Family Courts: New Act Won’t Enhance Openness and Public Confidence

The NS has presented a submission to the House of Commons’ Justice Select Committee’s inquiry into the operation of the family courts, claiming the new Children, Schools & Families Act 2010 will not succeed in delivering greater accountability.

The inquiry’s remit includes looking at “confidentiality and openness in family courts, including the impact of the recent changes in the Children, Schools and Families Act 2010”.

In its submission, the NS says that although the media warmly supported the previous Government’s aim of increasing openness and transparency and improving public confidence in the family justice system, its conclusion, regretfully, is that the Act will not achieve this.

“In the final event the Act became the vehicle for a regime which not only ensured total anonymity for all those involved, thus completely defeating the objective of greater accountability of those involved in the system, but which also, if brought into effect in its present form, will arguably place greater restriction upon the media’s ability to report than is presently the case.”

The NS points out that the Act’s effect is apparently to make it a contempt of court to publish any article referring to family proceedings, even if derived entirely from material already in the public domain and even if the parties were not identified, if the publication was not derived from an “authorised news report”.

Referring to the extensive public consultations which led to the passage of the Bill earlier this year, the NS says “the highly commendable aim of opening up the courts, increasing transparency and restoring public confidence in the system was subverted and an important opportunity to restore and enhance the principle of open justice and public accountability was sidetracked by the intense pressure exerted by some of those involved in the family justice system to build into the Bill extensive and automatic reporting restrictions.”

The NS submission emphasises that the media always fully accepted that children and families who were parties to family court proceedings should have automatic full anonymity, but the media did not agree that there should be an automatic and blanket restriction on identifying others involved in the proceedings, including professionals and practitioners involved in the family justice system. The reporting restrictions on identification of parties are drafted in such terms as to render meaningful reporting impossible, says the NS.

The NS also points out that the Act is complex, its scope and effect in places uncertain, and that if journalists are not confident in the application of the rules, they may be deterred from reporting the family courts at all and the central objective – greater public accountability and scrutiny – will be jeopardised.

In conclusion, the NS says it believes “that the intention of increased transparency has been lost in the Act’s drafting, that the aim of achieving privacy for the families has been conflated into a renewed regime of secrecy  which – if the relevant provisions in the Act are brought into force unamended – will not only fail to deliver the desired public accountability but will represent a major reduction in what can now be lawfully published, and will actually further reduce public debate and discussion of the family justice system.”

For further information please contact Sue Oake on 020 763 27463 or sue_oake@newspapersoc.org.uk.