• FNF’s proposals for public spending in family policy would lead to significant savings over the comprehensive spending review (CSR) period.
• Encouraging Shared Parenting will lead to less pressure on the family courts and related services, thus leading to savings.

Today, FNF’s CEO, Craig Pickering writes to Chancellor George Osborne with proposals for public spending in family policy that would lead to significant savings – in the tens of millions of pounds range - over the CSR period.

FNF welcomes the Coalition Agreement’s positive reference to encouraging shared parenting – wherever it is in the best interests of the child, as it usually is, both parents are fully involved in the child’s life following separation or divorce. This should lead to less pressure on the family courts and related services, thus leading to savings. The family justice system is broken and expensive. Currently the Ministry of Justice estimates that the cost of the family justice system is £800 million a year. The Centre for Social Justice estimates that the costs of family breakdown are running at £20-24 billion. Every year, the cost to the individual tax payer is estimated to be £680-820. Swingeing increases in fees for litigants in the family courts have just been announced.

FNF has three key proposals:

First, we would like to see Cafcass, the service that advises judges in family law cases, slimmed down and re-focused. This would add value, for it would both allow such claims to be investigated more carefully and remove a major source of delay in cases which do not concern such claims.

Second, the legal aid system needs to be reformed to ensure that one parent is not able to spin out court proceedings so as to cut off the children from the other parent. Such tactics are all too often successful. Approximately a quarter of the £2.2 billion legal aid budget is spent on family cases and this has been slowly increasing. Expenditure on Family Graduated Fees Scheme cases is now £26 million per year higher than it was 5 years ago – rising by over 30% from £74 million to nearly £100 million. In 2007 the National Audit Office calculated that the average saving in legal aid terms of a ‘mediated case’ compared to a ‘non-mediated case’ was £1,020 in cases involving child residence, ‘contact’ and the like. The same report showed that in 2004 – 2006 only 20% of those applying for legal aid had attempted mediation. 

Third, we propose encouraging parents to make out of court settlements via mediation and parenting courses. These would be a cost to the public purse, but we believe that overall our package would improve the lives of the children of separated families and help reduce the Government’s deficit.

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