Tag Archives: Court of Appeal

Overseas assessment and delay

Posted on March 12, 2025 by suesspiciousminds

There’s been a tension for quite a long time between children’s timescales (and the 26 week timetable and principle of no delay) versus exploring all realistic alternatives to adoption.

This Court of Appeal case is a decision on this point, and in my view a helpful reminder to the parties and Courts that the welfare of the child is paramount and that the impact of delay in decision-making for the child needs to be bourne in mind.

Christopher Marlowe said of Helen of Troy that she had the face that launched a thousand ships, and Isaac Asimov postulated later that therefore a milli-Helen is the quantity of beauty sufficient to launch a single ship. This post will launch if not a thousand bookmarks, then at least a hundred for every LA lawyer in the country will want to have this one to hand from time to time.

M (A Child) (Placement Order) [2025] EWCA Civ 214 (06 March 2025)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2025/214.html

At the start of the Appeal hearing, the proceedings had been going on for 62 weeks. I won’t go into the background of why the parents weren’t considered suitable, but for a long time, the issue of placing the child with an aunt and uncle in Pakistan was being considered. By the time of the final hearing, the Local Authority took the view that they no longer supported a placement of the child in Pakistan.

That was broadly for these reasons – 14 months after proceedings had been issued, the aunt and uncle still had no visa to come to the UK – that would take at least a further 6 weeks – after that, they could come to the UK and participate in a detailed assessment of their parenting with the child, then obtaining a Court order in Pakistan which might take 6 months. There were also considerable issues with the financial support that the aunt and uncle would need to be able to care for the child.

38.The judge having reached her conclusions in relation to placement with the mother, proceeded, against the background of the welfare checklist, to consider whether it was in M’s best interest to adjourn the proceedings in order to “explore whether it is in fact in [M]’s best interests to be placed in Pakistan, and whether such a placement is actually achievable in [M]’s timescales”.

  1. The judge recorded that the aunt and uncle accepted that:
  2. The judge said at paragraph [76] that the plan to place M with his aunt and uncle was “fraught with uncertainties”. She then particularised issues such as the need to obtain visas, that the local authority were no longer willing to fund a UK assessment, the further delay occasioned by the assessment itself followed by further court proceedings and the need for a mirror order.
  3. The judge emphasised the importance of timescale because of the impact on M. The judge went on at [78-79]:
  4. The judge held at [81] that the adjournment would have to be at least three to four months to complete the assessment and return to court, and probably “more akin to six to twelve months before successful placement could be achieved if the assessment were positive”. There would, she said, be a real possibility that the assessment would not be positive and/or that M could not be placed with the aunt and uncle, which would lead to further delay. The timescales for adoption were, she held, “both shorter and more certain”. She accepted the evidence that a match could be found within a reasonable timescale with placement within months.
  5. Against the backdrop of her findings, the judge reached the conclusion at [82] that it was not in M’s best interests “even when judged by the yardstick of considering his lifelong best interest” to continue the process of assessment with the aunt and uncle “despite all the detrimental consequences that flow from such a decision”.
  6. The judge concluded by saying that whilst it had been a difficult case, it was not a finely balanced one. She expressed her empathy with the aunt and uncle “who have done all in their power to offer their nephew a home”. However, “further delay for an unknown length of time and for an uncertain outcome is quite contrary to M’s needs”.

The Court of Appeal looked at the question of whether the trial Judge was unreasonable and unduly pessimistic about the plan.

53. That there was a real possibility that the assessment might fail was in my judgment an inevitable consequence of the uncertainty inherent in the whole complicated plan; for example, it may simply not have been viable because the funding was no longer available from the cash-poor local authority or the applications for visas may be refused. M may himself have found the introduction to his aunt and uncle with the language barrier just too difficult and, as had been identified by Ms Rafiq, there were issues with schools and the home conditions. These were all potential stumbling blocks. For my part I can see that there was also a significant risk that the demands on the aunt and uncle might be simply too great. Should the matter have been adjourned then, providing they managed to obtain visas, the family would have relocated to a strange country for an unspecified period of time for assessment and, if successful, the uncle would then return to Pakistan with the two older (but by no means grown up) children. Once home they would have to manage without their primary carer while their father worked punishingly long hours, potentially for many months, whilst court proceedings took their course in both the UK and Pakistan, proceedings which would be necessary in order to provide essential protection for M’s position in Pakistan.

The Court of Appeal re-emphasised the point made in Re W 2016 that there is no ‘right’ or ‘presumption’ for a child to be brought up within their natural family {author note – I don’t particularly like this aspect of the Re W decision, but it is the law}

  1. The judge did not ignore the positive aspects of the CFAB assessment or the cultural advantages to a family placement, and in conducting her finely tuned balancing exercise specifically said, as recorded at [41] above, that there were grounds for optimism based on the CFAB assessment. However, as Ms Styles rightly submitted, optimism is all well and good but when considering the future of M, a hard-edged evidential approach is necessary.
  2. Notwithstanding the commitment shown by the aunt and uncle to offering M a home and the undoubted advantages if it can be achieved, and that it is in a child’s best interests to have a family placement, in my judgment there were a myriad of reasons why the plan to place M in Pakistan might fail. Given the long delay which had already taken place in getting the proceedings to trial, that the assessment might not be successful was a feature which the judge was bound to have at the forefront of her mind. As in any case where it is hoped that a family placement can be achieved it is important, as was perhaps not recognised until too late in this case, that there is no presumption or right for a child to be brought up by a member of his or her natural family. In Re W (A Child) (Adoption: Grandparents Competing Claims) [2016] EWCA Civ 793, McFarlane LJ said:
  3. The judge was alive to the challenges and spoke of “two contrary principles having pulled the court in different directions, the importance of children’s welfare of being brought up by natural family where it is safe and achievable, and the harmful effects of delay”. Ultimately the judge concluded that M’s welfare demanded that he be placed for adoption and that when she performed a proportionality cross check she said she was “satisfied that, despite its draconian nature and lifelong consequences, adoption is a necessary and proportionate interference – in short, nothing else will do”.

In looking at whether the Court should have granted a further extension to the proceedings to allow for further assessment of the aunt and uncle, the Court of Appeal said this:-

The court was also taken to Peter Jackson LJ’s judgment in Re S-L (Children) [2019] EWCA Civ 1571; [2020] 4 WLR 102, in which he considered the use of s32(5) CA 1989. In relation to a case where improper use had been made of the provision, he made an observation which applies equally to all cases:

“12. In cases involving children, there can sometimes be good reasons for adjourning a final decision in order to obtain necessary information. The overriding obligation is to deal with the case justly, but there is a trade-off between the need for information and the presumptive prejudice to the child of delay, enshrined in section 1(2) Children Act 1989. Judges in the family court are well used to finding where the balance lies in the particular case before them and are acutely aware that for babies and young children the passage of weeks and months is a matter of real significance. Sharpening this general calculation, public law proceedings are subject to a statutory timetabling imperative. Section 32(1)(a) provides that the court must draw up a timetable for disposing of the application without delay and in any event within 26 weeks; subsection 32(5) allows an extension only where the court considers it necessary to enable the proceedings to be resolved justly.
13[…] the recorder’s decision to adjourn therefore squarely engaged the above provisions in relation to both children and she was obliged to explain why an extension of the timetable was necessary. In any event, she was under a general obligation to ensure that an adjournment was justified. Adjourning a decision should never be seen as ‘pressing the pause button’: it is a positive purposeful choice that requires a proper weighing-up of the advantages and disadvantages and a lively awareness that the passage of time has consequences”.
It was agreed by all parties that at 18 months old M is in a critical phase for making long term healthy attachments and that the older he is the more likely he is to encounter attachment difficulties and the harder it would be to find a match if he were to be adopted. Ms Darkens, again in reflective mode, when asked in oral evidence about M’s timescales said that “the timeframe for the optimum outcome for him was months ago”.

Mr Styles highlighted that many matters critical to the outcome are simply outside the judge’s control. Three areas spring to mind:

(i) Obtaining funding from the Resource Panel: the Panel would have to approve the essential funding notwithstanding that the local authority’s care plan is no longer to place M with the aunt and uncle;
(ii) Obtaining a visa from the Home Office: Mr Gupta accepts that visas have to be obtained and that the courts cannot put pressure on the Home Office. He says, however, that it is routine for the Home Office to be asked to expedite an application for a visa. I agree that the local authority could do that, but they certainly could not do so by reference to a court-prescribed timetable;
(iii) Obtaining a Guardianship Order in Pakistan: the uncontradicted evidence of Mr Khan is that it is preferable for an order to be obtained in Pakistan prior to placement there. The evidence is that this can take up to six months. It goes without saying that even the most rigorous timetabling by a UK judge can have no influence on the processes of the courts of a foreign jurisdiction.
These and other matters which are outside the control of the Court have to be taken into account when deciding whether a further extension of the proceedings are to be permitted. Further, it has to be remembered that “Day 1” for the consideration of acceptable timescales is not by reference to the date that a court agreed to adjourn the final hearing, but is the date on which the care proceedings were issued, as Peter Jackson LJ said in Re S-L (cited above), any court should be “acutely aware that for babies and young children the passage of weeks and months is a matter of real significance”.

Notwithstanding Mr Gupta’s realistic submissions, supported by Mr Brookes-Baker on behalf of the mother, and Ms Shaikh on behalf of the father, the judge’s careful and sympathetic analysis of the application for an adjournment for further assessments of the aunt and uncle cannot be faulted and in my judgment she reached the right decision given the uncertainties inherent in the proposed plan for placement in Pakistan and the urgency of achieving permanency for M.

Conclusion

M has been in care all his life. At the date of the trial he was 14 months old and the aunt and uncle, through no fault of their own, were not in a position to say that they could, as of that date, be regarded as a realistic option for the placement for M with them.

In my judgment for all the reasons set out above, I would endorse the judge’s observation that the decision was a difficult one but not a finely balanced one. What made it difficult was that the hopes of the family, and particularly the aunt and uncle, had been raised and then maintained long after a decision should have been reached that, for many reasons in addition to delay, the aspiration to place M with his extended family in Pakistan was not achievable within his timescales and that M’s best interests could only be served by the making of a placement order with a view to his being adopted in the UK.

For these reasons I dismissed the appeal against the making of a placement order.

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Private law costs order

Posted on March 4, 2025 by suesspiciousminds

I don’t often write about private law, but this is a Court of Appeal case considering whether or not a costs order should be made when one party made allegations that were completely without substance that incurred significant costs in investigating them.

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2025/183.html

Re E : Children: Costs 2025 EWCA Civ 183

The issue was further complicated because the Court did make SOME findings about the father, and also there were cross-allegations by father against the mother of parental alienation.

  1. The parents married in 2011 and have four children. They are boys aged 11 and 10, a girl aged 8 and a boy aged 3. The parents separated in January 2022 after the father told the mother that he had been unfaithful. The children have remained with the mother and, although they had warm feelings for their father until the separation, they have not seen him since.
  2. After the separation, the parents made allegations of domestic abuse against each other. The mother alleged physical abuse, coercive and controlling behaviour, emotional abuse and rape. The father alleged physical abuse, coercive and controlling behaviour and emotional abuse.
  3. In addition, by April/May 2022 the mother was making allegations that the father had physically and sexually abused A and B and, to a more limited degree, C and that he enabled other men to sexually abuse A and B as part of a “sex-ring”. The father alleged that the mother was making up these allegations in order to alienate the children from him.
  4. As a result of the allegations, and particularly those of sexual abuse, the local authority and police became involved. The police conducted three ABE interviews with A and two with B. Their investigation did not lead to any action against the father.
  5. As a domestic abuse complainant, the mother was entitled to legal aid. The father, though of modest means, did not have that benefit. By the end of the fact-finding hearing he had incurred legal costs of over £75,000 without so far obtaining any order for contact.

The mother’s allegations that the father had sexually abused the children and drawn them into a sex-ring had no substance of any kind.

  1. The judgment runs to 68 pages, and it is only necessary to extract observations and conclusions that are relevant to the issue of costs:
  2. The judge summarised his findings at paragraph 7:

i. The mother had made eight witness statements in which details of her allegations had emerged in a piecemeal way. She gave accounts of statements made to her by A and B that described the most serious kinds of sexual abuse. There was, the judge said, considerable force in the argument that the allegations only emerged once it became clear to the mother that this was the only way to prevent the father from having contact with the children.
ii. The mother denied that she knew who had abused her sons. She further denied that she had told the court in October 2023 that she knew their names, but the judge did not accept that.
iii. The mother gave evidence over two days. The judge found that she was not a compelling witness and that some of her evidence was simply untrue. She was vague, confused, passive and easily led. Her answers were rambling and avoidant. This was in marked contrast to her clear and determined approach outside the courtroom when trying to persuade professionals that the children had been sexually abused, and her anger when they did not accept her viewpoint.
iv. The judge’s impression of the father’s evidence was mixed. His evidence about his behaviour towards the mother during the course of their relationship and his behaviour after separation was unconvincing, and his evidence in support of his allegations of domestic abuse against the mother was entirely unconvincing, indeed untruthful. In contrast, his evidence when challenged about the allegations of sexual abuse against his children was markedly different. He was upset, and appeared bemused and defeated. He could not understand why anyone would believe him to have perpetrated such gross abuse upon his children or how anyone could put such ideas into their heads. His responses on this issue appeared measured, appropriate and genuine.
v. The judge described the case as extremely troubling. The children’s accounts of abuse, which he considered in detail, were not convincing. However (at paragraph 184):
“The mother has convinced herself that the father sexually abused her children. Secure in her belief that the central allegation is true, she has pressed relentlessly for other professionals to accept her perspective and act accordingly. When they have not acted or not acted in the way that she has wanted, she has redoubled her efforts. She has, in my judgment, pressured her children to ‘start talking’. She has convinced them that the father is a bad person and that he poses a danger to her and to them. The father’s actions in attending the property and threatening the mother, once seen by the children or relayed to them, have reinforced that view.”

When it came to the original trial Judge considering the father’s application for costs, the judgment says this:-

The judge directed himself in some detail on the conventional legal principles in respect of costs in cases of this kind. He expressed considerable sympathy for the father’s position and accepted that the financial cost of the proceedings had taken an enormous toll on him. However, he made no order for costs, giving these reasons:

“59. In my analysis, these are proceedings where both parents have made cross-allegations against each other. In respect of each parent I made findings on some of their allegations but did not make findings on all of them. The fact-finding hearing had not been listed just to consider the mother’s allegations of sexual abuse against the father. They had also been listed to consider the mother’s allegations of domestic abuse against the father, the father’s allegations of domestic abuse against the mother and the father’s allegations of alienation against the mother.

  1. As confirmed to me today, Mr Davis has not sought to argue that any different legal test should apply whether ultimately any costs order is to be paid by the mother herself or, as in his submissions in this case, by the State through application to the Legal Aid Agency. The principles I must therefore apply are the same.
  2. Whilst there is some force in the submissions made on behalf of the father, ultimately I do not consider this to be a case where I should exercise my discretion to make a costs order in his favour. This is for the following reasons:
    (1) The reasons I gave to adjourn the hearing in January 2024 were not reasons that related in any way to the mother’s litigation conduct. I accept, therefore, the submission that is made on this point on behalf of the mother. The decision to adjourn was the result of late or non-disclosure by third parties, namely, the police and the Local Authority. Arguably, it is them not the mother who should have faced a costs application in relation to the adjournment.
    (2) This is not a straightforward case where allegations were made by one party and found to be proved against the other party, or else where allegations were made by one party and dismissed in     their entirety. The mother did establish some of her allegations of domestic abuse against the father despite his denial. He has been found previously to have harassed her in breach of a non-molestation order. The father did not establish his allegations of domestic abuse against the mother which had no substance as I found and were very much raised as a counterweight against the allegations she had made against him. Each party succeeded and failed in part on the cases advanced before me.
    (3) I made critical observations about each parent in the course of my judgment. My observations of the mother are at paragraphs 82 to 85 of the judgment and of the father, at 142 to 148. I concluded that neither parent was a wholly reliable witness.
    (4) The mother is right to point out that my finding in relation to the allegations of sexual abuse in relation to the children was not that the mother had maintained allegations which she knew to be wholly false. It is, as I set out in paragraph 184 of my judgment, that she has convinced herself that he did these things. This is an important distinction.
    (5) The conclusions that I reached about both parents are set out in the concluding part of my judgment. As I have said, I concluded that the mother had convinced herself that the father sexually abused the children. So far as the father is concerned, he did not escape in any sense unscathed from the observations in my judgment. I said this about him at paragraph 186:
    “The father was aggressive and threatening towards the mother in the course of their relationship     and after it ended. This behaviour included threats of violence towards her, threats to damage their home, throwing a bottle to the floor and a glass at her door. The father pressured the mother for sex during the marriage. He threatened to look elsewhere for sex and his infidelity in December 2021 brought the parties’ marriage to an end. The father kicked A on the foot in anger on at least one occasion”.
  3. In conclusion, therefore, this case represents a much more mixed and nuanced picture than as presented on behalf of the father and can be distinguished from those cases where costs orders have previously been made against one party in favour of the other. I appreciate the father feels that there is an injustice in that the mother has been entitled to public funding and he has not. However much sympathy I have for that contention, it does not of itself justify an order for costs and thereby the opening of a gateway to redress that injustice through an application under s.26 to the Legal Aid Agency. As Mr Davis rightly accepts, that would not be a good reason for making a costs order in his favour.
  4. I therefore make no order as to costs insofar as the fact-finding process is concerned.“

The Court of Appeal took a different view and made a costs order that the father recover some of his costs

Analysis and conclusion

Turning to this individual case, I acknowledge the generous latitude enjoyed by a judge making an evaluative decision after a substantial trial, and remind myself of the limits on the role of an appeal court and the obligation to read extempore judgments sensibly and not over-critically. It should also be noted that, with this one exception, none of the judge’s primary decisions in this difficult case has been subject to any appeal by either party.

