![\"family](\"http:\/\/www.ldaily.ua\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/family-court.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/a>Outlining a Ukip policy paper on opening up the family courts, the Clacton MP said a \u201cjuggernaut\u201d of legal process currently leads to \u201coutrageous injustices\u201d and is calling for greater sensitivity and openness in the courts system.<\/p>\n\nCarswell said: \u201cThere is a scandal at the moment. Once the legal process starts it is like a juggernaut and it breaks up families. Most of the time that is justified but some of the time it is not.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Carswell, who is keen to broaden Ukip\u2019s policies beyond its opposition to Britain\u2019s membership of the EU, was speaking as the party published a policy document recommending a series of reforms to open up the family courts. The paper, written by Carswell and Duncan Simpson, the deputy director of Ukip\u2019s parliamentary research unit, calls for:<\/p>\n
\n
- More use of special guardianship orders to allow grandparents to take over the care of a child.<\/li>\n
- The opening up of placement and adoption order proceedings to the media on the same basis as other family law proceedings.<\/li>\n
- A requirement that all judgments be published, except where the presiding judge seeks and obtains a contrary order from the president of the high court family division.<\/li>\n
- The media to be allowed access to expert reports on an anonymised basis with restrictions enforced only in the most exceptional cases.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\nCarswell said: \u201cWe feel very strongly that the secrecy in the family courts is leading to some outrageous injustices. It\u2019s the big cartel courts and the legal profession and the social workers riding roughshod against ordinary people. We think common sense is needed to address this. That means more openness in the family courts.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Ukip\u2019s only MP suggested that his reforms would have prevented the heartache suffered by Karissa Cox and Peter Butler, who lost custody of their child after being wrongly accused of abuse. The child was put up for adoption after the couple took their baby to hospital after the six-week-old started bleeding from its mouth. Staff at the hospital noticed bruising on the baby, prompting the authorities to take the child into care and to charge the parents with child cruelty.<\/p>\n
The parents were cleared this month, by which time the child had been adopted. \u201cIf our reforms had been in place that case could not have happened,\u201d Carswell said.<\/p>\n
The Ukip MP said he accepted that in many disputed cases children need to be taken into care or adopted against the wishes of the parents. \u201cI am not saying it is wrong for the state to forcefully break up a family. There are times when it has to do that”.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cBut at least the evidence should be tested in an open court. At least there should be some opportunity for people to know what it is they are being accused of … and at least the people who are preparing the evidence ought to have met the people they are giving evidence about.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Carswell, who has\u00a0a strained relationship with the Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, said the policy paper showed how he was broadening the party\u2019s interests. The MP launched the policy document with his party ally\u00a0Suzanne Evans\u00a0and the former Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming, who has campaigned on adoption issues.<\/p>\n
\nCarswell said: \u201cPeople might say: \u2018Hang on, Ukip doesn\u2019t normally spend a lot of time talking about adoptions and the family courts. Well, actually \u2026 I can\u2019t think of another example where the big powerful system is ignoring ordinary people to such an extent. This is exactly the sort of area Ukip should make a priority.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":16642,"menu_order":0,"template":"","newscat":[9],"newstag":[],"issues":[],"class_list":["post-16641","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","newscat-novosti"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/16641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"newscat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newscat?post=16641"},{"taxonomy":"newstag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newstag?post=16641"},{"taxonomy":"issues","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issues?post=16641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}