Source: https://suesspiciousminds.com/tag/sir-james-munby/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 15:05:30+00:00

Document:
This time around, SW’s son was applying to the Court of Protection for a best interests decision that the Inland Revenue be prohibited from coming into SW’s home or taking any action against her.
One might cynically think that this application benefits the son and his father more than SW, since they are the people under investigation for VAT fraud, and that they are just using the mother/wife SW as a shield or device to escape prosecution for VAT fraud. You dreadful cynic.
“Upon considering an application for an order under the inherent jurisdiction of the Court of Protection and upon the court not having an inherent jurisdiction and upon the court considering that the application and statement in support is incomprehensible and therefore without merit.
“1) Parliament has granted jurisdiction to the Court of Protection in Deprivation of Liberty cases by introducing into the Mental Capacity Act 2005 safeguards through the Mental Health Act 2007 (which received Royal assent in July 2007), in order that those who lack capacity have the protection of law which will comply with Article 5(1) and 5(4) of the European Convention of Human Rights (“ECHR”).
He submitted no further evidence.
10.I can deal with the matter briefly. I agree entirely with both the decision and the reasoning of the District Judge. I add three points.
11.First, a ‘best interests court’, in which I include the Court of Protection, the Family Court and the Family Division of the High Court of Justice, has no power to regulate or adjudicate upon the decision of a public authority exercising its statutory and other powers: see, generally, A v Liverpool City Council and Another  AC 363, (1981) 2 FLR 222, and, specifically in relation to the Court of Protection, Re MN (Adult)  EWCA Civ 411,  COPLR 505, appeal dismissed N v ACCG and Others  UKSC 22,  COPLR 200. But that is precisely what the son is seeking to persuade the Court of Protection to do here. He is seeking an order, albeit in declaratory form, to prevent HMRC exercising its powers “without permission from the Court of Protection.” The appropriate remedy, if one is needed, is by application to the criminal court, in a case such as this, or to the Administrative Court. I make clear that I am not to be understood as suggesting that, in the circumstances, any application the son might make to either court stands the slightest prospect of success; my view, for what it is worth, is that it would not.
12.Second, there is, in any event, no evidence before the court to demonstrate SW’s incapacity, which alone can give the Court of Protection jurisdiction.
13.Third, on the basis of the evidence which the son has put before the court, there is simply nothing to support any contention that HMCR has acted unlawfully or that it either has in the past done, or that it threatens in future to do, any of the things apparently alleged by the son: that is, to effect forced entry to SW’s property, to control and manage her property, or to restrict her liberty of movement. The son has placed before the court a number of witness statements prepared for the purpose of the criminal proceedings by officers of HMRC. He has not sought to challenge any of the facts asserted by those officers – indeed, he seeks to rely upon parts of their witness statements. And since, as I have said, he was not present, he is in any event hardly in a position to gainsay what they assert. The simple fact is that there is nothing in any of this material which even begins to suggest that what the son is asserting is even arguably right. On the contrary, what the material demonstrates is the seeming propriety with which HMRC obtained and executed the search warrants, the very proper concern which the HMRC officers involved had for the potential impact on SW of what was going on around her while the relevant search warrant was being executed, and the very proper steps which they appropriately took to protect and safeguard her welfare.
14.The son’s application as it was presented to the District Judge was, in my judgment, totally without merit, misconceived and vexatious. His application under Rule 89 is equally devoid of merit. It must be dismissed, with the consequence that the District Judge’s order striking out the original application remains in place.
Posted in case law, court of protection and tagged appeal, best interests decision and other agencies, court of protection has no power to compel other agencies, hopeless appeal, president of the family division, re sw no 2 2018, sir james munby. Bookmark the permalink.
Readers may be aware of the ongoing litigation caused because fertility clinics had not properly ensured that their paperwork reflected the wishes and intentions of the adults involved that they would both wish to be legal parents to any child the clinic helped them conceive, very often this being just a failure to ensure that ticks were placed in each box or that the forms complied with what was required of them. This has led to a lot of human misery, where people who believed that they were a legal parent of a child were told, often years later, that they were not, and had to go through a court process to put that right. The last one I wrote about, the parents had had to adopt their own biological child and spoke in very moving terms about how awful that was.
This one is even worse, I think.
