The High Court refused Times Newspapers Limited’s application to have a reporter attend and report on a motion in ongoing family law proceedings. Mr Justice Keane held that the motion had to be heard in private under the statutory in camera rule and that the court had no discretion to permit press attendance for reporting.
The underlying proceedings were brought under the Judicial Separation and Family Law Reform Act 1989 and the Family Law Act 1995. The parties were divorced, with outstanding issues concerning the custody and care of their two minor children. The motion at issue was brought by the respondent/appellant, who was acting without a lawyer. He sought to strike out or set aside a High Court order made on 28 February 2013 concerning custody and access. The judgment on Times Newspapers’ application did not decide that challenge to the order.
Times Newspapers argued first that the motion should be treated as a separate proceeding, akin to judicial review, and therefore outside the private-hearing rule. Alternatively, it said the court could allow reporting subject to safeguards balancing the family’s privacy rights against freedom of expression. The applicant/respondent opposed press attendance. The father neither supported nor opposed it, provided any permitted report did not tend to identify the parties or their children.
Justice Keane rejected the separate-proceeding argument. He said any jurisdiction to set aside the earlier High Court order, if such jurisdiction existed, could only be invoked through an interlocutory application within the family proceedings. He left the existence of that jurisdiction undecided.
The court found that section 34 of the 1989 Act required the proceedings to be heard otherwise than in public. That requirement also applied to proceedings under the 1995 Act. The judge distinguished earlier cases permitting limited media reporting where legislation gave the court discretion, or where court rules expressly allowed a public hearing. He noted that section 40 of the Civil Liability and Courts Act 2004 provides specific reporting exemptions, but bona fide press representatives were not among the specified classes entitled to attend under those exemptions.
The judgment recognised that a court decision in proceedings covered by the in camera rule may be published. But Justice Keane concluded that this did not give the court power to admit a reporter to the hearing itself. He refused Times Newspapers’ application. The ruling concerned attendance and reporting on the motion hearing; it did not determine the father’s request to set aside the 2013 order.