Of the 150-odd people who packed out Chancery Lane’s reading room last week to discuss plans to admit journalists into family courts, we reckon that about 149 considered it a bad idea.

However, this now appears certain to happen. The Ministry of Justice will shortly produce guidelines to tell courts, litigants (and children) what to expect, and journalists how to behave.

Of course, the political drive behind the scheme is to try and kill the perception that family courts are some kind of secret, sinister feminist cabal. (‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ one panellist snorted.)

The problem, as ever, is weighing the public interest of open justice against the privacy of families. No one is proposing that newspapers be allowed to report everything they see or hear. The new regime leaves in place a raft of statutory measures banning journalists from identifying juveniles, including by ‘jigsaw identification’.

Serious concerns remain, nevertheless. The MoJ plans to open the courts to ‘accredited’ journalists. In the UK, there is no such thing. So how will courts distinguish between bona fide reporters and citizen bloggers?

Another question is what to do about news media located outside the jurisdiction of English law.

As Mr Justice Hedley said, the real test of openness will be when the first celebrity child case hits the courts. Let’s hope everybody’s on their best behaviour...