Thread by @louisetickle

I am pretty fed up to have been told today that the Transparency Review oral evidence is going to be heard behind closed doors.

This is the Review instigated by the President of the family division of the high court examining whether the family justice system should be more transparent in its workings - workings that have come in for sustained criticism for years. Workings that go on behind closed doors.

I discovered, completely by chance, at the end of last week, that the panel the President had convened would be taking oral evidence on the issues that arise when an arm of the stage takes draconian decisions in secret which change people's lives forever.

So I emailed the Judicial Office press office to ask what arrangements had been made for these oral evidence sessions to be seen and followed as they happened.

Today I got this in response: "The Transparency Review Panel will conduct the first of three oral evidence sessions this week. These sessions will be recorded either digitally or with minutes, following consultation with each participant...

"A record of each evidence session, is anticipated to be available publicly following completion of the review. Further details will follow." This is hardly the epitome of transparency, and there is simply no justification for it.

The reason the family court system hears cases in private is to protect children's privacy. There can be no reason for shrouding the a) date b) names of people giving evidence c) proceedings of any Review into transparency in this kind of opaque process.

The hearings should have been publicised so that those who are interested, and who may have given written evidence, could know they were scheduled.

Offering anything other than a live stream of oral evidence, or at the very least, a later recording (checked in case any matters subject to statutory restriction had been aired) or a full transcript, is totally wrong.

The idea that a 'minute' could possibly be adequate is a joke.

There is no firm commitment at all to *any* record of what goes on contained in the words "anticipated to be available".

This is just... awful. It confirms me in the view I try very hard to resist - ie that the family justice system's reliance of doing business in private is so deeply ingrained that it has become institutionally blind to the ludicrousness of a Transparency Review held in secret.