Welcome to the Roundup, where we correct, clarify and comment on media reports of family law, explain and comment on published family court judgments, and highlight other transparency news.
MEDIA COVERAGE OF FAMILY LAW, TRANSPARENCY etc
The Times (£) reported that Twins found to have different fathers, in UK’s first recorded case (2 May 2026). This was about a pair of twin sisters who took DNA tests at home after years of doubt about the identity of the man they had been told was their father, only to find that they had two different fathers. It was apparently the first such case to be recorded in Britain, though such cases have been documented elsewhere. According to the report, Allan Pacey, professor of something called andrology at the University of Manchester, said he had never encountered a similar case in more than three decades working in reproductive health, and that ‘In order for this to happen the woman has to ovulate two eggs within the same cycle, quite a rare event in itself, and she will have to have sexual intercourse with two men within the same 12 to 24-hour period’.
The Observer published How the MoD tried to cover up domestic abuse by a special forces soldier (3 May 2026), which was a piece by Louise Tickle about some of the difficulties she faced in reporting a case that the military authorities had tried to keep out of the public eye. We wrote a separate blog post on it here.
The BBC had a grim report about Couple jailed over death of four-year-old boy (8 May 2026). A man who killed his ex-girlfriend’s young son was jailed for 18 years and the child’s mother was also imprisoned for failing to prevent the abuse that led to his death. The child was beaten over several months, with the pair lying to family and friends that he was always ‘falling off things and bumping into things’.
The Times reported that Britain’s ‘first gay dad through surrogacy’ charged with rape (8 May 2026). This was a report of a pending trial, in which one of Britain’s first gay fathers to become a parent through a surrogate mother ‘strenuously denied’ targeting and grooming young men for sexual exploitation. According to Essex Police, the two men are due to appear at Chelmsford Crown Court on 5 June and will remain in custody until then; but the police have also charged two more men in connection with the same investigation.
The Guardian reported that Barrister says ‘dead woman was put on trial’ after husband cleared of manslaughter (9 May 2026) which appeared to discuss, or at any rate report, criticism (by another barrister not involved in the case) of the conduct of a defence barrister’s conduct of a criminal trial in the case of a man acquitted of manslaughter, coercive and controlling behaviour and two counts of rape against his now deceased wife, following her suicide. Prior to her death she had made allegations against her husband. These, relied on by the crown, were challenged by the defence barrister, in terms which were the subject of the reported comments. But without seeing the full transcript of the trial it seems difficult to comment, and unwise to do so, so we say no more.
The Times reported that Nanny looking after baby who died has been working for 20 years (10 May 2026). This was about a night nanny in whose care an eight-week-old boy died after ‘probably’ being given an antihistamine to sedate him in the hours before his death. The coroner Professor Fiona Wilcox, had initially not named the nanny, Sandra Davidson, in a Prevention of Future Deaths (PFD) report, but in response to a letter from The Times, the Inner West London coroner’s court said the senior coroner recognised the relevance of the open justice principle and the significant public interest arising from the court’s conclusions and findings in the PFD report, and in that context named the nanny.
The Law Society Gazette reported that Family solicitor who hired private investigator fined £17,500 (11 May 2026). The solicitor in question hired the gumshoe apparently to find out the address of a litigant in person contrary to their consent and then disclosed the information to his own client. He claimed to have done so on instruction, but while it’s the sort of thing that might happen in Judge Deed or Rumpole fiction, it did not meet with the approval of the Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal, who fined the sole practitioner and urged him to learn from the mistake (which he promised to do).
Family Law Week reported that Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 and Victims and Courts Act 2026 receive Royal Assent with changes for family lawyers (11 May 2026). In regard to the first, the Dept of Education said ‘Alongside tangible cost of living measures to make families’ lives easier, the Act also represents the most ambitious piece of safeguarding legislation in a generation. Thanks to the Act, the most vulnerable children will be better protected by a care system that prioritises child safety over profit, takes action against illegal children’s homes, and gives Ofsted the powers to act against providers that fall short.’ And according to the Ministry of Justice, the second new statute includes provision for ‘Parental responsibility to be restricted for perpetrators of worst child sex offences’, which we wrote about last month.
