The opening of family courts to the press is ‘moving at an unseemly gallop’, a leading high court judge in the family division said last week. Mr Justice Hedley told an emergency meeting at the Law Society that the new policy – announced by justice secretary Jack Straw late last year – seems certain to come into force this month.

However, the timetable leaves little time for scrutiny of regulations expected to be laid before Parliament on 6 April, or to prepare guidance for courts, litigants and the press.

Straw’s plan is to improve public understanding of family courts by allowing ‘accredited’ journalists to report proceedings while maintaining participants’ anonymity. Judges will be able to exclude journalists in exceptional cases. However, participants at the debate, in front of a capacity audience in Chancery Lane, criticised the proposals for putting politics ahead of the welfare of children and other parties.

The Law Society’s position is that family courts should be private unless opened ‘on a case-by-case basis’.

Concerns aired include problems of approving individual journalists, and what to do if they exercise their right to come in to court mid-case.

A leading family barrister, ­Alison Russell QC, warned that allowing journalists in court could cause difficulties if other ‘non parties’ demanded entrance. ‘This may serve to inflame already heightened emotions.’

In the chair, Jane Fortin, professor of law at Sussex University, said that expert witnesses might walk away from family work if they found themselves ‘named and vilified’ in the press.

However, Mr Justice Hedley told the meeting that when hearings had been opened to the press, his experience had been ‘uniformly positive’. The real test will come when the first ‘celeb child’ case hits the family courts, he said. ‘It will be fascinating to see how everybody responds.’