Family Division liaison judge Mr Justice Poole has made what is believed to be the first transparency order to allow reporting of a case in the family courts.
The order covers a finding of fact hearing being held in Leeds and is expected to last 11 weeks. It was made under a reporting pilot being conducted in the Family Courts in Leeds, Cardiff and Carlisle from 30 January.
Today's judgment states that it is appropriate to adopt the pilot from the hearing’s outset. The transparency order (TO) was made prior to the hearing and circulated to the parties. 'Potential pilot reporters’ were told of the case through the Royal Courts of Justice press office.
The finding of fact hearing involves three separate family law applications brought to the court by local authorities in relation to three separate families, all living in Yorkshire. The cases concern allegations that the mother in each family ‘fabricated or induced illness in one child of each family'. Three women have been arrested and a criminal investigation started.
Under the TO ‘pilot reporters’ – accredited journalists or an authorised legal blogger – may report on proceedings with restrictions to protect the identities of children. The order adopts the template attached to president of the Family Division Sir Andrew McFarlane’s guidance with two ‘significant variations’ which, Poole said, would ‘not be necessary in most cases.’
The variations include a condition that no reporting of the proceedings will be permitted until the conclusion of the hearing and ‘perhaps, due to possible criminal proceedings, long after that’. The second variation is the inclusion of a confidential schedule to the order with the real names of family members, including children, involved.
Poole said: ‘The purpose of doing so was to avoid inadvertent reporting of any members of the three families. If a pilot reporter has any doubts about whether an individual is subject to the prohibition on identification, they can check the confidential schedule.’
He added: ‘I would not expect the use of a schedule of identifying information to be needed in many cases in the reporting pilot, but it may be a useful addition in a few cases such as the present one.’
The judge also restricted the documentation reporters are entitled to receive under the transparency order. He said: ‘In my view the quantity of such documentation in this case would be an unhelpful burden on reporters and the parties alike.’ Opening and closing position statements or skeleton arguments and the indices to the hearing bundles are available, but no other documentation can be shared ‘without the express permission of the court.’
Poole has permitted the identification of Sheffield Children’s Hospital, where some of the children involved in the proceedings were treated, due to the ‘strong public interest’ which ‘outweighs the degree of risk of harm to the subject children of being identified as a result of the hospital being named.’ Other hospitals involved cannot be identified.
Poole said that it was ‘inevitable’ that individuals who were already aware of the families may be able to find out more from reports and similarly when an anonymised judgment is published which may cause ‘a great deal of distress’ to the children and families involved. He added, however, that protections provided by s97 of the Children Act 1989 and the transparency order ‘provide the court with sufficient confidence that reporting may be permitted without creating an unacceptable risk that the children will be harmed by being identified.’