ITV news reported on Forced adoption scandal: ‘I wasn’t adopted or fostered because I was not white’ (13 May 2026) which focused on the race discriminatory aspects of the scandal in which hundreds of thousands of unmarried mothers were forced to put their children up for adoption between 1949 and 1976, simply because they were unmarried. The report includes quotes from Professor June Thoburn, who was a childcare officer in Oxford City, and later in London at the time, along with testimony from a number of survivors. However, we think the references to legislation in the article may not be entirely accurate.
Bristol Live reported that Judge bans reporting of trial involving six men accused of serious sexual offences (14 May 2026). This was about a forthcoming trial in which the judge had imposed strict reporting restrictions preventing press coverage of much of the case while it was going on, by reason of the risk to its fairness in the context of significant public interest in grooming gangs. The trial was expected to last 12 weeks, and the accused were said to be part of a wider group accused of similar offences, so it might well have been risk to the fairness of other trials yet to begin that prompted the judge’s decision.
The Sunday Times reported on How a loving mother came to cut her baby’s hospital tube (16 May 2026). This was an investigation by Emily Dugan into a case in which a mother was found to have severed the treatment line of her critically ill baby in Great Ormond Street Hospital. The mother, who is autistic, was accused of a rare form of child abuse known as fabricated or induced illness (FII), and both she and the father were arrested, while the future of their baby, referred to as Baby X, was decided by the family court. The conclusion that it had indeed been the mother who had cut the baby’s tube was in a fact-finding judgment by Keehan J, obtained pursuant to an application to the court by Dugan and The Times, but not published (yet) while proceedings concerning Baby X’s future welfare remain the subject of further hearings.
The Times reported that Men using foreign surrogates ‘buy babies’ from women in poverty (18 May 2026). It said data released by the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) showed that between 2019 and 2025 there had been 130 applications in England from single males to become the legal parents of surrogate babies born abroad, while only 23 application related to surrogate mothers in the UK. The stats also showed that the number of single men becoming fathers through surrogacy had tripled between 2019 and 2025. Campaigners pointed to a ‘worrying development’ of single men using commercial surrogacy arrangements to have babies born to foreign women living in poverty, ‘who are put through high risk pregnancies and who do not see their children again’. It also suggested an easy evasion of the prohibition under current legislation of commercial surrogacy in the UK. (Legislative reform recommended by the Law Commission seems to have been shelved.)
BBC Indepth investigated Why illegal children’s homes are being paid up to £2m per child by councils (21 May 2026). The reporter Noel Titheradge said an earlier investigation had ‘led directly to a government ban on the use of unregulated children’s homes in England’ but it was clear that the registered and therefore legal children’s home market was not meeting the demands of a specific cohort of children with complex needs. Councils struggling to accommodate children were still ‘placing more of them than ever in what are now illegal homes – at huge taxpayer expense’. And in around 800 cases in England, councils have turned to unregistered homes, despite the ban on them, according to the Public Accounts Committee. In response, the government was pinning its hopes of fixing the problem on the recently passed Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.
Following on from that story, the Financial Times (£) reported that UK competition watchdog to examine childcare market (24 May 2026) saying Education secretary Bridget Phillipson was about to instruct the Competition and Markets Authority to open an investigation into publicly-funded childcare providers, to see if public authorities were getting good value or, basically, being ripped off. An earlier investigation by the CMA looking at fostering agencies and children’s homes had found that the market was not working well and would not improve without focused policy reform.
The Financial Times opined that Britain is waiting too long to save vulnerable children (30 May 2026). Camilla Cavendish said the scandal of children’s residential care, which was bankrupting some local authorities, was a consequence of system failure at an earlier stage. ‘Many of these children shouldn’t be in residential care at all. Giving families intensive help much earlier could prevent so many teenagers being branded as “complex”, often violent and broken. … What’s needed is a system that gives intensive help to families in crisis, acts decisively in response to abuse, but also unlocks the potential of wider family networks.’ She cited the National Audit Office’s report last year into managing residential children’s care, which found the costs of supporting looked‑after children in residential care had increased by 96% from 2019 to 2024 to £3.1 billion.
