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Twenty Police sent to arrest baby

This video is a video of a mother and baby being taken away somewhere in Somerset. No-one involved seems to understand what the law is. The police officers refer to a "police protection order". What they are actually doing is using Section 46 of the Children Act where the police have powers to take children into police protection.

For the purposes of this Act, a child with respect to whom a constable has exercised his powers under this section is referred to as having been taken into police protection. At times this power is abused by the local authority childrens services. They tell the police a child is at risk and the police go and arrest the child. The danger for the mother is that she only has a roughly 20% chance of getting her baby back. (whether she goes to the hospital with the baby or not).

Most likely what should have happened is that the local authority should have applied for an emergency protection order. That is a better system because because it gives the mother the chance to argue against the action rather than it just happening.

Potentially a judicial review of this decision would succeed. Sadly the people lobbying for the mother are people who have a strange legal belief known as "Freeman of the Land". I have never seen anything good come of FMOTLing. They mean well, but they ignore the fact that the "glorious revolution" was in fact a popular revolution in 1688 that established a new constitutional settlement. Only things derived from that constitutional settlement have force.

In any event we have this strange event in Somerset probably about a week ago where a mother is taken to hospital with the threat that her baby will go without her if she doesn't go. It may be injuncted off the net, but also it may not.

The rumours around the net is that the argument is that mother supports things being natural including no vaccination etc. Personally I support vaccination for my children, but I don't think this sort of argument necessarily warrants a baby being arrested within 24 hours of birth. At the same time, however, no-one present appears to fully understand the law in this area. Most importantly, however, the avoiding of an EPO process prevents the mother arguing her own view and merely takes the view of the state.

Comments

Nick Brown said…
It's difficult. Not vaccinating your kids often goes along with any number of potentially harmful beliefs (and of course, immunisation (or failure to) doesn't only protect (or endanger) the immunised individual, because of herd effects. But this doors seen heavy-handed.
John Hemming said…
The challenge, however, is a traditional Audi Alteram Partem challenge. (Then known as fair trial, now known as Article 6).
Antje Seeger. Blog said…
It is so horrible,that 13 police-officers threaten a woman(who gave birth to a baby a few hours ago) to go immediately to hospital for vaxinations. As I could hear , this mother isn`t alone,-there are well experienced and professional trained midwifes in the house to care for mother and baby. SO DEAR POLICE-OFFICERS ,-YOU BETTER GO AND HUNT REAL CRIMINALS. Don`t waste the time with intimidating a young mother....! OR DID YOU GET THE TASK TO TAKE HER BABY AWAWAY ...???

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