Plan scrapped to give divorced fathers right to see their children

Proposals to give divorced fathers in the UK a legal right to a relationship with their children are set to be scrapped in a review of family law published yesterday.

A report in the Daily Telegraph says that plans for a law to give children the right to a “meaningful relationship with both parents” are likely to be dropped.

Senior civil servants are said to believe that the proposal would be too disruptive to children and would have made it necessary for judges to allocate time that parents each had to spend with their offspring.

The recommendation was left out of a report on family justice by the former pensions regulator and civil servant, David Norgrove.

Figures show that eight per cent of single parents are fathers, meaning that there are 200,000 single fathers in the UK bringing up 300,000 children.

Courts decide to leave children with their mothers in the vast majority of cases.

In his interim report in March, Mr Norgrove recommended that there should be a “statement in legislation to reinforce the importance of the child continuing to have a meaningful relationship with both parents, alongside the need to protect the child from harm”.

This fell short of fathers’ groups demands for a right to equally shared parenting, but was seen as an important step forward.

However, civil servants say that fears that such a recommendation would put too much pressure on judges to set out the exact length of time that each divorced parent should spend with their children have led to it being dropped.

The interim report recognised that this area of family law was a “particularly emotive issue”.

It said: “If parents share care fully before separation they are more likely to do successfully after separation. But where the converse applies, legislation cannot change that fact.

“Achieving shared parenting in those cases where it is safe to do so is a matter of raising parental awareness at the earliest opportunity. The welfare of children must always come before the rights of both parents.” Mr Norgrove refused to comment last night.

Groups such as Fathers 4 Justice have waged a battle throughout the past decade for improved rights for men denied access to their children. In May 2004 its supporters threw purple flour at Tony Blair, when he was at the dispatch box in the House of Commons.

In the same year, a man dressed as Spiderman scaled the London Eye and another campaigner in a Batman costume staged a five-hour protest on a ledge at Buckingham Palace.