Family transparency battle continues

Plans to open up the family courts to press scrutiny will be limited to “system rather than substance”, a high court judge has warned.

Journalists will be able to sit in on private family court hearings relating to children and report on the process in April, under government plans to make the family justice system more transparent.

Addressing family lawyers attending Resolution’s annual conference in Bristol last week, however, Mr Justice Andrew McFarlane said journalists would be tightly controlled: “They will face tough sanctions if they report any detail of the particular case that they are observing,” he said.

“Reporting will be limited to the process and the gist of proceedings, rather than the detail of any particular case. In other words the reporting will be about system rather than substance.” He called for “a mechanism that permits accredited journalists, MPs and others to have access to such material from past court proceedings as would enable them to audit the family justice process against the complaints that they are hearing from the parent.

“This might simply involve the receipt of an anonymised copy of the judgment which would do no more than expose material in written form that the journalist would have had access to had they attended the original oral hearing.

The brave new world post–April following the “opening up of the Family Courts” therefore seems to be far more sophisticated and restricted that may have been understood by some journalists, the public at large and, for that matter, the legal profession, he added.