The BBC reported that Emily nearly lost access to her baby because of a hair strand test. Experts fear she’s not alone (26 May 2026). This discussed concerns that hair strand tests, carried out by government-approved commercial laboratories and routinely relied upon in family courts where parents are suspected of drug or alcohol abuse, might be flawed or at any rate not as reliable as previously thought. The report identified cases where the tests had been wrong and parents wrongly separated from their children in consequence.
ITV news reported that Mother who was victim of domestic violence says family court has allowed manipulation to continue (27 May 2026). A dozen women had told ITV news that ‘family courtrooms, where custody rights of children are decided, are being used as weapons for abusers’. The report suggested that abusers were taking advantage of the court process to perpetuate abuse, above and beyond the inevitably retraumatising effect of giving evidence about abuse that’s already occurred.
Joshua Rozenberg on A Lawyer Writes reported on Abuse training for judges (29 May 2026), saying ‘senior judges have explained for the first time how members of the judiciary are trained to deal with cases involving domestic abuse’ after the Judicial College published a summary, Judicial education in domestic abuse 2026 to 2027. The training covers both magistrates and judges in both criminal and family cases.
The BBC reported that I was drugged and raped by my husband for years (30 May 2026), which was about a case that bore a disturbing similarity to the notorious Pelicot case in France. This was about a woman from Devon, who had known her now ex-husband since she was 17 and had been in a relationship with him for 18 years, during which he crushed sleeping pills into her tea at night to rape, photograph and film her. He was convicted and imprisoned, but the woman was now speaking out about her experience with a view to helping victims of similar crimes. She also wanted to raise awareness of spiking and the risk of it not just from strangers but as a form of domestic abuse.
BROADCAST & AUDIO COVERAGE
BBC Three had a documentary Kidnapped by My Mum, about a boy who, at 11, was reported missing by his grandmother, after being abducted by his mother and grandfather and taken with them to live ‘off the grid’ in various sites across Europe, among conspiracy theorists and ‘sovereign citizens’. The background to the story was reported in a news report Alex’s mum abducted him as a boy. Now he’s ready to talk to her again (13 May 2026).
The Law and Disorder podcast had an episode on The Modern-Day Porn Industry: How extreme content is avoiding regulation (13 May 2026) in which the hosts, former Lord Chancellor Charlie Falconer KC, Baroness Helena Kennedy KC, and former family court judge Nicholas Mostyn discussed an issue that ‘came to the fore in 2024 when French woman, Gisèle Pelicot waived her anonymity as the victim in a multiple rape case involving her husband and several strangers; that was the moment the world was forced to consider the impact that violent and abusive sexual content online could have’.
AI AND FAMILY LAW
Talking Family Law – The Resolution Podcast had an episode LIVE from National Conference: AI and the Risk of Bias (29 May 2026) reporting a keynote session looking at the impact of AI in the justice system, including the benefits of being able to deliver justice more efficiency and the risk of it perpetuating bias that exists in the system. It featured Mr Justice McKendrick who is ‘the lead judge for AI in family justice.’
We missed it at the time but his appointment turns out to have been announced at last year’s Resolution conference, when the President, Sir Andrew McFarlane said:
‘His role will dovetail into the work that is already underway across the judiciary to investigate how AI may be harnessed so as to assist in the judicial task, but there is also a need for there to be a bespoke understanding of the potential impact, both positive and negative, on Family justice in particular. The ability of AI to summarise, highlight and render digestible vast quantities of data in a second or two will be of undoubted benefit in Family cases. As will the ability to anonymise judgments and other documents for publication. But the potential for devious litigants to use AI to promote a false case or otherwise produce evidence which seems wholly credible but is in reality corrupt is also plain to see.’
In other AI news both the Law Society Gazette (Judge turns to AI to help parents understand decision, 18 May 2026) and Legal Futures ( Court simplifies ruling for parents with learning difficulties in AI first, 28 May 2026) covered the recent judgment by HHJ Hesford in the case of Re B – Fact Finding (Use of AI for Judgment Summary for Parents with Learning Difficulties) [2026] EWFC 107 (B) where the judgment was handed down with two additional versions, generated with artificial intelligence software, one in simplified language, the other in bullet points and emoji, for the benefit of parents with learning difficulties. We reported on the case in a separate post, Make it simple! Make it clear! Using AI to improve clarity and understanding of a judgment (22 May 2026) and our comments on the case were quoted by Scott Jones in his report for Legal Futures.
