Law Weblog

Family courts to be more open

Saturday 20 December 2008 at 11:14 pm | In News | Post Comment

From April, journalists will be allowed to attend and report on all divorce, custody and care proceedings unless specifically excluded.

There have been too many examples of where the secrecy has led to questionable decisions, and the secrecy has allowed certain statements to be made in the family courts which would have been instantly questioned had they been made in public courts which had been open to media coverage. For example, in a case in 2006 a child was taken into care for 14 months based on evidence that was all later declared “misleading, incomplete or wrong”, but where the council and the team leader of the case were never named.

The Times newspaper claimed credit for Straw’s decision to open the family courts to journalists, and said today it has “campaigned vociferously” for the change, “arguing that keeping the media out of certain courts has led to miscarriages of justice.”
Straw credited The Times for having brought the issue to his attention

“more graphically than it otherwise would have done”.