Lord Justice Wall calls for media access to family courts

Lord Justice Wall found it unacceptable that conscientious judges and magistrates up and down the country, doing their best, with inadequate resources and under heavy pressure of work to make difficult decisions in the best interests of children, should be accused of administering "secret" justice. He reminded his audience that it was Parliament, not the courts, which imposed the restrictions contained in section 97 of the Children Act 1989 and section 12 of the Administration of Justice Act. The judicial task was to interpret and apply those statutes, and that is what the judiciary had conscientiously done.

Lord Justice Wall was in favour of giving the media - and in practice that meant the press - access to family proceedings, provided that there were clear ground rules about what they can and cannot report and the extent to which, if at all, they are to be at liberty when reporting the proceedings, to identify the parties, and, in particular, the children concerned.