Finally, the downside of AI, namely its tendency to ‘hallucinate’ (make stuff up), continues to get careless lawyers into trouble, as Legal Futures noted in a couple of recent cases:
- Judge refers solicitors to SRA for fake AI-generated cases (15 May 2026)
- Junior solicitor used AI to draft misleading letters to court (26 May 2026).
LEGAL BLOGGING
In her post Making final orders at an Issues Resolution Hearing (13 May 2026) Julie Doughty described a hearing in care proceedings concerning a 14 year old boy at Gloucester Family Court the previous month. She said it was her ‘first case of legal blogging where I’ve heard anything about the child’s views being sought on my attendance and reporting of the proceedings’ . She hoped the boy understood or had explained to him the reasons the judge gave for making the care order, which was in accord with his expressed wishes.
RECENT COMMENTARY
Joshua Rozenberg commented on A Lawyer Writes (4 May 2026) about the Child abductor wrongly freed by Pentonville Prison. Previously Mrs Justice Judd, having found Adedapo Kolawole Adeyeye in contempt of court for failing to arrange for his son’s return to France, had committed him to prison for six months, due to expire on 21 April. On 20 April, a deputy High Court judge found that Adeyeye had taken no steps to have the boy returned to his mother and sentenced him to a further 12 months in prison. But on the same day the prison released him in error. Mr Justice Hayden then took the unusual step of publishing an anonymised judgment in the hope of reuniting the child with his mother. In Claire Mireille N’Djosse v Ifedayo Adedapo Kolawole Adeyeye [2026] EWHC 1033 (Fam) he said, at para 18:
‘It is hoped that publicity will assist in securing Adeyeye’s return to custody. Thus, the Article 8 and Article 10 issues now coincide. I will permit both names and images of father and child to be placed in the public domain. I will also permit the mother’s name to be published. I would also observe that when the State fails in the way that it has done here, there is a public interest in that being put in the public domain too and in transparent terms.’
Jon Baines commented on his Information Rights and Wrongs blog that Anonymity application in databreach proceedings fails (14 May 2026). This was about Secake & Ors v Shared Services Connected Ltd [2026] EWHC 1022 (KB), in which Mr Justice Saini refused an application by the 2502 claimants who were current or former members of HM Crown Forces (or partners/children of such persons) in a case about a data breach relating to pensions. They sought anonymity on various grounds including that it was required so as not to exacerbate the effects of the data breach but the judge said that would apply to *any* data breach claim. The principle of open justice prevailed.
There’s a helpful explainer on Local Government Lawyer (29 May 2026) by Avaia Williams – Transparency and open justice in the Court of Protection – of an important judgment about providing document to observers in the Court of Protection and why CoP proceedings are still ‘private’ even if the hearings are held in public. (We refer to the Family Court issues about the open justice principle in Judgments, below.)
NEW JUDGMENTS OF INTEREST
Other than discussed above.
Re R (A Child: Leave to Oppose Adoption) [2026] EWCA Civ 673
Permission to appeal against a refusal of leave to oppose an adoption order was refused, but the Court of Appeal gave guidance on some procedural matters:
- (1) When the court is considering applications for leave to apply to discharge a placement order or to oppose the making of an adoption order, it should articulate the legal tests correctly.
- (2) Where the court refuses such an application at the first stage because it is not satisfied that there has been a change in circumstances since the making of the placement order, and where it has a clear view that the application would in any event have failed at the second stage for welfare reasons, it should state and briefly explain this as an alternative basis for its decision.
- (3) An adoption order should never be made on the same occasion as an order refusing leave to oppose. Paragraphs 11-14 of the Practice Guidance (Adoption: Final Hearings) (2018) should be followed.
Re L ( A Child: Placement and Contact Orders) [2026] EWCA Civ 639
Five children were subject to care orders; the four oldest were placed in two separate foster homes and the plan for the youngest was adoption. The family court judge had refused to make a placement order because he was unhappy about contact arrangements. The local authority appealed. The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal and made the placement order itself alongside an order for contact between the siblings under section 26 Adoption and Children Act 2002, until the making of an adoption order. The Court emphasised that s 26 gave the court the power to reconcile a child’s need for permanence with his need to maintain his sibling bonds.
