Derailing the 2004 Parenting Time Reform
The EI reform proposal went into Whitehall on 8 October 2003 on a wave of professional support that registered in the public domain. Newsnight did a ‘fresh hope' interview with Lord Filkin, the Minister for Constitutional Affairs; there was wide coverage in the Guardian, Independent on Sunday and The Times. EI was easy and quick to do and did not cost much money: it promised great gains in return for great savings. This meant that (unlike many other projects in Whitehall) EI was likely to happen and there would be no problem with funding.
In other words, EI was a sitting duck.
In a project goes to Whitehall - and the first question is, ‘What’s all this about?’ In this case, family law. Next, the project is pigeon-holed: Q: “Which bit of family law?” A: “Children, Section 8, contact.” Then:
Q: “Who do we have who knows about that?”
A: “Cafcass”
Cafcass: Intercepting Reform in Whitehall
It was the work of a moment for Cafcass to claim EI was ‘their’ project, put themselves forward as project managers, mislay the EI project papers, dispense with the EI blueprint, appropriate the funding and spend it on an undefined venture of their own called ‘Family Resolutions’. The EI Implementation Plan handed to the Minister at his first meeting with the NATC on 3 November 2003 disappeared.
How Family Law Officials run rings round politicians
The only barrier to Cafcass replacing EI with a spoiler was the Minister. This difficulty was easily overcome: the Minister (and, as time passed, the Ministers) were reassured that Cafcass’ Family Resolutions was the same as Early Interventions under another name - and, if anything came up in the House, the Minister could say, in all good faith:
“To suggest, as the Opposition have, that we have abandoned what was known as the early interventions initiative is simply a travesty of the truth.” The Rt Hon Margaret Hodge, Hansard 1468, 3 December 2004:
Or, there and again, maybe that good faith was not quite so good:
“The Government did not accept or agree to implement a model of dispute resolution named early interventions, therefore it would be incorrect to state that there was any destruction of this model” 24 Jan 05, The Rt Hon Margaret Hodge to Rt Hon Eric Forth MP (2004/006556POMH):
Or perhaps the situation was really the opposite - of that opposite (29 April 2004, Lord Filkin to the Coalition for Equal Parenting):
“Dear Stephen,
Early Interventions: Pilot Project
Thank you for your letter of 30 March 2004, regarding our meeting of 27 January. I felt that this was a valuable discussion of the Family Resolution Pilots (previously called the Early Intervention Pilots) and of contact issues. The Early Interventions project which was developed by New Approaches to Contact (NATC) and others, is being developed and taken forward. It has been renamed the Family Resolution Project because whilst the intended intervention is early in the current court process, it is not early in the process of relationship breakdown.”
‘Yes Minister’ and Family Law
Or maybe the truth was more like this? From the NATC’s records:
“On 15 July 2004 the NATC met with Lord Filkin and [the lead civil servant] managing the EI /Fam Res project. At this meeting the lead civil servant (BC) managing the project gave specific and detailed assurances to the Minister that the original EI project was under construction and nearing completion. The Minister was adamant on the commitment of the Government to producing a project to the original EI specifications; the civil servant was insistent that a project to these specifications was being produced.
Some ten weeks later, a completely different project was launched by this same civil servant. A full written report of these events, together with supporting documentation, is available from the NATC (ref ConAffCom).”
Family Law: Black = White = Black etc
Or, why shouldn’t a Minister say this (prior to an apology that she had not met the NATC)?:
“I should highlight that New Approaches to Contact have been involved throughout the Department’s Consultation on the Green paper Parental Separation: Children’s Needs and Parents’ Responsibilities. I have personally met with the Director of NATC to discuss the early interventions proposals to which (your constituent’s) letter refers.”
This same letter continued: ”We happen to have chosen a different name! In no sense was there any abandonment of the EI initiative rather, where appropriate, adaptations have been used to suit the operation of the Pilot under English jurisdiction” 24 Jan 05, The Rt Hon Margaret Hodge to Rt Hon Eric Forth MP (2004/006556POMH):
This goes a little beyond ‘Yes Minister’. This is the next stage: where Ministers say what Whitehall tells them to say, and write what is written for them. That has a bearing on the future. Whitehall disposes, Ministers do not.
Family Law Reform in Whitehall: the Discarded Blueprint
In 2003 Whitehall set about dismantling the EI project, maintaining that nothing of the kind was happening. This precipitated a three-year battle to reinstate EI, exhaustively documented (the tally October 2003 to November 2004 was 2,333 emails and 168 computer files of hard-copy). In battles of this type there is only one winner: Whitehall. The passage of arms ended with no EI, a dud Act of Parliament (duly passed) and a truly horrific intellectual muddle that persists to this day.
These 2004 papers click here were prepared for the 15 July 2004 meeting with the Minister (where they were read and ticked paragraph by paragraph) after it emerged that the original EI proposal had never reached the Design Committee. The ‘Design Committee’ had started work not on EI but on ‘Family Resolutions’ (FR).
Family Law: a spoiler
And what was ‘Family Resolutions’? A contemporaneously noted conversation (copy available, 25 May 2004, 14.10-14.20) is excerpted below. It shows how business is conducted at the heart of Government. This furnishes a second crucial pointer for useful change in family law:
Pointer 1: politicians have little or no control over how their civil servants run things
Pointer 2: civil servants lack the capability to run the things they control
Whitehall: Basic Incompetencies in Family Law
On 25 May 2004, the NATC discussed things with Whitehall Design Team member PA, asking…
“…when the EI replacement, Family Resolutions, had been submitted and approved; and whether we could see the FR proposal?
He said that there was no FR proposal. When this was queried this, he repeated it a number of times in different ways. There “had been no formal proposal for Family Resolutions”. There had been “no formal submission to the DCA Minister” and “no formal submission to the DfES Minister”. There were “no specifications”.
He explained that this was because “the project was a project to develop a project”, and that “there is no project specification because it is a work-in-progress” and “It has not been approved by the Minister because it is undergoing design” and “the project is... that we are working on whatever the project is”. He did not think that this type of project was different from the Early Interventions project.”
Family Law: Fool’s Gold
‘Family Resolutions’ existed only as a sentiment. The fully-specified EI project was replaced by the vague idea that ‘something should be done’ - but no-one knew what. The Design Team’s capabilities were exhausted by the time they worked out more or less how the existing legal system worked. So they ‘piloted’ that - on the existing ‘every-case-is-different basis’, with no guidelines. Being identical to the existing system, it disappeared as it was rolled out (save for a mention in the Bumper Book of Government Waste).
Whitehall and Family Law
Whitehall has no real way to go back from the wrong thing to the right thing. That would acknowledge that wrong thing had been done in preference to the right thing. Rather, it must wait years - for the results of failure to come in - before adjustments are made: to the chassis that has already failed.
Nonetheless, a token ‘Family Justice Inquiry’ was held in 2005.
Cafcass: Into the Void
The Inquiry did not reach its starting point.
When the EI flagship around which the White Paper was originally built had gone down, the government’s agenda went with it. Four years ‘work’ across two departments had crumbled away.
Dozens of peripheral witnesses were called to the Inquiry.
Despite energetic representations, the NATC was excluded (correspondence available) on the pretext that it was not the NATC EI project that had failed, it was Cafcass’ FR project.
This was an inside job. No-one aware of the substitution was invited to give evidence. The Inquiry duly found that nothing could have been done better. All that remained was a decent professional burial (see the next module), the terrible muddle (read on) and maybe the distant hope of a change in government and / or a better-informed go next time round.
Click here to read full EI proposal.