It is
time to open up family courts to public scrutiny
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,542-1433279,00.html
The
Times - 10th January 2005
It is
time to open up family courts to public scrutiny
It is heartening
to see judges, who tend towards the traditional, at least taking the
lead in trying to modernise the court system. When the two most senior
judges in the family courts say it is time to open up that system to
greater public scrutiny, then politicians must take notice.
Recent high-profile
campaigns from the pressure group Fathers 4 Justice, which wants greater
access to children after divorce, have highlighted the secrecy of the
family courts and, that group claims, their unfairness. The concern
of Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, President of the High Court Family Division,
and of the second most senior family judge, Lord Justice Thorpe, is
not whether justice is being done, as they believe it is, but whether
it is being seen to be done. The vociferous fathers' rights movement
has succeeded in giving the impression that the secrecy of the family
court system allows injustice to be inflicted.
One anomaly
is that the present arrangement of Queen¹s Bench, Chancery and
Family Divisions allows litigants to court-shop when bringing a case
' over wills or matters of obvious public interest, for example ' knowing
that the third is closed and they will be subject to less scrutiny.
A series of
recent criminal cases in which expert evidence wrongly led to the conviction
and imprisonment of Angela Cannings and Sally Clark, and the trial of
Trupti Patel, for killing their children has also led many to question
the operation of the family courts, relying as they sometimes do upon
the same or similar suspect expert evidence. The fact that such evidence
is used in closed proceedings led some to doubt the integrity of family
court decisions which have such profound consequences not just for parents
but for their children.
A government
review last year came to the expected conclusion that decisions in the
family courts were sound. When Mrs Cannings was cleared on appeal last
year of murdering her three babies, the Children¹s Minister, Margaret
Hodge, ordered a review of thousands of civil cases in which children
were taken from their parents and put into care. A nine-month investigation
found that, of 28,867 cases in which a care order was in place, just
one was wrong and should be changed. Much of the review was conducted
by social services departments investigating themselves, and so there
remains doubt about the process and the outcome of such cases. The system
cleared itself, but is hardly in the clear.
Opening up the
system would not, and should not, mean sweeping away the anonymity needed
to protect children. The outlines of cases, and the basis upon which
decisions are made, can be reported without revealing the identities
of those involved. Just as the Government is rightly experimenting with
cameras in the appeal courts, it ought to allow the public to witness
and to judge the fairness of the family courts. People may well be reassured,
rather than shocked, by what they find there, but at least a better-informed
public will be able to have an intelligent debate about reform.
