Caught
lying again - Minister quotes non-existent law
On Sunday August
27, 2006 the Constitutional Affairs minister Harriet Harman finally
admitted that secrecy does indeed surround divorce and custody hearings.
She said the
"80-year-old regime of secrecy that protects the courts has led
to a failure of public confidence and a collapse of trust in their workings."
This affects over 400,000 children and families every year.
[see http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1859394,00.html
]
It is this recognition
of unhealthy secrecy that Men's Aid and other fathers groups having
been seeking.
But what is
the 80-year-old statute or judicial ruling the minister cites ?
Does legislation even exist ?
The answer is 'no'.
This is yet more spin, hoodwinking and inaccuracy of the public by leading
politicians.
To be eighty
years old the legislation would need to have been passed round about
the time of the General Strike in 1926 - a time when divorces could
almost be counted on one hand (in comparison with today).
The only legislation
near that date is the Criminal Justice Act 1925 which made it an offence
to take photographs in court.
From a lawyer
friend we hear that he doesn't 'suppose for one moment that Harriet
Harman know what she is talking about'
And from earlier
research we know that the next significant date was 1936 when small
amendments were made to divorce procedures by the MP and writer A.P.
Taylor. He introduced a Private Members Bill to extend the grounds for
divorce to include, insanity, epilepsy, mental defect, mental illness
of a certain degree, venereal disease and desertion which was passed
in 1937.
Last week we
made enquiries at a parliamentary level and discovered that (as we thought)
it is the Children Act 1989 that places the most and severest restrictions
on divorce and custody hearings, i.e. hearing them in secret courts
where the evidence is only displayed behind closed doors. [See Section
97(2), CA 1989].
Interestingly,
prior to the 1989 Act, section 12 of the Administration of Justice Act
1960 (the 1960 Act) made it a contempt of court to publish information
relating to, or for reasons of, national security ('D-notices', one
supposes ?); where information related to a secret process, discovery
or invention. The courts simply extended this ban to cover divorce and
custody.
