Expert Witnesses In Family Court Proceedings

EDM number 2857 in 2010-12, proposed by John Hemming on 13/03/2012.
Categorised under the topics of Children and families and Courts.

That this House notes the report by Professor Jane Ireland, commissioned by the Family Justice Council, in which she studied 100 expert reports from family court proceedings; further notes that 20 per cent. were written by people not qualified, a further 20 per cent. by people writing outside their knowledge and qualifications, 65 per cent. were `poor' or `very poor' and 90 per cent. were written by people who were not in current practice; recognises that this raises a massive question as to whether or not the judgments of the courts in the majority of care proceedings are reliable; and calls for a substantial further opening of the courts to enable the quality of evidence given to be subject to adequate real time scrutiny.

This motion has been signed by a total of 20 MPs.