When he was 19 years old, Clive Jefferies, then in the Royal Army Medical Corps, served his country in the Falklands War. On 8 June 1982 he was with the Welsh Guards on RFA Sir Galahad when it was bombed and destroyed by the Argentinian Air Force at Bluff Cove. On that day the fates smiled at him. Minutes before the attack he had been in a part of the ship where the first bomb exploded, killing many men. In the aftermath of the bombing he saved the life of a comrade who was in difficulties in the water. At his funeral, 32 years later, his commanding officer described his conduct on that fateful day as magnificent.
Returning to civvy street in 1987, Clive served the community as a nurse and midwife. He and his wife, the claimant Samantha Jefferies, met in 1999, moved in together in 2002 and married in 2007. Their ambition to have a family was assisted by the Sussex Downs Fertility Centre, a clinic operated by the First Interested Party, BMI Healthcare Limited, and regulated by the Second Interested Party, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).
Neither of the first two cycles of IVF treatment was successful. On 1 April 2014 they attended the clinic to plan a third cycle of treatment, using three embryos, created from Samantha’s eggs and Clive’s sperm, which had been frozen on 11 August 2013. It was not to be. Fate struck. On 19 April 2014, suddenly and unexpectedly, Clive collapsed and died of a brain haemorrhage, while at home with Samantha. He was only 51 years old. He had previously been fit and healthy. It came as an appalling and terrible shock to Samantha. She was devastated.
With that history, the very last thing anyone would want is for there to be a row about how long the frozen embryos, the only chance for Samantha to have the baby fathered by Clive that they had both wanted, could be stored for and whether as a result of a flaw in paperwork for there to be a suggestion that they should be destroyed.
But that is what happened.
To their credit (and no doubt just reading those three paragraphs above would have made this an easy decision) the clinic indicated that it did not want to take any active role in the proceedings and did not try to stand in the way of Samantha’s application for a declaration that despite flaws in the paperwork the embryos could continue to be stored, which she duly got.
These cases are causing misery, suffering, anxiety and a great deal of expense and Court time. It would be nice if the Government produced some legislation which provided for an amnesty and blanket declarations that where the fault lies with the paperwork and not the adults commissioning the fertility clinic, the wishes of those adults should prevail and avoid the need for Courts. It’s not an easy bit of legislation to draft, but I hope someone takes up that challenge on behalf of all of these parents who are going through turbulent and miserable times (and sometimes as here when life has already dealt that person such a challenging hand).
Posted in case law and tagged 2016 EWHC 2493 Fam, fertility clinic, HFEA 2008, Jefferies v BMI Healthcare Ltd 2016, sir james munby, storage of embryos, the President of the Family Division. Bookmark the permalink.
The President of the Family Division has been at the forefront of the litigation about IVF clinics that managed to make a mess of the paperwork such that people who fully intended to both be legal parents of a child conceived in that way have ended up not being legal parents and having to go through cost and emotional turmoil. Purely due to failures in using the correct forms. It is a trivial mistake, but one (as you can see from this piece) has huge emotional consequences and cost for those involved.
The President notes that there are approximately 90 cases of such anomalies, where due to failure with forms and paperwork parents who intended in good faith to become legal parents of the child they were conceiving with help of the clinic did not actually become the legal parent.
In this case, when the parents were told of the mistake, the child had not yet been born.
The legal advice they got at the time (which was probably right at the time – or at least what most lawyers would have said was the only answer) , before Theis J found the alternative route) was that there would have to be an adoption.
18.X and Y were told both by the clinic and by the solicitors they instructed – not those involved in the present proceedings – that the only solution was for Y to adopt C1. I have referred on previous occasions to how utterly inappropriate adoption is as a remedy in cases like this: see In re A, para 71(vii), and Case I, para 24. However, as I observed in Case I, para 23, my impression is that this erroneous view, shared at the time both by the HFEA and by the clinics whose actions I have had to consider, and, I might add, by many family lawyers, was based on assumptions, derived from Cobb J’s judgment in AB v CD and the Z Fertility Clinic  EWHC 1418 (Fam),  2 FLR 1357, which were widespread until, in February 2015, Theis J gave judgment in X v Y (St Bartholomew’s Hospital Centre for Reproductive Medicine Intervening)  EWFC 13,  PTSR 1.
