Parental Responsibility in UK Law

It is wrong to place undue and therefore false emphasis on the rights and duties and the powers comprised in 'parental responsibility and not to concentrate on the fact that what is at issue is conferring upon a committed father the status of parenthood for which nature has already ordained that he must bear responsibility. Those interferences with day-to-day management of the child's life have nothing to do with whether or not this Order should be allowed.

On this point, in my judgment, Keehan J was wrong in law. First, because his approach does not give effect to the fundamental principle established by Gillick: namely that, in this context (see paragraphs 79–85 above), the exercise of parental responsibility comes to an end not on the attaining of some fixed age but on attaining ' Gillick capacity'. It was therefore, with great respect to Keehan J, beside the point for him to observe (para 103) that:

The right to receive a copy of Form C6A is not limited to those who are able to establish that they are entitled to the protection of Article 8. The right to receive a copy of Form C6A exists for the benefit of every father whom a local authority 'believes to be a parent without parental responsibility for the child' irrespective of whether or not that parent has de facto family ties.

Parental responsibility is not automatically conferred on fathers who are not married to the mothers of their children. There must, accordingly, be criteria against which an application for parental responsibility falls to be judged. The only statutory criteria are (1) that it must be in the interests of the child for such an order to be made and (2) that the making of a parental responsibility order must be better for the child than making no order.

Fourthly, and perhaps for that reason, the English courts have been tempted to overlay the factual concept of habitual residence with legal constructs.

6. No minor of whatever age has power by refusing consent to treatment to override a consent to treatment by someone who has parental responsibility for the minor and a fortiori a consent by the court. Nevertheless such a refusal is a very important consideration in making clinical judgments and for parents and the court in deciding whether themselves to give consent. Its importance increases with the age and maturity of the minor.

Hence his hospitalisation The seven dissenting judges considered that placing a 12 year old boy who was not mentally ill in a psychiatric ward for several months against his will was indeed a deprivation of liberty. It would appear, therefore, that the case turns on the proper limits of parental authority in relation to a child. As already mentioned (para 4 above) there is no equivalent in English law to parental authority over a mentally incapacitated adult.