Child Sexual Abuse (Independent Panel Inquiry)

John Hemming Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I may have misunderstood the hon. Gentleman’s last point about the inquiry coming to a conclusion well within 12 months. I think that it will take longer than 12 months, but, as he said, it is important that it does not go on endlessly, seemingly being pushed ever and ever further into the future, with no report. This will of course be for the chairman of the inquiry to determine, but my own view is that it would be helpful to set a date by which a report will be made, even if at that point the inquiry says that it needs to do further work in certain areas. People need to see that there will be a report. Indeed, the inquiry will need to consider how to keep people updated on an ongoing basis during its work so that they do not feel that it is just going on behind closed doors.

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

I have documentary evidence to substantiate the allegation that the Foreign Office recently turned a blind eye to child abuse in St Helena. We are also aware of the recent banning of the American journalist Leah McGrath Goodman from investigating child abuse in Jersey. In both cases, that was done by UK Government authorities in recent years; I am not arguing that Ministers were involved. Are those cases within the inquiry’s terms of reference?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend has campaigned long and hard on the abuse that may have taken place in both those geographical areas. I am afraid that my answer will disappoint him. Work is of course already being done in relation to Jersey. It would not be appropriate for this inquiry to look at Jersey and St Helena. As I have said, I expect the inquiry to confine itself to England and Wales. I will of course need to discuss that with the chairman, but that is my expectation.

Historical Child Sex Abuse

John Hemming Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) on calling for and securing this debate. Progress has been made; we now have a panel to look at the wider issues relating to child sexual abuse. I am pleased that Ivor Frank, a barrister who has himself been in care, has been appointed to the panel. I did get Michael Mansfield to agree to chair the panel, but I have not yet managed to persuade the Home Secretary to appoint him.

It is worthwhile to look at the issues that the panel will be considering, some of which are not in the terms of reference, which should be widened to include Northern Ireland, the Crown dependencies and possibly the British overseas territories. My speech will range wider than that. I spoke on this subject on 13 November 2012; anyone interested should read column 246 of Hansard of that date. I will not repeat the speech, but I refer again to Mike Stein, who, in his excellent article in Child and Family Social Work in February 2006, explained how widespread the problem was, with a possible one in seven children in care being subject to abuse. Perhaps that bears repeating: one in seven children in care. I accept that care is not the only place in which child sexual abuse occurs, but we need to understand how large a number that is. Obviously, it explains why there are so many survivors who are upset about the cover-up.

When looking at the past, it is important that we learn lessons for the future. One lesson that we should really learn is how easy it is for things to be concealed by agents of the state. Hillsborough is relevant in that sense. It should be noted from the Rotherham report that it is only through media attention that anything happens. The checks and balances operating in the system might as well have been welded together for all the challenge that they provided. I remain concerned about the work of Verita, for example, which has been involved in previous cover-ups of errors by the state. I was shocked to see it at the centre of the Savile inquiries both in the UK and Jersey. The central control over the reports from hospitals enables any links to those people protecting him to be concealed.

Let me turn now to the word “independent”. Someone who is paid by someone else is not “independent” of the payor. We see that in the petition I presented for Shaz Hussain, which demonstrated how the local hospital can commission KPMG to write what suits the hospital management rather than the truth. The word “independent” is massively misused in the child protection system. The independent reviewing officer is just another employee of the local authority, and we can see how ineffectual that role is by looking at A and S (Children) v. Lancashire county council 2012 EWHC 1689 (Family).

England has many more problems than Scotland, although there are cases such as that of Mark and Kerry McDougall, who lived happily with their two children in Ireland, but were on the receiving end of vindictive proceedings that saw their children removed when they returned to Scotland. Sadly, they have had to return to Ireland as mum is pregnant, and we will see where that goes.

The state has many tools at its disposal. Local authorities get injunctions to stop people complaining to legislatures, which is an appalling situation. When it comes to child sexual exploitation, there have been problems with the attitudes of those responsible for caring for children even if they do not go as far as the one in seven reported by Mike Stein.