Having learned of the newer approach of the Family Courts, to fix the deficiencies in the process and make declarations of parentage which would achieve the legal status as the child’s parents without adoption, the couple sought advice and made an application to revoke the adoption order.
As readers of the blog will know, that’s a very rare application, and less than a handful of such cases have ever succeeded. Most reported attempts have failed.
“[The adoption] was an unwelcome, unwanted and intrusive process but one in which [Y] and [X] felt compelled to participate for they wanted legal certainty for [C1] and were told they had no other options. They are now, understandably, further distressed to learn that other remedies may have been available to them. They are seeking a Declaration of Parentage and a revocation of the adoption order. I unequivocally support their applications.
The guardian concludes with the hope that the original birth certificate be returned, this document having, as she says, “enormous significance” for X, Y and C1.
25.I wholeheartedly agree with the guardian’s observations and unequivocally accept her recommendations. For all the reasons she gives, C1’s welfare demands that the adoption order be revoked. Common humanity to X and Y demands the same. They have suffered very greatly from failings in the ‘system’. In the circumstances I have described, to deny them the relief they seek would seem an affront to justice. But does the law enable me to make the desired order? In my judgment, it does.
26.I have been taken to the authorities: see In re F(R) (An Infant)  1 QB 385, Re RA (Minors) (1974) 4 Fam Law 182, In re F (Infants) (Adoption Order: Validity)  Fam 165, Re M (Minors) (Adoption)  1 FLR 458, In re B (Adoption: Jurisdiction to Set Aside)  Fam 239 (affirming Re B (Adoption: Setting Aside)  1 FLR 1), Re K (Adoption and Wardship)  2 FLR 221, Webster v Norfolk County Council and the Children (by their Children’s Guardian)  EWCA Civ 59,  1 FLR 1378, Re W (Adoption Order: Set Aside and Leave to Oppose)  EWCA Civ 1535,  1 FLR 2153, Re PW (Adoption)  1 FLR 96, Re W (Inherent Jurisdiction: Permission Application: Revocation and Adoption Order)  EWHC 1957 (Fam),  2 FLR 1609, Re C (Adoption Proceedings: Change of Circumstances)  EWCA Civ 431,  2 FLR 1393, and PK v Mr and Mrs K  EWHC 2316 (Fam). See also, in relation to the revocation of a parental order made under section 54 of the 2008 Act, G v G (Parental Order: Revocation)  EWHC 1979 (Fam),  1 FLR 286.
i) Under the inherent jurisdiction, the High Court can, in an appropriate case, revoke an adoption order. In relation to this jurisdictional issue I unhesitatingly prefer the view shared by Bodey J in Re W (Inherent Jurisdiction: Permission Application: Revocation and Adoption Order)  EWHC 1957 (Fam),  2 FLR 1609, para 6, and Pauffley J in PK v Mr and Mrs K  EWHC 2316 (Fam), para 4, to the contrary view of Parker J in Re PW (Adoption)  1 FLR 96, para 1.
ii) The effect of revoking an adoption order is to restore the status quo ante: see Re W (Adoption Order: Set Aside and Leave to Oppose)  EWCA Civ 1535,  1 FLR 2153, paras 11-12.
iv) An adoption order regularly made, that is, an adoption order made in circumstances where there was no procedural irregularity, no breach of natural justice and no fraud, cannot be set aside either on the ground of mere mistake (In re B (Adoption: Jurisdiction to Set Aside)  Fam 239) or even if there has been a miscarriage of justice (Webster v Norfolk County Council and the Children (by their Children’s Guardian)  EWCA Civ 59,  1 FLR 1378).
v) The fact that the circumstances are highly exceptional does not of itself justify revoking an adoption order. After all, one would hope that the kind of miscarriage of justice exemplified by Webster v Norfolk County Council and the Children (by their Children’s Guardian)  EWCA Civ 59,  1 FLR 1378, is highly exceptional, yet the attempt to have the adoption order set aside in that case failed.