To start with, the judge was right to take account of the whole picture. The cross-allegations of domestic abuse were sadly commonplace, and were never likely to lead to a costs award. Similarly, and in disagreement with the father’s argument, there was in the light of the overall findings no basis for penalising the mother in costs because she failed to prove that he had raped her.

However, the judge should have acknowledged that the mother’s extreme allegations that the father had sexually abused the older children and had handed them over to a paedophile sex ring were of an entirely different character and that different costs considerations consequently arose. His starting-point that “these were proceedings where both parents had made cross-allegations” was an inadequate reflection of the true position. He should have recognised, firstly, that there was no equivalence between the sexual allegations involving the children and the other allegations, and secondly, that those allegations had completely transformed the proceedings, leading to extraordinary delay and hugely increased costs. He should also have appreciated that the adjournment of the January hearing was a direct result of the mother’s pursuit of the sexual allegations, and that it was incorrect to say that it was not related in any way to her litigation conduct. In short, he should have separated out the unfounded sexual allegations involving the children.

I also accept that the judge was mistaken in treating the fact that he had made a mixture of findings as a reason for making no order for costs, without considering his power to order that a proportion of the father’s costs should be paid.

The judge placed significant weight on his assessment of the mother’s motivation: see paragraph 61(4), referring back to paragraph 184 of the fact-finding judgment. He differentiated between allegations known to be wholly false and allegations that she had convinced herself were true. That is a subtle distinction, and I cannot see how it avails the mother in this case. The Delphic finding that she had convinced herself that the father had sexually abused the children, not further explained, could not be the end of the matter. In the first place, the court was not considering whether the mother regarded her litigation conduct to be reprehensible or unreasonable, but making its own objective assessment. As Staughton LJ said in Re R:

“The real point that has been argued before us seems to me to be this: the judge evidently found that the father had behaved unreasonably in the litigation. I do not doubt that Mr R genuinely believes that his arguments are perfectly reasonable. I do not question his good faith, but I am afraid I do agree with the judge that they did not, in reality, represent a reasonable attitude for the father to take.”
In any case, the judge’s approach to the mother’s motivation was in my view unduly indulgent. He should have taken into account a number of striking features of the litigation:

i. The link that he had identified between the sexual allegations and the mother’s realisation that this was the only way to prevent the father from having contact with the children.
ii. The lack of any objective foundation for the sexual abuse allegations, other than the children’s statements under pressure.
iii. The mother’s lie about knowing the names of other members of the paedophile ring, which was bound to cast doubt on the genuineness of her belief.
iv. Her choice to make lurid allegations (including that the father had involved a child in bestiality with a family pet) that she neither pursued nor withdrew.
v. Her continuous production of witness statements, arising from her pressure on the children to ‘start talking’ and leading to the court having to accommodate the results of repeated interviewing of the children.
vi. Her deletion of a recording of one child before it could be heard by other adults, supposedly to protect his privacy.
vii. The court’s “considerable doubt” about the genuineness of a drawing that the mother said had been made by a child.
viii. The wholly unsatisfactory quality of the mother’s oral evidence in relation to the sexual abuse allegations.
In the light of these matters the judge’s conclusion that the mother’s litigation conduct was not reprehensible or unreasonable cannot stand. We cannot remit the question to the judge, who is continuing to hear the substantive proceedings, and there is no reason why we should not reach our own conclusion.

After the hearing, we received submissions from the parties about the scope of our order. A number of the Family Court hearings led to orders that there be no order for costs, and it would not have been open to the judge to disturb them. Other orders were silent as to costs, and it was open to the judge and to this court to make orders in respect of those costs at a later stage. The same applies to the order of 6 February 2024, made at the end of the abandoned fact-finding hearing, by which the costs were reserved.

Taking all matters into account, I would substitute for the judge’s costs order an order in these terms:

The mother shall pay half of the father’s costs of the Children Act proceedings up to 3 July 2024, excluding the costs of the father’s representation at any hearing in respect of which an order was made that there be no order for costs; this order shall not be enforced against the mother without the leave of the Family Court.
That portion of the father’s costs is the least that can be properly ordered in the circumstances as a reflection of the impact on the proceedings of the mother’s false allegations that the father and others have sexually abused the children, and the father’s cross-allegation of alienation. I repeat that the costs order does not relate to the mother’s allegation of rape.

To that extent, I would allow the appeal.

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Should Judges be anonymous? The Sharif Court of Appeal decision

Posted on January 24, 2025 by suesspiciousminds

As people will know, Sara Sharif was brutally murdered by her father and stepmother in August 2023 and they were recently convicted of that offence. As part of the factual background of the case, it emerged that Sara together with her siblings had been the subject of Family Court proceedings and that decisions had been made in those proceedings which, had they potentially gone a different way, Sara would not have been in the family setting she was in before her murder.

Journalists understandably wanted to report on this aspect of the case and applications were made for them to be able to report on the Family Court proceedings. A decision was taken about what could be reported and what could not, and one of the issues that was restricted was identification of the Judges who had taken decisions about Sara and her siblings.

The case went before Williams J https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2024/3330.html who upheld the decision that the identity of the Judges should not be disclosed.

I accept that there is now considerable force – indeed compelling weight – behind the submissions as Mr Barnes puts it extracted below. That is not to say that all that he submits is correct or that I necessarily agree with it, but the questions posed are legitimate ones which justify exploration by the press.

(a) The criminal trial has served to crystallise an overwhelming public interest in understanding: (i) how Sara came to be placed in the care of her father, (ii) the effectiveness of the safeguarding undertaken by the Family Court, local authority, and CAFCASS, and (iii) the local authority’s understanding of the risk posed by the father from its lengthy involvement with the family1 in light of the referral made by Sara’s school on 10th March 2023 in relation to which the local authority made a decision to take no further action by 16th March 2023; b. The “unbroken chain of causation” back to the family proceedings in 2013, 2015/6, and 2019 is now very clearly established.(c) c. The school referral in March 2023 was referred to within the criminal trial and reported, as was the fact of an order being made by the Guildford Family Court in 2019…..
From the point of view of a judge who has practised in family law for 35 years and sat as a judge for 9 years including 4 years as the Family Presiding Judge for the South Eastern Circuit (which includes Surrey) my perspective on the investigations which took place, the assessments which emerged, the recommendations which were made and the decisions which were taken by the family court in 2013, 2015 and 2019 appear to be well within the boundaries of what one would typically encounter in a case of this nature.

However, it is perhaps precisely that perspective and the subsequent shocking murder of Sara which illustrates why there is a compelling public interest in the media being able to undertake their own consideration of the material and to question or test how we approached the issues and to ask the legitimate question of whether there were things that the system could have done differently or better. Nothing can bring Sara back, nothing can undo the harm that must inevitably have been done to her siblings from their exposure to what appears to have been sadistic long-term torture of her. The sentencing judge described it in all its appalling detail. There will be other processes which will examine the responses of the system but those other avenues do not in any way undermine the compelling public interest in the media being able to discuss the history of Sara’s involvement with the child protection system including the courts from the moment of her birth until her tragic death. If that discussion highlights shortcomings in what was done and whether Sara might have been better protected then those are issues which those of us in the family justice system will have to listen to and consider, those in children’s services will and those who have control of the resources made available to the Family Justice System and to child protection services and safeguarding generally will need to reflect upon and consider whether we can and should do anything differently and whether more resources in terms of child safeguarding and protection or within the Family Justice System are required to minimise the risk of this happening again. On the other hand, that exploration and discussion by the media may only reveal that parents who are sufficiently determined and manipulative can thwart the system.

In part of that judgment, Williams J was somewhat critical about the proposition that the Court should proceed on the basis that any reporting would be responsible, fair and accurate :-

The media submit that authority supports the proposition that the Court must proceed on the footing that any reporting of the proceedings will be responsible, fair and accurate (R v Sarker [2018] 1 WLR 6023at [32(iii)(b)]). That may be a useful starting point, but experience regrettably shows that some reporting is better than others and that it is not a reliable end point. It is also the case that once the media applicants have published the information it is available to anyone to do with it as they wish and in an age of disinformation and anti-fact the court must have an eye to what onward use may be made of the information. As the reporting of the murders of Alice da Silva Aguiar, Bebe King and Elsie Dot Stancombe demonstrates all too clearly, those with malign intent can rapidly distort information to meet their own purposes with devastating real-world consequences. As I said in the course of the hearing the reality is that there will be a spectrum of reporting – even within the represented media parties. Many will indeed report matters responsibly, fairly and accurately. Some will not. Contrast the extract of a judgment and a headline in a well-known national daily newspaper reporting it.

Extract
What this case is not about though is whether an Islamic marriage ceremony (a Nikah) should be treated as creating a valid marriage in English law.
Headline
A British court has recognised sharia law for the first time in a landmark decision as a judge ruled that a wife can claim her husband’s assets in the split. The High Court ruling on Wednesday said their union should be valid and recognised because their vows had similar expectations of a British marriage contract.
On Friday 13th December 2024 I responded to an application for permission to appeal made on behalf of Ms Tickle and Ms Summers and adjourned the application pending this judgment giving reasons for doing so. On Saturday 14th December at 19.18 GMT the Guardian carried a story written by Ms Tickle and Ms Summers reporting that I had refused permission to appeal. Accurate – no; fair – no; responsible – I would venture to suggest not. I could make several observations about how fairly, responsibly and accurately the Dispatches programme broadcast on 20th July 2021 depicted a number of decisions of the family courts. Thank goodness that journalists don’t have to operate as the courts do and hear both sides before delivering their verdict! Is reporting which only presents one side of the story fair, responsible and accurate? By any ordinary meaning of those words, I would suggest not. What it is very close to is advocacy or campaigning and that is one aspect of reporting but so is sensationalism as well as good investigative reporting. To apply some broad presumption which equates the sort of reporting undertaken by Nick Wallis to that of Andy Coulson is simply wrong. The Leveson Inquiry and the imprisonment of members of the press for egregious infringements of the Article 8 rights of hundreds of individuals makes abundantly clear that some elements of the media do not always adhere to high standards. So with respect it seems to me that to create an assumption that the press reporting will be fair, accurate and responsible is to create the equivalent of the Emperor’s New Clothes narrative which everyone knows is false, but no one dare state. Many of the media no doubt will adhere to that standard but regrettably experience of the real world as opposed to some utopian ideal teaches us that some will not – including amongst the mainstream media. Authorising disclosure to the press of extensive material about sensitive shielded justice proceedings and permitting reporting on it does not mean they will all report it fairly, accurately, and responsibly and the more extensive the disclosure and publication authorised the more the court is entitled to balance that with minimising the risks of disproportionate infringements of Article 8 rights of those concerned.

My conclusion on the naming of third parties and judiciary is therefore that there is no presumption that they should be named in shielded justice cases. For the judiciary I would accept that there is an assumption in shielded justice cases of naming because s.12 Administration of Justice Act 1960 contemplates that their name will be open notwithstanding the presence of the broader shield. In relation to other third parties – social workers and other child protection professionals – I would be inclined to a starting point that shielded justice preserves anonymity for them. For experts, jurisprudence and the Reporting Pilot provide a starting point of identification.

But these starting points must always be subject to a case specific evaluation which will involve consideration of elements relating to the case itself, the individuals and what it is legitimate to infer from the accumulation of knowledge we have about risks arising in the same way we may infer risk to children arising from publication and risks to health professionals in contentious medical treatment cases like Charlie Gard and Zainab Abassi.

I don’t think it will surprise anyone to know that the Press disagreed with that categorisation and that the Williams J decision was appealed.

Here’s the link to the appeal judgment

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2025/42.html

Tickle & Anor v The BBC & Ors [2025] EWCA Civ 42 (24 January 2025)

(For what my own personal opinion is worth – very little – but I’ll set it out, I do think that if the Courts are going to name social workers and Local Authorities and paediatricians, then in circumstances where there is legitimate media interest in decisions made by Judges then they too should be named. I slightly share Williams J concerns that the information might not be used to provide a balanced and reasonable account – we do after all live in an era when a national newspaper runs a headline of “Enemies of the people” to describe a Supreme Court ruling that they disagreed with… but I also think that the Streisand Effect is real and the more one tries to keep the Press away from something the more tenacious they’re likely to be. A tough case but on balance I would have published the names)

Anyway, here are the grounds for the appeal

The journalists’ grounds of appeal (upon which the Media Parties also rely) take four main points:

i) It was a serious procedural irregularity for the judge not to have given reasons before anonymising the historic judges.

ii) The judge adopted an unfair, biased and inappropriate approach to the journalists and the media generally (including relying on his own erroneous analysis of alleged media irresponsibility), thereby unacceptably encroaching on their rights under article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). This ground was added by amendment and permission has not yet been granted to allow it to be pursued.

iii) The judge ought to have held that the demands of open justice meant that anonymity for a judge could not be justified within the framework of balancing article 8 and article 10 of the ECHR.

iv) The part of the Order anonymising the historic judges could not be justified in the absence of any specific application or evidential foundation, and was inimical to the proper administration of justice.

The Judges in question were approached for their views:-

On 20 December 2024, King LJ directed that the historic judges be contacted to obtain their views (if they wished to express any). On 9 January 2025, leading and junior counsel for the historic judges filed a note indicating that: (a) none of them had sought anonymity, (b) each of them now had serious concerns about the risks which would arise if they were now identified, particularly in the prevailing circumstances, including the content and often inflammatory nature of public and media commentary arising from the intense scrutiny which has followed from the December judgment, (c) those concerns related not only to their own personal wellbeing but also to their family members and others close to them, whose interests the court might also want to take into account, (d) two of the historic judges (Judges 1 and 2, who were now retired and made only an emergency protection order and an interim care order respectively) considered that it would be right for their identities to remain protected, (e) Judge 3 was a sitting judge who was not, therefore, able to adduce evidence and did not feel it appropriate to express a position on whether their identity should remain protected, and (f) the historic judges considered that a risk assessment should be undertaken before any decision was made and that, if the anonymity part of the Order were to be varied, further assessments should be made of what (if any) protective measures should be taken before that decision was implemented, and (g) the Head of Security at HMCTS’s Chief Financial Officer’s Directorate had said that the Judges: “do not have secure digital footprints and the ease at which the residential address details of the judges can be accessed by anybody utilising the internet, creates very significant security/safety vulnerabilities. If there is a campaign, including potential ‘hate’ messages targeting [the historic judges], their personal safety and the personal safety of their family could be very severely affected”.

(I think that this is powerful – as we know, there is a very polarised media and once things appear in the media they also have a life of their own on social media and that can become very ugly very quickly. One can easily forsee some people reading an assertive headline and taking it upon themselves to harass the Judges. We can’t forget that the people to blame for Sara’s murder are the people who were convicted of it. And also, that Judges understandably are currently very mindful of an extremely serious assault that took place on a Judge in Milton Keynes, despite that being in a Court building with security)

The first question the Court of Appeal addressed was whether there was jurisdiction to prohibit the identification of the Judges.

Issue 1: Was there jurisdiction to prohibit the publication of the names of judges?

The critical jurisdictional question is the one that, it seems to me, the judge ought to have asked himself when it came into his head to order anonymity for the historic judges at the end of the hearing on 9 December 2024. At that point, no party had suggested that such anonymity was necessary. Moreover, no evidence of any kind had been filed supporting the making of such an order. The position at that date was, notionally at least, that the names of the historic judges had been in the public domain since the hearings over which they presided years before. It is true that the cases before them would have been heard in private and covered by section 12 of the AJA 1960 and section 97, and would, in all likelihood have been listed as something like “Re S (children)”. But the historic judges’ names appeared on each of the orders that they made. Orders are public documents. Further, the fact that these judges were sitting on the days in question at the courts in question was public knowledge as it should have been. In these circumstances, once the matter occurred to the judge, he ought, in my view, to have asked himself on what legal basis he could order the anonymity of the historic judges.

Neither the Local Authority nor the Guardian had submitted to the judge at any stage that the protection of the children required that the historic judges be granted anonymity. That remains the position. Accordingly, the parens patriae inherent jurisdiction of the court to protect the children was not engaged. Whilst there was no application for an injunction under section 37, the court would, in theory, have had power to grant an injunction to restrain the publication of the historic judges’ names (see the wide scope of that section as explained by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Convoy Collateral Ltd v. Broad Idea International Ltd [2021] UKPC 24, [2023] AC 389 at [57], and by the UKSC in Wolverhampton City Council v. London Gypsies and Travellers [2023] UKSC 47, [2024] AC 983 at [145]-[153]). It would have been very unusual for the court to grant such an injunction of its own motion without any application being made or intimated by the historic judges or anyone else. In any event, it has not really been suggested by anyone that section 37 (without section 6) gave the judge the jurisdiction to order anonymity. For the avoidance of doubt, no cause of action, whether in misuse of private information, breach of confidence or anything else was being asserted before the judge.