Re X (A Child) [2026] EWCA Civ 518
A 14 year old boy, resident with his mother in South Africa, visited his father in the UK who then told the mother that the boy didn’t want to return. The mother issued an application for a return order under the Hague Convention on International Abduction. The Cafcass guardian recommended the boy stay in the UK but, unusually, the High Court judge, Hayden J, disagreed and decided the return order should be made. He reasoned that the boy was unduly influenced by his father and was concerned about their ‘toxic relationship’. The boy and the father both appealed. The Court of Appeal said the judge had holistically examined all the evidence and taken X’x expressed views into account before arriving at his decision that X should return, which was upheld.
M (A Child: Adoption: Duty of Disclosure) [2026] EWCA Civ 568
This is an unusual example of an adoption order being set aside. A child born in April 2024 who had never lived with his parents was placed for adoption with a married couple in May 2025 and an adoption order was made in November 2025. The local authority subsequently appealed against the adoption order on the basis that they had been misled by the adopters. It transpired that the couple had separated in October and that the wife was in a relationship with a dangerous criminal she had met as a prison visitor. The Court of Appeal said, on the basis of the true facts that existed at the time of the hearing, an adoption order was the wrong order and that the failure by the prospective adopters to make full and frank disclosure of their circumstances amounted to a serious irregularity in the proceedings that rendered them unjust. The adoption order was set aside, the adoption application dismissed, so that the care and placement orders revived. The birth parents had not participated in the court proceedings.
Re D (Adoption: Notification of Husband and Relatives) [2026] EWHC 1289 (Fam)
A six month old baby had been living with early permanence foster carers who wished to adopt her. The birth mother fully supported the adoption, had been involved in selecting the carers, and had given advance consent to placement and adoption orders. The local authority sought orders under the inherent jurisdiction as to whether they should notify members of the mother’s family about the adoption application. The mother had asylum status and leave to remain in the UK until 2030; it would be dangerous for her to return to her home country for political reasons. The family’s plan was for her husband to eventually join her in the UK. The mother’s evidence (accepted by the court) was that she had unknowingly become pregnant after consuming a drink that had been spiked and she didn’t know how to contact the father. She hadn’t told anyone in her family in her home country what had happened. The judge gave the local authority permission not to notify the mother’s family, her own husband, his family, or the biological father about the intended adoption. The judge expressed sympathy for the mother’s trauma and courage.
Blackpool Borough Council v RR & Ors (no. 3) [2026] EWHC 1100 (Fam)
This is a lengthy judgment about publication and anonymisation. RR’s mother, Laura Langley, had been found by the Family Court in 2023 to have caused injuries that led to the death of RR’s baby sister Edith when she was two months old. Subsequent criminal proceedings ended when the expert evidence about Edith’s injuries was called into question. The judge ordered the jury to acquit Ms Langley, who then applied to the Family Court to re-open the fact-finding exercise that had been conducted by Mr Justice MacDonald in 2023. In Blackpool Borough Council v Langley and Ors (No.2) (Re-opening of Findings) [2026] EWFC 69, MacDonald J reconsidered the evidence and several medical reports and again concluded that it was more likely than not that Ms Langley had caused the injuries. In this judgment (no. 3), he had to make decisions about publishing his judgments and the extent of reporting restrictions, given that Ms Langley and some of the expert witnesses had already been subject to considerable publicity, although a Transparency Order in the family court still protected RR’s identity. The judge concluded that publication could go ahead, subject to the continued anonymisation of RR (now aged 11 and in local authority care) and her father. The judgment is helpful in setting out the judge’s reasoning and the relevant law in detail. An important factor was the public interest in the role of expert medical witnesses, that could only be discussed fully if the links between the family and criminal proceedings were understood.
This is an unusual case, about whether a wife had the mental capacity to initiate and conduct divorce proceedings. She had been trying to divorce the husband since 2023. The husband appears to be a vexatious litigant who was constantly emailing various judges and the clerk to Mr Justice Trowell, who was conducting this hearing. Both parties were litigants in person. The husband was more than 30 years older than the wife, and they had got married in Scotland some decades ago on her 16th birthday. Trowell J concluded that there was no question the wife had the capacity to conduct the divorce proceedings. The husband also argued that the Family Procedure Rules are incompatible with the Human Rights Act 1998; this application was also rejected. The judge directed that the divorce application continue without further delay. The husband put forward arguments that the judgment should be anonymised but, understandably, the judge said he wasn’t going to spend further time on that point and would simply anonymise it anyway.