29.The present case is unprecedented, indeed far removed on its facts from any of the previously reported cases. The central fact, even if no-one recognised it at the time, is that when Y applied for the adoption order she was already, not merely in fact but also in law, C1’s mother. It follows that the entire adoption process was carried on while everyone, including the District Judge, was labouring under a fundamental mistake, not, as in In re B (Adoption: Jurisdiction to Set Aside)  Fam 239, a mistake of fact but a mistake of law, and, moreover, a mistake of law which went to the very root of the adoptive process; indeed, a mistake of law which went to the very root of the need for an adoption order at all. The entire adoption proceeded upon what, in law, was a fundamentally false basis.
30.Flowing also from this is that the consequence of an order revoking the adoption order will in this case be fundamentally different from in any of the other cases. There will be no uprooting of C1 from one set of parents and return to another set of parents; C1 will remain, as hitherto ever since birth, with the same people, the people who, to C1, as also to X and Y, are and always have been C1’s parents in every sense of the word, parents emotionally, psychologically, socially and legally. X and Y always intended to be, and in law always were, C1’s parents.
31.To make an order revoking the adoption order, as I propose to do, will not merely right a wrong; it will recognise a legal and factual reality and put an end to a legal and factual fiction, what Ms Fottrell rightly described as a wholly contrived position. And it will avoid for the future – and this can only be for C1’s welfare, now, into the future and, indeed throughout life – all the damaging consequences to which X, Y and the guardian have drawn attention. As Ms Fottrell put it, C1’s welfare will be better served by restoring the status quo ante and setting aside the adoption order. I agree. I can detect no convincing argument of public policy pointing in the other direction; on the contrary, in this most unusual and highly exceptional case public policy marches in step with justice to X, Y and C1; public policy demands that I make the order which so manifestly is required in C1’s best interests.
Posted in adoption, case law and tagged 2016 EWHC 2273 (Fam), case o (HFEA) 2016, declaration of parentage, failures of IVF clinic, IVF, overturning adoption order, president, revoking adoption order, sir james munby. Bookmark the permalink.
You write one up, then another one appears.
Again the President, again Miss Deidre Fottrell QC, again failure by an IVF clinic to get the paperwork right in an IVF process and meaning that the parents need to go to the High Court to get their legal status as parents sorted out.
Adopting the terminology I have used in previous cases, the problem in the present case is very shortly stated. Before the treatment began, X signed a Form PP. Y did not sign a Form WP. Both of them signed a Form IC, though it was not in precisely the same form as the Forms IC I have had to consider in previous cases. The central issue is this: Did Y give her consent to X becoming the father of her child? In my judgment the answer is clear: she did.
Whatever might otherwise be the effect of the words “I will take appropriate action …” there is, on the facts of this case, no problem, because X subsequently signed the Form PP.
In these circumstances, the application of the principles set out in the earlier authorities is simple and the answer is clear: Y gave the relevant consent and X is entitled to the declaration he seeks.
I have drawn attention in my previous judgments to the devastating impact on parents of being told by their clinic that something has gone ‘wrong’ in relation to the necessary consents (see In re A, para 69, Case G, para 31, and Case I, para 28). I commented (Case G, para 32) that these were situations calling for “empathy, understanding, humanity, compassion and, dare one say it, common decency, never mind sincere and unqualified apology.” In both Case G and Case I, I was very critical of those clinic’s behaviour in this respect. Here again, unhappily, the clinic’s response fell far short of what was required.
In the present case, X and Y were similarly affected as had been the parents in other cases. X, who received the initial telephone call from the clinic, says he “cannot describe the shock I felt.” “It is impossible to describe what it feels like to be told so baldly over the telephone that the child you believed you were the legal parent of was not your legal child.” He was initially unable to contact Y. When she got home “I was beside myself; I was not crying but I was distracted, shaking and unable to function at all.” The impact on him was graphically illustrated by the fact that he was unable to remember either the name or the telephone number of the doctor who had telephoned him. Y remembers the “shocking state” X was in when she got home. In her statement, she voiced her anger that “a doctor should think it reasonable to ring someone up and give them such terrible news over the phone and then not back up the news with an offer of an appointment to discuss the issues in person, an offer of counselling and not to confirm the advice in writing.” By the time there was further communication, about a week later, X and Y had lost all confidence in the clinic and decided to seek their own legal advice.
The contrast with other events, before and after, is poignant and telling. X recalls how “I quite literally burst into tears when I found out [Y] was pregnant.” And the intense emotion, the enormous joy, the immense happiness with which X and Y reacted in court as I announced my decision was the most powerful and moving indication which it is possible to imagine of all they had had to go through.
