Douglas Carswell

UKIP PRU launches first policy paper: "Opening up the family courts"

This morning, I joined UKIP Deputy Chairman Suzanne Evans and former Lib Dem MP John Hemming to launch the UKIP Parliamentary Resource Unit's first policy paper, aimed at ending the injustice of forced adoptions.

Too many children are removed from their birth parents by the State without due cause – as a result of secret proceedings in the family courts. We need public scrutiny of forced adoptions to stop the State breaking up families unfairly, and hold those responsible to account.

Here are our proposals to introduce transparency and end the forced adoption scandal:

1. Promote more extensive use of Special Guardianship Orders, particularly where a child is made a ward of an extended family member, such as a grandparent.

2. Open placement and adoption order proceedings to the media on the same basis as other family law proceedings.

3. Introduce a presumption to allow reporting of Family Court proceedings on an anonymised basis (e.g. Child A, the mother of Child A).

4. Mandate publication of all judgments (those from district judges on application and subject to a fee), except where the presiding judge seeks and obtains a contrary order from the President of the Family Division.

5. Mandate that all local authority witnesses, including social workers as well as expert witnesses, be identified by name and position(s) held.

6. Require expert witnesses to list previous court cases in which they have given evidence, on application and subject to administrative costs.

7. Publish, on an anonymised basis, all statements of case, skeleton arguments, case summaries and other documents prepared and exchanged by the advocates in a case.

8. Allow media access to expert reports on an anonymised basis, with reporting restrictions imposed only in exceptional circumstances.

9. Allow unrestricted access to expert reports to academics for peer review on the condition that any research papers written as to the quality of reports are anonymised.

Read the full paper here!

Back to all posts