It seems to me, therefore, that the only realistic jurisdictional foundation for the judge’s decision was section 6 of the HRA 1998, perhaps taken alongside section 37. Section 6 provides, as I have said, that it is “unlawful for a public authority to act in a way which is incompatible with” an ECHR right. Accordingly, if the judge had, on the 9 December 2024, reason to believe that the historic judges’ article 2 or 3 rights would or might be engaged by allowing the press to publicise their names, he would have had to refrain from doing that, and if he had had reason to suppose that their article 8 rights would be engaged, he would have had to undertake the balancing exercise envisaged in Re S.

It is clear, in my judgment, that articles 2, 3 and 8 apply as much to judges as to any other person. It is less clear, however, that judges, even in cases like this, need to consider, of their own motion, when asked to relax reporting restrictions, whether to anonymise the names of the judges who have heard the cases in question. I have considered very carefully the submissions of the advocate to the court to the effect that the rare and extreme factual background to this case might itself mean that the article 8 threshold for the judges had been reached. I have looked carefully at the judge’s later reasoning that explains why he thought that social media and reporting risks to judges have, in the modern world, became sufficiently alarming and serious to reach the threshold.

I have, however, concluded that the judge was wrong. He had no jurisdictional foundation for making the anonymity order he did. Section 6 did not require him to trawl through his own experience to see if there were risks that he could imagine facing the historic judges. If, notwithstanding the lack of evidence to that effect, the judge was concerned about their being named, there were other, more appropriate, ways to protect them. He could have contacted HMCTS to warn them of the Order that he was making and the risks that he foresaw. HMCTS would, in that event, as has happened now, have considered how the judges could be protected.

I should interpose that nothing I say here should be interpreted as minimising the risks that judges in the position of the historic judges face. I have taken very seriously what the historic judges and HMCTS have said. But none of that material, which substantially relates to the potential impact on the judges of the publicity generated following the making of the Order, was before the judge. He had no evidential basis on which to think that the threshold for the application of articles 2, 3 or 8 had been reached.

It is the role of the judge to sit in public and, even if sitting in private, to be identified, as explained in Scott v. Scott, Felixstowe and Marsden. Judges will sit on many types of case in which feelings run high, and where there may be risks to their personal safety. I have in mind cases involving national security, criminal gangs and terrorism. It is up to the authorities with responsibility for the courts to put appropriate measures in place to meet these risks, depending on the situation presented by any particular case. The first port of call is not, and cannot properly be, the anonymisation of the judge’s name. That must be particularly so, where those names are already notionally in the public domain. Moreover, it is no answer as was suggested, to say that there is only a limited interference with open justice, because the historic judges’ names add little to the story. For all the reasons given in the cases I have cited, it is not for judges to decide what the press should report or how journalists should do their jobs.

The authorities that I have cited demonstrate that judges are in a special position as regards open justice. The integrity of the justice system depends on the judge sitting in public and being named, even if they sit in private. The justice system cannot otherwise be fully transparent and open to appropriate scrutiny.

For the avoidance of doubt, I am not saying that judges are obliged to tolerate any form of abuse or threats (see [54] above). Nor am I saying that it would never be possible for section 6 of the HRA to allow, or even require, a court to consider, even conceivably of its own motion, making an anonymisation order relating to judges. In my judgment, however, it is very hard to imagine how such a situation could occur. That is for three reasons. First it is difficult to see that such an order could be justified without specific compelling evidence being available as to the risks to the judges in question. Secondly, the court would have to be satisfied that those risks could not be adequately addressed by other security measures. Thirdly, the court would have to conclude that the risks were so grave that, exceptionally, they provided a justification for overriding the fundamental principle of open justice.

The first reason is sufficient to dispose of the anonymisation of the historic judges in the Order in this case. There was no evidence before the judge on 9 December 2024 that the judges had been physically threatened, and none supporting the proposition that their article 8 rights were in jeopardy. The judge had no evidence about the historic judges’ private or family life, and did not need to speculate as to the generic risks that family judges might face in the modern age of social media. I agree with what Nicklin J said in the IPSA case (see [47] above) about the threshold that needs to be reached and the need for resilience. I acknowledge that the case of Spadijer recognises the changes that have occurred in our societies and the increased sensitivity of our era, but I do not think that affects the need for judges to operate in the open.

In these circumstances, I take the clear view that the judge had no basis, in the absence of specific evidence affecting the historic judges, on 9 December 2024, to think that articles 2, 3 or 8 were or might be engaged. He, therefore, had no need to undertake any balancing exercise between article 8 and article 10. The historic judges’ identities were in the public domain and ought to have remained in the public domain.

We do not know whether the judge ever became aware of the fact that abusive threats against the historic judges have, since the verdicts against the father and step-mother, most regrettably appeared on the internet in social media posts. The father’s counsel obtained a sample of these threats and sought to admit them in evidence on the appeals. We looked at them de bene esse (for what they were worth). I would admit them in evidence, since they were not available before the hearing on 9 December 2024, and it was useful for the court to know about them in its deliberations. To my mind, however, these threats do not alter the position. They are not threats from parties affected by the orders that the historic judges made. They are generic threats of the kind that are, unfortunately, all too commonly now made against politicians and public figures of all kinds. It is one thing for an internet troll to post a message saying that “politician X should be strung up”, and quite another for a party to litigation to threaten the judge directly. Likewise, the generic fears of the historic judges and the recently expressed concerns of HMCTS do not, in my judgment, alter the position. There are, as I have said, other ways of protecting the historic judges.

In the circumstances of this case, the judge had no jurisdiction to anonymise the historic judges either on 9 December 2024 or thereafter. He was wrong to do so, and the Order must be varied accordingly. I will return to the process by which that is to be achieved in the final section of this judgment.

To be honest, having succeeded on that point the appeal is inevitably going to succeed, but we’ll keep going.

Issue 3: Was there inappropriate bias against or unfairness towards the media?

I have set out some of the colourful language used by the judge at [27] and [30]-[33]. It is said that the judge demonstrated unfairness and bias against the media in general and the journalists in particular. This ground is also academic now that I have decided that the judge had no jurisdiction to do as he did.

I do, however, think that the threshold for permission to appeal on this ground is met, and I would accordingly give that permission on the basis that the ground had a real prospect of success. It was, I think, unfair of the judge to say, with such vehemence, at [60] that the journalists had been guilty of inaccurate, unfair and irresponsible reporting. The decision to adjourn the journalists’ application for permission to appeal just before the end of term was akin to dismissing the application. The distinction was, in the circumstances, a technical one. The decision to adjourn necessitated the application to me for permission to appeal, which I granted on 19 December 2024. At the time that the judge adjourned the application for permission to appeal on 13 December 2024, the parties thought, as the judge had told them, that his reasons would not be available until the New Year. It was excessive in the circumstances to accuse the journalists of irresponsible reporting even if the application for permission had been technically adjourned rather than dismissed. His sarcastic remark at [60] about the Channel 4’s Dispatches programme of 20 July 2021 was unwarranted. He said, for no reason that I could discern: “[t]hank goodness that journalists don’t have to operate as the courts do and hear both sides before delivering their verdict!”. Such sarcasm has no proper place in a court judgment.

There are other examples in the judgment of the judge taking an excessively strong line about the quality of reporting in other cases. It was inappropriate for him to have prayed in aid other cases within his experience (as, for example at [59]) to support the position he had adopted without any of the parties asking him to do so.

I do not intend to proliferate my remarks. The mistake the judge made was to think that he could properly trawl through his own experiences to create a case for anonymising the judges. He should not have done so. Courts operate on the basis of the law and the evidence, not on the basis of judicial speculation and anecdote, even if it is legitimate to take judicial notice of some matters. In short, the judge’s judgment demonstrates, to put the matter moderately, that he got carried away.

It is not necessary to decide whether the judge’s inappropriate and unfair remarks about the press and the journalists amounted to actual or apparent bias. He undoubtedly behaved unfairly towards the journalists and Channel 4 – and that is enough to allow the appeals. The judge lost sight of the importance of press scrutiny to the integrity of the justice system. The case should be remitted for further hearings to a different Family Division judge.

The Court of Appeal determined that the names of the Judges would be provided to the Press but that they would be given 7 days so that His Majesty’s Court Service could have time to prepare any necessary additional security measures

For the reasons I have given, I would allow the appeals primarily on the jurisdiction ground, but also on the grounds of the judge’s failure to seek submissions or evidence before giving his decision, and his unfair treatment of the journalists and Channel 4. I would, as I have said, give all the media parties permission to raise the additional ground of appeal. I would deprecate the judge’s use of anecdotal material and his own experiences to create a case for anonymising the judges.

The historic judges have asked for time to prepare themselves if their names are to be revealed. Since that is the result of allowing the appeal, I would order that they be given 7 days from the date of this judgment before their names are published, to allow HMCTS to put measures in place to protect them from any potential harm once their names are released.

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A child in need is a child indeed (or not)

Posted on January 23, 2025 by suesspiciousminds

This one took me quite a few reads to make sense of (and it is quite possible that I’m still not there)

I THINK that it is largely fact-specific, but the Court of Appeal do look at whether the wording of ‘unlikely’ in s17(10) Children Act 1989

“For the purposes of this Part a child shall be taken to be in need if—
(a) he is unlikely to achieve or maintain, or to have the opportunity of achieving or maintaining, a reasonable standard of health or development without the provision for him of services by a local authority under this Part;
(b) his health or development is likely to be significantly impaired, or further impaired, without the provision for him of such services; or
(c) he is disabled

should be looked at in the same sort of context as ‘likelihood’ is treated by the Courts in s31 threshold (i.e a risk that cannot sensibly be ignored)

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2025/4.html

TW, R (On the Application Of) v Essex County Council [2025] EWCA Civ 4 (20 January 2025)

Basically, TW had been a 16 year old child living with his stepfather and that placement broke down. He approached the Local Authority for assistance and they helped him liaise with Housing and get accommodation. He later judicially reviewed the Local Authority for not treating him as a s17 Children Act ‘child in need’ at the time that his placement with stepfather broke down, which would have meant that the accommodation provided was under s20 of the Children Act 1989 in turn making him ‘looked after’ and in turn providing him with support under the Leaving Care provisions.

The Local Authority said that they had carried out an assessment at the time as to whether TW was a ‘child in need’ and made a lawful determination that he was not and that they had followed the statutory guidance.

I think that this paragraph is significant :-

On 10 June 2021, TW attended a meeting with SM and a member of the borough council housing department. They discussed his “potential housing options”, including support with accommodation through s.20 and under the EYPP. According to the note of the meeting, SM advised him in detail about the options, although in his statement in these proceedings TW said that he did not recall being given the detailed information recorded in the note. The note concluded by recording that TW said that he “does not want be in care as there were too many rules”. He said he wanted to be supported to access housing through EYPP.

In general, where a person aged between 16 and 18 seeks accommodation, the LA would consider whether they are a child in need and if satisfied that they are, would provide that accommodation under s20 rather than signposting them to Housing BUT where the young person is given information and decides that they do not WANT to be looked after then they would not be s20 accommodated against their wishes.

The national guidance says this :-

53….”Where there is no immediate threat of homelessness intervention may be more appropriately led by early help services, whereas if there is an imminent threat of homelessness or if the young person is actually homeless, a child in need assessment must be carried out and the child accommodated under section 20.”

It was Mr Moffett’s submission that the statutory guidance was encouraging local authorities to do what the local authority did in this case. He submitted that the logic of the appellant’s argument was that the statutory guidance was unlawful, but the issue of legality was not before the Court. Mr Purchase conceded that early intervention to prevent a child becoming a child in need was entirely legitimate, but submitted that the guidance was misleading if it meant that early intervention did not amount to the provision of services under s.17(10) in circumstances where it was established that, without those services, there was a real possibility that the child would suffer significant impairment to his health or development. If on the facts a child’s circumstances fall under s.17(10), any services provided to him by the local authority were provided to him as a child in need.

Mr Moffett observed that, in one sense, every child is a child in need of support from someone. The definition of child in need under s.17(10), however, is confined to those children who are unlikely to achieve or maintain a reasonable standard of health or development without the provision of services under Part III of the Act: R (P) v Secretary of State for the Home Dept, R (Q) v Secretary of State for the Home Dept [2001] EWCA Civ 1151 at paragraph 95. In carrying out the assessment, the local authority is obliged to take into account support otherwise available: R (VC) v Newcastle City Council, supra, per Munby LJ at paragraph 30. Mr Moffett submitted that, in carrying out that exercise, there was no conceptual reason to exclude support which might be provided by other agencies or by the local authority under other provisions.

In effect, as the homelessness was foreseeable but not imminent (he was ‘sofa surfing’ with friends – staying for short periods of time at the homes of others) the LA were providing services by way of Early Help to prevent a situation where TW would actually become homeless, and he was not on their assessment a child in need.

The Court of Appeal looked at the authorities on determining whether a child is a ‘child in need’

The clearest statement of the law relating to the assessment of whether a child is a child in need is by Baroness Hale in R (A) v Croydon LBC, supra. The issue in that case was whether each of the claimants, who had sought asylum on arrival in this country, was under the age of 18 and therefore capable of being a child in need under s.17(10) and therefore entitled to be accommodated under s.20(1). At paragraphs 26 and 27, Baroness Hale drew a distinction between the assessment of, on the one hand, whether a child was a child in need and, on the other hand, whether the person was a child at all.

“26. The 1989 Act draws a clear and sensible distinction between different kinds of question. The question whether a child is “in need” requires a number of different value judgments. What would be a reasonable standard of health or development for this particular child? How likely is he to achieve it? What services might bring that standard up to a reasonable level? What amounts to a significant impairment of health or development? How likely is that? What services might avoid it? Questions like this are sometimes decided by the courts in the course of care or other proceedings under the Act. Courts are quite used to deciding them upon the evidence for the purpose of deciding what order, if any, to make. But where the issue is not, what order should the court make, but what service should the local authority provide, it is entirely reasonable to assume that Parliament intended such evaluative questions to be determined by the public authority, subject to the control of the courts on the ordinary principles of judicial review. Within the limits of fair process and “Wednesbury reasonableness” there are no clear cut right or wrong answers.

  1. But the question whether a person is a “child” is a different kind of question. There is a right or a wrong answer. It may be difficult to determine what that answer is. The decision-makers may have to do their best on the basis of less than perfect or conclusive evidence. But that is true of many questions of fact which regularly come before the courts. That does not prevent them from being questions for the courts rather than for other kinds of decision-makers.”
    The principle that the evaluation of whether a child is a child in need is a matter for professional judgment by the local authority is reflected in the National Guidance. Paragraph 3.16 provides:

“Determining who is in need and the extent of any needs requires professional judgment by social workers, informed by consultation with other professionals familiar with the circumstances of the individual young person and their family.”

The Court of Appeal decided that TW’s situation ‘might’ have led a Local Authority to conclude that he was a child in need but looking at their decision-making and the initial judgment about that, they considered that the decision of the LA and the Judge that TW was not a child in need was reasonable and not irrational.

I accept that the language of s.17(10) is “forward-looking”. The assessment of what is likely or unlikely necessarily involves looking to the future. But SM’s assessment was manifestly focused in that direction. The key findings cited above are for the most part all forward-looking. Her finding about TW’s current sleeping arrangement was that “whilst this is ok in the short term, it is not an ideal long term arrangement”. Her answers to the question “What will make things safer?” were all directed to future provision, as were her recommendations. Her evaluation, accepted by the decision-maker, was that TW’s future needs could be met through accessing housing via EYPP with additional support from Family Solutions without the provision of services by the local authority under Part III of the Act.

The provision of services to prevent a child becoming a child in need is expressly prescribed in the National Guidance. It was plainly open to the local authority, following the Guidance and in particular paragraph 3.2, to conclude that TW fell into the category of a young person needing early help. Although he had a range of needs and specific vulnerabilities, there was no “imminent threat of homelessness”. He needed support to “reduce the chance of a problem getting worse” and the local authority was able to coordinate early help services to meet those concerns. It was therefore entirely rational for the local authority to conclude that there was no requirement for services to be provided under Part III of the Act.

So far as Mr Purchase’s other submissions are concerned, I am doubtful whether there is anything to be gained from the proposition that the word “unlikely” in s.17(10) should be interpreted by reference to the meaning of “likelihood” applied by family courts when considering whether the threshold for intervention under s.31(2) of the Act is crossed. It would not be helpful to introduce a gloss into the clear statutory language of s.17(10) which social workers have to follow on a daily basis. In any event, there was nothing in Mr Purchase’s submission on this issue which persuaded me that the judge had fallen into error.

I do not read the judge’s observation at paragraph 71 of his judgment – that the words “unlikely” and “reasonable” in s.17(10)(a) suggest that the test “will not be lightly met” – as indicating that he was applying too high a hurdle. Furthermore, as is clear from the rest of that paragraph, he was very properly following the guidance given by Munby LJ in R (VC) v Newcastle, which in turn was based on the statement by this Court in R (P) v Secretary of State for the Home Dept, supra. As this Court said in the latter case (at paragraph 95):

“the distinguishing feature of a ‘child in need’ for this purpose is not that he has needs – all children have needs which others must supply until they are old enough to look after themselves – but that those needs will not be properly met without the provision of local authority social services.”
In my view the judge was entitled to reject the arguments that the fact that SM had discussed s.20 accommodation with TW on 10 June 2021, and described the payment of £30 to him on 25 June 2021 as “s.17 cash”, indicated that he was in reality being treated as a child in need. The fact that it was the local authority who had entered the contractual arrangement with EYPP and referred TW to that agency for accommodation did not mean it was treating him as a child in need. The support subsequently provided by the local authority was via the Family Solutions team, not under s.17. On the totality of the evidence, and in particular the very clear terms of the social work assessment and the manager’s decision, the judge was entitled to conclude that the local authority treated TW as not being a child in need.