A Father v A Mother [2026] EWFC 110
This fairly short judgment by Mrs Justice Lieven is helpful in analysing allegations of ‘parental alienation’ in a situation where a mother and children have been intimidated and the mother is asked in cross-examination to say something positive about the father. The judge says: ‘it is necessary to inject a little realism into the situation’.
This was a fact-finding judgment in Bradford Family Court where a father wanted unsupervised contact with his teenage children but there were risk factors because he was being investigated by the police with regard to viewing images of child sexual abuse (‘prohibited images’). Points of interest include the judge’s rejection of evidence from polygraph tests and his evaluation of risk assessments by a clinical psychologist and a Cafcass officer.
GCC v M & Ors [2026] EWFC 94 (B) and GCC v M & Ors [2026] EWFC 95 (B)
Guidance on making care orders at home says they should be exceptional. The judge in Bristol Family Court set out why this was an exceptional case. It involved a young mother who was a vulnerable care leaver and the risks related to the children’s father. This was a single issue case – it was only the risk posed by communications by the mother with the father that the local authority was intervening. The children were thriving in her care and had strong attachments with her. A supervision order wasn’t proportionate – it had not worked before in persuading the mother to cease communication with the father. A care order was proportionate in order to create the framework for the intrusion into the mother’s article 8 rights. The care order was not being used to provide services; it was necessary for the protection of the children. It was not being used to try to keep to the PLO timescale of 26 weeks (which had long expired), but it would enable swift action in an emergency and the exercise by the local authority of parental responsibility.
This is an interesting case about contempt of court in family proceedings heard in Liverpool Family Court. In May 2025, a child arrangements order had been made for the father to have only indirect contact with his children. Arrangements for the communications were set out. The order included the standard warnings about not sharing information about family court proceedings held in private. However, a month later, the father approached a group of children who went to his son’s school and gave them an envelope full of court documents, asking them to pass this to his son. The children notified a member of school staff and apparently the children in the case didn’t know about the incident. The judge found the father in contempt because he had shown/provided documents relating to the proceedings to third parties, namely four pupils at the school, in breach of the Family Procedure Rules Part 12.73 and 12.75 and section 12 of the Administration of Justice Act 1960; and had communicated or attempted to communicate with his children via third parties other than via a specified relative, in breach of the order. The father was sentenced to 28 days imprisonment, suspended on the condition of no further breaches.
Re Gardner (Deceased) (Court of Protection: Disclosure of Position Statements) [2026] EWCA Civ 640
This is an appeal from a Court of Protection judgment about the extent to which observers of CoP hearings are entitled to see copies of court documents. Unlike the open reporting provisions in family proceedings, where reporters are entitled to see certain documents, observers in the CoP don’t benefit from any rules on this point. According to Cobb LJ, now President of the Family Division, the open justice principle doesn’t apply to hearings held ‘in private’ although in practice CoP hearings are usually now held in public, subject to strict Transparency Orders (TOs). In the lower court, the judge had ordered parties to send various position statements to an observer – this decision was reversed by the Court of Appeal. There is discussion in the judgment about the administrative burden placed on the CoP by TOs and the need for some new rules or guidance.
OTHER TRANSPARENCY etc NEWS
On 5 May 2026, the Church of England issued the press release Independent audit report of the National Safeguarding Team, about the team’s first independent audit. The report highlights areas of good practice as well as identifying 66 recommendations for further improvement. Some of these relate to the wider Church’s safeguarding structures, while others are specific to the NST. There is a fuller summary on the Law & Religion UK blog.
The Ministry of Justice published Patterns of education, social care and youth offending (14 May 2026), a suite of reports produced by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) Data First programme, funded by Administrative Data Research UK (ADR UK). It presents new insights into the education and social care background of children and young people in England who have been cautioned or sentenced for any offence, with a focus on knife offences, anti-social behaviour (ASB) and acquisitive offences, and violence against women and girls (VAWG) offences. The reports are intended to deepen understanding of the education and social care backgrounds of children and young people who had been cautioned or sentenced for these offences, including their attainment outcomes and characteristics.