Unhappily, they did not receive from the clinic the support they were entitled to look for. The clinic declined to meet X and Y, as they wished. The clinic was tardy in confirming, though eventually it did, its unqualified assurance that it would pay their reasonable costs. Even worse, and despite earlier correspondence in which they had sought disclosure, the solicitors X and Y instructed had to make an application to the court before the clinic finally disclosed the relevant records.
I repeat what I said I have said previously (Case G, para 33), I agree with every word of that. Pauffley J went on to criticise in particular the tardiness of the clinic in that case in disclosing the relevant patient files to the parents.
What is required in all these cases, I emphasise, is immediate, full and frank disclosure by the clinic of all the relevant files as soon as they are requested by the parents. Legal professional privilege apart, which can hardly apply to the original medical files, there can be absolutely no justification for refusing such a request.
I have now had the experience of watching too many parents in these cases sitting in court, as they wait, daring to hope for a happy outcome. The strain on them is immense. If the process is delayed because of obstruction on the part of the clinic, that is shocking. The original administrative incompetence in these cases is bad enough; to have it aggravated by subsequent delay, prevarication or obstruction on the part of the clinic merely adds insult to injury. Ms Fottrell, on instructions, tells me that her clients were shocked and upset by the clinic’s conduct and experienced great distress and anguish in the weeks and months following the initial telephone call. I am not surprised. The only mitigation is that when the clinic came to file its evidence, the “person responsible” who made the statement adopted a more seemly and appropriate stance, expressing “sincere apologies” for the clinic’s error and for its effect on X and Y.
The clinic must pay X and Y’s reasonable costs in full: both the costs of the solicitors they originally instructed and who obtained the order for disclosure of the documents, and the costs of the solicitors they subsequently instructed to bring their substantive claim to court.
Posted in case law and tagged 2016 EWHC 1329, declaration of parentage, HFEA, HFEA 2008, IVF, IVF and parental responsibility, IVF problems with paperwork, president of the family division, re n 2016, section 55A Family Law Act 1986, sir james munby. Bookmark the permalink.
Another one of the cases where due to failures in completing the paperwork with IVF treatment, one of the parents did not acquire the legal parental responsibility that they should have acquired, leading to painful and possibly expensive Court proceedings. The failure in this particular case, leading to the parents to have to make an application in the High Court and get Deidre Fottrell QC to represent them, is that the Clinic failed to make sure that the form when completed had shown a tick in the right box to indicate consent.
So, in this case, whilst a tick in a box may be quite continental, double-checking is a mum’s best friend. I’m here all week, try the chicken.
The individual cases have kept rumbling on, and the High Court has been rather scathing from time to time of the mess that the Hospital management / legal department have been handling things.
Following IVF treatment provided by a clinic at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, which is and was regulated by the HFEA, Y gave birth to their child. X seeks a declaration pursuant to section 55A of the Family Law Act 1986 that he is, in accordance with section 36 of the 2008 Act, the legal parent of the child. Y is wholeheartedly supportive of X’s application.
In this case, the failure was not a failure to use the right forms, or indeed to ensure that the parents had signed them, but here, that the parents had failed to put what the judgment calls a “v” (but I think must be a tick) in the right box.
Adopting the terminology I have used in previous cases, the problem in the present case is very shortly stated. Before the treatment began, X signed a Form PP. Y signed a Form WP. There is no problem with the Form PP. The problem arises because when Y signed the Form WP, which otherwise was properly completed, she omitted to place a v in the box in section 3 opposite the text “I consent to my partner (named in section two) being the legal parent of any child born from my treatment.” The central issue is this: Did Y give her consent to X becoming the father of her child? In my judgment the answer is clear: she did.
That there has been a mistake in this case in the completion of the Form WP is obvious, for the very purpose of completing the form is to give the consent indicated by the placing of a v in the relevant box. And it is plain what was meant. After all, Form WP is headed “Your consent to your partner being the legal parent.” What did Y think she was doing when she completed and signed the Form WP, if not to give her “consent to [her] partner being the legal parent”? The answer is obvious: by signing the Form WP she intended to and believed she was giving that consent. The only defect in the completed document is, as was the defect in Case I, a simple undetected clerical error. In the present case, as in Case I, this obvious mistake can, in my judgment, be ‘corrected’ as a matter of construction, and without the need for rectification.