It was plainly open to the manager to conclude on the evidence that TW’s needs would not be met without the provision of services under Part III and that he was therefore a child in need. But the appellant has fallen well short of demonstrating that that was the only rational conclusion open to the manager. In those circumstances, the judge was right to dismiss the application for judicial review.

From TW’s point of view, it is of course very unfortunate that he was not designated a child in need because he is not entitled to be treated as a “former relevant child” and receive the benefits which would flow from that status. As Baroness Hale warned in R (M) v Hammersmith and Fulham LBC, there is plainly a risk that some cash-strapped local authorities may seek to avoid their responsibilities under Part III of the Act. But there is no basis for thinking that this local authority has taken that course in this case. Its decision was reached rationally after a careful assessment and was plainly in line with national guidance.

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Adoption and contact

Posted on November 5, 2024 by suesspiciousminds

If you’ve been following the news recently, you may have heard talk of ‘the weave’, where someone appears to go off at a tangent (such as perhaps talking about Hannibal Lecter as though he were a real person, or about how smart his uncle was at MIT) with the idea that then you’d skillfully bring it back to a real message of consequence (such as, no, i’ve got nothing.)

Anyway, I’m going to write about the Court of Appeal decision in

R & C (Adoption or Fostering) [2024] EWCA Civ 1302

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2024/1302.html

which talks about the very long history of the legal principle that the Courts don’t make contact orders about parental contact against adopters (going right back to 1989) and the current landscape – not yet the legal one, but thinking on the ground, about the benefits of open adoption and post adoption contact. So it’s an interesting case.

And I’m going to start the Weave now.

People who know me well will know that my favourite book ever, and a book that legitimately saved my life in dark times is “The Worst Journey in the World” by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. Cherry-Garrard was a fairly lowly scientific officer on Scott’s ill-fated voyage to the Antarctic. Tragically, Cherry-Garrard was one of the officers who went out to find Scott and his teammates bodies when it was clear that they were not going to return alive. It’s a incredible book about bravery, fear, the awesome wonder and fear of the world’s emptiest place, friendships and sadness. One of the things that I learned from that book is that when you’re making the massively long trip to the South Pole, you don’t start from point A and go to the Pole. No, for the year beforehand, you make a succession of trips from Point A to Point B, to Point C, back to A – to point C, leaving supplies of food and oil at each point at what are called Depots. So you don’t have to haul the whole of the food and oil that you need for the whole journey there and back in one go – you just have to keep moving forward at a small distance and putting down a marker and leaving enough for the person who comes next to be able to make the rest of the journey.

I think that Re R and C, when we look back in a couple of years about the legal landscape, will look an awful lot like a Depot. We can’t make the whole journey from the many many legal authorities that currently exist saying no contact orders against adopters to making the orders in one stop – the process, if that’s what is going to happen, is going to be a series of smaller judgments getting us farther away from the starting point and giving the next Court enough food and oil to go on to the next depot and potentially all the way to the South Pole.

Let’s have a look at the case :-

This appeal is brought by a local authority against a judge’s refusal to make placement orders in respect of two young children. The principal reason for the judge’s decision was that he concluded that adoption was inconsistent with the children’s need for continuing contact with members of their birth family, in particular their two elder half-siblings. The local authority, supported by the children’s guardian, say that the judge’s decision was wrong. Its care plan contemplates that the children will only be placed with prospective adopters who are prepared to agree to continuing direct contact between the siblings.

This appeal falls to be decided at a time when there is renewed discussion about open adoption and provides an opportunity to reiterate the clear principle that, at the stage of making an order under s.21 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 authorising a local authority to place a child for adoption, it is the court, rather than the local authority or any other person, which has the responsibility for determining whether there should be ongoing contact between the child and the birth family.

As indicated earlier, the Court of Appeal set out the long legal history about making orders about contact that would bind on adopters.

As noted above, adoption after 1926 conventionally involved the complete severance of the relationship between the child and their birth family. There were, however, exceptional cases in which contact continued. In Re C [1989] AC 1, the House of Lords allowed an appeal by prospective adopters against a decision of this Court dismissing an appeal against a judge’s refusal of the adoption application. The subject child, who was 13 years old, had a close relationship with her elder brother which the appellants accepted should continue unimpeded after adoption. Her mother, however, withheld her consent to the adoption on the ground that it would weaken the siblings’ relationship. In allowing the appeal and making the adoption order, the House of Lords (with the appellants’ support) attached a condition to the order (under the legislation then in force, the Children Act 1975) providing that there should be continuing contact after the adoption. In his speech with which the rest of the House agreed, Lord Ackner observed (page 17F to G):

“It seems to me essential that, in order to safeguard and promote the welfare of the child throughout his childhood, the court should retain the maximum flexibility given to it by the Act and that unnecessary fetters should not be placed upon the exercise of the discretion entrusted to it by Parliament. The cases to which I have referred illustrate circumstances in which it was clearly in the best interests of the child to allow access to a member of the child’s natural family. The cases rightly stress that in normal circumstances it is desirable that there should be a complete break, but that each case has to be considered on its own particular facts. No doubt the court will not, except in the most exceptional case, impose terms or conditions as to access to members of the child’s natural family to which the adopting parents do not agree. To do so would be to create a potentially frictional situation which would be hardly likely to safeguard or promote the welfare of the child. Where no agreement is forthcoming the court will, with very rare exceptions, have to choose between making an adoption order without terms or conditions as to access, or to refuse to make such an order and seek to safeguard access through some other machinery, such as wardship. To do otherwise would be merely inviting future and almost immediate litigation.”
In the years following this decision, the principle that a court should not, save in exceptional circumstances, make an order for post-adoption contact with members of the birth family against the wishes of the adopters was firmly applied, even as attitudes towards the benefits of such contact began to change. In Re R (Adoption: Contact) [2005] EWCA Civ 1128, this Court considered an appeal involving post-adoption contact a few months before the coming into force of the 2002 Act. Having noted what he described as the “clear change of thinking” since the previous legislation was passed in 1976, Wall LJ observed (at paragraph 49):

“contact is more common, but nonetheless the jurisprudence I think is clear. The imposition on prospective adopters of orders for contact with which they are not in agreement is extremely, and remains extremely, unusual.”

Back to the central issue:-

The analysis continues at paragraphs 26 to 36, concluding with the most recent authority (which post-dated the original decision in this case:-

In Re D-S (A Child: Adoption or Fostering) [2024] EWCA Civ 948, this Court allowed an appeal against a judge’s refusal to make a placement order and made the placement order itself. In his judgment with which the other members of the Court agreed, Peter Jackson LJ concluded that the child’s relationships with her birth family were “not of such importance that they can outweigh the predominant need for her to have a family of her own”. He described this as a factor which spoke “in favour of contact taking place, if it can be arranged, after C is placed for adoption and later adopted.” He recorded that the local authority could be “expected to honour its care plan for current contact, and for a 3-month search for adopters who will accommodate meetings with family members.” But he concluded that “overall, it would not be better for us to make a contact order, in fact it might be detrimental to the greater priority of finding an adoptive family for C.

The Court of Appeal then spoke about the broader cultural landscape in the national debate and discussions about adoption:-

Although developments in adoption policy that are not yet reflected in legislative change do not, in my view, call for detailed analysis on this appeal, it is right to record that this appeal falls for determination at a time when there is increased public discussion about the future of adoption in general and of open adoption in particular.

These issues were addressed by the President of the Family Division in his two recent lectures – “Adapting Adoption to the Modern World” (the Mayflower lecture in Plymouth, 9 November 2023, https://www.judiciary.uk/speech-by-sir-andrew-mcfarlane-adapting-adoption-to-the-modern-world/) and “Adapting Adoption to the Modern World – Part Two” (the POTATO conference lecture, 17 May 2024, reported at July [2024] Fam Law 797). As he stressed in the second lecture, neither lecture was a court judgment, Practice Direction, or Presidential Guidance, but rather an expression of his “preliminary thoughts” on the question: “How will this cultural shift towards greater openness impact upon the work of the Family Court and how may the court support the looked-for change in the default setting so that maintaining relationships with a child’s birth family is the starting point, rather than the exception?”

In the course of his second lecture, the President took the opportunity to underline some features of the existing law and also make suggestions about how the law might develop in future. He observed:

“Orders for contact made under ACA 2002, s 26 when making a placement for adoption order set the template for contact going forward. Where continuing contact in some form is ordered at that stage, this will be an important ‘known known’ about the child to be taken on board by any potential adopters with whom placement may be considered.”
He continued:

“…the likely template for contact arrangements post adoption should be set at the placement order stage. This is not a change in the current approach. A court making a s.26 contact order, in keeping with the duty under s.1 and its lifelong focus, should have regard not only to the short-term contact arrangements required in the pre-adoption stage, but also in setting the course for the maintenance of family relations over the longer term if that is in the child’s best interests. Also, there is nothing wrong, and I would suggest it should be good practice, for a s.26 contact order to contain a recital as to the court’s view on contact arrangements post-adoption.”
In these observations, the President was doing no more than reiterating the approach to s.26 mandated by case law. He went on to express some preliminary thoughts about how courts might in future exercise their powers to make contact orders at the adoption application stage. As he acknowledged, in those remarks he was considering steps which go beyond the current case law. It is likely that this Court will consider these matters again at some point, but they do not arise on this appeal. We are concerned only with the interpretation of s.26.

There’s an interesting discussion about whether there is a difference, legally, between imposing an order on adopters who do not agree with it at the stage of adoption and on the other hand, the Court setting the tone of what contact they would expect an adopter who has not yet been matched with the child to sign up to. I.e that the Court at first instance had been treating as a binary decision – if sibling contact no adoption, if adoption no sibling contact, which is more important, when there could have been a route to achieving both.

It was acknowledged by counsel for the local authority that, under the current law, save for extremely unusual circumstances, no order will be made to compel adopters to accept contact arrangements with which they do not agree. It was submitted, however, that there is a critical difference between, on one hand, imposing on adopters a contact regime that they had never bargained for in respect of a child previously placed with them for adoption and, on the other, crafting a contact regime at the placement order stage so that the eventual adopter accepts the adoptive placement with their eyes wide open to the court-directed imperative for long-term sibling contact. Within the latter regime, the court will “set the tone” or define the template of future contact at a point well before the prospective adopter commits to the child’s placement. The use of s.26 in such circumstances would not be for the purpose of overriding an adopter’s fully formed views about sibling contact, but to shape those views before they are formed. In this case, the judge misconstrued the powers and flexibility afforded him by s.26. He wrongly considered that he lacked the ability to shape the children’s long-term contact with their siblings, and therefore allowed that factor to dominate the welfare evaluation. By concluding that he could not give the children a “guarantee” of sibling contact, he underestimated the efficacy of the statutory steps he could take to achieve that outcome. The appellants submitted that, if this approach were followed generally, few siblings from a large sibling group would meet the test for adoption.

The Court of Appeal say this:-

A key element in the judge’s reasoning was his assertion that “permanence comes at a significant cost, namely the complete and irrevocable severance of all ties with the natural family”. As demonstrated by the summary of the case law set out above, that may have been true of all adoptions at one stage, and it remains true of some adoptions now. But it is emphatically not true of many adoptions and is at odds with the concept of open adoption which is now embraced as a model in what the President has called the modern world. The judge acknowledged that the severance of ties with the natural family “can sometimes be ameliorated by continued contact between the birth family and the adopted child” and that, in this case, the local authority has “committed itself to a search only for adopters willing to promote direct sibling contact”. He discounted these factors, however, on the basis that ongoing contact “is at the discretion of the adopters” and that “sibling contact cannot be guaranteed” because “even adopters who are open to it initially may not continue to promote it after the making of an adoption order”.

In these observations, the judge overlooked the fact that it was his duty to “set the template for contact going forward”. This case seems to fall four square within the words used by Wall LJ in Re P at paragraph 151. As in that case, there is a “universal recognition” that the relationship between the siblings needs to be preserved. It is “on this basis that the local authority / adoption agency is seeking the placement of the children …. [T]his means that the question of contact between the two children is not a matter for agreement between the local authority / adoption agency and the adopters: it is a matter which, ultimately, is for the court”. In those circumstances, “it is the court which has the responsibility to make orders for contact if they are required in the interests of the two children”.

In reaching his conclusion, the judge quoted passages from my judgment in Re T and R. It does not follow, however, that in every case where the court concludes that it is strongly in the interests of the children to continue to have sibling contact the option of adoption should be ruled out. Each case turns on its own facts. In Re T and R¸ the crucial importance of contact to the psychological wellbeing of the subject children and their older siblings, the importance of maintaining the children’s sense of their cultural and community heritage, which could only be achieved through contact, coupled with the community’s antipathy to adoption which made contact unfeasible, led to a conclusion that adoption was not in the interests of the children’s welfare. In other cases, the evidence will clearly demonstrate not only that ongoing sibling contact is in the children’s interests but also that it is likely to be achievable in an adoptive placement. In my view, this is just such a case.

Under the current law, as the President said in Re B, “it will only be in an extremely unusual case that a court will make an order stipulating contact arrangement to which the adopters do not agree”. But that does not obviate the court’s responsibility to set the template for contact at the placement order stage. In this case, the local authority was committed to search only for adopters willing to accommodate sibling contact and invited the court to make an order for contact under s.26, both to meet the children’s short-term needs and to set the template. There was of course a possibility that the search for such adopters might be unsuccessful or that adopters might subsequently refuse to agree to contact. But in the circumstances of this case, that possibility was not a sufficient reason to refuse to make the placement order.

The Court of Appeal considered that the Judge had been wrong in their analysis of the options before them

Under the current law, as the President said in Re B, “it will only be in an extremely unusual case that a court will make an order stipulating contact arrangement to which the adopters do not agree”. But that does not obviate the court’s responsibility to set the template for contact at the placement order stage. In this case, the local authority was committed to search only for adopters willing to accommodate sibling contact and invited the court to make an order for contact under s.26, both to meet the children’s short-term needs and to set the template. There was of course a possibility that the search for such adopters might be unsuccessful or that adopters might subsequently refuse to agree to contact. But in the circumstances of this case, that possibility was not a sufficient reason to refuse to make the placement order.

The judge was wrong to dismiss the argument that, because of their ages, R and C deserve a right to permanency on the grounds that it “comes perilously close to social engineering”. Although it is not entirely clear, it seems he used the phrase “social engineering” to mean taking a decision about the children’s future by reference to social policy rather than their specific welfare interests. But the value to a child’s welfare of the permanence which only adoption can provide has been recognised in many cases, including in passages cited by the judge from the judgments of Pauffley J in Re LRP (A Child) (Care Proceedings – Placement Order) [2013] EWHC 3974 (Fam) at paragraph 39 and Black LJ in Re V (Children) [2013] EWCA Civ 913 at paragraphs 95 – 96. Every court considering whether to endorse a plan for adoption must take into account the fact that, in Black LJ’s words, “adoption makes the child a permanent part of the adoptive family to which he or she fully belongs.” The professional evidence before the judge was that it was in these children’s welfare interests to be placed for adoption. There was no justification for describing this as “perilously close to social engineering”.

I am also troubled by the judge’s statement that “the role of the court is to protect children from harm. It is not to improve their life chances or to move them to placements where they will be better off.” This is a distorted interpretation of the statutory welfare checklist in s.1(4) of the 2002 Act. The factors in that list include “any harm … which the child has suffered or is likely to suffer” but it also includes a range of other factors, including the ability of the child’s parents and others to provide the child with a secure environment in which the child can develop and otherwise to meet the child’s needs. Where the court concludes that a child has suffered or is likely to suffer significant harm as a result of the parents’ care, the court is obliged to consider all the relevant factors in the statutory checklist in order to determine which outcome best provides for the child’s welfare throughout their life.

I am equally concerned by the judge’s further comment that “the mother cannot be completely ruled out” and that, although “at present the risks to the children of a return to her care are simply too great”, she also “has much she can offer” once she has resolved her emotional and psychological problems. It is not entirely clear what he was intending to convey by these comments. It may be that he was intending merely to express his view that the continuation of a relationship between R and C and their mother was of value to the children. But the terms in which he expressed himself imply that he was holding out the prospect of the children returning to their mother at some point in the future. If so, this was no more than a speculative hope. There was no evidence on which he could have concluded that she would succeed in overcoming her problems so that, in the words of paragraph (f)(ii) of the checklist, she would acquire the ability to “provide the child[ren] with a secure environment in which [they] can develop and otherwise to meet [their] needs”.

