AN ORGANISED CONSPIRACY

AN ORGANISED CONSPIRACY

 http://www.mensaid.com/flr.htm

   CONFIDENTIALITY
   – & -
   THE SECRET HISTORY of FAMILY LAW REFORM

   The ending of confidentiality in the family courts is a welcome
forward step. But, of itself, the removal of confidentiality does not
alter anything. Its effect is to allow things which are unaltered (the
existing legal system) to be observed. Legal process, legal
institutions and case outcomes will remain unchanged. In theory, their
functioning will be ‘revealed’; in practice, if critics of the system
are right, the main observable shift will be from a system which
cannot be understood because it cannot be seen, to a system which can
be seen – but still cannot be understood , because it borders on the
incomprehensible. This vista may in due course provide a basis for a
more-informed debate. Eventually the plans announced by Ms Harman
might become a prelude to the elaboration of constructive proposals.

   Thereafter, perhaps work might start – on a problem which has
already been solved.

   The seminal reforms, which everyone seeks, have already been
devised, agreed, announced, funded – and passed for implementation by
the Government in 2003. They still lie fallow.

   These same reforms would already have introduced the long-overdue
new model for the family courts. These measures, endorsed by the legal
profession at senior level and approved by the Government, were killed
in Whitehall without Ministerial knowledge. The blueprint remains in
existence – fully articulated, fully-costed, fully-detailed and
fully-endorsed, with an agreed management team geared to deliver the
requisite procedural changes within nine months from start-up.

   The suborning of this agreed professional reform is documented,
beyond gainsay, in the professional journals; in the broadsheets; in
Ministerial correspondence; in judicial pronouncements; in
departmental records, letters and email; and in Hansard. Perhaps Ms
Harman should be told.

   DIVIDED RESPONSIBILITIES

   How could a programme of orderly change supported by the High
Court judiciary and endorsed by the Government simply ‘go missing’ in
Whitehall? The June 2004 Green Paper, Parental Separation, expressly
announced these reforms and the underlying principles on which they
were based. Parliamentary time was set aside for the Children and
Adoption Bill 2005 to enact them.

   But, without Ministers knowing, the Green Paper had been subverted
before it was published. The Children and Adoption Act 2006, designed
to deliver the new procedural machinery, was stillborn. The meaures it
was intended to enact had been killed by Whitehall officials three
years before.

   The history of this misadventure is bound up in the fate of the
seminal NATC Early Interventions pilot project. On 8 October 2003 the
detailed proposals for this project were submitted to Whitehall, after
8 years in development, on a wave of unprecedented professional
support. As recited in Family Law 835 (November 2004) the project had
the written approval of the President, High Court Family judiciary,
the Family Law Bar Association, leading lawyers, parenting groups and
- vitally – the leading child development consultants. It was no
surprise that, in October ‘03, the NATC EI project received
Ministerial approval from the DCA’s Lord Filkin. The funds to
implement this flagship project were located in the DfES. EI was
passed to the DfES for implementation.

   A DEPARTMENT OUT OF CONTROL ?

   In accordance with usual timescales, the inaugural meeting of the
DfES Design Team to process the new measures happened some five months
later, on 17 March 2004. The Team’s chair was Mavis Maclean CBE. It
was at this stage that finely-honed NATC EI template should have been
translated into institutional practice.

   But, by that stage, the EI reform had already been utterly
destroyed. Work on the EI project was stopped before it started. The
project was stifled pre-birth. Neither Mavis Maclean nor (with a
single exception) anyone else on the Government’s Design Team had
significant knowledge of the NATC EI project. The Design Team was not
told about it. Scrutiny of the 17 March 2004 minutes confirms the NATC
Early Interventions project was not mentioned – then or later. Nor was
the NATC. Nor was the Early Interventions project. The EI project was
never discussed. The Design Team jettisoned 8 years of specialist
development work, without being aware of it, starting its labours
anew, from scratch, on a blank sheet of paper. On 19 April ‘04 it
emerged that the NATC EI documentation had been ‘mislaid’ by the DfES
before the Design Team met. On 29 April ‘04 it transpired that the EI
documentation was never read.

   Appointments to the DfES Design Team had been on the basis of
hand-picked ignorance of the NATC EI principles. But, since EI was
then a dominant topic in family law, this meant that those on the DfES
Design Team knew little of the practicalities of family law
litigation. The Design Team’s novices had their work cut out merely to
arrive at an approximate understanding of what the existing legal
system was – and, in due course, that was re-rolled out, instead, as
the finished project. This was the misbegotten Family Resolutions
project interposed for EI. Since this new Family Resolutions system
was all but an identical to the existing legal system, in proportion
as it was rolled out, Family Resolutions disappeared.

