ACCORDING to his accompanying statement, the Children Bill is likely to be Mervyn Taylor's final piece of legislation as Minister for Equality and Law Reform - indeed his last throw in political life. We can, I suppose, be grateful for small mercies, for this Bill, which purports to deal with discrimination towards fathers, is an unmitigated disaster.
We might have been alerted by Mr Taylor's observation that the debate on the rights of unmarried fathers had "often been conducted in terms of the competing rights of fathers and mothers". I cannot agree.
Parental Equality, the main body campaigning on this issue, has consistently stated that the rights of children must be the paramount consideration. In a detailed submission to Mr Taylor last February, PE stressed that "all legislation in this area should be deliberately framed to ensure the best interests of children based on the best expert advice available".
The Minister's assertion betrays his desire to dispose of this embarrassing issue without offending any of the tenets of political correctness to which he and his colleagues are enslaved. My own belief is that he made his comment, just as he framed this legislation, to mollify the anti father interests who, in all seriousness, seek to portray men as engaging in legal tug of wars over children as a way of "asserting their power".
To suggest, as he does, that this issue is about knocking couple's heads together is ludicrous. The issue is that fathers are asking for the restoration of an essential human right which has been taken away from them and their children on an immoral basis. Nobody is attempting to exclude mothers. There are no "competing rights" between unmarried fathers and mothers, because such fathers have almost no rights at all. And this legislation offers them nothing.
Mr Taylor's Bill makes, inter alia, the following proposals that the courts be obliged to consider the wishes of children in family breakdown situations and to arrange separate representation for children in certain cases; that children be enabled to give evidence to family courts by means of video links; that unmarried fathers could become guardians of their children, by agreement with the mother, without having to go to court; that grandparents and other blood relatives be given rights to apply for access to a child; that joint custody be granted if "appropriate".
In presenting his Bill, Mr Taylor said his intention was to provide for differences being resolved by "agreement rather than confrontation", an approach which he would like to see reflected in both the family services and the family courts, because it is "a thousand times better for children, a well as for parents, to proceed by negotiation rather than by conflict".
FEW will disagree. The point of delving into this area at all, however, is surely not to restate the obvious, but to deal with the conditions and anomalies which make conflict and confrontation unavoidable. In this the Minister has signally failed. For, yet again, he has ignored the rights of children to have relationships with their fathers on an independent basis.
It is true that both the Bill and the Minister's remarks in presenting it give the appearance of doing something about the "rights of children". Only a barbarian would disagree with this objective, and at first sight of the proposed legislation most lay persons would conclude that it has been advanced. Closer examination suggests that, by failing to restore the full moral rights of children and fathers, the Bill will actually prove detrimental to the happiness of large numbers of children.
The proposal to allow fathers to become guardians without going to court provides a glimpse of the true intent of this legislation. It is, of course, to be welcomed that a father will no longer need to go into court to lay claim to love and protect his own child.
But it appears that his rights will still exist only by consent of the mother. This measure will save fathers some expense and indignity, and the court system a lot of wasted time, but it has nothing to do with shifting the balance of rights. Although making a show of attempting to deal with the rights of unmarried fathers, these remain secondary and minimal.
The already overwhelming rights of mothers are, similarly, likely to be strengthened by the proposal to "consider the wishes" of children in disputes. Since this legislation, if passed, will sit on top of a deeply flawed legal foundation, and be "supported" by a skewed and antifather culture in the family services sector, this provision will almost certainly be used to exclude fathers even more.
Since, in the vast majority of cases, mothers have automatic sole custody of children, the system, as it stands, is constructed to regard the mother's rights as coterminous with those of her children. Is anyone seriously suggesting that this provision will be employed to reverse custody arrangements at the behest of a child? If so, can we look forward also to proposals to "consider the wishes" of children with regard to school attendance, and the consumption of ecstasy or parsnips?
Anyone with experience of this area knows precisely what this proposal will mean: children, threatened with the withdrawal of their mother's affection, being dragged into court to disown and discredit their fathers.
THE proposal that a court may "if it thinks it appropriate" grant joint custody to both parents looks good on paper. But the Bill makes no attempt to define what this entails.
Moreover, the way the legislation is phrased suggests that it will apply only in unusual circumstances, and the question arises as to what these might be. It is reasonable to presume that, under the present obscene system, it will be applied only in cases where the alternative would be to give sole custody to the father, i.e. where the mother is manifestly unfit to be awarded sole custody.
Mr Taylor's reassurances notwithstanding, this will lead to more conflict and confrontation. By introducing joint custody without addressing the flawed nature of the existing culture, or even issuing guidelines to define the concept, Mr Taylor has almost certainly made things worse.
This Bill is a cynical and cowardly copout. It gives an impression of having tackled this problem, while in reality making a dog's dinner of it. It is all very pleasant to talk about negotiation and agreement, but the reality of most cases is that if these were possible there would not be a problem in the first place.
The reason this issue has arisen is that, once a breakdown occurs, it rapidly becomes clear that the mother holds all the cards, and "negotiation" and "agreement" in this context mean the father accepting whatever she decides. Far from addressing that essential problem, this Bill attempts to suggest that it does not exist.