Overall, the judge’s reasoning in paragraphs 44 and 45 of the judgment failed to provide a sufficiently robust and rigorous analysis of the advantages and the disadvantages of the realistic options for the children, as required by repeated decisions of this Court,

The Appeal was allowed and the Court made placement orders with recitals in relation to contact:

If my Ladies agree, I would therefore propose that this Court allows the local authority’s appeal, sets aside the judge’s order, and makes placement orders in respect of both children. In addition, pursuant to s.26(2)(b) of the 2002 Act, I would add an order requiring the person(s) with whom R and C live, and any other person(s) with whom they are to live while they remain the subjects of placement orders, to allow them to attend visiting contact with their siblings N and Y six times per year, in accordance with arrangements made by the local authority. I would include in the order a recital, in terms proposed by the local authority, recording that

“the local authority confirming that, under its care plans and during its search for prospective adopters for R and C
(1) that the local authority will arrange direct inter-sibling contact between the subject children and their siblings N and Y, six times per year;
(2) that the local authority will search exclusively for and will match the subject children only with prospective adopters committed to facilitating inter-sibling contact as set out above and who will propose to adopt both the subject children;
(3) that, in the event that prospective adopters committed to facilitating inter-sibling contact as set out above have not been found within six months, the local authority will apply to the court.”
Finally, in line with the suggestion made by the President in his second lecture “Adapting Adoption to the Modern World – Part Two” (quoted at paragraph 39 above), I would propose adding a recital that it is this Court’s view that after adoption R and C should continue to have direct contact with N and Y six times a year.

I would expect to see more such recitals in cases where the Court consider it appropriate for the children’s interests to set down that marker of what contact post placement is expected by the Court. We will have to watch this space to see what happens where such recitals are made and the placement identified for the children doesn’t deliver.

We do live in a society currently where the debate on both the benefits of contact and the realities of trying to restrict all contact are going to continue to develop and the law must of course move with the times and be willing to revisit long-established principles where the landscape outside of the Court room has changed.

As I read from the splendidly dressed Oliver Conway on Twitter the other day about this case “I think we need to accept that the internet means closed adoption (where there is no contact with birth family) is pretty much unworkable”

Everyone now has a printing press and a private investigator in their pocket – every interaction a person, including a child, has leaves a digital footprint that can be traced and the ability to trace it just gets easier and easier with each passing year. The genie, if not fully out of the bottle yet, is at the very least pushing at the base of the cork with both hands and loosening it considerably.

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A line from Hull to Bristol

Posted on August 9, 2023 by suesspiciousminds

This is a Court of Appeal decision about care orders at home, and the difference in practice and approach in two (not quite halves) parts of the country. I chatted about this on what we now have to call X yesterday and it drew some interest, so I’m doing a post on it.

Basically, the Court of Appeal were considering a case where a Court had made a Care Order and the child was placed at home. They raised within the appeal broader issues of how the issue of Care Orders at home was being dealt with differently based on whether your Court fell North or South of that imaginary line across the country between Hull and Bristol.

The Court of Appeal (or those who decide these things) felt the case was sufficiently important to make it to the judiciary website – it isn’t yet on Bailii

Re JW (Child at Home under Care Order) [2023] EWCA Civ 944

JW (Child at Home under Care Order)  

http://www.judiciary.uk/judgments

For some years it has been recognised that a difference exists in the approach taken by
courts in different regions when determining whether a final care order, supervision
order or no order should be made when care proceedings conclude with a plan for the
subject child to be placed, or remain living, at home with their parent(s). Broadly
speaking, if a line is drawn from Hull down to Bristol and beyond, courts in England
and Wales that are North and West of that line will often make a care order in such
cases, in contrast to courts South and East of the line where normally a supervision
order or no public law order will be made. My experience is that the judges who sit on
one side of the line or the other are confident that the approach taken in their area is the
correct one. The difference of approach is striking, and its existence has become
something of a hot potato, and increasingly so as Family Courts across England and
Wales strive, once again, to conclude public law care proceedings within the statutory
26 week time limit set by Children Act 1989, s 32(1) [‘CA 1989’].

The Court of Appeal go on to say that the last time the issue of Care Orders at home versus Supervision Orders at home was really explored in detail on appeal was in Baker J’s decision of Re DE – a case which really looked at what, from a human rights perspective, the process would be for a Local Authority to use the power under a Care Order to remove and thus disturb the care plan approved by the Court. It isn’t as simple as the LA having the power and using it – they have to follow a careful process and meet tests to ensure fairness, and there’s not an easy method for parents to challenge it – or at least challenge it with lawyers who are being financially recompensed for the work involved.

Re DE looked, at least to a lawyer on the Southern side of that divide, like it was the end of a practice of care orders at home, save in the most exceptional cases. The LA have all of the responsibility but frankly none of the power, and the parents have the spectre of the LA over them until the child is an adult and the fear that the power might be used. It doesn’t seem like an order anyone would want.

But apparently, it was not the end of that practice. My best guess is cases where a Court is worried about a child being at home and dubious about a Supervision Order being enough, but doesn’t feel placement outside the family is justified, reaching for a Care Order as being a middle ground where a greater risk can be managed at home knowing that the LA have statutory responsibilities. I don’t, however, know how that translates into the diffference either side of the Hull-Bristol line.

(The facts of this case were that the parents had 3 children aged 14, 11 and 7. The mother met and married a man named Mr P, who she learned after her marriage had been convicted for possession of indecent images of children – and obviously what an awful thing to learn. She separated from Mr P but there were concerns that she had been allowing him unauthorised contact with the children. If Mr P disappeared from the family life completely then the children would be safe at home, but would that actually happen? The Court made a Care Order for the 3 children with them to remain living with mother, presumably so that the LA could use the Re DE process to remove the children if Mr P was caught having unauthorised contact)

The mother appealed, arguing that rather than make such a draconian order, the Court should have extended the proceedings for fuller assessment of her ability to protect.

This being a judgment led by the President of the Family Division, the law and history of the law about Care Orders versus Supervision Orders is set out clearly and succinctly, and it would be an excellent basis for any lawyer constructing submissions on the point.

The judgment also discusses the Public Law Working Group (PLWG) who considered these issues and provided written guidance, which indicates that:-

‘34. The making of a care order on the basis of a plan for the child to remain in
the care of her parents/carers is a different matter. There should be exceptional
reasons for a court to make a care order on the basis of such a plan.

  1. If the making of a care order is intended to be used [as] a vehicle for the
    provision of support and services, that is wrong. A means/route should be
    devised to provide these necessary support and services without the need to
    make a care order. Consideration should be given to the making of a supervision
    order, which may be an appropriate order to support the reunification of the
    family.
  2. The risks of significant harm to the child are either adjudged to be such that
    the child should be removed from the care of her parents/carers or some lesser
    legal order and regime is required. Any placement with parents under an interim
    or final order should be evidenced to comply with the statutory regulations for
    placement at home.
  3. It should be considered to be rare in the extreme that the risks of significant
    harm to the child are judged to be sufficient to merit the making of a care order
    but, nevertheless, the risks can be managed with a care order being made in
    favour of the local authority with the child remaining in the care of the
    parents/carers. A care order represents a serious intervention by the state in the
    life of the child and in the lives of the parents in terms of their respective ECHR,
    article 8 rights. This can only be justified if it is necessary and proportionate to
    the risks of harm of the child    .’

I would set that out in a table, but I can’t know how to hear any more about tables. *

The Court of Appeal were very mindful of the wider issues in the case, and that it did not sit comfortably that two entirely different philosophical approaches to care orders at home existed in the country and markedly so on geographical lines – the North taking the view that Care Orders at home were part of a judicial toolkit for problem-solving and the South that they were a very serious intervention that would only very rarely be warranted. This needed to be resolved.

  1. 65. The present situation, in which the law is applied in a markedly different manner in two
    halves of England and Wales, cannot continue. There needs to be a common approach
    throughout England and throughout Wales. What that common approach should be has
    been determined through consultation and discussion by the multidisciplinary
    membership of the PLWG. The recommendations at paragraphs 158 to 162, and the
    Best Practice Guidance at paragraphs 34 to 37, of the PLWG March 2021 report, and
    Appendix C of the April 2023 report on supervision orders, which have already had
    extra-curial endorsement, I now formally endorse in a judgment of this court. They
    must be applied in all cases. The approach taken by the PLWG is no more than the
    logical development of the earlier caselaw, once account is taken of the need for
    proportionality and once it is understood that, following Re DE, there are only
    procedural differences between the power of removal where there is a care order or
    where there is none. As Hale J/LJ made plain, it has never been the case that a care
    order should be used as a means to ensure that a local authority meets the duties that it
    has with respect to children in need in its area, nor should it be used to influence the
    deployment of resources.
  2. The PLWG recommendations and guidance can be reduced to the following short
    points:
    a) a care order should not be used solely as a vehicle to achieve the
    provision of support and services after the conclusion of proceedings;
    b) a care order on the basis that the child will be living at home should only
    be made when there are exceptional reasons for doing so. It should be
    rare in the extreme that the risks of significant harm to a child are judged
    to be sufficient to merit the making of a care order but, nevertheless, as
    risks that can be managed with the child remaining in the care of parents;
    c) unless, in an exceptional case, a care order is necessary for the protection
    of the child, some other means of providing support and services must
    be used;
    d) where a child is to be placed at home, the making of a supervision order
    to support reunification may be proportionate;
    e) where a supervision order is being considered, the best practice guidance
    in the PLWG April 2023 report must be applied. In particular the court
    should require the local authority to have a Supervision Support Plan in
    place.
  1. The impact of the requirement for a 26-week timetable and adherence to the PLO mean
    that the decision as to what final order to make may occur at a comparatively early stage
    where a child has been removed from home, but a rehabilitation plan is being implemented. In such cases, there may be grounds for extending the 26-week deadline to some extent, but where, as in the present case, the children are settled at home and what is taking place is the reinforcement and further development of protective measures over an extended period, the court should make a final order rather than contemplating extending the proceedings over an extended or indeterminate period.

The Court granted the appeal (though to make Supervision Orders rather than extend the proceedings.

*TABLES! is a reference to one of my latest obsessions, “I think you should leave” and this sketch below, which yes, i’m just crowbarring in because I love it. Warning, it does contain some strong language, so NSFW

“why was there swearing?”

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Unconditional consent

Posted on January 18, 2023 by suesspiciousminds

This is an Appeal about a decision to make a Parental Order in a surrogacy case.

Re C (Surrogacy : Consent) 2023

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2023/16.html

In the original hearing, the woman who gave birth to the child had become more attached to the child than she had envisaged when she originally agreed to the surrogacy, and she was concerned that she would be shut out of the child’s life if a Parental Order was made. She was not legally represented at the hearing and it took place remotely.

The mother at the hearing had said that she would agree to the making of a Parental Order IF and only IF there was a Child Arrangements Order to specify that she would be able to spend time with the child.

Parental Orders are governed by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 and one of the requirements in making them is :-

Section 54(6), with which the present case is concerned, provides that:
“(6) The court must be satisfied that both —
(a) the woman who carried the child, and
(b) any other person who is a parent of the child but is not one of the applicants […],
have freely, and with full understanding of what is involved, agreed unconditionally to the making of the order.”

(There’s a s54(7) which allows the Court to waive parental consent only if the biological parent cannot be found, but that isn’t relevant for this case. )

Unlike say a Placement Order which the Court can make even if the parent objects if the appropriate legal test is met, there is no discretion for the Court on a Parental Order – if the criteria in s54(6) is not met, the Court cannot make the Parental Order.

The Court did make a Parental Order and a Child Arrangements Order that the biological mother should be able to spend time with the child. The mother later appealed. There is also ongoing private law litigation about contact.

The issue as to whether the consent has been given freely, with full understanding of what is involved and unconditionally is a matter for the Court, and it is understandable that the Court of Appeal wanted to look very carefully at the transcript of the hearing.

The hearing took place between 10.08 am and 10.30 am. We have been provided with a transcript and have also listened to the recording. It is necessary to set out some parts of the transcript to fairly understand the course of the hearing, with editing to maintain anonymity.
The effective part of the hearing started with an introduction from the Respondents’ counsel. She explained that the parties had agreed the terms of a child arrangements order, and although the court could not make such an order on its own initiative in the parental order proceedings, it could grant permission for an application to be made under the Children Act, and then make an order. However, she noted the requirements of section 54(6) and informed the judge that Ms A would be saying that her consent to a parental order was conditional on the making of a child arrangements order. Counsel nonetheless invited the court to consider making a parental order on the basis of Ms A giving her consent, with a child arrangements order being made “as a separate matter”.
After some consideration of the Children Act provisions and the proposed contact arrangements, the judge then addressed the Appellant:
“THE JUDGE: Ms A, Ms Maxwell has outlined the position to me and, as I think you probably know, there are a number of matters in the statute, section 54, that I have to be satisfied about and one of those Ms Maxwell has rightly reminded me is that you, freely and with full understanding of what is involved, agree unconditionally to the making of the order. If you only agree to the making of the order if there is a child arrangements’ order, then that would obviously not be freely and unconditionally given consent.
The other matters in the statute are all dealt with amongst the papers in particular and also in Mrs Chapman’s report, so I do not think any of those cause me a difficulty in making the order. The only one that does is the consent because, although I understand there is an agreement that there will be contact, and I will be asked to make a child arrangements order, I cannot do that as a condition of making the parental order. I can only make the parental order if you freely consent and without conditions, so, first of all, does that make sense to you, what I have just said? I know sometimes for a non-lawyer it gets a bit convoluted. You are nodding so that is helpful, thank you.
Then, I suppose, first of all, is there anything you want to ask me and then is there anything you want to say in response, as it were?
The Appellant then replied in these terms:
MS A: Thank you, your Honour, there is nothing I want to ask you but in terms of the condition, the unconditional consent, I think I would be lying if I said that I unconditionally consent to it because it is a– I would like to see C and so I am making the parental– the consent on that I see C. If I– I don’t unconditionally give it because I am fearful that I won’t have time to spend time with C and so that’s why I can’t quite unconditionally consent.
However, I do believe it is in all of our interests to move on with our lives and to kind of start rebuilding our relationship again and I do feel that having a child arrangements order is best for all of us along with a parental order being made, but I couldn’t lie and say that I do give my consent unconditionally. If that helps, your Honour.”
The judge responded at some length, starting in this way:
“THE JUDGE: Well, it is very clear and I fully understand what you are saying. It does not help me– and this is not a criticism of you, it does not help me get over the legal obstacle. Let me look at it in a different way and, please, let me be very clear, I am not trying to put any pressure on you at all because that would be wrong, because the whole point is that I make an order only if everybody consents… I cannot make a child arrangements order in this particular proceedings probably for very good reason, because if it was part of the issues, then it probably would not be freely consented to…
She then explained that she would be content to hear an oral application for a child arrangements order, saying:
“So in terms of trying to reassure you, I am told that application would not be opposed. You could make it orally once I have concluded the making of a parental order but I cannot make the parental order unless you do consent to it… — and if you do not consent, and again I am not saying this in any way to put pressure on you– sometimes it may sound a bit like that but of course if you do not consent, you will all be in this limbo moving forward until somebody attempts to make a different application which obviously the applicants may do but I cannot adjudicate on that in advance.
So we are in a slightly difficult position… I think you consent to the concept that the applicants are, as it were, C’s parents and that is recognised in law. I think the issue is one of concern about the way forward for contact, so– but unless I have you unconditionally consenting I think we cannot move on from this limbo, so I am not– try to think about what I have just said for a minute and while you are thinking about that, I am going to go to Mrs Chapman to see if she would like to add or say anything because I think apart from this difficulty she feels that the criteria are met but I just want to check with her.
The judge then turned to Mrs Chapman, who confirmed that the Appellant was happy with the parenting C was receiving but that she did not want to consent because she wanted a legal right to spend time with C and was scared of having no contact.
The judge then returned to the Appellant for these important exchanges:
THE JUDGE: … so, Ms A, we are in the position that as a matter of law and also considering C’s welfare, I think all of us agree that a parental order is the right thing for him. Everybody agrees that it is right for him to see you and to know you but it is just coming back to the original question, so having heard what has been said, what is your thinking now?
MS A: Then the only way forward is for me to give my unconditional consent, your Honour.
THE JUDGE: I am sorry?
MS A: I will provide my unconditional consent.
THE JUDGE: And you are quite sure about that?
MS A: I don’t see that there is any other way for us to move forward without it.
THE JUDGE: Well, I think that was the right decision and I think that is extremely helpful for everybody, for all of you and perhaps most importantly of course for C. I am very grateful to you and I expect the applicants are as well. So what I will do is I will make the parental order… Then in terms of a child arrangements’ order, now that the parental order has been made, everybody agrees that it is… right for Ms A to have contact and under the Children Act you can make an application or I can treat an oral application as having been made and given the amount of information I have about all of you, I do not need you to go through the normal process of getting enquiries from Cafcass because obviously I already have that information from Mrs Chapman, so I would be content to make a child arrangements’ order and Ms Maxwell has said that the agreed way forward is the every six weeks– I appreciate there will be a little bit more detail to this but every six weeks for a day, holidays and Christmas and– so that is her position. So from your side, Ms A, is that agreed by you as the way forward?
MS A: It is, yes.
THE JUDGE: In that case, I had better go back to Mrs Chapman in case from a welfare point of view she has any concerns. Mrs Chapman, from a welfare point of view for C would you be happy to endorse that order?
MRS CHAPMAN: Yes, I am happy to endorse that order.
THE JUDGE: So in that case that order will then follow, so we have a parental order and there will then be a child arrangements’ order. I think then I hope very much that all of you can relax a little after what has been quite a difficult time and move forward. C is going to be one soon and I think it would be very nice to move forward knowing all the decisions have been made, so if I go back to Ms Maxwell; Ms Maxwell, is there anything else you want to add?
MS MAXWELL: Your Honour, no, thank you very much.
THE JUDGE: Okay. Ms A, is there anything else you want to add?
MS A: No, thank you.
THE JUDGE: Well, thank you very much, and, Mrs Chapman, is there anything else you want to add?
MRS CHAPMAN: No, I have got nothing more to add, thank you.
THE JUDGE: Well, thank you very much for your help and my thanks to everybody for their help because I know it can be quite stressful in a situation like this, so I am very grateful to everybody for having achieved the right way forward for C…
Okay, thank you all very much for attending. I know it has been difficult for everybody and I can see for Ms A in particular, so I will thank you all for attending and I will let you all go now. Thank you very much everybody.
MS A: Thank you, bye.
THE JUDGE: Bye.”