On the same day as she signed the defective Form WP to which I have referred, Y, at the invitation of the clinic, also signed another Form WP to ‘correct’ an error which, she was told, had been made in the Form WP she had signed some years before in connection with earlier successful IVF treatment. The earlier Form WP had been wrongly dated. What ensued was quite remarkable, as the clinic committed itself to – blundered into – what, were these matters not so sensitive and grave, one might be tempted to call a comedy of errors. First, the suggested ‘error’ in the earlier Form WP was quite immaterial for, as I noted in In re A (para 78), “the precise date is not material; what is vital is that the form was signed … before the treatment.” Secondly, it is quite clear that a mistake in a Form WP (or for that matter a Form PP) cannot be corrected retrospectively after the treatment by the signing of a substitute form. Thirdly, precisely the same error (the omission of the v in the box in section 3) appears in each of the two Forms WP signed by Y on this occasion. Fourthly, one might have thought that the clinic, having, as it thought, detected an error in the earlier Form WP, would have been more than careful to ensure that each of the new Forms WP was correctly completed. Not a bit of it!
The lack of understanding of the critically important legal framework with which it had to comply, and its seemingly lackadaisical failure to ensure proper completion of the new Forms WP in the face of what it believed to be its previous error, cast a sadly revealing light on the managerial and administrative failings of a clinic which one really might have thought would have been able to do better.
These administrative failures, which have been so characteristic a feature of every one of the cases I have had to consider, unhappily seem indicative of systemic failings both of management and of regulation across the sector. I can only hope that what all this litigation has revealed will by now have led to very significant improvements in understanding and practice.
Sadly, I suspect that it is only going to be when the Hospitals are hit with compensation claims or costs orders that things will improve.
Posted in case law and tagged 2016 EWHC 1330, HFEA, IVF treatment. IVF treatment and parental responsibility, president of the family division, re j 2016, section 36 HFEA 2008, section 55A Family Law Act 1986, sir james munby. Bookmark the permalink.
This one he has previously given judgment on, and ruled that at an interim stage the children should return home to parents with the parents wearing electronic tags. The mother, and two other adult relatives, were arrested when attempting to board a flight to Turkey with their four children.
This one is the fact finding hearing, as to what the mother’s motivation was.
As I have mentioned, the final version of the Scott Schedule is dated 17 October 2015 and now runs to 80 numbered paragraphs. Much of this sets out the “agreed context”. Paragraphs 13, 16-20, 22, 24-27, 32, 34b, 36-37, 39-44, 46-48, 51-53, 55, 57-76 and 78-80 contained the findings sought by the local authority which were disputed by the mother. In his final submissions, Mr Simon Crabtree on behalf of the local authority made clear that it no longer sought findings in relation to paragraphs 13-18.
i) The mother’s acquaintanceship with various individuals who, it is alleged, had travelled via Turkey to Syria in 2014 to take up arms with ISIS militants (paragraphs 19-27).
ii) Lies the mother told the children’s schools on 27 February 2015 about the reasons for their forthcoming absence from school (paragraphs 28-33).
iii) The fact that when stopped at the airport on 2 March 2015 the mother gave a false address (paragraphs 36-37).
vii) The fact that the mother’s most recent account, as I have summarised it in paragraph 10 above, is a lie (paragraphs 56-65).
“The reality is, the mother, her own mother and her brother had no intentions of remaining in Turkey.
They intended to travel with the children from Istanbul to the Turkish border with Syria.
Once they crossed the border into Syria, they intended to join up with ISIS militants and to supply them with items of use to the group’s combative activities.
In all probability, they also intended to meet up with those … who had already travelled … to Syria via Turkey.
In essence, the mother’s plan was to take these children to a war zone.
As such, she knowingly and intended to place the children at risk of significant harm.
The sole purpose and intention was … to cross the border into Syria and take up arms with ISIS militants and/or live in the Islamic caliphate ISIS claims to have established in the region for the foreseeable future.
[Neither] she nor [her brother] had any intention of returning to [her house].
“In short, the mother is a radical fundamentalist with links and contacts with ISIS militants and those who seek to recruit others to their cause.
