Mr Justice Mostyn:
1.I am concerned with IW who was born on 26 March 2020. His mother is VW; his father is PM. The relationship of VW and PM was extremely short lived and they never lived together.2.For over two years IW has been in care under an interim order made the day after he was born. He was in fact removed from VW shortly after his birth. VW has never played any part in his upbringing.3.The application for a care order was made on the day of IW’s birth. Today, VW is confronted by a lengthy threshold document. In another sphere she might say that her accusers had overloaded the indictment. She makes a certain number of admissions, indisputably sufficient to take the case well over the statutory threshold in s. 31 of the Children Act 1989. She will not oppose the making of a final care order in September nor will she oppose the making of a placement order on that occasion, the application for which was issued on 4 September 2020. 4.The father, PM, does not have parental responsibility. He will not seek to oppose the making of care and placement orders.5.Why is this matter not proceeding by consent? The reason is that the local authority does not accept that VW’s admissions properly reflect the reasons why IW has to be permanently removed from his birth family and adopted. It seeks that at a five-day hearing in September 2022 the un-admitted allegations should be tried and judgment given upon them. 6.An order was made by Her Honour Judge Marson on 14 June 2022, of her own motion, that I should consider as a preliminary issue which threshold issues remain in dispute and whether it is proportionate and appropriate for these to be litigated at a final, contested hearing.7.I heard the preliminary issue on 19 July 2022. I record that the quality of advocacy, both written and oral, was of a very high standard.8.There has been a certain amount of case law on the question of whether the court in the exercise of its discretion should permit what are technically superfluous further allegations to be tried in circumstances where the admissions made by the parent satisfy the statutory threshold.
- Approved Judgment
- Mr Justice Mostyn:
- General legal principles
- The family law authorities
- consequence
- Not infrequently, a finding in relation to one child will have implications for the welfare of other children
- only
- underlined
- But the significance to the individual child of knowing the whole truth cannot, of itself, be a main purpose of the investigation.
- Similarly, the public interest in the identification of perpetrators of child abuse cannot, of itself, be such a purpose.
- necessary
- This means that the court must be satisfied that the findings, if made, would produce something of importance for the welfare decision.”
- The facts of this case
- Decision