Case No. SE20C00603

19.The family law authorities on the exercise of the court’s discretionary power to permit such a trial are in some respects contradictory. 20.I cite first Re G (A Minor) (Care Order: Threshold Conditions) [1995] Fam 16, where Wall J held that on an application for a care order the court had to be satisfied by evidence that the significant harm suffered by the child was attributable to the care, or absence of care, given to the child by the parent against whom the order was sought, and no agreement between the parties could deprive the court of that duty to be so satisfied; and that where there was a disagreement as to the factual grounds for the making of a care order it was not an appropriate exercise of the court's power to take the lowest common denominator as the basis for an order. He stated:“Furthermore, whilst as a matter of strict law I am only concerned with L., I do not think I can properly shut my eyes to the fact that the father has other children, including a baby born on 5 May 1993. I am not, of course, making any decision other than that under section 31 in relation to L. I am, however, in my judgment, entitled to take into account, in deciding whether or not to make findings of fact in relation to L., the possibility that the father may seek to use the absence of findings in relation to L. as a means to advance his case in other proceedings.”21.In contrast, in Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council v D [1995] 1 FLR 873 Thorpe J was clear that the scope and purpose of the proceedings did not extend to protecting other children, let alone unborn children. He stated: “[T]he purposes and scope of the present proceedings are to settle the future of a single child. To do that by order at the conclusion without full trial of the Children Act proceedings, the duties of the court in relation to that child are contained within the Children Act 1989 and are specific both in relation to the threshold criteria and the pursuit of the welfare principle as paramount. The court has no definable statutory duty in relation to children as yet unborn. It has no function to grant a declaratory judgment.” Re G was not cited to Thorpe J. Nonetheless, it can be seen that Thorpe J was faithful to the traditional conception of the role and purpose of a court.22.Thorpe J went on to state:“Such understandable concern as the local authority has in relation to the possibility of fresh litigation of issues presented in these proceedings in relation to possible children as yet unborn, has to be set against what seems to me to be the enormous benefits of conclusion of contested proceedings by compromise. The over-complication of the procedures for conclusion by compromise risks the loss of that essential benefit in what may be a very finely balanced and complex situation. If there is a concession that the essential orders should be written either by consent or unopposed, if there is a formal concession of the passage of the s 31 threshold, if that concession is based on specific admissions of abuse or neglect, if the court is satisfied that the order and its foundations are proved, it seems to me quite contrary to public interest that the proceedings should be prolonged simply to resolve nice differences as to the expression of the essential concessions.The emotional and psychological cost to parents in accepting advice that leads to the conclusion of the case without a hearing is considerable. Some regard has to be paid to their self-esteem and some regard has to be paid to the pace at which the acceptance of responsibility for abuse or neglect of children evolves. If the court has a function, once formal admissions have been made that pass the s. 31 threshold and that extend to the recognition that neither parent can safely be entrusted with the care of any child, then my conclusion is that the court should accept the terminology of those who proffer the formal admissions rather than the terminology of those who seek the orders.Accordingly, I have accepted the formal admissions made by Mr Foster and Miss Hindley on behalf of their respective clients. I have declined the invitation of Miss Swift, and to some extent Mr Townend, that despite those formal admissions the court should exercise its discretion to investigate further and make pronouncements on evidence.”23.In Re B (threshold criteria: agreed facts) [1998] 2 FLR 968, [1999] 2 FCR 328 Thorpe LJ, sitting in the Court of Appeal, expressly confirmed and endorsed all that he had said in Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council v D. In Re M (Threshold Criteria: Parental Concessions) [1999] 2 FLR 728, CA, the correctness of those decisions was not doubted. One would have thought, therefore, that the limited scope of the discretion to permit a fact-finding hearing of un-admitted allegations would have been, by these original authorities, fixed with certainty. Explicitly, the original authorities hold that the potential utility of the judgment in later proceedings involving a different child is not a legitimate purpose of such a hearing (I shall call this “the different child” purpose or factor). The original authorities do not mention as a legitimate purpose the advantage of having such a judgment so that the child may in adulthood know the whole truth about his adoption (“the whole truth” purpose or factor). Nor do the original authorities mention as a legitimate purpose that having such a judgment may be a useful platform for identifying a perpetrator of domestic abuse (“the perpetrator identification” purpose or factor). One can be sure that if Thorpe LJ considered these latter two factors to be legitimate purposes he would have said so. 24.The reason that the original authorities explicitly reject the different child factor, and tacitly reject the whole truth and perpetrator identification factors is because, in the words of Thorpe J, “the purposes and scope of the present proceedings are to settle the future of a single child”. In a case such as this, that purpose is achieved by the court performing its statutory duty under s.31 of the Children Act 1989 and s.21 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 and making care and placement orders. Those are the over-arching objectives of the proceedings, no more, no less. It is not the role, function or purpose of the court to do anything more than this.25.Naturally, a judgment from a standard fact-finding trial (where there were no, or insufficient, admissions of the threshold allegations) may have the