My feeling when reading this exchange is that the mother had not freely and unconditionally consented at the outset, and that by the end of hearing she was saying that she did unconditionally consent although it is hard to see that she genuinely meant it.

The biological mother argued at appeal that she had not unconditionally consented, and that the division that the Court made of making the Parental Order with ‘unconditional consent’ on the basis that moments later an uncontested Child Arrangements Order would be made did not vitiate that lack of consent.

The carers were arguing that the Court was entitled to separate out the two orders and have them run sequentially in “sealed deliberations” and that therefore the biological mother’s consent was unconditional. They further argued that if the Court of Appeal was not with them on that, that s54(6) should be read as though the words “Such consent not to be unreasonably withheld” were added.

(This is apparently something which is currently being actively considered by the Law Commission who are looking at surrogacy)

The Court of Appeal set out their decision:-

There are three questions to be answered in this case. The first is whether, on a straight reading of s.54(6), the Appellant gave free and unconditional consent to the making of the parental order. The second is whether, if that is not the case, the Convention requires the court to assume and exercise a power to dispense with consent, and thereby to preserve the parental order. The last question is what order this court should make in respect of the underlying application for a parental order if the answer to each of the above questions is ‘No’.
The requirement that a person has “freely, and with full understanding of what is involved, agreed unconditionally to the making of the order” means exactly what it says. Although it may be forensically convenient to separate out the individual elements, what is required is a consent that is free, informed and unconditional. If that is achieved, it is immaterial whether the consent is given gladly or reluctantly.
Where there is any doubt about consent, it will be a matter for the court to judge, giving consideration to all the circumstances. One relevant factor is likely to be the means by which consent has been expressed. Because of the profound consequences of the underlying choice, it is normal for there to be a degree of formality. This is reflected in the preference in FPR 13(11) for consent to be in writing, using Form 101A and with the parental order reporter as witness. Even then, consent can be withdrawn at any stage before the order is made. This degree of formality is not mandatory but its absence should put the court on its guard to ensure that the proffered consent is valid. In the present case, the disputed consent was given orally in the face of the court and via CVP. In that unusual situation, a sharp eye had to be kept on the possibility that the court process might of itself be exerting pressure to the extent that any stated consent was devalued.

Further, although the hearing was conducted with complete courtesy, there were a number of other objective features to put the judge on her guard. In the first place this was a remote hearing in a sensitive case, with the Appellant being alone and unrepresented. The inevitable stress on any litigant was then inadvertently exacerbated by the way in which the Appellant found herself out on a limb, with her position on consent being represented as the only obstacle to an overall solution: “if you do not consent, you will all be in this limbo”. Also, an unrepresented litigant who is addressed by a judge at some length may be influenced by feelings of deference. Again, I recall that the judge was motivated by her assessment of what was in the best interests of C, the Respondents and indeed the Applicant herself. That welfare assessment was very probably sound but it had nothing to do with the question of consent. Had the resulting arrangements been satisfactory to all concerned, the problems with consent would no doubt have faded from memory, but the fact that the outcome has been so disappointing so far tends to show that the order was not built on solid foundations.
I would accept as a matter of principle that it is possible to conceive of a parental order and a child arrangements order coexisting. None of the reported cases has had that outcome, but they may not be representative of all problematic surrogacies. Some unproblematic surrogacies do not lead to parental orders at all, and contact with a surrogate will sometimes take place without any thought of a child arrangements order, even where a parental order has been made. However, in cases where there is less trust, there must still be a narrow path available to parties who genuinely agree that dual orders are the solution. While the statute does not envisage such orders, it does not expressly exclude them and to that extent I would accept Mr Vine’s submission that it might be possible for this outcome to be achieved. What the statute does, however, unequivocally exclude, in order to protect the surrogate, is twin orders in circumstances where one order is the price for the other. That is what occurred in this case.
For these reasons, the answer to the first question is that the Appellant’s consent was not merely reluctant but neither free nor unconditional. It was given in reliance on the promise of a child arrangements order and the Appellant’s statement that she gave it unconditionally did not reflect the reality. Furthermore, the eventual expression of consent was given under unwitting but palpable pressure. The parental order should not have been made.
Coming to the second question, I unhesitatingly reject the submission that section 54(6) can be read in such a way as to confer a dispensing power upon the court. The right of a surrogate not to provide consent is a pillar of the legislation and the assumption by the court of such a power would go far beyond permissible judicial interpretation of the kind found in A v P and in Re X. It is beyond doubt that the proposed setting aside of the parental order would clearly fall within the scope of the private and family life aspects of Article 8: Mennesson at paras. 87 and 96. However, the rights of the Respondents and of C are not violated by the setting aside of the order for want of consent on the part of the Appellant. The Strasbourg court has recognised a considerable margin of appreciation in this area and the potential availability of adoption to secure C’s legal relationships is also relevant, even if that route would be sub-optimal: Valdis Fjölnisdóttir v Iceland, Application no.71552/17, 18 August 2021. I would take this view even if this court were to make its own Article 8 assessment at the present date. I therefore conclude that the Convention does not require the parental order, made without valid consent, to be left in place.
The final question is what order should be made in respect of the underlying parental order application. The choice is between dismissing it or remitting it. I would look favourably on remitting if a parental order could possibly result from the parties being given another opportunity to take stock. I have noted that the judge might have adjourned the hearing for that purpose, and Ms Bazley has accepted that this option was open to her. But that was in the middle of 2021 and we are now in early 2023. In the meantime, relationships between the parties have deteriorated further, as the ongoing Children Act proceedings show. Even with the benefit of their current representation, the parties have been unable to devise a solution of their own. The Appellant’s position is that she will not consent to a parental order.
In these circumstances, I am driven to conclude that to remit the parental order application would perpetuate the process that led to the making of the original order. I would therefore allow the appeal and dismiss the application for a parental order. That C should be brought up by the Respondents and have contact with the Appellant was intended by all. It remains agreed by all that C will continue to be brought up by the Respondents, but the appropriate legal mechanism for that, and the question of contact with the Appellant are matters that are beyond the scope of this appeal.

I’m very glad that the Court of Appeal did not decide to read words into the statute which are not there – we’ve seen in recent years dilution of the statutory principle about only reasonable expenses being paid in surrogacy and about the time limits for making the application. If the Law Commission makes recommendations for changes that are approved by Parliament then so be it, but I personally don’t care for the Court amending statute to solve hard cases.

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Can a foreign conviction establish threshold in care proceedings?

Posted on August 9, 2022 by suesspiciousminds

I already know that regular reader David Burrows is going to love this case.

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2022/1118.html

W-A (Children : Foreign Conviction) [2022] EWCA Civ 1118 (05 August 2022)

This is an appeal, by a man named MH (mother’s husband) against a decision by the High Court that his conviction for sexual offences against a child in Spain would stand as presumptive evidence of proof of the facts underlying the conviction in an English Court dealing with care proceedings. That is, that in order to rely on those facts the Local Authority didn’t have to go and prove those allegations again.

It seems at first instance a peculiar appeal, because the common sense answer would seem to be, yes, of course the foreign conviction can be relied upon.

But we go back to both a 1943 road traffic accident claim and some 1968 legislation to look at it, and the issue doesn’t ever seem to have come up before.

The 1943 road traffic accident claim is Hollington v Hewthorn [1943] 2 All ER 35; [1943] 1 KB 587 a Court of Appeal decision. The plaintiff was suing the defendant for a road traffic accident and wanted to rely on the defendant’s conviction for dangerous driving. The Court of Appeal ruled then that as they were two separate incidents, the conviction in the criminal court carried no evidential weight as to whether the defendant had been negligent in this case and that if the plaintiff wanted to rely on it, the civil Court would need to look at the facts of the conviction and reach its own decision. I.e that a conviction or finding in another Court did not prove the fact in the second Court.

This was then reviewed by the Law Commission, arising in the Civil Evidence Act 1968, which provides at s.11 that in any civil proceedings the fact that a person has been convicted of an offence by any court in the United Kingdom shall be admissible for the purpose of proving that he committed that offence,

Job done?

Well, no, because the Civil Evidence Act 1984 did not make the same provision for convictions overseas or findings by another Court short of conviction.

However, the Law Reform Committee in its Fifteenth Report (“The Rule in Hollington v Hewthorn”, Cmnd 3391, 1967), did not recommend the abolition of the rule in relation to findings made in civil proceedings, nor its abolition in relation to foreign convictions. At paragraph 17 they said:
“We have restricted our recommendation to convictions by courts of competent jurisdiction in the United Kingdom. We do not include convictions by foreign courts. This is for practical reasons. The substantive criminal law varies widely in different countries. So does criminal procedure and the law of evidence. The relevance of the foreign conviction to the issues in the English civil action could not be ascertained without expert evidence of the substantive criminal law of the foreign country. Its weight could not be judged without expert evidence of the procedural law of the foreign country and reliable information as to the standards of its courts. There are, of course, many countries whose standard of the administration of criminal justice is as high as our own, but there are others in which one cannot be assured of this. It would be invidious to leave the admissibility and weight of a foreign conviction to the discretion of an English judge unfamiliar with the legal system and standards of criminal justice of the foreign country concerned. Furthermore, the burden of showing that a foreign conviction was erroneous would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to sustain, since there would be no way of compelling the witnesses in the foreign criminal proceedings to attend to give evidence in the English courts. The practical effect of making foreign convictions admissible might well be to make them conclusive and the remoter the country in which the conviction took place the more difficult it would be to dispute its correctness”.

So the Court of Appeal had to decide the point – is Hollington v Hawthorne 1943 binding on the family Courts – which means findings from other civil courts or foreign convictions would not be of themselves proof that the matters underlying those decisions were proven

I’ll add that MH had received a 5 1/2 year prison sentence in Spain for his sexual offence against a child, and the Court of Appeal had this to say on the implications of simply ignoring that or demanding that the allegations be proved again in the English courts.

One checklist factor is any harm which the child has suffered or is at risk of suffering. This calls for a risk assessment in the light of findings of fact arrived at in the normal way, with the burden of proof being on the party seeking a finding to prove it on a balance of probability. The obligation to take account of all the circumstances means that the court is not confined by the way in which the parties put their cases. Provided procedural fairness is observed, it has complete control of the process, which is aptly described as quasi-inquisitorial.
The proviso concerning procedural fairness is of course important. Natural justice and Art. 6 ECHR sound as clearly in family proceedings as in any other context. At the same time, there will be circumstances in which perfect fairness to all parties cannot be achieved and the court must protect each competing interest to the greatest possible extent, having regard to the purpose of the proceedings themselves. The rights and interests of the child will generally predominate where they conflict with the interests of others, but there is always a balance to be struck.
The present case offers a clear illustration of this tension. The central issue is whether MH poses a sexual risk to children. The incident that led to the Spanish conviction is the lynchpin of the local authority’s case. MH accepts that he was convicted but says that he was not guilty. He also argues that his trial (at which he and the child gave evidence) was unfair in a number of ways. He has produced a certain amount of documentation surrounding his conviction and more may be available by the time of the final hearing. However, the question of admissibility cannot turn on the attitude of the parties or the availability of surrounding information and the matter must be approached as if this was a bare conviction.
Accordingly, when the case is finally heard there are two possibilities. The first is that the conviction is not admitted and the local authority is required to prove the allegation of sexual abuse as if there had been no conviction. That may be impossible, given the length of time that has passed, and in consequence the threshold may not be crossed with the result that the proceedings would founder. The second possibility is that the conviction is admitted, with MH having the opportunity to persuade the court that it should not rely upon it; again, that may not be easy. It is therefore necessary to select the outcome that is more consistent with the purpose of the proceedings themselves.
Family proceedings involve a fact-finding element, on the basis of which assessments and decisions are made. In care proceedings, proof of the significant harm threshold is a precondition for the court to exercise its powers and it has been said that, while the proceedings overall are essentially inquisitorial, they are necessarily adversarial in that respect: Re TG (Care Proceedings: Case Management: Expert Evidence) [2013] EWCA Civ 5; [2013] 1 FLR 1250 at [70] (Sir James Munby P). However, the fact-finding element of the process cannot be isolated from the welfare decision it informs. In this respect the position differs from other kinds of civil proceedings, as reflected in the respective procedural rules. The overriding objective under the Civil Procedure Rules is to enable the court to deal with cases justly and at proportionate cost, while under the Family Procedure Rules it is to enable the court to deal with cases justly, having regard to any welfare issues involved.
The characteristics of family proceedings therefore speak strongly against the existence of artificial evidential constraints that may defeat the purpose of the jurisdiction.

Going on to the law

Conclusions

The rule in Hollington v Hewthorn does not apply in family proceedings as I have defined them because such a rule is incompatible with the welfare-based and protective character of the proceedings.
In family proceedings all relevant evidence is admissible. Where previous judicial findings or convictions, whether domestic or foreign, are relevant to a person’s suitability to care for children or some other issue in the case, the court may admit them in evidence.
The effect of the admission of a previous finding or conviction is that it will stand as presumptive proof of the underlying facts, but it will not be conclusive and it will be open to a party to establish on a balance of probability that it should not be relied upon. The court will have regard to all the evidence when reaching its conclusion on the issues before it.
In this case the judge was right to find that the conviction of MH is plainly relevant evidence in these proceedings and that there is no rule of evidence that makes it inadmissible. As Leggatt J said in the civil context of Rogers v Hoyle at [27], the modern approach is that judges can be trusted to evaluate evidence in a rational manner, and that the ability of tribunals to find the true facts will be hindered and not helped if they are prevented from taking relevant evidence into account by exclusionary rules. This is all the more so in family proceedings, where exclusionary rules such as estoppel, res inter alios acta and Hollington v Hewthorn do not apply because they would not serve the interests of children and their families or the interests of justice.
As I have said, while it might be possible to distinguish the present case from Hollington v Hewthorn on the basis of identity of issues and lack of unfairness to third parties, it is unnecessary to found the analysis on these narrower and more contestable matters that depend on identifying the true ratio of the decision. Nor do I attach special significance to the inquisitorial nature of the proceedings. The important consideration is not that family proceedings are inquisitorial in form but that they are welfare-based in substance.
The outcome is not unfair to the mother. As the judge said, she is not in a position to give evidence that is relevant to the conviction. It is not conclusive and she will have an opportunity to examine any surrounding evidence.
On the basis that the conviction was admissible, the judge was right to admit it. Indeed there could have been no good reason to refuse. She asked whether it was appropriate to depart from Hollington v Hewthorn, but as she had held it to be both inapplicable and distinguishable, the real question was whether there was some other reason to exclude the evidence, and there was none. Accordingly the question of comity is not relevant, while the circumstances of the original finding or conviction and the difficulties of proof in an individual case are matters for the court to keep in mind when it comes to weigh the evidence as a whole.
Once a conviction is admitted it inevitably becomes evidence with presumptive weight, otherwise there would be no purpose in admitting it. It would be meaningless to treat it as “just another piece of evidence”. Further, the court’s power to reopen its own findings has no application to the question of how the findings of other tribunals should be treated.
For these reasons, which are similar to those given by the judge, I would reject each of the grounds of appeal and dismiss the appeal.

and Lord Justice Bean said:-

Peter Jackson LJ has given in his judgment a compelling analysis of why a foreign conviction should, as a matter of principle, be admissible and given presumptive weight in proceedings under the Children Act 1989; and why there is nothing in Hollington v Hewthorn which requires us to hold otherwise. I agree with him entirely, and I too would dismiss the appeal.
As to the point of principle, no one in this case has argued that MH’s conviction in Spain should be conclusive. But the suggestion that it should not even be admissible is alarming. It is not difficult to imagine a care case in which a relevant party has been convicted of a serious sexual or violent offence in a foreign court, but the English court has no independent evidence of the facts on which the conviction was based. It cannot be right that in such a case the family court in England and Wales deciding issues relating to the welfare of children should have to ignore the conviction and somehow pretend that the relevant party is of entirely good character and that the offences of which he was convicted never happened.
As to the rule in Hollington v Hewthorn, in their 1967 report the Law Reform Committee observed that “rationalise it how one will, the decision in this case offends one’s sense of justice”; and that “it is not easy to escape the implication in the rule in Hollington v Hewthorn that, in the estimation of lawyers, a conviction by a criminal court is as likely to be wrong as right”. They made recommendations in respect of convictions by UK courts which Parliament promptly enacted in the Civil Evidence Act 1968. However, in paragraph 17 of their report, cited above by Peter Jackson LJ, the Committee recommended no change to make foreign convictions admissible.
It is unnecessary for us in this case to decide anything about the admissibility of foreign convictions in English civil courts. In civil proceedings the doctrine of precedent may require this court to follow Hollington v Hewthorn without question, even though in Hunter v Chief Constable of West Midlands [1982] AC 529 at 543 Lord Diplock (with whom the other members of the House of Lords agreed) said that it “is generally considered to have been wrongly decided”. But for my part I suggest that, half a century on, the reasoning in paragraph 17 of the Law Reform Committee’s 1967 report requires re-examination. Either the surviving effect of Hollington v Hewthorn as a whole, or (more narrowly) the question of the admissibility of foreign convictions in English court proceedings, would be a very suitable topic for consideration by the Committee’s successors, the Law Commission of England and Wales, either on a reference by the Lord Chancellor or as part of the Commission’s next Programme of law reform.

