On 8 November the Ministry of Justice announced the anticipated national standards for expert witnesses in family courts. The announcement was made by Minister if State Lord McNally at Bond Solon’s Annual Expert Witness Conference and formed the joint response by the MoJ and the Family Justice Council to the consultation that has been taking place on the Family Justice Review.
Lord McNally told the conference: “Expert witnesses have a vital role to play in many of these sorts of cases making complex issues understandable to lawyers, judges and juries. You play an important part in the administration of justice.
“The Family Justice Review also recommended that agreed quality standards should be developed for expert witnesses in the family courts. My officials have been working with the Family Justice Council, experts groups and other interested parties to develop those quality standards. These standards were recently subject to consultation. I am pleased to say that, today, we are launching the joint Ministry of Justice and Family Justice Council response to the consultation.”
The standards were outlined in more detail at a specialist session at the conference and it is anticipated they will be implemented next April.
Lord McNally told an interviewer at the conference that some elements of the justice system would be recognised by Dickens or even Shakespeare and that reform to make the system more efficient was essential.
“If we can make the system more efficient, we can make it better for those that get involved in the law, and also those who work and deliver a service in the law.”
Experts who “anticipate the changes” and work with them “will survive and prosper”.
The standards, said Lord McNally, will help to ensure that experts providing evidence to the family courts in proceedings relating to children have a recognised level of qualifications, skills and experience consistent with the provision of good quality advice to the court.
There are 11 standards which all experts in family courts should meet, according to the response published to coincide with the announcement. They range from ensuring that the expert is a practitioner or academic subject to peer appraisal in the subject area and has sufficient knowledge of the “social, developmental, cultural norms and accepted legal principles applicable to the case presented at initial enquiry, and has the cultural competence skills to deal with the circumstances of the case” to requiring the expert to be familiar with Practice Directions and carry professional indemnity insurance.
The standards also require the expert to “state their hourly rate in advance of agreeing to accept instruction, and give an estimate of the number of hours the report is likely to take”.
Lord McNally denied this amounted to “justice on the cheap”, although he did aver that the “days of big fee barristers earning colossal sums at taxpayers’ expense are over.”