Although she is arguably entitled to have whatever view she chooses, she is not however entitled to place her children at risk of significant harm or even death in furtherance of such a cause.
Bearing in mind the two underlined passages, you may be surprised to learn that the President ruled that the threshold was not met, and the children are now living with mother under no statutory orders at all.
I have to say that mum’s counsel did a blinding job, but it is still a surprising outcome, on my reading.
What about the ISIS flag though?
Thirdly, he submits that the local authority has failed to show that the material recovered from the mother’s home was indicative of her holding such views or being sympathetic to ISIS. The flag is one that has been adopted by ISIS, but it contains the shahada and seal of the Prophet Mohammed, both of which, he says, are important symbols which all Muslims share. The local authority, he correctly points out, has failed to adduce any evidence to disprove the proposition that the flag predated the al-Baghdadi Caliphate, and the mother’s case that she received it from a bookshop some 12 years ago as a gift has not been seriously challenged.
The first point to be made is that, on her own admission, she is, even if she cavilled at the appropriateness of the label, a liar. The contrast between her original case, as I have summarised it in paragraph 7 above, and her revised case, set out in paragraph 10 above is obvious. If elements of her first story have been carried forward into the second, the two are nonetheless so fundamentally different that one or other must be essentially untrue. This is not mere suggestio falsi et suppressio veri; it is simply the telling of untruths, in plain terms lying. The notes to the schools were, on any basis, and wherever the ultimate truth in relation to the trip may lie, false to the mother’s knowledge. Mr Rowley characterises them (paragraph 66) as “ill-advised”. I cannot, with respect, agree. They involved the deliberate uttering of falsehoods. I am also satisfied, and find as a fact, that the mother did indeed give a false address when questioned by DS SH. And the allegations she made in the witness-box against the police were, in my judgment, and I so find, utterly groundless. On matters of fact I accept the evidence of each of the police officers. I cannot accept Mr Rowley’s submissions on the point (paragraph 68).
As we have seen, the mother put herself forward at the hearing as now being completely open, honest and frank. Was she? I am not satisfied that she was. I am unable to accept what she is now saying merely because she is saying it. Some of it may be true. About much of it I am very suspicious. Some of it may well be, in some cases probably is, untrue. But the fact that I am not satisfied that the mother was telling the truth, the fact that I am very suspicious, does not mean that I find everything she said to be a lie. And, as I have already explained, the fact, to the extent it is a fact, that the mother has in the past told, and is still telling, lies, does not of itself mean that the local authority has proved its case.
Be all that as it may, the plain fact is that the mother has not, in the past, been frank and honest either with the local authority, the guardian or the court and I am not satisfied that she is being now.
i) The mother is a proven liar. The mother has not, in the past, been frank and honest either with the local authority, the guardian or the court and I not satisfied that she is being now.
ii) H (if that is his true name) is someone known to the mother and who has some connection with Turkey. The mother has wholly failed to persuade me, however, either that she met H in the circumstances she describes, or that their relationship was as she asserts, or that the role (if any) he was to play in Turkey was as she says. I am unable to accept her as being either a reliable or indeed a truthful witness. The mother, in my judgment, has not proved her case in relation to H.
iii) The mother is an observant Muslim, but the local authority has been unable to prove either that the materials found at her home have the significance which was suggested or, more generally, that she is a radical or extremist.
iv) The luggage contained a significant number of items which cry out for explanation in circumstances where the only explanation proffered by the mother is tied to her story about H which, as I have already explained, I am unable to accept.
It is for the local authority to prove its case. The fact that the mother has failed to persuade me of the truth of her case, in particular in relation to H, does not, as I have already explained, absolve the local authority of the requirement that it prove its case. And, for reasons I have explained and which Mr Rowley appropriately relied on, I must be careful to remember the Lucas point when I come to consider the inferences I can properly draw from the fact, to the extent I have found as a fact, that the mother has lied. The fact, to the extent it is a fact, that the mother has in the past told, and is still telling, lies, does not of itself mean that the local authority has proved its case.
There are, as I have noted, many matters on which I am suspicious, but suspicion is not enough, nor is surmise, speculation or assertion. At the end of the day the question is whether in relation to each discrete part of its case, the local authority has established on a balance of probabilities, applying that concept with common sense, the proposition for which it contends.