Mr Justice Nicklin, as chair of the Transparency & Open Justice Board, gave a speech, Open Justice and the Missing Dimension: Access to Documents in Civil Proceedings at the Newcastle Business & Property Courts Forum on 11 May 2026. Access to documents was a crucial aspect of open justice, he explained. ‘So, the issue is not whether documents matter. The issue is how to ensure that the legal entitlement to open justice is actively secured in a civil world in which the documents are fundamental to the proceedings and their understanding.’ He addressed the obstacles and objections and possible limitations on the scope of such access, and the mechanisms by which it might be achieved. The speech was the subject of a comment piece in the Law Society Gazette by reporter Bianca Castro, who recounted some of her difficulties with getting papers, and exhorted her readers to Show me your skeletons! (15 May 2026).
The government issued a white paper on youth justice, Cutting youth crime. Changing young lives (18 May 2026) the headline feature of which was a discussion about raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility. But the introduction by Lord Chancellor David Lammy MP focused on early intervention to reduce the risk factors for many children growing up in deprived areas, ‘surrounded by violence, addiction and abuse’ or ‘passed around children’s homes or foster care placements, never staying in one place long enough for the stability they need to get on in life’. The Law Gazette reported on the early intervention aspects In depth: ‘Once-in-a-generation’ reform of youth justice system (25 May 2026). Meanwhile the BBC picked up on a proposal to make parents more responsible, or at any rate liable: Parents could face bigger fines for child’s crimes under youth justice shake-up (18 May 2026). The Bar Council commented Youth justice needs a shift from criminalisation, saying ‘Protecting society and protecting childhood should not be competing aims and children should not be defined as criminals at a very young age.’
On 18 May 2026, Women’s Aid published its response to the King’s Speech to Parliament, welcoming some items including the carrying over to the current parliamentary session of ‘legislation which includes the repeal of the presumption of parental contact’; but saying they were ‘disappointed to see that the King did not explicitly mention the government’s mission to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG)’.
IMPRESS, the press and media regulator launched its new Court Reporting FAQs guide on 20 May 2026, with a practical, expert-led webinar answering the most frequently asked questions around court reporting. The document was created in response to queries from Impress members seeking guidance on specific issues relating to court reporting, and is not intended to be an exhaustive guide. There are, they say, trusted resources for journalists that already do this such as McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists, one of whose co-authors, Sian Harrison, provides the foreword to this compilation of queries.
The Lord Chancellor David Lammy MP, when welcoming the launch by the Lady Chief Justice of a new Judicial and Legal Diversity Board (22 May 2026) spoke of the need to increase public confidence in the criminal justice system, in support of which he took the opportunity to announce an expansion in broadcasting of sentencing remarks to strengthen transparency. This will include sentencing remarks by the Chief Magistrate which will be broadcast live for the first time. He added that filming will also be allowed in the Administrative Court for the first time, something already proposed by the Transparency and Open Justice Board (as reported in last month’s roundup) but still requiring executive approval (and legislation) to implement.
The Inside HMCTS blog had a post by Divorce Service Manager Adam Lennon on Family courts: what we’ve delivered and what comes next for court users (26 May 2026). While lauding the benefits and achievements of the digatisation of the system, including the new digital Private Family Law service enabling child arrangement orders, non-molestation orders, and occupation orders to be submitted online, which is expected to go live this year, it also recognised the need to address the delays in dealing with cases, notably public law children cases. ‘We’ve committed additional sitting days to these cases and are working closely with the judiciary to streamline processes. Delays have real consequences, so I’m determined to improve this area.’
The government’s public consultation on Growing up in the online world closed on 26 May 2026. The consultation was launched in March to elicit views from interested parties including civil society, parents and carers, and children on ‘further measures to prepare children for the future in an age of rapid technological change’. That included potential age restrictions on social media, gaming sites and AI chatbots, restrictions on addictive features, and better support for parents and families. The government has now published its preliminary analysis of the consultation responses. This appears to have suggested that there was overwhelming support from parents and carers for a minimum age of access to social media of 16 (but the evidence of such a policy as applied in Australia suggests it may be too easy to evade, and a better alternative might be to get the tech bros to behave themselves better for everyone). The RPC blog roundup suggests that, although an outright ban is supported by former health secretary Wes Streeting, the government may be moving away from that approach.
