John Hemming's Web Log

The Independent have done some investigation into the decisions taken by the court of protection. I have also written an article . As with much that happens in family court proceedings there is little transparency about what is actually happening. I remain concerned that a single social worker's words are sufficient to imprison someone for years. I have seen a number of cases where it appears that the expert opinion is wrong in terms of assessing capacity. However, the system still steamrolls on.

This is a video of part of my conversation with Leah McGrath Goodman on the terrace of the House of Commons. She has had people look to find out how many other journalists have been banned from the UK. In the past 10 years she has not found one case. There remain a number of issues to be sorted out relating to how she got banned and the delays in giving her a visa. Liberty (the NCCL) also seemed particularly complacent about her being banned. They showed no interest in the issue at all. Oddly enough the immigration department promised a response, but have not produced it.

This story in the Daily Mail is surreal. I have followed this particular case for some time and spoke about it in parliament in 2009. I fail to see where the public interest is in imprisoning someone for saying happy birthday to the adult son that lives with them on facebook. It is completely nuts.

This is the judgment in McAlpine v Bercow. I always expected Sally Bercow to lose this case. This is the key paragraph The Defendant does not have any burden of proof in the issue I have to decide. She does not have to offer an alternative explanation of why a peer, whose name and career is known to few members of the public today, might have been trending on 4 November 2012 without her knowing why he was trending. But where the Defendant is telling her followers that she does not know why he is trending, and there is no alternative explanation for why this particular peer was being named in the tweets which produce the Trend, then it is reasonable to infer that he is trending because he fits the description of the unnamed abuser. I find the reader would infer that. The reader would reasonably infer that the Defendant had provided the last piece in the jigsaw. This was a clear example of jigsaw identification. THE TWEET The Tweet reads: "Why is Lord McAlpine trending? *I...

Birmingham stands united in joining the nation in strongly condemning the abhorrent and brutal murder in Woolwich yesterday. The incident is a truly barbaric crime and has no place in any society. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victim and his family. We understand the victim to be a serving British soldier and extend our sympathy to members of the Armed Forces at this difficult time. We also condemn the attacks on places of worship following the murder and urge communities to remain calm and come together in solidarity. We call upon all people to join us in praying for the victim, his family and for the peace of our Cities. Birmingham Social Cohesion Forum Birmingham Faith Round Table (Although this is a statement on behalf of the above groups I am happy to endorse it myself)

This story confirms that the council is now going to accept the £2.1m from the government in order to cut the amount of council tax paid by people on means tested benefits. The question the Council need to answer is why they didn't take this money in January when it was on offer. However, we should welcome the progress that has been made even though more progress on this is needed. Mike Whitby and I were both lobbying the government to be flexible on this issue. I have already called for the funding to be extended into future years in a debate in Westminster Hall.

This story on the BBC news website is as follows: A woman was reportedly jailed secretly by the Court of Protection recently for disobeying its orders. The court decides on issues affecting mentally incapable people. The claims , reported in the Daily Mail, suggest the woman disobeyed orders relating to care for her 80-year-old father, who was suffering from dementia. It is a bit odd that the BBC report this as if there isn't a court judgment that has been published which already indicated that Wanda Maddocks' imprisonment was subject to reporting restrictions. Interestingly a BBC journalist actually turned down the story on the basis of the anonymous judgment. It demonstrates the BBC's general complacency about criticisms of the establishment. This is a big problem in Jersey.

This is a copy of the new rules in respect of jailings for contempt of court. There are two key elements that are new: a) That all hearings will be listed, so that people know they are happening and, b) That a public judgment will be published on Bailii. b) particularly is the key element although a) is important. b) is what was in my private members bill Section 8 (2). Result! This is a clear victory for the Justice for Families - secret prisoners campaign - where with the assistance of the Daily Mail the rules have been made workable and more accountable. It remains important, however, that we keep an eye on the system to make sure it is following the rules. (which it wasn't in the past) There are, of course, the issues of a single social worker being able to imprison someone through the court of protection. That I will come to later. I will also keep an eye on the court to make sure that the rules are followed. What is important about this practice direction is tha...

We see the difficulty of the operation of the British Constitution with the government writing to Munby P about the Court of Protection. In my view James Munby is one of the better judges. However, there are issues that cannot simply be left to the judges. Yes, the judiciary should be consulted, but in the end parliament writes the laws not the judiciary. The problems in the Family Division (and I include the Court of Protection in this) have arisen because individual judges have been left to just get on with it. Some do a good job and others do a dreadful job (and of course there are those in between). The Rule of Law is supposed to mean that it should not matter which judge a case is heard by. However, things don't work like that in practise. The biggest issue for the court of protection is actually the question as to how reliable the assessments of capacity are. It is driven by this. Alistair Pitblado (the Official Solicitor) has also managed to escape scrutiny. His...

