Children, Schools and Families Bill

The hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) wants to speak for a minute just before 9 pm. I hope to finish in sufficient time for that. Sadly, the Government have gone about this whole process in completely the wrong way, and as such they have created a monstrous mess. It is overly complex, reverses Clayton v. Clayton, makes secret documents of court orders that are currently public and achieves very little. I should like to cite an example that demonstrates the problems with secrecy in the system by referring to two babies who were born in Spain last week to families that emigrated rapidly from Suffolk because they faced the removal of their babies at birth, with the police in the delivery suite and social workers in attendance to take the children immediately into care. As everybody knows from the statistics, the vast majority of babies who are taken into care at birth end up being adopted. One baby was born to Sam Hallimond and his fiancée Vanessa. They went through the family courts, and the press could in fact have named them because Clayton v. Clayton allows them to be identified. The Bill, however, aims to gag Sam and Vanessa: it aims to stop the press reporting their names. They are in Spain, the baby is all right, everyone is okay, the authorities are quite happy with them and there is no difficulty. The members of the other family are Dale and Lorraine Coote and their daughter Megan, who are constituents of Mr. Deputy Speaker, the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Sir Michael Lord), and very pleased to have his support. They have not touched the family courts, so all the documentation on and discussion of their case can be made public; there is absolutely no difficulty whatever. The Bill will have no effect on them, because their case has never been to the family courts. On the merits of the argument, Spain, according to UNICEF's report card No. 3, has one of the best records in the world for protecting children from death from abuse and neglect. The authorities have been around, seen the Cootes and said, "You're all right. Just stay in touch with us. We do not have a problem with you looking after your own child." The authorities here wanted to remove the child at birth, with a police officer in the delivery room—straight into care, feed the adoption machine. There is a key point about the accountability in and transparency of the process. With the Cootes' case, all the documentation is public and not constrained in any way whatever. The fact that they are abroad means that, to a certain extent, they can do what they want anyway, because the court order stops at the border. The Hallimond case is much harder, because the press in this country cannot report the documentation. The press abroad can, however, so there is no difficulty there. In care proceedings, the family courts are in essence the quality control system for a complex judgment. In social work, decisions about when and when not to intervene are critical judgments, and one needs to maintain an open mind and review the judgment. One can criticise the Department for making the whole system worse, but, crucially, the role of the family courts is to bring in that quality control. Birmingham city council reviewed the practices of its own children's services department and identified that, in about 50 per cent. of cases, the judgment was poor: the practitioners were incapable of judging when a child was and was not at risk. The quality control for that judgment is the family courts, but the problem is that it often fails. It does not always fail, because there are some very good judges, but other judges basically accept any old rubbish that is put up by the local council, and the judgment goes through. The Court of Appeal subsequently says, "Oh, that's all judicial discretion," so it does not correct the judgment. As a backstop for that process, we need transparency: we need to be able to look at what has happened. The Government's strategy has been to assume that a journalist will be sitting in the family courts all the time. A national newspaper reporter might go to the court in London once or twice, but they will not know in advance about a miscarriage of justice; they will know only in arrears. The process fails because it does not look at the situation from the point of view of the parties. It is the parties who know when a miscarriage of justice has occurred, so it is the parties who should be able to take that issue—yes, perhaps with certain constraints—and have a discussion about the merits of the case. I have a constituency case in which a mother was put in the Appledore centre and her parenting ability assessed, and it was decided that because she breastfed her baby on demand—she did not follow Gina Ford's instructions, in other words—she failed her parenting assessment. One would think that such an assessment, which I have in writing, would be rejected by the family court, but sadly it was not. The problem that we have with the appeal in that case is that the judge has not issued a written judgment, so the appeal will go in on the basis of no judgment being provided. Those sorts of things simply should not happen. I should have declared right at the start—I think everybody knows—that I co-ordinate the Justice for Families campaign, which is why I am contacted by people from all over the country, including children in their late teens who are forced into care unnecessarily by the family courts system. It is those children, too, who are being gagged by the process. It would be a criminal offence for a newspaper to report the name of a child who is 17 and is wrongly subject to a care order. That would not have been the case prior to this Bill, because under Clayton v. Clayton the parties following the judgment can be reported. There is only area where I would have some agreement with the proposed constraints on information. Obviously, it is at the judgment stage that information should be talked about, but the Government's big mistake is that they are going about this in completely the wrong way. What is important about the whole process is being able to look at the experts' reports, all the evidence and the transcript of the hearing, and ask, "Is it reasonable for the state to intervene in the way in which it is intervening in this situation?" These are very traumatic processes. The two families who are in Spain at the moment faced the real prospect of a police officer in the delivery room to take the baby at birth under a police protection order. That is massively traumatic, so it is not surprising that they, like several other families, have decided to emigrate. Looking at the telegraphing that is going on between the Minister and the Conservative spokesman, it is probably fair to say that they could do with a little bit more than the minute that they asked for, so I will finish on this point. The Government have gone about this in completely the wrong way. The April 2009 stuff was really quite good, although it needed to go further in certain ways, but what needs to happen now is that we stop gagging the parties who are subject to miscarriages of justice.