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
Play: A DoL House
At The Big House, London, N1 3LH, from Wednesday 17 June 2026 – Saturday 11 July 2026
This new drama is about ‘the secret world of Deprivation of Liberty (DoL) orders’ – legal measures that authorise the severe restriction of a teenager’s freedom by locking doors, confiscating phones and enforcing constant surveillance in the name of safety. Created with The Big House members, judges, and legal experts, A DoL House is an unflinching, provocative play that steps inside a hidden system to ask: What does ‘keeping young people safe’ really mean? When does protection become control? And is there another way? Book tickets
Conference: Public Children Law
Family Law Week’s Public Children Law Virtual Conference 2026 will take place on 7 July 2026 from 12:45 pm to 5:30 pm.
Designed for family law practitioners, local authority lawyers, children’s guardians, social workers and all professionals working within the field, the conference programme will cover:
- The role of psychologists in Public Law proceedings
- Expert Evidence in Care Proceedings, from instruction, to challenge.
- Trauma, Protection and Reform: The case for a domestic abuse specialist court for public law proceedings
- Public Law Case Update
FAMILY LAW AND TRANSPARENCY IN OTHER JURISDICTIONS
Canada
The Supreme Court of Canada gave a long-awaited judgment in an important case effectively recognising a new tort of intimate partner violence.
Its decision in Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia, 2026 SCC 16; 2026 SCC 16 (CanLII), allowed in part an appeal from the earlier decision of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice 2022 ONSC 1303 (Can LII); 2023 ONCA 476 (CanLII). Although the SCC judgment includes a lengthy syllabus or headnote summarising the judgments, and the CanLII website provides what seems a reasonably accurate AI summary of the case, the implications of the decision are quite helpfully set out in a human authored blog post from law firm Lawson Lundell LLP: New Guidance from the Supreme Court of Canada on the Creation of Novel Torts (19 May 2026). They say that ‘Beyond its significance for victims and survivors of domestic violence, the majority’s reasons in Ahluwalia provide helpful guidance on the development of new tort law generally — guidance that is likely to shape Canadian tort law for years to come.’
The Canadian online legal magazine SLAW had a piece on Meaningful Participation of Children and Youth in Justice: Voice Is Not Enough (20 May 2026) discussing the BC Family Justice Innovation Lab (FJIL) Youth Voices Initiative, Article 12 of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), and the pioneering work of Professor Laura Lundy (Queen’s University Belfast) in this area.
Ghana
The BBC reported that Ghana’s parliament passes anti-LGBTQ+ bill (30 May 2026) with disappointing news of a new bill criminalising homosexuality and the promotion of LGBTQ+ activities. Same-sex relationships have been banned in Ghana under laws dating from the British colonial era, but the new bans would make existing laws ‘more robust, more encompassing and more stringent in dealing with the practices of LGBTQI’, the report said.
Japan
The BBC reported that In Japan, divorce splits parents from children. Could a law change end sole custody? (24 May 2026). It explained that under the current law in Japan, after parents split up, only one parent would hold legal rights over the children. That meant – regardless of their relationship with the child – the other parent could be forced to disappear from their life, unless the parent with custody granted them access. But that was set to change after a revision to Japan’s Civil Code took effect, on 1 April 2026, allowing divorced couples to share custody of their children. The report included an account of one particular case where a father missed the contact he’d previously enjoyed with his children after they were taken away by his ex-partner.
Finally…
We have a small favour to ask!
TEN YEARS A CHARITY
The Transparency Project is a registered charity in England and Wales run by volunteers who mostly also have full-time jobs. Although we’ve now been going for over a decade, we’re always working to secure extra funding so that we can keep making family justice clearer for all who use the court and work in it.
We can’t do what we do without help from you!
We’d be really grateful if you were able to help us by making a small one-off (or regular!) donation through our Just Giving page.
Featured image: photo by Lucy Reed