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Family Justice

With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement about the opening up of the family courts. I have today laid before Parliament the document ““Family Justice in View””, copies of which will be available in the Vote Office and on my Department's website. Family courts play a crucial role in our society. They make far-reaching decisions—for example about how to divide finance on divorce, or what protection to give victims of domestic violence—and they make life-changing decisions about the future of children: whether they should be given contact with their parents, whether they should be removed into the care of the state, and whether they should be placed for adoption. The decisions of family courts have profound and long-term effects on the lives of those involved and cumulatively on society as a whole. Family cases can be conducted in the magistrates family proceedings courts, in county courts, and in the family division of the High Court. All those with responsibility for these proceedings are well trained and work to extremely high standards. It is vital that these courts, like any others, command the confidence of the public, if the public—including the parties involved—are to accept their decisions. That can best be achieved if justice in these courts is seen to be done. For entirely legitimate reasons, the privacy of parties to family proceedings must be properly protected. That is of enormous importance to adults, and is an overwhelming imperative in cases involving children. At present, with some exceptions, neither the public nor the media are permitted to witness proceedings in these courts. However, many argue that the current provisions to safeguard privacy and confidentiality go too far, leaving family courts unfairly open to accusations of bias or even injustice. In contrast, there is a greater degree of openness in the youth courts. For example, the media are allowed to witness and report proceedings in the youth courts, so long as they do not identify juvenile defendants, and youth courts have a wide discretion to allow others to attend. These rules have worked effectively, and both their spirit and their letter have been well respected by the media. The debate about opening up the family courts has intensified in recent years, and two successive consultations have been carried out, in 2006 and again in 2007. The results of those exercises were inconclusive, with strong representations on the one hand in favour of improving transparency, and on the other in favour of maintaining the current position. In the past few months, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Lewisham, East (Bridget Prentice), who has responsibility for access to justice, and I have been actively considering how we can shed more light on family courts while preserving the imperative of the welfare of the child. The Government have now reached their conclusion, and I am therefore announcing today that the rules of court will be changed to allow the media to attend family proceedings in all tiers of court. Understandably, the media will be subject to reporting restrictions similar to those that apply in the youth courts. The courts will be able to relax or increase those restrictions in appropriate cases, and will have the power to exclude the media from specific proceedings altogether where the welfare of the child or the safety of the parties or witnesses requires it. The overall effect of these changes will be fundamentally to increase the openness of family courts, while protecting the privacy of children and vulnerable adults. As well as allowing the media to attend family proceedings, there is a need to increase the amount and quality of information coming from the courts. At present, anonymised judgments of the Court of Appeal, and in some instances of the High Court, are made public, but that is not the situation for the county courts or the family proceedings courts, which deal with the bulk of family law cases. We have therefore decided to pilot the provision of written judgments when a final order is made in certain family cases. The courts in the pilot areas—Leeds, Wolverhampton and Cardiff—will, for the first time, routinely produce a written record of the decision for the parties involved. In selected cases, where the court is making life-changing decisions for a child, it will publish an anonymised judgment online, so that it can be read by the wider public. The consequences of family proceedings are so significant that the parties involved will sometimes need to seek advice or support from a range of people, including legal advisers, family members, medical practitioners and Members of Parliament or other elected representatives. To do so, they must be able to discuss and share information about their case. In 2005, we made changes to the rules of court to allow people to disclose certain information to specified individuals, but after two years it became clear that those rules remained unnecessarily restrictive and too complicated. Following a consultation last year, the Government have now decided to relax the rules on the disclosure of information in family proceedings. Parties and legal representatives will be able to disclose more information for the purpose of advice and support, mediation, the investigation of a complaint, or—in an anonymised form—for training and research. In more cases, the person receiving the information will be able to disclose it to others, for the purposes for which it was originally disclosed to them, without seeking the permission of the court. To protect the anonymity of children after proceedings have concluded, the decision of the Court of Appeal in Clayton v. Clayton will be reversed. In principle, that decision removed the protection of the court once proceedings had been completed, although that protection could be reapplied in particular cases. Most of the key changes that I have announced today can be made in the rules of court, without the need for primary legislation, but some will require legislation, including the reversal of the effect of the decision in Clayton v. Clayton and the potential opening-up of adoption proceedings. As regards the latter, we will consult on the most appropriate approach. The Government are committed to improving the visibility of justice in this country—to lifting the veil that sometimes keeps justice from view. The measures that I have outlined today will help to build a transparent, accountable family justice system that inspires the confidence of the people whom it serves, while continuing to protect the privacy of the parties and children involved. I commend the statement to the House.