   NEW ALCHEMY: GOLD INTO BASE METAL

   Two officials were involved in the Whitehall process of
substitution, one from CAFCASS (a Mr Brian Kirby) and the other a DFES
“child protection” specialist (a Mr Bruce Clark). The latter had sole
charge of the EI project in Whitehall, within the DfES, during the
crucial period from October ‘03 to March ‘04 – when EI went in, and
Family Resolutions started to come out. This individual knew nothing
of significance about Private Law family law disputes. He assumed that
the law was what everyone would like it to be, which is the opposite
of what it actually is. To his DfES way of thinking (and he declined
advice) it followed that the framework which the NATC EI project would
have implemented was already in force. So the EI project was
superfluous. And, by the same token, the benefits of the EI project
could be announced (without the trouble of actually doing anything) as
ground-already-made-good: as a platform on which the other Green Paper
proposals could be built. These measures, similarly founded on
nothing, have also disappeared along with the DfES flagship of Family
Resolutions itself.

   Mr Clark applied a well-worn Whitehall adage: ‘It is truth
universally acknowledged that the best way to take control of a
project is to get rid of anyone who knows anything about it’. In order
to achieve this own-goal, Mr Clark dispensed with the EI project
originators and anyone who had meaningful involvement with it. He set
up the Mavis Maclean’s uncomprehending Design Team to have a go at
‘whatever the project was’ in this area. This is a direct quote. He
colluded with CAFCASS to swap EI for the Fam Res spoiler wanted by
CAFCASS. But ‘Family Resolutions’ was not a project. It existed merely
as a two-word name. It was a CAFCASS idea – to start thinking of an
idea – to do something. It is probable the Fam Res proposal had not
generated one side of A4 prior to its substitution as the official
‘reform’ project slated for national roll-out.

   An awkward problem throughout the process of substitution, from
October ‘03 up until the project’s launch and incipient demise as
Family Resolutions in September ‘04, was that the approved project was
actually EI. For months the lead civil servant, repeatedly put to the
point, issued misstatements and false assurances to Ministers and
legal professionals that he was still progressing the measures and
principles in the NATC EI project. He said that the same project was
being carried forward: only the name (‘Family Resolutions’) had been
changed. These same assurances were relayed by Ministers to the House
and to the Press. Both were misled. The mistake was embodied in the
June 2004 Green Paper. Family Resolutions, which was never more than a
spoiler, duely sank without trace at the moment of launch. Mr Bruce
Clark (who seems to have previously indulged in a similar escapade
relating to another family law sector) was later subject to an
‘internal investigation’ by his Permanent Secretary, Sir David
Normington, who cleared him of all wrong-doing on 19 September
2005[1].

   THE FUTURE ?

   The upshot of these events is that both departments – the DCA and
the DfES – are now unsighted. When the DCA passed the NATC EI project
to the DfES in late 2003, it relinquished control over proposals to
remodel the family court system – so much so, that DCA officials have
yet to hear, for instance, that Family Resolutions has failed. For
three years now, the DCA has countered representations on the EI/Fam
Res fiasco with the response that it is not worth letting DCA
Ministers (for instance, Harriet Harman) know about it. Family court
reform is now a DfES responsibility.

   But the DfES was never interested in the workings of the family
courts. It is not something it knows about. Its officials do know what
happened to Fam Res and EI, but to put things right would be to admit
that things have gone wrong. The upshot is a ‘closed-ranks’ DfES
strategy to prevent the restarting of useful work. Departmental
damage-limitation succeeded to the extent that the next DfES Minister
(there have been several) had no inkling that anything was wrong until
he first presented the Children and Adoption Bill to Parliament on 12
October 2005. He did not know that his Bill had been voided of
significance three years before by the DfES destruction of the EI
project.

   Thereafter, Whitehall-funded research (RR720) on the history of
the Family Resolution debacle, conducted by the obliging Professor
Trinder, similarly contrived to turn a blind eye. The Constitutional
Affairs Committee, which deliberated on Section 8 reforms and the fate
of the NATC EI project from Oct ‘04 to February ‘05, was likewise
stage-managed by Whitehall staffers. The prime witness (the NATC) was
not called. The DfES enterprise to obliterate the prospect of useful
change in the family courts engineered by Mr Clark (perhaps inspired
principally by ignorance, albeit self imposed) has at this writing
been entirely successful.

   The problem of ‘what to do next’ is rather delicate. The wheel,
after all, has already been invented. There is no pressing need to
waste decades, and billions of pounds, trying to re-invent family law
reform or tinker at the margins. A modest first step may be to put
Harriet Harman in the picture. Everything above will be news to her.

   12 October 2006 – Consensus

   This history of dire mismanagement is explained away on various
conflicting grounds. All are bogus. First, it is said that Fam Res is
an ‘adaptation’ of the NATC EI project. This is untrue. The two
projects are opposites. Second, that the NATC project was replaced
after a period of ‘consideration’. But the EI project was never
considered. The papers were merely thrown away. Third, that the EI
project was not designed for the British judicature. But it was
designed for, by and with, British legal experts and British judges.
Fourth, that the EI project never existed. Fifth, an odd red herring,
called the ‘Florida project’, is wheeled into uncertain play. But
there was no Florida project. And so on