Openness and accountability in family courts: new legislation proposed
19 November 2009
Proposals to further open up family courts to the media have been announced as part of new legislation put before Parliament today.
Clauses in the Children, Schools and Families Bill build on changes announced in April that allowed the media to attend most family proceedings for the first time. The legislation aims to balance the need to make family courts open and accountable against the critical importance of protecting the welfare of children and families involved in family proceedings.
In recognition of the significance of these reforms in a sensitive area, the changes will be introduced in phases to allow Ministers and Parliament to assess their impact before potentially moving to a greater degree of openness.
The first phase will allow reporting of family proceedings – including placement proceedings for the first time – with a strict indefinite ban on the publication of the identity of children and families involved. It will also prohibit sensitive personal information from being reported, unless the court directs otherwise. In the interests of open justice and to improve public confidence, experts who are paid to provide evidence to the court may be named. The legislation will not change the current rules that permit applications for access to court documents.
The overall aim is to move to an open reporting system where information would be reportable unless the court specifically prohibited it in an individual case, whilst still protecting the anonymity of the children. A review, after the initial provisions come into effect, will allow Ministers and Parliament to decide whether some or all the reporting restrictions could be removed in the interests of greater transparency, whilst maintaining a total ban on identifying the children and the families involved. This would cover restrictions on witnesses and sensitive personal information. Moves to the second more open phase would require a positive vote of both Houses of Parliament.
Justice Secretary Jack Straw said:
‘We want to create a system that is transparent, accountable, and inspires public confidence in its good work, whilst still protecting the privacy of children and families involved.
‘Greater media access to family courts will lead to greater trust in family courts. Finding the right balance among many strong views will take time, which is what this Bill will allow us to do.
‘I welcome the Lord Chief Justice’s comments earlier this week. I know that all in the family justice system will work together to help ensure that we strike the right balance between open justice and accountability and the protection of children and families’
The clauses in the Bill introduced today are part of an ongoing programme to increase media reporting of family courts, announced by Jack Straw in December 2006 following the consultation response paper, Family justice in view. Mr Straw’s oral statement is on the website along with the response paper. The first of these changes were made in April this year, when the media were given the right to attend some family proceedings and report the gist of them.
Alongside the programme to increase media access, pilot projects are underway which are looking at making anonymised judgments more readily available. Details of the projects are in a press release: Family courts – information pilot announced.
Notes to editors
1. Media representatives who attend family proceedings must be accredited. This is through the existing UK Press Card scheme, which has a wide membership, and is open to those working wholly or mainly in the media.
2. Extract from the Lord Chief Justice’s speech on 16 November 2009:
‘Just as an independent press can expose the errors made by local authorities and governments, so too, the administration of justice in the courts should be open to the public scrutiny which an independent press provides. You have the right to be present in court unless the right has been taken away. Unless the right has been expressly taken away, your right to be in court is no different to and no less than the right of the lawyers, the advocates, even the judge himself or herself. You are not performing the same function as the judge, but you have a valued function to perform.’
The full speech is available at the Society of Editors website.
3. The full content of the Children, Schools and Families Bill:
For more information please contact the Ministry of Justice Press Office on 0203 334 3536.
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