In July 2006, the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) published a consultation paper entitled ‘Confidence and confidentiality: improving transparency and privacy in family courts’.
The executive summary at the start of the paper states that there is a case for making family courts significantly more open “so that people can understand and better scrutinise decisions and have greater confidence”. The summary goes on to indicate that the DCA wishes to consult on a number of proposals related to the opening up of the family courts, of which the most radical are:
