Government reverses pledge to abolish court fees in care cases
November 05, 2010
Posted by:Jonathan Wheeler
In May 2008 the Government increased the fees local authorities have to pay to take court proceedings to protect abused children and take them into care. The fees rose from £150 to £4800 per case. We helped to co-ordinate an MP lobbying campaign to question the Government’s rationale, particularly in the light of the distressing baby P case, and I gave an interview live on Sky News on 18th November 2008 to publicise this problem. In March 2010, the then Justice Secretary Jack Straw bowed to pressure from those lobbying for reform and agreed to abolish the fees from April 2011. This was in response to an independent review commissioned by the Government in the wake of the Baby P scandal. Lord Laming, who had previously conducted a review into child protection due to the perceived failures of Haringey Council, had warned in his report that the fees could influence a local authority's decision to initiate care proceedings for vulnerable youngsters. So the details of our campaign were moved to the archived section of our web site, and we congratulated ourselves as part of the wider lobbying group on its success.
Since then of course we have had a change of Government, and the credit crunch. Last week the new justice minister, Jonathan Djanogly issued a statement reversing Jack Straw's decision. Djanolgly said "there is no justification that these fees should be abolished and as such they will remain... Protecting vulnerable children is paramount and I do not believe that continuing to charge these court fees will place vulnerable children at risk". He added that it would be unlawful for local authorities to take finances into account when exercising their statutory duties to decide what is best for a child suspected of suffering harm within their family. He has however commissioned a further review once the family justice review panel has reported next autumn.
How many reviews does he need? And why are the real concerns raised by Lord Laming after Baby P's death, and the independent review of the impact of the court fees commissioned by the previous Government, suddenly not worth the paper they are written on? The Government must not be allowed to treat the proper protection of vulnerable children as an income stream. We know that local authorities are now facing significant budget cuts, which in turn is going to make it harder for them to afford these court fees, but of all the services they provide, surely the duty to act in the very best interests of a child, with the power to remove him from a life of neglect, violence and in some instances torture and sexual abuse, must be sacrosanct. It is deeply worrying that the new minister is refusing to learn from the mistakes of the past. And so it seems our campaign must continue.