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More heat than light – appeal on recusal

Posted on July 11, 2022 by suesspiciousminds

This is an appeal from a decision of Keehan J not to recuse himself for future hearings following what was on any description a very challenging interaction between Judge and counsel.

When I first thought about writing this post my intention was to try to be studiously neutral – I obviously wasn’t in Court, I didn’t hear the evidence, I haven’t read the full transcripts or heard them, and these matters were clearly highly contentious. Also, because both Judge and counsel are named, I did not want to be disrespectful to either of them on what was clearly a situation that was heated and became even more heated as things went on.

I have reconsidered slightly, and I think that I will just give my quick view that I think things got badly out of hand and that there were faults on both sides but with the benefit of being removed from the case in time, stakes and no connection to it I think the Judge reacted badly to some provocative remarks both orally and in writing BUT that as one of the episodes of counsel/Judge conflict did lead to the evidence given by a witness being potentially affected, I think the Court of Appeal COULD have allowed the appeal, but weren’t wrong to refuse it.

Deep breath.

Re AZ (A Child: Recusal) 2022

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2022/911.html

The background of this case is complex and difficult. Effectively, the mother and father entered into a surrogacy arrangement and a child, A resulted from that. The clinic had kept some of father’s gametes, and it was later found that by way of deception on the mother’s part, those gametes had been released to her in order to enter a second surrogacy arrangement unknown to the father, which produced twins.

There had been quite a lot of litigation, and serious findings had been made against the mother in relation to the conception of the twins and her honesty whilst giving evidence in those proceedings. The mother made allegations of domestic abuse against the father which the Judge found not to be true and that she had been dishonest in her evidence about these matters.

The parents had separated and a decision was made by the Court that A was to live with his father. The mother then made an application for Child Arrangement Orders for the twins, not mentioning in her application the adverse findings made by Keehan J in A’s proceedings.

The mother made complaints to the police about the domestic abuse (subsequent to the findings that they were not proven, and not mentioning those findings) and similarly about the father who was a doctor to the General Medical Council.

A five day hearing took place in August 2021. The mother sought at the outset an adjournment of the hearing on medical grounds. It was finally agreed that she would give evidence remotely.

Counsel instructed for the mother, Mr Uddin, had prepared a position statement in support of her application to withdraw.

In the course of summarising the circumstances in which his client’s medical condition had come to the court’s attention, counsel included the following observations:
“The application for an adjournment is made by the respondent mother with some trepidation. The mother feels that this court will use against her any application for an adjournment.”
“It is apparent that the court due to issues at previous hearings has a distrust of the mother and to put it bluntly prima facie disregard for the mother’s position.”
“It is one thing for the court to deny the mother to vary an interim contact order but another to disregard her application for an adjournment.”
” …she had ignored her own health conditions to avoid a delay in these proceedings and her weariness of this court due to her previous experience before this court.”
“The subsequent treatment of the mother by the court after her cancer disclosure has solidified mother’s weariness of this court.”
“It is true the mother has raised questions about the conduct of the court at previous hearings, but it would be unfair and unjust for the court to use this against the mother which the mother feels the court is doing.”

In the early stages of the hearing, the Judge made some remarks in relation to this document.

The transcript of the hearing shows that almost immediately after the start of the hearing, the following exchange took place:
“Judge: Yes, Mr Uddin?
Counsel: May it please you Lordship, my Lord —
Judge: It does not please me, actually, because I consider your position statement to have been impertinent and impudent and I should tell you now that if you ever dare file a position statement like that before me again, I will consider reporting you to the Bar Standards Board. Do you understand?
Counsel: Thank you, my Lord. My Lord, the position statement was done on instructions from my client
Judge: Yes, I am sure it was.”

The second most serious matter occurred during the Guardian’s evidence.

This instance is described as “bullying and threatening the Appellant’s counsel with the Bar Standards Board on the 27th August 2021”. As all parties recognised, this was the most troubling incident during this difficult hearing. In argument before us, Ms Ancliffe placed particular weight on it in support of the appeal.
The background to this incident is a passage in the evidence given by the children’s guardian at the end of the previous day’s hearing. During questions from Mr Wilson on behalf of the father in which he was challenging the need for a family assistance order, the guardian had described the relationship between the mother and A as “so special and so close” and continued:
“I think we’re looking hopefully at a new chapter in this little boy’s life, one where he can resume a positive relationship with his mother and learn about his siblings. All of these things are really important for A, for his sense of identity. He must have suffered trauma and loss losing his mother out of his life and all of his extended family, to whom he was very close and, again, I’ve observed that personally on more than one occasion. So, to have that back in his life would just be so good for him and I think the CAFCASS officer could assist with that.”
On the following morning, shortly after Mr Uddin started his examination of the guardian, the following exchange took place:
“Counsel: Now, yesterday in evidence you said, and please correct me if you find me to (inaudible) in any way, that A did suffer trauma when he was moved away from [the mother] to the care of [the father] leaving behind—-
Judge: If [the guardian] said that, I did not hear it.
Counsel: Well, I did– I prefaced it, my Lord, with the “If I have misquoted you, please correct me.”
Judge: Yes. All I am saying is I do not recall her saying that.
Counsel: Well, my Lord, she (inaudible). My Lord, I am asking a question but I did preface it and said, “If I misquote you.” What would you like my Lord to do, not– for me not to even ask the question because your Lordship has not heard it?
Judge: Well, she did not say it.
Counsel: Well, let us hear what she says then, my Lord.
Judge: Do not talk to me like that.
Counsel: My Lord –
Judge: You carry on and do what you want.
Counsel: Well, my Lord, how could I do anything I want? I am in your Lordship’s court.
Judge: Yes. It would be helpful if you could remind yourself of that. Now ask the question.
Counsel: Well, no, my Lord. I—-
Judge: Ask the question.
Counsel: Well, I want– I think we need a five-minute break because I do not like being spoken to like this. I am an officer of this court. I deserve respect. Your Lordship comes into this court and we all stand up because we show respect and I am an officer of the court. I will not—-
Judge: No you are not —
Counsel: (inaudible)
Judge: –an officer of the court. You are not a solicitor. You are a member of the Bar.
Counsel: Well, my Lord, I—
Judge: I am not wasting any more time. Get on with your cross-examination.
Counsel: My Lord, I will make one further point. This is my workplace. This is my workplace, just like your clerks and—-
Judge: Will you please just get on with asking your question?
Counsel: I will but can I have it affirmed from you that you will not talk to me in that way?
Judge: If you speak to me respectfully, I will speak to you respectfully.
Counsel: My Lord, I apologise if I have come across in any way disrespectful but this is my place of employment and I will not be spoken to in that way by anybody. When I have employees, I never speak to them in that way.
Judge: You are getting yourself close to being reported to the Bar Standards Board. Now please just get on with your cross-examination.
Counsel: May I ask that same question again or not?
Judge: Certainly.
Counsel: Yesterday – please correct me if I misquote you in any way – my understanding was that A suffered trauma when he was moved away from [the mother], away from the extended family and her. Am I quoting you right or am I misquoting you?
Witness: I think you’re probably misquoting me. I don’t remember using the word “trauma”. I’m not saying A wouldn’t have suffered trauma but I don’t recall saying that in evidence yesterday.
Counsel: Okay. Well, I did say– I said in fact– I had a note of “trauma” and I will– I stand to be corrected. Did you use the word “traumatic” then or– can you recollect?
Witness: I can’t recollect, I’m sorry.
Counsel: All right then. Well, then, in that case, in relation to the upheaval, how do you think that has affected A?
Witness: I think A because of his age would have been confused about the changes that took place moving from one residence to another residence. He already had formed a good relationship with his father so it wasn’t as though he was going some– with someone he didn’t know. The environment would have been slightly different but, yes, I think it– because he’s preverbal and explanations couldn’t really be given to him as to what was happening in his little life, you know, I think he would have been confused.”
The guardian’s evidence continued. A little later in the morning, following a short adjournment for unconnected reasons, Mr Uddin addressed the judge in these terms:
“My Lord, if I may be permitted to make this personal statement which is recorded here, in these proceedings today was the second time your Lordship has threatened me with the Bar Standards Board and I am concerned whether my client is losing confidence in me and whether I can continue. However, having spoken to my client, she has not lost confidence in me. I will continue with this case but, my Lord, I totally appreciate these kind of cases are not easy for anyone concerned, even your Lordship. These are dealing with the souls of people and, my Lord, I am also a human being with blood and salt running through my veins and if there is another threat, my Lord, I am going to have to consider– I totally accept, if I am in any way inappropriate, then your Lordship should admonish me so, on that basis of that understanding, my Lord, I am going to continue. I feel my client has not lost confidence in me and I can carry on. I just wanted to put this marker down, my Lord. May I continue?”
The judge did not respond to this statement. Counsel resumed his examination of the guardian. There were no further episodes of conflict between him and the judge.

It was submitted on behalf of the mother that this incident would lead a fair-minded and informed observer to consider that there was a real possibility of bias for several reasons. First, the judge’s initial intervention was wrong and unfair. Counsel’s recollection of the guardian’s evidence the previous evening was correct: she had referred to trauma. Secondly, the judge lost his temper with counsel and addressed him in a way that amounted to bullying. Thirdly, counsel was clearly unsettled by the way in which the judge addressed him and asked for an adjournment, which the judge refused. Fourthly, the judge’s renewed threat to report him to the BSB was unjustified and wrong. Finally, the effect of the intervention was that the guardian wrongly said that counsel had misquoted her. The judge’s intervention therefore materially undermined the evidence.
In response, Mr Wilson acknowledged that the judge’s comments during this exchange may be the most troubling. He pointed out that counsel’s summary of the guardian’s evidence the previous day was not precisely accurate. He did not seek to defend the judge’s reference to the BSB. He added, however, that, following this exchange, Mr Uddin had continued to cross-examine the guardian for an extended period recorded over a further 21 pages of transcript, during which there were further respectful and productive exchanges between judge and counsel. This was one incident over a five-day hearing and, in evaluating the question of apparent bias, a fair-minded and informed observer would have regard not just to this moment but to the whole hearing in the context of the overall proceedings.
In his written submissions to this Court, Mr Bowe informed us that, having carefully considered the transcript, the guardian could see that counsel’s question did not strictly reflect the evidence that she had given the day before in that she had not said that A had suffered trauma “when he was moved away” from the mother to the father but rather that A must have suffered trauma having lost the mother and his extended family. He added, however, that the guardian’s perception was that the judge unexpectedly shouted at counsel when telling him not to talk like that, causing counsel to request a five-minute break and that the style of the intervention, taken in combination with the previous admonition and reference to the BSB on 25 March, resulted in what Mr Bowe called a somewhat freezing effect on counsel. He also noted that the effect of the intervention was to cause the guardian to doubt her previous evidence and potentially deprive counsel of the opportunity to explore the issue of “trauma” more fully on the mother’s behalf. For those reasons, it was his submission that a fair-minded observer would consider that instances (3) and (8) together do amount to apparent bias.

The Court of Appeal had to consider whether the judicial tests for recusal (i.e that this Judge would not hear this case again) were met and whether the Judge had been wrong to refuse the application to recuse himself.

Obviously, any application for recusal is very difficult. You are, on instructions, having to apply to the Court to say to them that your client does not consider that they have been fair and that they cannot decide the case fairly in the future. Nobody really wants to say that to a Judge, and probably no Judge really wants to hear it. There is a balance to be struck between the duties to fearlessly represent your client but also to have respect towards the Court, and it can be a very difficult tightrope to walk.

The Court of Appeal said this

In this part of the case we are concerned with alleged bullying of counsel by a judge. Where it occurs, judicial bullying is wholly unacceptable. It brings the litigation process into disrepute and affects public confidence in the administration of justice. However, it inevitably remains the case that situations of conflict between bar and bench will sometimes arise. In that connection we make the following points.
First, counsel are sometimes obliged to object to, or be critical of, something said or done by the judge in the course of a hearing. Judges should, and almost always do, appreciate that this is a fundamental part of the advocate’s role and should entertain the objection with respect, even if they regard it as ill-founded. However, respect goes both ways. It is important that any such objection or criticism is expressed, however firmly, in a professional way. Most judges nowadays conduct hearings in a less formal manner than may have been usual in earlier generations, but that is not a licence to disregard the particular position of authority which they necessarily enjoy.
Second, trials are a very intense environment. Even the best counsel may in the pressure of the moment express themselves in ways which they did not really intend or say things which they would not have said if they had had time for reflection – whether in the context of an exchange with the judge of the kind discussed above or more generally. Judges should, and almost always do, recognise this. Many such lapses can simply be overlooked or corrected with a light touch.
Third, there will nevertheless be occasions when counsel’s conduct requires explicit correction or admonishment. In such a case the judge should try to ensure that any rebuke is proportionate and delivered in measured terms, without showing personal resentment or anger. Even a merited rebuke may be unsettling for counsel; and it may also, even if unjustifiably, have an impact on the confidence of their client in the fairness of the hearing. That said, some such impact may be unavoidable, in which case it has to be accepted as a consequence of counsel’s behaviour.
Fourth, a statement by the judge that they are considering referring counsel to the BSB is a particularly strong form of admonition and is accordingly particularly liable to have an adverse impact of the kind referred to above. For that reason, we believe that it will rarely be appropriate for a judge to raise the possibility of referring counsel to the BSB in the middle of a hearing. In the great majority of cases, the better course will be to wait until the end of the hearing, which will avoid raising the temperature more than is necessary and will also mean that the judge can evaluate counsel’s conduct in the overall context of the hearing. In the rare case where an allegation of professional misconduct does have to be raised in the course of a hearing, the situation will require sensitive handling and the judge will be well advised to take time to consider carefully when and how to raise the matter.
Finally, since judges are human, and (as Black LJ observed in Re G, supra) hearings can be challenging for them as well as for counsel, they will sometimes lapse from these high standards, and incidents will occur which the judge should have handled better. But such lapses do not necessarily amount to bullying; still less does it necessarily follow that in such a case the hearing will have been unfair or that the judge should recuse themselves from any further involvement. On the contrary, it is fundamental to the culture and training of a professional judge that they will decide each case according to its objective merits. If judge and counsel rub each other up the wrong way, whether or not it is the fault of either or both, that can be, and almost always is, put to one side in the decision-making process. Likewise, the professional training and experience of counsel should enable them to deal with criticism from the bench, even if they may believe it to be unjustified.
We should add that although the mother’s reference to bullying requires us to consider the judge’s conduct, the dispositive question on this application is not whether he was guilty of misconduct in relation to either instance but whether his conduct would give rise to a reasonable apprehension that he was biased against the mother, because of her counsel’s behaviour.

They went on

In his third judgment handed down on 15 November 2021 the judge said that parts of the position statement filed for the hearing on 25 March 2021 were “rude and impertinent”: the phrase he used at the hearing itself was “impudent and impertinent”. We might not have used those precise terms, but we agree that the passages that we have quoted from the position statement are objectionable. Although, as we have acknowledged above, there are occasions where it is counsel’s duty to accuse a judge of unfairness, in the context of the adjournment application the accusation was not only unfounded but gratuitous. It did not advance the substance of the application to say that the mother feared that it would be unfairly “disregarded” because of the judge’s previous findings, still less that she feared that he would use it against her. Those assertions did no more than vent the mother’s personal feelings about the judge’s findings (which findings were unappealed). We recognise that this may not have been an easy position statement for Mr Uddin to draft but if his response to the judge that it was drafted “on [the mother’s] instructions” meant that he thought he was obliged to make offensive imputations of this kind merely because his client wanted him to do so, that was a serious misunderstanding of his duty.
It was in our view appropriate for the judge to admonish counsel about the tone of the position statement. He also acted appropriately by doing so succinctly, and in a way that drew a line before he moved on to the substance of the application. We have to say, however, that we do not think that his rebuke was well expressed. Although it is never easy to assess how things are said from a written transcript, the words used by the judge convey the impression that he felt personally affronted: that was not appropriate. As for his mention of the BSB, it is fair to say that the judge did not say that Mr Uddin’s conduct merited a report (and we do not believe that it did) but only that he would report him if he did the same again. But it was, for the reasons set out above, inadvisable for him to mention a possible reference to the BSB in the course of the hearing.
Although we believe that the incident could have been handled better, we consider it to have been a limited incident, best characterised as an over-reaction to what was in our view a gratuitously offensive position statement.

and in relation to the cross-examination of the Guardian

As we have seen, the parties before us were agreed that instance (8) was the most serious of the instances on which the mother relied. It is important to start by analysing exactly what went wrong.
The starting point is the judge’s querying of whether in his question to the guardian Mr Uddin had accurately summarised an earlier answer she had given. The question began:
“Now, yesterday in evidence you said, and please correct me if you find me to (inaudible) in any way, that A did suffer trauma when he was moved away from [the mother] to the care of [the father] leaving behind …”
It was at that point that the judge intervened to say that he had not heard the guardian say that, though a little way into the exchange he said in terms that she had not done so.

