I completely agree (not for the first time) with John Bolch at Family Lore about the Baby P case. Of course anything councils can do to improve child protection systems must be done – it must be done regardless […]

In his speech at the Labour conference yesterday, Gordon Brown proposed new legislation to enshrine his government’s commitment to abolish child poverty by 2020 (or as the article puts it, he vowed to bring in

Gary Glitter is I expect on his way back to Britain having served time for child sex offences in Vietnam. Some commenters at the Sun’s website have expressed the view that disgraced Glitter, as he’s now known, shouldn’t […]

Not all calls for “clarification” of the law are nonsense, but it is well worth being sceptical about such calls generally: often they rest on the assumption that the law should always rely on clear-cut black and white definitions. An […]

The other reader request comes from an equally esteemed legal chap whose legal interests closely match those of Head of Legal and who finds early mornings equally or perhaps even more challenging. He asks what I […]

The Lords have given quite an interesting judgment today on the standard of proof in care proceedings under the Children Act 1989, which I think in principle applies across the board in civil proceedings. They’ve cut through the confusion […]

Before I leave the Big Apple, a leader in today’s New York Times drew my attention to this US Supreme Court case in which a federal law on child pornography has been upheld as constitutional.

The Times […]

The Lords judgment handed down today is in a Hague Convention child abduction case: there is discretion under article 12 of the not to order the return even of an unlawfully abducted child, in exceptional circumstances.