Family Justice (Transparency, Accountability and Cost of Living) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 9:34 am on 26 October 2012.

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Photo of John Hemming John Hemming Liberal Democrat, Birmingham, Yardley 9:34, 26 October 2012

The hon. Gentleman is right that there is too often an element of arbitrary power. The difficulty flows from insufficient academic scrutiny of the whole process—in other words, things are left to the discretion of individual practitioners, all of whom have their individual attitudes. When someone moves from one practitioner to another, the arbitrary power will often be exercised in a different way. I spoke about this to Professor Sue White, a professor of social work at Birmingham university. She is concerned about the change in practice that does not seem to be evidence-driven, but she is not allowed access to family court proceedings unless she is actually involved in the individual case. The ability to do proper peer-reviewed research on the decisions taken and what is happening on the ground is simply not there. The system just goes on.

I try to look at the reports from a scientific point of view, and find that some of them do not hold water. As I said, Professor Jane Ireland’s work pointed out that two-thirds of the reports she looked at were either poor or very poor, which is not adequate for the purpose of making life-changing decisions. That lack of intellectual rigour leads to arbitrary power, as the hon. Member for

Wycombe (Steve Baker) says. The introduction of intellectual rigour would make that go away and get us back to the rule of law rather than some people having massive discretion. At the moment, we do not have the rule of law setting out what should happen in these situations. That is what gives rise to many different problems in many different areas.