Practice: people should be able to talk openly, as long as children are protected

Family law solicitor Sarah Harman is to launch a campaign calling for greater transparency in the family courts, following her three-month suspension from practice at a disciplinary hearing last week.


The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found Ms Harman guilty of conduct unbefitting a solicitor after she sent an anonymised version of a judgment in a family case to her sister, the then Solicitor-General Harriet Harman.


The Solicitor-General passed the information to the then minister for children, Margaret Hodge, who was conducting a review into expert evidence in family cases. Sarah Harman also sought media support for the case and provided a case summary prepared by senior counsel to an MP and three journalists.


She then applied to the court for permission to put the documents in the public domain, but did not tell the court that she had already passed them on. She was convicted of contempt of court and ordered to pay £25,000 in costs last year.


The rules on disclosure were changed in October to allow parents to speak to MPs. Ms Harman told the Gazette she would spend her three-month suspension, which will begin in January, campaigning with MPs, parents and child-care colleagues for a change in the law. She said: 'I believe that you can't have a democratic society where people involved in the legal process are unable to talk openly to whoever they want to, about their sense of injustice - as long as the child is not identified.


'A select committee report in March this year said the restrictions on parents speaking about family cases should be swept away, and the media should be allowed into the courts. At the end of October, the rules were changed to allow parents to do what they have always been doing - to speak to MPs and counsellors. But the new rules are now so complicated, and so many people in family cases are unrepresented, that it is a recipe for more confusion and more contempt [of court].'


She added: 'My position has always been that I did not mislead anyone intentionally... Three months away will be a great hardship to me, but I will not whinge.'


Ms Harman's client had been accused of trying to poison her daughter, with expert evidence that she was suffering from the controversial 'Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy' which was first propounded by Professor Sir Roy Meadow.