THE practice of
family courts sending people to prison in secret could soon be at an end.
In Parliament on
Tuesday, June 13, constitutional affairs minister Harriet Harman told colleagues
two hundred people were sent to prison last year without a public hearing. The
revelation came in response to a question by Northampton north MP Sally Keeble
who has been campaigning for an end to the process.
Family court
currently meets in private but many believe this should change in the interests
of justice.
Mrs Keeble asked Ms
Harman what plans the government had for family court hearings to be told:
"The idea that
people are sent to prison without any reports of the proceedings makes even more
important the work that we are undertaking with the family courts and with the
important intervention of the Constitutional Affairs Committee to open them up
so that they act in the public interest while maintaining personal privacy."
Ms Harman is
currently heading a review of the family court system in England and gave a
speech on the subject at Highgate House in Northampton only last month.
Mrs Keeble said: "A
constituent of mine who refused her violent ex-partner access to their child was
appalled at the prospect of going to prison in total secrecy with no public
hearing.
"This might be the
way to deal with people who are a serious risk to state security but it is not
the way to deal with feuding parents"
This is the first
time that these numbers have been disclosed and it is astonishing that four
people go to Prison in secret each week from the family courts."