In Birmingham, practitioners in the past have argued that children should be permitted to prostitute themselves while not being allowed to make toast for each other. Attitudes are now shifting, but it remains the case that I have reported cases and felt that my reports were not taken seriously. Someone spoke to me this year about a paedophile network operating in Birmingham in the 1990s, which included at least one senior manager in the child protection arm of social services. I reported that to the police and the local authority. I spoke again to my contact this morning who confirmed that the council had said nothing and that the police had failed to give an update, although they did speak initially.

The council has produced a report called “We Need to Get it Right” in which it states that child sexual exploitation was a “hidden issue”. I raised that in Parliament in 2007 and had expressed concern previously to the local authority. Hence, the issue was not so much hidden as ignored. I have recently raised concerns on behalf of a constituent about activities around the canal going into the city centre, but neither my constituent nor I are satisfied with the response of the authorities, which seem to want to sweep the matter under the carpet—or into the canal.

Some of the public have wondered why, if we have parliamentary privilege, we are not naming names. Speaking personally, I am always concerned that there should be evidence. Lots of things are said on the internet, but we need to remember that not everything on the internet is true. Furthermore, we also need to avoid prejudicing any formal inquiries.

What is true is that very recently, in mid-2011, a journalist from the USA, Leah McGrath Goodman, was banned from the common travel area because she told authorities she was investigating child abuse in Jersey. That included Haut de la Garenne, one place where Savile was active; this happened before he died. She could have asked him who was protecting him, but she was banned by the UK Government. Not only that, but she was obstructed in Heathrow later when the ban was reduced to a year from two years and she finally got a visa. It seems clear that there are influential individuals still using the tools of the state to hold back investigations. What is important is that there will still be an audit trail of evidence and if something is missing it will be obvious.

Jersey is an important element of the debate. It is excluded from the terms of reference, but we know that children were sent there from London to be sexually abused. There are also reasonably widespread reports of abuse cruises involving children in Jersey being visited by people from the UK.

We know that with Kincora, which is outside the terms of reference, and with Cyril Smith, the security services were involved in covering up child abuse. Sir Peter Hayman’s role is obviously key in considering that question. Robert Armstrong should have known by the end of October 1978 about Sir Peter Hayman’s involvement in Paedophile Information Exchange because he had access to all the UK’s secrets and was potentially vulnerable to blackmail. The finding of a sealed letter addressed to him in his false name at his secret London flat—a very curious sequence of events—should have been raised with Merlyn Rees and then with James Callaghan. PIE’s membership is, of course, both a threat to and an opportunity for MI5.

What is interesting about the Wanless report is that the Home Office had a set of secret files on about 100 children’s homes that was passed to the Department of Health in 1972. Their purpose is not described and all the files were marked to be retained and not disclosed for 75 or 100 years. That set of files was not disclosed to Wanless, although Wanless does refer to a standard National Archive file called “Home Secretary’s Meetings” that ended in 1984. That file is missing from the National Archives and could not be found by National Archives staff. Furthermore, the security services refused to provide any information to Wanless and there are questions about what has happened with the special branch files.

There are signs of security service involvement in the treatment of Leah McGrath Goodman as well, and that is of course recent. Answers are needed and the events are sufficiently recent for the answers to be there for anyone who looks with their eyes open.

I have been approached by police officers who are concerned that the management within the Metropolitan police—the senior sergeants or whatever—instructed junior police officers to conceal evidence, and there are examples that can be identified. I put to the Home Secretary the suggestion that where there is a command structure and a senior officer instructs a junior officer to break the law, there should be an opportunity for some sort of amnesty for the junior officer if they then reveal that, so they do not end up being prosecuted for revealing how they were forced to commit offences.

I wrote to the Home Secretary in July asking whether that could be done and received a standard response about the inquiry about a week ago. I have written again to suggest action if we wanted to find out the truth of what has gone on in the Met. There is no doubt that there were people in the Met who were involved in the cover-up. I have had people report that to me; a lot of people are willing to speak up, but not if they end up going to jail as a consequence of admitting what they were forced to do. It is a complex issue, of course, because whenever we have amnesties we need to consider their limits, but if things continue to be concealed because people are frightened to tell the truth it will be very difficult to get to the truth. One of the critical points in all this is getting to the truth.

