that difference is life-changing.”Unlike the old system, the new model would see family circumstances – including allegations of domestic abuse – examined ahead of court, with Cafcass, Cafcass Cymru or a local authority and independent domestic violence advisers involved from the start, he said.
The pilot also sees Child Impact Report ordered at the start of a process – a move Andrew McFarlane, the president of the family law division, called a “gamechanger” because it gave courts an early understanding of the impact the dispute on the child and resulted in fewer hearings which benefited “families and indeed the whole system”.Lisa Harker, director of Nuffield Family Justice Observatory, said the expansion was welcome, but added: “It is important that we measure how children experience proceedings and whether their lives improve, not just how quickly decisions are made.”
Starmer adviser urges ministers to look at profits cap for energy and petrol firms
The government’s top cost of living adviser has called on ministers to explore a temporary cap on the profits of energy and petrol companies to prevent them from cashing in excessively on the war in the Middle East.Richard Walker – a Labour peer, the chair of Iceland supermarkets and the prime minister’s “cost of living champion” – said he had asked the government to examine limiting how much businesses were able to benefit from higher energy prices after Iran’s blockade of the strait of Hormuz, a crucial shipping route for Europe’s oil and gas, and the wider conflict in the region.“I have asked the government to consider a temporary profit cap … to stop producers and retailers exploiting the crisis to make windfall profits at the expense of consumers,” Walker wrote in a column in the Sunday Times.“As executive chairman of a retailer, I have no problem with profit. It’s what allows businesses to invest, employ people and pay tax
Thousands of care leavers in England ‘locked out’ of work as firms slow to adapt
Thousands of young people leaving care in England are being left “locked out” of work by employers who say they are open to hiring but make few changes to adapt, a charity has warned.Calling on employers to act on their promises, the Drive Forward Foundation said care leavers were almost three times more likely to be out of work than their peers.As ministers push to tackle a youth jobs crisis, the charity, which helps care leavers to find work, said this employment gap had remained “stubbornly consistent” despite a decade of youth jobs initiatives.Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 40% of care-experienced people aged 19 to 21 are not in employment, education or training (Neet), compared with 12.7% of their non-care-experienced peers
Palantir extends reach into British state as it gets access to sensitive FCA data
Palantir is to be granted access to a trove of highly sensitive UK financial regulation data, in a deal that has prompted fresh concerns about the US AI company’s deepening reach into the British state, the Guardian can reveal.The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has awarded Palantir a contract to investigate the watchdog’s internal intelligence data in an effort to help it tackle financial crime, which includes investigating fraud, money laundering and insider trading.The Miami-based company, co-founded by the billionaire Donald Trump donor Peter Thiel, has been appointed for a three-month trial, paying more than £30,000 a week to analyse the FCA’s vast “data lake”, which could lead to a full procurement of an AI system.The deal is part of the FCA’s drive to use digital intelligence to better focus resources on rule-breaking among the 42,000 financial services firms it regulates, from major banks to crypto exchanges.There was only one other, unnamed competitor for the contract
‘Thank God they’re still alive’: Kaiser therapists claim its new screening system puts patients at higher risk by delaying their care
Ilana Marcucci-Morris is worried about the patients she treats and how long it took for them to arrive in her office. At Kaiser Permanente’s psychiatry outpatient clinic in Oakland, California, she says she increasingly finds herself assessing people experiencing more severe mental health issues than two years ago. For those who do make it to their appointments, she thinks: “Thank God they’re still alive.”It wasn’t always this way, according to Marcucci-Morris, a licensed clinical social worker. Licensed professionals used to almost always be the first point of contact for patients with behavioral health issues at Kaiser, she said
GB strike golden treble at world indoors with Hodgkinson, Hunter Bell and Caudery
Amid a gold rush for the ages, one image became instantly seared on the mind: Georgia Hunter Bell, Molly Caudery and Keely Hodgkinson jumping in pure delirium, before screaming in delight as they revelled in surely the greatest night for British athletics since the London 2012 Olympics.You could hear them high in the stands in Torun. And, one hopes, even louder in homes up and down the land. For across 29 enthralling minutes they delivered echoes of Super Saturday with three brilliant world indoor championship gold medals one after another. Bang
Chessum makes Tigers purr on return from England duty as Bristol fall short
Swapping the bright Saturday night lights of the Stade de France for the rusty old Crumbie Stand can be a real mental challenge. There is certainly less demand for foie gras in Aylestone but for certain people nothing beats a constant diet of rugby. England’s Ollie Chessum did occasionally look a tad weary during another selfless 80-minute shift but a vital 33-19 Leicester win made all those hard yards worthwhile.The result not only hoists the Tigers into third place in the Prem table but Gabriel Hamer-Webb’s spectacular last-gasp try earned what could prove a key extra point when the playoff maths are totted up. Bristol, who had been pressing for a couple of bonus points of their own, were ultimately left empty-handed and down in fifth place after a game that was never less than intense and absorbing
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