Campaigners for fathers' rights tonight branded an official review into family law a 'sham' and a 'cover-up'.

The importance of maintaining relationships with both parents should be underlined in legislation, but there should be no guarantee of equal access to children when a relationship founders, it said.

A report for the Government did say it was 'unfair' where parents who are continually refused contact with their children by their former partner have to pay maintenance.

Courts should be able to order reductions or suspensions in payments where the resident parent is not abiding by an access agreement, it said.

As the Daily Mail revealed this morning, the report also said grandparents should be included in agreements on the future of children following a divorce.

The Family Justice Review, led by former civil servant and businessman David Norgrove, concluded the state of the family courts was 'shocking' and that disputes take 'far too long' to resolve.

Its report said children at the centre of custody disputes can wait more than a year for their future to be decided under the current legal system.

The review said couples should be urged to seek mediation rather than face a divisive and costly courtroom battle.

Separating couples should be made to understand the impact of conflict on the children and encouraged to reach agreement between themselves.

Where legal intervention is unavoidable, couples should be obliged to sign parenting agreements to ensure their children continue to have contact with grandparents and siblings.

The agreements would 'reinforce the importance of a relationship with grandparents and other relatives and friends who the child values'.

Fathers 4 Justice members on a rooftop. A spokesman for their cause said the report was 'perverse and obscene'

The review also suggested the creation of a new Family Justice Service to oversee the large number of agencies currently involved in proceedings while creating a unified family court system.

However, it stopped short of ordering a presumption of 'shared parenting', where it is assumed that both parents should have equal access, which has been demanded by fathers' groups.

Nadine O'Connor, campaign coordinator for Fathers 4 Justice, said: 'The report is perverse and obscene and secures the walls of secrecy.  We said from the outset that this Labour-selected review panel would fail families and they have.

David Norgrove, who led the review, said the biggest problem in family law was that 'people don't work together'

'The proposals for grandparents are simply a smokescreen.  This report gives grandparents a right to see the children, so why not give parents that right too?

'This report just reinforces the mantra that fathers are a risk to their children and must jump through hoops to see them, while mothers and grandparents on the other hand clearly are not.'

Brian Hitchcock, of the Family Law Society, said the panel's recommendations flew in the face of Government promises to move towards shared parenting.

'The panel's denial that shared parenting makes sense is a backward step which will condemn millions of children to a life of hell,' he said.

Mr Norgrove said: 'We don't come at this from the rights of adults. We are approaching this from the best interests of the children.'

He said the biggest obstacle he had found in the family law system was that 'people don't work together'.

'There are lots of very committed and very able people in the family justice system and we have got a lot to be proud of. But there are a huge number of institutions and people involved in it and they are not brought together into any kind of coherent system,' he said.

'Family justice is under huge strain. Cases take far too long and delays are likely to rise. Children can wait well over a year for their futures to be settled. This is shocking.'