I recently asked a question to find out about reports written about British overseas territories such as St Helena. It appears that people have known for years what is going on in such places but that nothing has been done to make things work any better. I happen to know that a couple of employment tribunals, which I do not think are covered by the sub judice resolution, started today in Kingsway and will be reported in the media tomorrow. They are relevant and if people are interested they should follow the proceedings.

Let me mention again the failure of the Government to modify the SSDA903 return in order to track when children are lost or trafficked out of the care system. It does not appear that the Government are bothered about this given that they refused to even count them. I continue to go on about this. I know that I am a bit of a techie who is really interested in computer systems and things like that, but if children are disappearing from the care system and we do not bother to count them, what does that say? The response from the Minister was:

“The Department has no plans to expand the codes under which local authorities provide statistical returns on children missing from care, as this will lead to an unnecessary increase in reporting requirements.”—[Official Report, 13 December 2011; Vol. 537, c. 641W.]

Frankly, that is unacceptable. We should be concerned if children are being trafficked. We should be sufficiently concerned as an absolute minimum to count how many are trafficked and find out which authorities they are lost from and what their ages are. We are lucky in that we have a reasonably good database that tracks what happens to children in care. Every year, a large number disappear for other reasons—not that they have gone back to their parents, or have been adopted. They just disappear from the system. I do not think that that is reasonable. We are happy to send in auditors if we are worried that money has disappeared. We send in local government auditors to check about local government finance. We audit the finances to make sure that money has not been stolen. We do not audit what happens to children to make sure that they have not been stolen. That is a failure of this Government, of whom I happen to be a quasi supporter as a Back Bencher.

The history here is all about abuse of power by employees of the state. The fact that it involves the maltreatment of children for sexual gratification makes this all the worse. For the future, we need to make it harder for state employees to conceal abuses of power. More transparency and accountability are needed, as well as less secrecy. Parliament, which is the voice of the people, has to stand on the side of the powerless. Whitehall mandarins, judges, BBC managers, council bureaucrats and professionals all have their own interests and a desire to hide mistakes. Parliament needs to balance the scales on the side of the weak—those without wealth who are crying out and not being heard.

Criminal Law

John Hemming Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

Last time the previous Question was moved, I voted for it. On this occasion I will vote against it. The difficulty is to work out what the Opposition feel they will achieve from this. Although there is always an argument about the Executive lumping together lots of decision into one vote, one of the more complex questions is when the Executive are bound by a motion of the House. It was obvious on the Wild Animals in Circuses Bill and various other occasions that the Executive are not automatically bound by motions in the House. The Executive are bound when they say they will be bound. On this occasion the Executive have said that they will be bound. There is therefore nothing else on that that the Opposition can achieve and the motion should be withdrawn.

Child Abuse Inquiry

John Hemming Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Our initial consideration of potential candidates did involve looking more widely than the United Kingdom, and I should be happy to repeat that process. It should be borne in mind that it is not only the United Kingdom that has seen examples of child abuse of this sort. If we do look more widely, we must be careful to ensure that individuals will again be able to have the confidence of survivors.

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

Leah McGrath Goodman, an American journalist, was banned from entering the country by the UK Border Agency, as a result of which she was prevented from investigating child abuse in Jersey. The allegations involved a senior UK politician. I hear what the Home Secretary says about terms of reference, but the terms of reference would exclude investigation of an issue that falls into two jurisdictions. Why, for instance, was Leah McGrath Goodman arrested at Heathrow airport recently? Will the Home Secretary look carefully at such issues, which are evidence of the way in which things have been covered up during the present decade?

[Mrs May]

I know that my hon. Friend has long campaigned for events that took place in Jersey to be included in any inquiry that is held. As I explained earlier, I will take steps to ensure that no work that is done by the inquiry into matters in Jersey is lost to this inquiry, if it is relevant to this inquiry, and that no one falls through the cracks. As for the case of the journalist coming through the border, I was not aware of it, but if my hon. Friend writes to me about it, I will respond.