Because of the way things developed, the judge did not specify exactly what it was in Mr Uddin’s formulation that he believed was wrong. When Mr Uddin eventually put the question again the guardian said that she did not believe that she had used the word “trauma”. As the transcript shows, she was wrong about that, and to that extent Mr Uddin’s question accurately reflected her evidence. But it is not clear to us that that was the judge’s point. Mr Uddin’s formulation was in fact inaccurate in a different way, because it suggested that the guardian had attributed the trauma to A being moved “to the care of [the father]” whereas she had referred only to it being caused by the loss of his mother and extended family. The difference is only slight, and it is fair to say that Mr Uddin had not finished his question when the judge intervened and he may well have been going on to refer to that aspect too (as he did when he eventually put the question again); but even if so his introduction of a reference to the father arguably carried the implication that the guardian had said there was something about the father’s care that caused trauma. It may well have been this perceived inaccuracy that the judge was objecting to. In any event, at this stage there was no more than a possible misunderstanding of a kind which sometimes occurs in the course of cross-examination, and no-one is to be criticised.
Mr Uddin responded to the judge’s intervention by saying:
“What would you like my Lord to do, not– for me not to even ask the question because your Lordship has not heard it?”
That was in our view disrespectful and impertinent. The correct response from an advocate when his recollection of the evidence is questioned by the judge is to seek to clarify the position, most obviously by establishing exactly what the issue is and asking that the judge’s note be compared with those of counsel and solicitors. His further response “Well, let us hear what she says then, my Lord” also has a confrontational ring, at least as it appears in the transcript.

Thus far the criticism is entirely of Mr Uddin. But it is clear that his disrespectful response (or responses) caused the judge momentarily to lose his temper. Even without the tape, it is plain that his response (“Do not talk to me like that”) was angry – and that is confirmed by the guardian’s recollection recorded at paragraph 121 – and his replies in the course of the following exchange, culminating in the observation that Mr Uddin was coming close to being reported to the BSB, show that he did not immediately recover his poise. That exchange in its turn clearly unsettled Mr Uddin and caused him too to become heated – “I deserve respect”, “can I have it affirmed that you will not talk to me in that way?”, “I will not be spoken to in that way by anybody”. Although the judge tried to close the incident down and return to the evidence, Mr Uddin would not at first do as the judge asked. He requested a break, which the judge refused. Although Mr Uddin resumed his questions to the witness, he obviously remained troubled, hence his “personal statement” a few minutes later.
This was clearly a regrettable incident. It was started by Mr Uddin’s disrespectful response or responses, for which the judge was fully entitled to admonish him. However, the way that the judge did so raised the temperature and clearly unsettled Mr Uddin. With the benefit of hindsight, we believe that he should have taken up the suggestion of a short break for “cooling-off”. Instead, he warned Mr Uddin that he was getting close to being reported to the BSB. We have already observed that it is generally inadvisable to warn of the possibility of a reference to the BSB in the course of the hearing, and that was particularly so here when feelings were running high.
Miss Ancliffe submitted that the judge’s intervention had led the guardian to wrongly disavow her earlier reference to A having suffered trauma by having been moved from her mother’s care. That may be the case, even though the judge himself did not focus on that word, but it is in truth impossible now to know. Ultimately, it does not matter. We are not concerned as such with the effect of the judge’s intervention but whether the incident to which it led gives rise to a reasonable suspicion of bias on his part. However, we should say that we do not consider that the guardian’s revisiting of the issue had a material impact on the outcome. She was a professional witness well able to express her considered opinion and her subsequent answer, set out at the end of paragraph 117 above, described in more precise terms how A had been affected by the move from the mother.
CONCLUSION ON INSTANCES (3) & (8)

It will be seen that we have some criticisms of the judge’s response in relation to both these instances, and in particular instance (8). However, the question on this appeal is whether what he said on those occasions would lead a fair-minded and informed observer to consider that there was a real possibility that he was biased against the mother. We do not believe that it would. In neither case was his conduct gratuitous: on the contrary, he was reacting, albeit inappropriately, to disrespectful conduct on the part of Mr Uddin. These were two short-lived and isolated episodes in separate hearings, the second of which lasted several days. They are just the kind of incident which may arise in the course of highly-charged proceedings but which, as we have said above, a professional judge will put to one side when assessing the merits of the case. As noted at paragraph 47 above, in his eventual judgment the judge said that the exchanges between him and Mr Uddin had had no effect on his decision-making. Of course that statement itself cannot be conclusive, but it is consistent with what the fair-minded and informed observer would expect of a professionally trained judge and there is nothing to suggest that it was not the case here. There is no complaint of any other inappropriate interchange between the judge and Mr Uddin. We refer also to paragraph 95 above. The mother and her legal representative were given a fair opportunity to put her case, and the mother was allowed to adduce extra evidence. At the conclusion of the hearing, the judge handed down a judgment in which he rejected a number of the proposals put forward by the father. All the evidence is that the judge reached his conclusions following the August 2021 hearing in a fair and balanced way, and there is no reason to suppose that he would not do so in the remaining stages of the case.
Having been critical of some of Mr Uddin’s comments, we should record our impression that, despite the evident professional difficulties he was facing, he represented his client tenaciously and effectively.
OVERALL CONCLUSION

In relation to both groups of instances, we have concluded that they would not lead the fair-minded and informed observer to conclude that there was a real possibility that the judge was biased against the mother. For the avoidance of doubt, that remains our view if all seven instances are considered cumulatively. It is for those reasons that we concluded that there was no basis on which the judge should have recused himself and that this appeal should be dismissed.

(As a sidebar to the case, one of the grounds of appeal which did not particularly cause the Court of Appeal trouble was the claim that the Judge’s remarks during mother’s evidence of “I am writing that down” were indicative of bias, and the Court of Appeal said this:-

There is no substance in the complaint about the judge’s taking of notes or his references to his notebook during the hearing. It is entirely a matter for a judge to decide what notes to take of the evidence. Neither counsel nor anyone else in court is in any position to assess what a judge is writing down. It is not unknown for a judge to indicate to counsel that his line of questioning is not helpful by putting down his pen. This is an example of the disclosure of judicial thinking which, as Sir Thomas Bingham MR observed, is sanctioned in the English tradition. Criticising a witness’s answer, and recording the criticism in his notebook, is a legitimate expression of scepticism which, to use Sir Thomas’s words, “is not suggestive of bias unless the judge conveys an unwillingness to be persuaded of a factual proposition whatever the evidence may be”. In this case, the judge’s references to the notebook during the mother’s evidence were made in the course of appropriate challenges about her reasons for reporting allegations to the police which he had found to be fabricated.

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There is no authority because nobody has thought it plausible up till now to question them

Posted on November 5, 2021 by suesspiciousminds

This is a very perplexing case.

It is an appeal from

Re FS v RS and JS 2020

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2020/63.html

decided by Sir James Munby.

I honestly can’t improve on Sir James Munby’s opening in that judgment, so let’s crack into it

This is a most unusual case. Indeed, so far as I am aware, and the very experienced counsel who appear before me do not dispute this, the case is unprecedented. Certainly, the researches of counsel have identified no decision directly in point. The applicant’s own description is that his applications are “novel.” I suspect that the initial reaction of most experienced family lawyers would be a robust disbelief that there is even arguable substance to any of it.
The cynic will recall the words of Diplock LJ in Robson and another v Hallett [1967] 2 QB 939, 953:
“The points are so simple that the combined researches of counsel have not revealed any authority upon them. There is no authority because no one has thought it plausible up till now to question them.”
But if at the end of the day the answer is clear, as in my judgment it is, the points are not so simple as one might at first suppose. Equally in point, is the observation of Thorpe LJ in Moses-Taiga v Taiga [2005] EWCA Civ 1013, [2006] 1 FLR 1074, para 21, that:

“the absence of … authority … only illustrates the tendency for propositions of universal acceptance to be difficult to support by reference to authority.”
But is the universal assumption correct? I leave the last word to Megarry J, who in Hampstead & Suburban Properties Ltd v Diomedous [1969] 1 Ch 248, 259, said with grim humour:

“It may be that there is no direct authority on this point; certainly none has been cited. If so, it is high time that there was such authority; and now there is.”

The nub of the case is that Mr S is 41 years old. His parents are married to one another and live in Dubai. Mr S has a series of impressive qualifications- he has a First in Modern History, he is a qualified solicitor, he has a Masters in Taxation and is studying for Chartered Tax Advisory and Law School Admissions Test examinations. His parents have provided him with a rent-free flat in central London, and up until this litigation had been paying the utility bills.

Mr S was asking the Court to make an order that his parents financially support him.

Yes, you read that right.

I suspect that the initial reaction of most experienced family lawyers would be a robust disbelief that there is even arguable substance to any of it

Yep, that certainly describes my view.

I would certainly say that those representing him left no stone unturned in their efforts to find a legal basis for suggesting that the Court should have jurisdiction to make married parents pay maintenance for their 41 year old professionally qualified son.

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2021/1572.html

Siddiqui v Siddiqui & Anor [2021] EWCA Civ 1572 (02 November 2021)

Could it be s27 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973?

  1. Section 27 of the MCA 1973 is headed: “Financial provision orders, etc., in case of neglect by party to marriage to maintain other party or child of the family”. Section 27 provides:

“(1) Either party to a marriage may apply to the court for an order under this section on the ground that the other party to the marriage (in this section referred to as the respondent) –
(a) has failed to provide reasonable maintenance for the applicant, or
(b) has failed to provide, or to make a proper contribution towards, reasonable maintenance for any child of the family.

I suspect it doesn’t take a Court of Appeal Judge, or even a lawyer to work out why s27 doesn’t work. Hint , a child is not a ‘party to a marriage’

Then Schedule 1 of the Children Act 1989, which does provide provision for a child to apply for financial support from a parent, and there are some breadcrumbs of this applying to children over 18 who are still in education (which Mr S sort of is), but the problem there is

Schedule 1 para 2 (4) No order shall be made under this paragraph at a time when the parents of the applicant are living with each other in the same household.

And Mr S’s parents clearly are.

The next attempt was the inherent jurisdiction, which sort of expanded into vulnerable adults who did not meet the tests of the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

The judge rejected this argument for three reasons. First, at [113], because the asserted claim “lies far outside the accepted parameters of the branch of the inherent jurisdiction prayed in aid by the applicant”. The basis of the jurisdiction was, at [114], “to protect and facilitate” a vulnerable adult’s exercise of autonomy.
Secondly, at [123]: “The second reason why the inherent jurisdiction is not available to assist the applicant is because of the fundamental principle that the inherent jurisdiction cannot be used to compel an unwilling third party to provide money or services”. In support of this reason, the judge cited from a number of authorities including N v A Commissioning Group and other [2017] AC 549, a case concerning an application under the Mental Capacity Act 2005, in which Baroness Hale said, at [35]:
“the court only has power to take a decision that P himself could have taken. It has no greater power to oblige others to do what is best than P would have himself. This must mean that, just like P, the court can only choose between the ‘available options’. In this respect, the Court of Protection’s powers do resemble the family court’s powers in relation to children. The family court … cannot oblige an unwilling parent to have the child to live with him or even to have contact with him, any more than it can oblige an unwilling health service to provide a particular treatment for the child.”
Thirdly, at [132]:
“The third reason why the inherent jurisdiction is not available to assist the applicant is because of the fundamental principle which I summarised in In re X (A Child) (Jurisdiction: Secure Accommodation) [2016] EWHC 2271 (Fam); [2017] Fam 80, where I referred at para 37 to:
“the well known and long-established principle that the exercise of the prerogative – and the inherent jurisdiction is an exercise of the prerogative, albeit the prerogative vested in the judges rather in ministers – is pro tanto ousted by any relevant statutory scheme.”
The judge set out, at [137], his assessment of the legislation:
“Between them, the 1973 Act and the 1989 Act provide a comprehensive statutory scheme dealing, along with much else, with the circumstances in which a child, including, as here, an adult child, can make a financial claim against a living parent (I put the point this way to make clear that I have not overlooked section 1(1)(c) of the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975). More specifically, the legislation, in its general reach, applies to the applicant, as to every adult child, and is comprehensive in relation to cases falling within its ambit. Furthermore, as Mr Warshaw and Mr Viney point out, the legislation deals explicitly with the very claims the applicant seeks to make; indeed, in the case of the 1989 Act it explicitly prohibits the claim he seeks to pursue. There is accordingly, in my judgment, no scope for recourse to the inherent jurisdiction.”

So that is also out.

Next, under the Human Rights Act that there is discrimination under article 14, a breach of Mr S’s article 6 rights and that the Court should read down the existing legislation to allow his application.

(Bear in mind, this is all litigation to decide whether the Court even has power to make the orders Mr S wants – no consideration yet of the merits if any of his application)

The argument here was that Mr S, as a child of parents who are not separated, is being treated differently to a child of parents who are (as he would be able to make a Schedule 1 Children Act application if his parents were separated.)

I am sure that Courts, particularly the Court of Appeal, do not have swear jars, but if they did I would greatly admire the forebearance of anyone who wasn’t chipping in quite heftily. For my part, I can’t read this judgment without muttering “For F***s sake”

110. In my view, it is clearly not. As Mr Warshaw submitted, not permitting an order to be made in favour of a child whose parents still live together does not run counter to the purposes of article 14 or the aim of the ECHR. I also agree with the judge, for the reasons he gave, when he said, at [88], that “the suggested analogy with ‘birth status’ is wholly false”. Apart from the fact that birth status is expressly included in article 14, describing or defining a child as “legitimate” or “illegitimate”, because of the marital status of their parents, is clearly an identifiable characteristic, or status, attributable to the child. There is no equivalence or correlation between a child’s status being defined by whether their parents are or are not married, as relied on by Mr Southey, and the Appellant’s position.
Being the child of parents who are living together in the same household is not a personal or identifiable characteristic any more than being the child of parents who have divorced is a personal characteristic. It is not something the child has or which, in any way, defines the child. Being the child of parents who are not separated is simply a bar to the court making an order under paragraph 2 of Schedule 1. In essence, the Appellant’s complaint is, as Leggatt LJ said, “merely a description of the difference in treatment itself”.
Analogous Situation
I also do not consider that a child of parents who are living together is in a comparable or analogous situation to a child whose parents are separated. As set out in Clift v UK, at [66], “the requirement to demonstrate an ‘analogous position’ does not require the comparator groups to be identical”. What is required is that the “applicant must demonstrate that, having regard to the particular nature of his complaint, he was in a relevantly similar situation to others treated differently”. This is sometimes said to require a specific and contextual analysis.
As set out in the judgment below, the whole history of the relevant statutory provisions show that they are giving the court powers to make financial orders “when the parents’ relationship has broken down”, as set out in the 1982 Report (para 6.31). That is their purpose and objective. They are not focused on needs, as Mr Southey submitted. Needs are clearly relevant to the court’s determination of what, if any, order should be made but only in the context of the parents’ relationship having broken down.
The fact that the jurisdiction to make orders under sections 23 and 24 of the MCA 1973 depends on the parents’ relationship having broken down is self-evident. It is also clear from section 27 because it depends on the failure to provide reasonable maintenance. It is also clear from paragraph 2(4) of Schedule 1 which, as referred to above, was expressly included to ensure that orders could only be made in favour of children “over the age of 18 whose parents are separated”, as made clear by the 1982 Report and as stated by the Lord Chancellor.
Mr Southey additionally submitted that the challenged provisions amount to indirect discrimination because, as set out in DH v Czech Republic at [175], “a general policy or measure that has disproportionately prejudicial effects on a particular group may be considered discriminatory notwithstanding that it is not specifically aimed at that group”. The present case is far removed from the facts of DH v Czech Republic which concerned racial discrimination in education in that a disproportionate number of Roma children went to special schools. I do not consider that the principle or approach referred to in that case applies to the circumstances of the present case. All children whose parents are not divorced or separated cannot obtain an order and I do not consider that the challenged provisions can be said to have disproportionately prejudicial effects on a particular group as set out in DH v Czech Republic or as submitted by Mr Southey.
Further, again, as set out in DH v Czech Republic, at [175], the difference in treatment must be between “persons in relevantly similar situations”. In the present case, as explained above, the Appellant is not in a relevantly similar situation to adult children whose parents have divorced or are not living together. As Lady Hale did in R (Stott), at [213], I would quote what Lord Nicholls said in R (Carson) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2006] 1 AC 173 at [3]:
“There may be such an obvious, relevant difference between the claimant and those with whom he seeks to compare himself that their situations cannot be regarded as analogous.”
In my view, there is an obvious and relevant difference in the present case. The difference is obvious because the Appellant seeks to compare himself with children whose parents are divorced or separated. It is also relevant because, to repeat, the purpose of the legislation is specifically to address the consequences of parents either being divorced or separated or, to put it more broadly, the breakdown of the parents’ relationship.
I would repeat that the Appellant is not treated differently because of his health status or disability. They are not relevant features in the context of this case. Further, as explained above, the Appellant does not have a status which engages article 14 at all.

The appeal was unanimously refused. The judgment doesn’t go on to say whether Mr S’s parents sought an order for costs, nor whether they were ceasing to allow Mr S to live in their London flat unless he starts paying his way. Or indeed whether they are writing a will that cuts Mr S off completely. If they don’t do any of that, they are kinder and better humans than I.

On the plus side, there’s a powerful incentive for Mr S’s parents to never ever separate, because the second they do, the Schedule 1 bar falls away and off we go again. I’ve heard of people staying together for the sake of the children, but this is a new wrinkle.

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