In its April 29th edition, the Daily Mail ‘sank its teeth’ further into the issue of the Court of Protection (COP) and secrecy. It has covered this issue before, but is not alone in having concerns in this area: the issue has been previously raised by The Times, has been the subject of an ongoing campaign by Lib Dem MP John Hemming, and is the sole item on the agenda of single-issue websites such as http://www.factuk.org.uk/ .
These are two feature articles by journalist Sue Reid in the Daily Mail:
Secret court in control of a £2billion fortune: It holds the assets of 16,000 vulnerable people – but pays them paltry interest
Neil has an IQ of 125 and runs his own business. So why won’t a secret court let him spend his own money?
The articles, especially the second, are surprisingly long and extensive, covering a range of COP-related issues, over and above the handling of money – and so cannot be easily paraphrased. If you have had, or may have, dealings with the COP, they are especially worth reading.
Note: This issue has also been picked up by the columnist Christpher Booker in The Sunday Telegraph on 27th April. See his article
The opposition to secret courts is gathering pace Justice should never been conducted in secrecy. Just look at the family courts.
Booker’s article ends: ‘When the newspaper broke its story about Maddocks, I was pleased to be asked, thanks to my reporting here in The Sunday Telegraph, to add a commentary explaining how the need for its campaign against secret courts is confirmed by what already goes on in our family courts. I was even able to give a similar story to the Maddocks case – and just as horrifying: a Court of Protection judge has been able to prohibit reporting of a case involving an old man being held by social workers in a care home apparently against his and his family’s wishes – apart from a disgracefully one-sided account, written from the viewpoint of the social workers and merely based on the court judgment. Delighted as I am to see another newspaper adding a powerful voice to this campaign to expose what goes so hideously wrong when courts can hide their workings from public view, we have a mighty battle on our hands. New examples come up every day of how this secrecy allows abuse of the Human Rights Act, which judges are supposed to uphold…’