Child Sex Abuse (Rotherham)

John Hemming Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

The Jay report confirmed that some girls who had been taken into care for their own protection actually received worse protection in care. The independent reviewing officer, whose job is to protect children in care, is an employee of the same local authority and therefore not independent. Will the Government consider backing my private Member’s Bill, which seeks to establish a remedy for children in care so that they can be protected from maltreatment in the care system?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point and, if I may, I will take it away and discuss it with the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. It is bad enough when agencies such as the council and the police fail to take seriously the concerns of young people, but it is even more concerning when those young people are in the care of the local authority itself and have become the victims of these crimes as a result of dereliction of duty. I will take my hon. Friend’s point away.

Child Abuse

John Hemming Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I recognise the right hon. Gentleman’s concern to ensure that as much information as possible is made available to the House on these matters. We have seen action by industry, but we continue to talk to industry about how these issues can be addressed. We will be represented on the UK-US taskforce by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims, whom I welcome to his new position in the Home Office. We are working very closely with industry. It is important to ensure that industry is able to undertake the tasks that we wish it to. It is doing that, but we want to work further with industry to ensure that we are getting the blocking and the filtering absolutely right, so that we can have the maximum impact.

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

Some of the more serious historic allegations relate to children who were in care at the time of the event. In Jersey, there are allegations that children did not survive to their adulthood to make complaints. In England, the Government still do not record what happens when children disappear from care, using the record “Leaving care for other reasons”. Will the Secretary of State talk to her colleagues in the Department for Education about whether we can record when children disappear from care and why they disappear, so that we can audit the process and ensure that children are safe in care today?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend has raised a very important point about how children in care have been, I think in too many cases, failed by the state over the years. This is not an area where the state can have any real confidence. We should, frankly, look back at what has happened to a number of children in care with deep concern. I will certainly take my hon. Friend’s point up with the Department for Education—and also with the Department for Communities and Local Government, because of local authorities’ responsibility.

Justice and Home Affairs Opt-out

John Hemming Excerpts

Monday 7th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Raab]

Of course it could be reached. I was a Foreign Office lawyer for six years. I would love to obsess, fixate and opine on all the legal niceties, but this is about political will. Ultimately, these issues come down to political will.

Many Members have quoted ACPO’s submission on the importance of the European arrest warrant. I accept that it has been very clear about that. However, as I said earlier, it has not been able to assess how many fugitives would go free if we did not opt back in to the European arrest warrant, but went down an alternative route. That is the Achilles heel in its argument. In fairness to ACPO, if one reads on from the statement that the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) read out, it says:

“That said, extradition did exist before 2004 and so it could operate without it”—

that is, without the European arrest warrant—

“as it does with non-EU states.”

The idea that we would face a cliff edge and that fugitives would go free left, right and centre—we have the tabloid scare stories about terrorist suspects and paedophiles—is nonsense. The only way in which that could happen would be if the EU was prepared to cut off its nose to spite its face and refuse to have any extradition relations with us at all. What possible interest would it have in doing that?

I listened carefully to the police evidence, as I think has been borne out by my comments today. I also want to look at the non-police evidence. Fair Trials International has given evidence at length about the miscarriages of justice that have taken place. The appalling miscarriage of justice in the Andrew Symeou case, in terms of both the incompetence of the Greek system and the gruesome jail conditions that he ended up in, are passed by very glibly by those who suggest that we should opt straight back in or that we should opt back in and then somehow reform the system without having the leverage that we have now.

I have the constituency case of Colin Dines, who is subject to a European arrest warrant that alleges his involvement in a mass telecoms fraud involving the Mafia back in Italy. No evidence has been presented of his links to that crime. No attempt has been made to come to the UK to interview him, to get his side of the story or to see if the matter can be straightened out. In the process, with the stress and the strain, he has suffered a stroke, only to find out that the case is crumbling and that the substantive charges look very likely to be dropped or, at least, that a face-saving way out will be found by the Italian authorities. There are other cases, such as those of Edmond Arapi and Deborah Dark.

I respect the Liberal Democrat position on the European arrest warrant, but when I heard the Deputy Prime Minister, in the Farage-Clegg debate, dismissing the Symeou case as “fantasy”, it was deeply disappointing. It was right that he subsequently corrected his position on the Symeou case. As someone who has met the family of Mr Symeou and the other victims to whom I have referred and who still sees the Dines family, who continue to suffer from the European arrest warrant, I find the glib dismissal of a civil liberties issue by the Liberal Democrats difficult to reconcile with their supposed advocacy of British freedom.