Standing back from all the detail, and all the arguments, there are, at the end of the day, two factors of particular importance and which, unhappily, point in opposite directions. The mother, for her part, has not proved her case in relation to H, with the consequence that the only explanation she has proffered for the presence of various significant items in her luggage falls away. The local authority, for its part, has not proved either that the materials found at her home have the significance which was suggested or, more generally, that she is a radical or extremist. Weighing these and all the other matters I have referred to in the balance, I am left suspicious of what the mother was really up to but I am unable to conclude that the local authority has proved any part of its case as set out in paragraphs 66-73 and 78-80 of the Scott Schedule.
It is very difficult to successfully appeal a finding of fact (the Court of Appeal vacillate from time to time as to whether you even CAN – because technically you appeal an order, not a judgment. In this case, the President did make an order – because he made NO order on the care proceedings or Wardship application, so the LA can appeal that). The Court of Appeal are very mindful that on a finding of fact hearing the Judge has the advantage of hearing all of the evidence and seeing the demeanour of the witnesses, so are reluctant to interfere.
Having said that, I’d appeal the hell out of this one. The order (which one presumes would have the effect of removing the electronic tags) is stayed until 18th December (oh, today), so we will soon find out whether an appeal has been lodged.
Posted in assessment of risk, case law, international and tagged appeal, electronic tagging, isis, president, radicalisation, re X children no 3 2015, sir james munby, stay, taking children to syria. Bookmark the permalink.
The outcome of the President’s case involving parents who were found, with their four children (aged between 20 months and 7 years old) around the border between Turkey and Syria, with the suspicion that they intended to cross the border and join up with the conflict going on in Syria.
(b) the parents explanation, that they were on holiday in Turkey as a family, with no sinister motives at all.
In any event, one would now think in retrospect that holidaying with a baby and 3 young children near the Syrian border was something of a mistake.
The next bit of the hearing is to look at what should happen next.
The outcome of this hearing is that the children are all at home with their parents, under no orders at all, and the children’s passports have been returned.
Now, there’s always been a background residual concern that in the concerns about radicalisation and terrorism that a wholly innocent family could be caught up and subjected to what must be a terrifying process. So if that is what has happened here, that would be hugely newsworthy.
Equally, if option (a) is what actually happened, and the family have subsequently satisfied a Court that they are safe now, that would be hugely newsworthy.
Annoyingly, we can’t be 100% sure of either option. The Court do not set out what findings, if any, were made about the children’s time near the Syrian border in Turkey. It may be that the Court was not asked by any party to make such a finding, or that the parents made concessions. We just don’t know.
The local authority and the guardian accept that conclusion and the analysis that underpins it. So do I.
It doesn’t feel ideal that we have to infer from one sentence fragment in a judgment ‘that this has been a wakeup call for these parents’ that the more likely explanation for the children’s presence near the Syrian border was a malign one, not a benign one.
But, one could also read it that the ‘wake-up call’ is that the parents now realised that Syria was a dangerous part of the world and that their holiday to Turkey was ill-advised and they would never make that sort of foolish mistake again.
I know which reading I think is right, but the problem legally is that an allegation that the parents had planned to take their children into Syria is an allegation that needs to be proven – the parents don’t have to prove their innocence. In the absence of a clear finding, then it didn’t happen.
1 The wardship orders first made in respect of the subject children on 4 May 2015 and renewed thereafter on 8 May 2015 are hereby discharged.
2 The order dated 8 May 2015, requiring the applicant local authority to retain the parents’ and children’s passports to the order of this court is hereby discharged, whereupon the local authority has agreed to return the said passports to the parents.
Again, that order sets out that there are identified risks, but doesn’t actually identify them. Are those ‘identified risks’ that the parents had planned to take the children into Syria but have now come to their senses, or that the parents are the worst holiday planners since Withnail?
Perhaps the people involved in the case know definitelively what happened, but given the importance of such cases nationally, particularly if these parents were exonerated from suspicion, it might have been rather important to actually spell it out.
Posted in assessment of risk, case law, inherent jurisdiction, international and tagged isis, president of the family division, radicalisation, re m children no 2 2015, sir james munby, syria, turkish border. Bookmark the permalink.

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