In a recent issue of ADC (2000; 82:192–6), we published a paper by Speight and Wynne expresssing their concern about certain aspects of child protection procedures in the UK. This month we published a response by the Rt Hon Lady Justice Hale (formerly Professor Brenda Hoggett QC), who was the Law Commissioner in charge of the programme of reform in family law from 1984–93. She was also a member of the interdepartmental review of the Child Care Law published in 1985, which led to the 1989 Act. A bill that led to this Act was drafted mainly at the Law Commission before it became a government bill during 1998–9.

Dame Brenda Hale is now a High Court Judge sitting in the family division, where she has ample opportunities to experience the Children Act in practice. She is currently a member of the Court of Appeal.

It was with sadness and concern that I read the recent article by Nigel Speight and Jane Wynne, as I have great respect for their work as paediatricians.1 The sadness was that “physicians committed to logical thought and evidence based practice” should have gone into print without, it seems, having checked some basic facts or having read and understood the Children Act 1989 which they criticise so severely. The concern is that if their “anecdotal, impressionistic and subjective” comments reflect a real experience of practice under the Act, then others must have similarly misunderstood and misapplied its basic principles.

In the discussion of the background to the Children Act, Speight and Wynne comment that the authors of the Act seem to have been more influenced by lobbying from parents' rights groups and that “at no stage during the drafting of the Children Act does there appear to have been any counterbalancing input from …