Dr. Geoffrey Shannon:

That is an excellent question. We introduced in the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015 a provision allowing for children to be more prominently heard through a child expert. This November, we are ten years on from the children's rights referendum where we talked about hearing children. The people most affected by the refusal to facilitate access are actually children. It is absolutely important that we ensure children are heard in these decisions because they are the people who ultimately will be affected.

There are problems within the system at the moment with regard to ensuring that happens. We need the resourcing of reports if children are to be heard indirectly, but they are not adequately resourced. The second point is that we still have not succeeded in that project of hearing children in all cases. With regard to a new family court - we were just talking about this outside - two generations of children have grown up since we first started talking about this issue, yet children are not properly heard in these cases. This is a fundamental issue. In maintenance and access applications, it is of paramount importance that children are heard either directly or indirectly. We have a long way to go to ensure that objective is realised.