An Aberdeen father is challenging a judge’s decision to block his bid to appeal to the new Supreme Court in London for the return of his abducted daughter.
Last night the man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, labelled the decision by Lady Stacey at the Court of Session in Edinburgh as “bizarre” and claimed it was at odds with an earlier ruling that the girl should never have been removed from Scotland by her mother.
Unless the judge’s refusal to allow an appeal to be heard is overturned, he will be unable to see his daughter – who has Down’s Syndrome – and argue the case for her to live with him during residence and divorce proceedings due to be heard next month.
He said: “They are denying me access to justice.”
The man has fought a lengthy battle to get his daughter back and the girl’s mother has refused to tell him where she is.
Aberdeen Central Labour MSP Lewis Macdonald said: “This is a very difficult case and this new twist makes it even harder for the father of the child to obtain a satisfactory outcome.
“The courts need to be consistent in the way they deal with these situations and, in this case, the latest Court of Session judgment appears to contradict other judgments in the same case and it must be a cause for concern.”
Lady Stacey ruled that it was “in the interests of justice” that a three-day hearing next month into the divorce and residence issues should proceed.
She declined, however, to order that before it takes place there should be a hearing of the father’s demand for his daughter to be returned to him – despite an earlier ruling that she should never have been removed.
The case has already caused debates in the Scottish and UK parliaments into how an English court came to decide the girl should remain with her mother, contrary to rules which make it clear it was a matter for the Scottish courts to decide.
The father said last night that if Lady Stacey’s ruling stands, next month’s trial will only hear the mother’s side of the argument about residence because he cannot appoint a social worker to report on his daughter’s circumstances as he has no idea where she is.
He added: “We will not be able to produce an argument, except that she was unlawfully removed in 2000.”