Make it illegal for a parent to withhold a child from the other parent.

Rejected 18 signatures

What the petition asks

To make it illegal for one parent to withhold a child from the other parent when there are no safeguarding concerns, and when a parent does this, they should be prosecuted for child abuse/neglect, and domestic abuse.

If a parent withholds a child from the other parent with responsibilities, for longer than 24 hours with no contact, that parent breaches the child safety act and is prosecuted for child neglect or abuse and domestic abuse against the other parent. This access is vital to child development and continual bonding of child and parent and too often women deny access to fathers more so than fathers to mothers and will save over 47 million a year in court costs.

Why it was rejected

There was already a petition about this issue. Duplicates are rejected so signatures collect in one place.

We have published the following petitions, which you might like to sign:

Make unreasonable parent alienation a criminal offence: Make unreasonable parent alienation a criminal offence.

Automatically grant equal access rights following separation: Automatically grant equal access rights following separation

We could accept a petition calling for changes to child arrangements different to the above petitions, but it would need to be clear if you wanted this to apply irrespective of any court orders or other agreements about child contact.

Timeline

11 Oct 2022	Petition opened for signatures
13 Oct 2022	Rejected by the Petitions Committee

Key facts

Signatures 18

Status Rejected

Rejected 13 Oct 2022

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