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Raab]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will correct that impression.

[John Hemming]

I just want to say that I do have concerns about the individual cases involving the European arrest warrant.

[Mr Raab]

I am glad that I took that intervention. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.

We need to work out the best way to reform the European arrest warrant through national legislation and by renegotiating the EU framework decision or, better still, by opting out and pursuing a bilateral treaty, which would mean that the British Supreme Court had the last word on the fate of British citizens. We ought to have a sensible debate about all of that.

I note that the Liberal Democrats’ answer to the problems of the European arrest warrant is another EU directive on the rights of the accused. A Liberal Democrat would say that, the answer to defects in EU law is always more EU law, but we must consider the systemic lack of judicial capacity and the lack of standards in some countries—I have mentioned Italy and Greece, which are not new EU member states, so heaven help people if they end up in the Romanian or Bulgarian justice systems or, worse still, in one of their jails. I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, but I do not understand how swiftly the Liberal Democrats have sold the freedom and civil liberties of British citizens because of their slavish adherence to EU dogma and the idea that ever more EU integration must be a good thing. We should not accept the Faustian bargain whereby we sacrifice a few British citizens to lock up a few extra criminals. That is not my idea of British justice. It is not what millions in this country fought for in world wars. It is not the tradition of this country dating back to Magna Carta.

We have options—that is critical—whether falling back on the Council of Europe conventions, which are not foolproof, or taking advantage of the legal personality of the EU to negotiate bespoke legal arrangements that do not fall within the ECJ jurisdiction. Hon. Members have referred to transitional arrangements, which could buy us some time. All of those are the common-sense middle ground we should be aiming for. There is absolutely no reason why a single serious criminal fugitive would go free if we considered such arrangements. To suggest otherwise is ridiculous scaremongering.

I have one final point to make on the European arrest warrant. There are reports in The Daily Telegraph today that Spain and France will not even countenance Britain adopting a proportionality test in UK law, even though the framework decision allows that. What chance would we have of renegotiating the framework decision after we opt in if they object to that now? Our leverage is at this point in time. We should take full advantage of it to achieve the best deal for British citizens.

The case I want to make is for operational co-operation with our EU friends without ceding democratic control. Britain has—by far, overall—the finest intelligence and law enforcement assets in the EU. The EU has legal personality, so it is much easier to negotiate justice and home affairs agreements. I have asked parliamentary questions on this. The EU has countless, by which I mean a good 10 or dozen, justice and home affairs international agreements with third countries. We have the precedent of Frontex—we are not a full member but co-operate on an administrative basis, which works incredibly well. We need to avoid the creeping supra-nationalism of the EU in justice and home affairs.

For all the talk of EU justice and home affairs safeguarding British law enforcement, the raw fact is that EU JHA has severely undermined our power to protect the British public by removing or deporting serious criminals. That will only get worse in the years ahead.

Immigration Bill

John Hemming Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

As I made absolutely clear, if somebody was in a position to acquire other citizenship, I would expect them to attempt to do so. As I indicated earlier, there may be circumstances in which somebody remains stateless, in which case our international obligations to those who are stateless would kick in, and we would abide by them.

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

I have spent some time looking at cases in which people have been deprived of citizenship, many of whom were abroad. Does the Home Secretary agree that it is reasonable for the judicial review clock to start ticking at the point when the person affected becomes aware that such a decision has been taken rather at the time when it is taken? There is a three-month limit on applying for judicial review of the decision, and to allow proper consideration that clock should start ticking when the person in question becomes aware of it.

[Mrs May]

I will look at my hon. Friend’s point. Obviously there is a process whereby somebody is informed of a decision once it has been taken. I will check the timetable for judicial review and come back to him on it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hanson]

The principle is the deprivation of the citizenship of individuals who are naturalised, and that might be a positive thing, but we would need to consider it in detail. We have only had 24 hours. I want to consider the legal implications, as well as the issues raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras. We need to look at judicial oversight and when and how notice should be given. We also need to look at what rights individuals have to appeal and what happens if someone is in another state when the decision is taken. What should be the responsibility and response of that other state? What should happen to the family? These are important issues which we need to cogitate and reflect on, and to return to in another place.

