To improve confidence in the legal system, family courts were opened to the media yesterday. Darlington chief reporter David Roberts was among the visitors.

ACCORDING to Justice Secretary Jack Straw, opening up family courts to the media is a step towards greater openness.

Tell that to a Northern Echo reporter who was turned away from a family court at Darlington Magistrates’ Court building yesterday because she was not in possession of a valid press card.

Fair enough, you might say, were it not for the fact that the reporter has covered criminal court in Darlington nearly once a week for the past three years and is on first name terms with the majority of staff.

However, rules are rules and I was dispatched to pick up where she left off.

For people unacquainted with the legal system, they often think covering criminal court is a day spent listening to Perry Mason-esque arguments.

They are, of course, wrong and the reality is much more mundane.

Family court is no different.

There are very few salacious Mills/McCartney divorce tales or Jeremy Kyle-style paternity tests. Instead, family court is where you go when your private life unravels to the degree where legal action is needed to try to put it right.

Instead of your personal arguments being played out between yourself and one or two other people, magistrates, court clerks, solicitors, ushers and now the media are privy to them all.

When I was finally let into the family court in Darlington yesterday, the one remaining case was a father who was applying to be allowed to visit his son for one hour a fortnight.

And that’s about as much as I can reveal.

Reporting restrictions in family court are so tight that I can tell you that magistrates were inclined to grant the application, subject to a drugs test being negative, but no more.

In some cases, judges can prevent any information being published and bar the press from the courtroom.

This begs the question why open the court to the media?

What is the point of an extra person intruding upon the personal affairs of a family?

It’s not much fun for all parties, the couple who were already studiously avoiding each others gaze chose to turn their attentions to the one interloper in the room.

It’s not a very comfortable experience, particularly in the intimate setting of a family court.

There have been complaints, not in Darlington, that in some cases the secrecy of hearings has led to injustices, with some children being taken into care wrongly.

Presumably, with the media as watchdog the theory is that this is less likely to happen.

However, if today’s evidence is anything to go by, unless the rules are relaxed further there will not be many journalists taking advantage of the “open” family courts.