It is quite clear that the Family Court Proceedings need more truly independent scrutiny. The government appear to be backtracking on openness.
What is needed is something to protect the participants from miscarriages of justice. One option is to use the same rules as the criminal courts where most material is handled in public, but the court can go into private session.
The government's option of bringing in the media was never ideal. What we need to be able to do is to discuss the proceedings in retrospect to determine what went wrong. We need to be able to compare the evidence from experts in different courts to find out what nonsense is being spouted. However, what we don't want is people's dirty linen to be strewn across the nation. The system with small pockets of commonsense is currently strewn with disaster. What I do get sitting in the House of Commons is contacts from across the country as the disaster continues to unfold.
It is clearly the case that the proceedings in the family courts are massively flawed very frequently. In part there is a statutory cause. However, courts where claiming innocence is proof of guilt should have died out centuries ago.
What is needed is something to protect the participants from miscarriages of justice. One option is to use the same rules as the criminal courts where most material is handled in public, but the court can go into private session.
The government's option of bringing in the media was never ideal. What we need to be able to do is to discuss the proceedings in retrospect to determine what went wrong. We need to be able to compare the evidence from experts in different courts to find out what nonsense is being spouted. However, what we don't want is people's dirty linen to be strewn across the nation. The system with small pockets of commonsense is currently strewn with disaster. What I do get sitting in the House of Commons is contacts from across the country as the disaster continues to unfold.
It is clearly the case that the proceedings in the family courts are massively flawed very frequently. In part there is a statutory cause. However, courts where claiming innocence is proof of guilt should have died out centuries ago.
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