[John Hemming]

I have looked at cases of people who have had their citizenship withdrawn while they have been out of the country, and there is a big issue about people becoming aware of a decision to remove their citizenship and having an opportunity to challenge it. Does the shadow Minister accept that although his objective is an improved procedural protection, his proposal runs the risk, in certain circumstances, of reducing it, because by the time someone finds out about a decision, the matter will have already gone to court, on an ex parte basis, and a decision will already have been taken? Perhaps it would be better left to judicial review, with the person having an opportunity to challenge a decision when they become aware of it.

[Mr Hanson]

My objective is the same, I think, as the Home Secretary’s, which is to protect the British people from potential terrorist activity at home and abroad. That is a key joint objective.

New clause 18 raises complex issues on which a range of individuals will have a view, but on which there has been no consultation outside the House. Let us look at the manuscript amendments and consider whether we could tighten up the process so that we are all content, and we will reserve judgment until we reach another place, at which point I hope we can reach a conclusion that meets our objectives.

Immigration Bill

John Hemming Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Pamela Nash]

I thank the Minister for that intervention. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) was extremely animated and angry earlier—understandably so—about some of the aspects of the Bill, but when I asked about the SNP’s position, he simply replied that he remained to be convinced, instead of saying that it opposed it. I ask the Minister to provide some clarity about the discussions and agreements reached with the Scottish Government and the devolved Administrations in Wales and Northern Ireland. What impact assessment has been conducted on the cross-border issues that the Bill could bring about?

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

Obviously there are countries outside the EEA with which we do not have reciprocal arrangements. On a point of principle, is the hon. Lady of the view that if someone visits from those countries we should provide them with free health care—or perhaps only in Scotland?

[Pamela Nash]

I would always advocate that the NHS should be free at the point of need—

[John Hemming]

Is the hon. Lady saying that the NHS should be free to people from around the world, so that they can visit here and have free health care, regardless of whether they make any contribution towards it?

[Pamela Nash]

As I said, I am disappointed at the lack of clarity on the details, so I do not feel able to say if I am—

[John Hemming]

rose—

[Pamela Nash]

Sorry, does the hon. Gentleman want to intervene?

[John Hemming]

I am asking the hon. Lady for her view.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Mr Hemming, sit down. This is not a personal discussion between you and Pamela Nash of the points you might want to make later. May we have a bit of order? Pamela Nash, you have the Floor. If you give way to John Hemming, could you indicate accordingly, so that I can call him?

Crime and Courts Bill [Lords]

John Hemming Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

There are some very good things in this Bill, but while I declare my interest in justice for families and concern about miscarriages of justice in the family courts, I have to say that it is also a missed opportunity. Lord Bingham’s excellent book “The Rule of Law” identifies eight principles for the rule of law. The first two are that the law should be accessible and not depend upon judicial discretion. That underlines that law should be comprehensible to non-lawyers and hence it should be possible to identify miscarriages of justice even when appeals are not allowed by the Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal should not be seen as having a form of papal infallibility.

My academic qualifications are in science rather than law, and that is where my concern about family court proceedings comes from. Rachel Pullen’s case—I recently assisted her to send it to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights—is a perfect example of that. She was deemed on the basis of a single expert report to have a significant learning disability and not to have the capacity to instruct a solicitor. I am, however, lucky enough to have had access to a second expert report, the comments of her GP and an IQ assessment for employment, and to have met her. All those things point to the original expert being plainly wrong. However, the case has been considered by the county court, the Court of Appeal, the House of Lords Judicial Committee and the initial Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights without that being picked up.

Sadly, that case is not unique. I have spoken previously in Westminster Hall on 21 March—at column 244WH—about other people whose mental capacity has been wrongly removed from them and I will not repeat those details now. If a case can travel through the appellate system to Strasbourg without the scientific facts being properly determined or even open to challenge, there is a serious problem.

