Journalist ban’ judge under fire. - Daily Mail - Steven Doughty

- 11 January 2006;Daily Mail

Article from the Daily Mail, 1st November 2006.

"Journalist ban’ judge under fire. Steven Doughty, Social Affairs Correspondent

A senior judge who called for powers to ban newspapers such as the Daily Mail from court hearings ran into a storm of criticism from lawyers and MPs yesterday.

Lord Justice Wall was accused of trying to limit public scrutiny of the troubled family court system. Critics warned his proposals could destroy the system altogether.

It follows a speech in which he said judges should have the right to expel from the family courts any journalist whose newspaper they considered "irresponsible’.

Lord Justice Wall singled out the Daily Mail’s coverage of a family case, which he said had been tendentious and untrue.

The Daily Mail maintains its reporting of the case – in which two well looked-after children were removed from their parents because their mother was felt to not have the intellectual capacity to look after them – was entirely accurate.

Ministers intend to allow reporting of the family courts, which decide divorce settlements and child custody, adoption and care cases, because of wide public mistrust of their decisions. But Lord Justice Wall’s plan would give judges the power to choose which journalists are allowed in.

Yesterday, prominent family law solicitor – whose sister, Constitutional Affairs Minister Harriet Harman, is drawing up the reforms – said: "I think the media has an important role to place in identifying and putting right miscarriages of justice. There is a stoking up of an unnecessary fear of what the media will do.’

Duncan Lamont, partner at City law firm Charles Russell, said: "You cannot allow one judge’s subjective viewpoint of one newspaper’s coverage of one case to destroy the system. The more scrutiny of the courts the better.’

Tory MP Andrew Rosindell, who was prevented from making public a family case in his Essex constituency, said: "It is very strange that just at the time we have the prospect of new laws to put this right comes the plan for the press to be banned on the whim of any particular judge.’