The Equal Parenting Alliance
The Equal Parenting Alliance is a new UK political party, formed in February 2006. We aim to promote a system of family justice in the UK that puts the needs and interests of children first.
It can hardly have escaped anyone's attention over the last few years that there is a great deal of disquiet about the operation of the family justice system in the UK. Indeed, we share the view that there is an awful lot to complain about.
We think the family justice system should respect the right of children to normal parenting by their two parents above the rights or wishes of either of their parents alone. The current system does not do this. To give the most obvious illustration of this; it allows one parent to easily eliminate the other parent from a child’s life, if they wish. We believe this is fundamentally wrong and bad for children.
We will lobby until family law is changed to operate fairly and for the benefit of children.
Where do the existing political parties stand?
New Labour Since taking power with a huge majority in 1997, this Labour government have had a negative impact on the implementation of family law in Britain.
It’s only in recent years that the problems with the family law system have become common public knowledge (mostly due to the vocal campaigning of Fathers 4 Justice between 2002 and 2006), so we believe the responsibility for doing next to nothing to improve the situation, rests almost entirely with this present government.
CONSERVATIVES The Tories supported a presumption of contact with non-resident parents at the last general election in 2005, and adopted a number of policies that we believe could have made a real difference for children in the outcome of family courts.
Unfortunately though, they didn’t appear to see it as an election issue important enough to highlight their policies, and consequently, most people were probably not aware they even had these policies.
Although this was possibly a missed opportunity to find out how many votes there are in family law reform, it could be that they were right: there are not that many votes at present.
This is where we see one important role for the Equal Parenting Alliance, to make family law reform a major election issue that the big parties cannot ignore, and to ensure it is a required topic for meaningful and well thought out policies by all parties at the next general election.
LIBERAL DEMOCRATS The Liberal Democrats also present a confused picture in their views on family law. Initially, the Libdems seemed to support a presumption of contact, but when the children and adoption bill was being debated recently in 2006, they changed their minds at the last minute and opposed it.
Essentially no-one seems to know what Libdem policies are on family law reform. The question to ask, of course, is: do they know?