A more recent case is unique because the mother kept her capacity, having faced its removal after an allegation of querulous paranoia by her barrister. She had been asked to spend £3,880 on an expert’s fee, even though the NHS had previously found no diagnosable conditions and her employer stated that she seemed fine. Nevertheless, she managed to win the battle as litigant in person with the assistance of a McKenzie friend. That does, however, raise serious questions about equality of arms. Nothing in the Bill will improve the situation when many people have their capacity wrongly removed or improve the quality and accountability of scientific expert evidence. There are two possible solutions: a Daubert procedure would assist for a case-by-case review, while allowing academic access to secret proceedings, as I suggested in my family justice private Member’s Bill, would provide a level of quality control currently lacking.

The proposal in the Bill to allow proceedings to be broadcast could help to improve the integrity of the legal system. Early-day motion 536 refers to a case heard on 2 May. Initially, the McKenzie friend who assisted the mother in that appeal told me it had been allowed, but after I chased it for six weeks’, a transcript was found stating that it had been lost, which caused me concern as I had been told that it had been allowed. I therefore wrote to the court in July requesting that I be allowed to listen to the official recording, but I got no response.

Hence in October I wrote to the Minister. I then had a response from both the Court and the Minister saying that the rules had been changed and that I could not now listen to the hearing. I wrote asking for the reasons, and it was only in late December that I was told by the judicial office that the Judicial Executive Board had decided not to allow people to listen to official recordings. Its argument was that in theory a recording in open court could include legally privileged material. I would argue that someone speaking in open court who knows that everything is being recorded would not expect the conditions needed for privilege. The judicial office has also said that the JEB is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, and hence we have no idea who participated in the meeting that made this decision or when it was taken.

To me that looks like a cover-up, but we do not know. If it is, we need to know who was involved, how high it went and why. It is puzzling that people have failed to say when this rule change happened. If the pronouncement of the judgment was broadcast, under clause 28, we would have an independent copy of the hearing and would be able to check why there was a discrepancy between the report of the hearing and the official transcript. Another thing missing from the Bill is a proposal to make the JEB clearly subject to the Freedom of Information Act. It is arguably caught by the Judicial Studies Board being subject to FOI, but that is not made explicit in the Act.

The difficulty in obtaining transcripts of judgments is an important problem that is causing difficulties in ensuring that the appellate system operates properly. There were two cases in Birmingham recently where there was no transcript on the file. It took almost three months to obtain the transcript in one of these cases. The Bill does nothing about this. Furthermore, an appeal from the family proceedings court to the county court can exhaust domestic proceedings. That might be good for anyone wishing to take a case to Europe, but it raises a further question about the integrity of the legal system if the Court of Appeal cannot look at something before it leaves the domestic jurisdiction. The Bill, in creating a single family court, might deal with this, but it is a matter of detail that needs to be sorted out.

I have helped litigants in person with three cases that involved appeals in the Court of Appeal where the appeal was allowed. I will not go into the details, because I do not have time, but all the appeals were allowed. One can have no certainty that any of these appeals would have gone before the Court without my involvement, and I am not a lawyer. I see many cases that I think would win appeals, but it is simply the procedural complications of getting the paperwork together, including access to the original case files and judgments, that prevents this.

I am also aware of a number of cases where a party is frightened to appeal because they are likely to face the judge in the Court of First Instance again and fear the use of judicial discretion to punish them for appealing. To me, appeals that have the potential to be allowed but which are not heard are miscarriages of justice just as much as the case referred to in early-day motion 835—a case where the parents were banned from talking to the media in any way. The Bill does nothing to deal with any of those situations.

The Bill does deal with conflicts of interest relating to judges—in paragraph 8 of schedule 9—but it remains the case that a firm of solicitors can act for parents in one case against a local authority and act for the same local authority in a second case, even with the same individual solicitor doing the work. That is a clear conflict of interest and gives rise to what is known as repeat player prejudice. I have seen a number of cases where this conflict of interest appears to have had an effect on the advice given and the consequent outcome for parents. A social worker previously told me how he had colluded with parents’ solicitors to ensure that the parents lost. However, this conflict of interest appears to be tolerated by the system, and the Bill proposes no modification.

The House of Commons often does not manage to scrutinise proposals effectively where there is not a proper party or adversarial division. This, even if I rushed my speech, is one of those areas.