Family court Hearings must be in public
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| Family court Hearings must be in
public. June 15 2006 Source; Northampton Herald & Post Hundreds Jailed in a Secret Family courts 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." |
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