President calls for rethink

Delivering the Paul Sieghart Memorial Lecture, Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss called for law reform to recognise relationships beyond the so-called ‘nuclear family’, particularly same-sex couples and transsexuals. The UK was the only western country apart from Albania where transsexuals could not register their gender change. She was concerned for those who could not marry and who had no recourse to any system of law which gave them protection if they formed partnerships, sometimes lifelong, to create a family structure. The UK legal system was not equipped to deal with same-sex partnerships, which was a continuing breach of the right of same-sex partners to have a legal framework within which to make and maintain their family life. Another vulnerable group UK was failing was children. The legal profession needed to radically rethink its attitude towards children to ensure that all professionals adopted a child-orientated approach rather than imposing their own adult perspective on a case. What was needed was ‘real in-depth reconsideration of how our justice system and the wider community should be responding to the needs of children’.