What the secret imprisonment of Wanda Maddocks has shown is that an anonymous judgment does not tell you everything about a case. The Daily Mail wrote more about the case today. I do think the wider issue will also have more attention in the future.

This is a recording of yesterday's procedure committee. I make some comments relevant to secret prisoners at 15:42.

This is a story about a woman who was initially tried in absentia and then imprisoned in secret for the "crime" of taking her father to see a lawyer in Birmingham. This really is not on. There is complacency in government about this sort of thing.

I suppose I have a disadvantage when considering legislation relating to the internet. Perhaps I know too much about how things work. There are still traces on the internet of work I did on https in 1995. Although the allocation of the port 465 for an SSL implementation of SMTP was provided by IANA at my request as you can see from This page this was made defunct later by the introduction of STARTTLS which is to be fair a much more port efficient way of dealing with encryption for email. The Joint Committee on the Draft Bill produced a report. I have now read the report. In that report it says: 297. The Home Office knows that not all overseas CSPs will comply with retention notices. It is for this reason that the notices issued under clause 1 may require United Kingdom CSPs to keep third party data traversing their networks. United Kingdom CSPs are rightly very nervous about these provisions. The Home Office has given an oral commitment to United Kingdom CSPs that the Home ...

This week my constituency office has been in contact with Robin Bryan, BCC’s Constituency Parks & Customer Liaison Manager for the Department of Parks & Nature Conservation. Works which were undertaken on 5 oak trees included; 2 x storm damaged, and pollarded to seek regeneration 2 x dead wood removal, and; 1 x felled due to level of decay and consequential risk The two trees that have been pruned back hard were storm damaged. The hard pruning was done to give the trees a good chance to regrow better and stronger. This particular action was chosen as the alternative would have been to remove them altogether as there was the worry that they were too top heavy and may collapse. The Sycamores, along the fence on Broughton Road, were growing through the fence and starting to obstruct the footpath for pedestrians etc. They would eventually start damaging the fence and it is easier and cheaper to remove when they are small. They were self-set trees anyway. Oaks have been pol...

In the end the government offered an improved position on the issue of corporate defamation and permitted development. Hence I actively abstained on both of those votes (voting both ways). I also opposed the government on the issue as to whether the ECHR has a duty to monitor whether society is getting better. The government took the view that it should only monitor its detailed functions and not have a general duty to improve things and monitor that. I also voted for the status quo on Health and Safety. (interestingly I was the only rebel in parliament on this).

I thought it was worth putting together a summary of the problems in the family division. Some of these problems also occur in other areas of the judiciary, but they are commonplace in the family division. The underlying problem is evidence. Because much of the evidence is opinion unreliable opinion from "experts" gives rise to unreliable conclusions. Professor Jane Ireland's report which is available here . concluded (inter alia): "Two thirds of the reports reviewed were rated as below the expected standard, with one third between good and excellent." . What this means is that 2/3rds of the decisions in the care proceedings are unreliable because the evidence was unreliable. An additional difficulty is that the experts (which include social workers) who are giving their opinions are often subject to conflicts of interest. For example in the Court of Protection a social worker can conclude that someone "does not have the mental capacity to decide w...

This story should cause concern. If a barrister who was on the verge of becoming a judge believes that the best thing to do is to leave the country what should others do. Given that Ireland, with its financial problems, has been trying to drive family court refugees back to England I have been talking to other countries to find out if they will simply apply the law to protect people from the abuses of power in England. I did speak to one country today who I think will help. There is also enthusiasm amongst foreign embassies for a conference in parliament to look at how to fight corruption in the family courts in England.

This is a link to the report. Interestingly in 2.1 it says: "The MCA legislation is not well understood or implemented. Because of this, staff may be too quick to assume that people lack the capacity to make any decisions. Also staff may not try to maximise people’s capacity, or carry out decisions within the best interests framework of the MCA, because they don’t understand the legislation." I have sent the RP case which is a key one relating to mental capacity to the grand chamber of the European Court of Human Rights. Far too many people have their capacity removed wrongly. The system remains chocabloc with conflicts of interests and rubbishy assessments and the route to challenge is overly bureaucratic (a legal appeal rather than a merits appeal).

The debate about how far £53 goes is really not a sensible debate. It is possible to feed yourself reasonably cheaply, but there are other costs of course. One issue which concerns me, for example, is bus fares for young unemployed people. Young people in Yardley now have go to Solihull Job Centre. From April 2013 the applicable amount for a young single person is in fact £56.80. (It was 56.25 so I am not sure where the sum of £53 comes from). For someone on £56.80 per week the bus fares to Solihull and back are £3.90 per day. That does allow travel anywhere. However, this is a material amount of the cash they get each week. I have raised this with the Job Centre authorities, but it appears that they did not take this into account when shifting the signing location.

This is a good article about how the inherent jursidiction of the court is overreaching itself in secret. If it was not subject to contempt of court secrecy this would not be tolerated.