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Court reporters
Judge wants power to ban newspapers
Lord Justice Wall said journalists from certain papers could
be barred when new rules are brought in to lift the blanket
of secrecy that currently covers cases dealing with disputes
over children.
He criticised the Mail’s reporting of a key case last
year in which an Essex couple’s children were taken
from them by social workers. But the Mail maintains that it
was entirely accurate and in this case highlighted the type
of decisions made in the secretive courts that many would
consider totally unjust. The children in question were put
up for adoption on the grounds that their mother did not have
the intellectual capacity to look after them and their father
was said to be too devoted to routine in the way he cared
for them.
The children were, a court heard, loved, clean, well-dressed
and well-fed, and had never been hurt or cruelly treated.
However a High Court judge agreed with social workers that
the parents’ wish to raise their own children should
be overruled.
The couple have been banned from seeing their children, now
aged five and two. The case won widespread attention after
it was highlighted by the Mail. In a speech to a conference
on family law yesterday, Mr Justice Wall, an Appeal Court
judge, said the newspaper – which he did not name –
had published a ‘highly tendentious and illicitly-obtained’
account.
In the past, media representatives have been prevented from
reporting family court hearings. Constitutional Affairs Minister
Harriet Harman is drawing up new rules that would grant the
media access.
But Mr Justice Wall said that if newspapers displease them,
judges should consider ‘the withdrawal of accreditation’
– preventing a paper from preparing its own reports
of a case. It would mean judges having the power to pick and
choose who can report on cases involving 400,000 children
and families every year.
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