Although, in his judgment, Mr Justice McFarlane insisted that he did not think that appalling behaviour of this kind is frequent amongst social services or the family courts, the most disturbing aspect of his analysis is the degree to which it suggests that it is extremely common. None of the social services officials involved seem to have been aware of doing anything unusual or exceptional. They did not even admit that their behaviour was below acceptable standards. Similarly, the court which rubber-stamped their behaviour, and authorised the removal of the child, proceeded in what its members clearly thought was a completely routine fashion. There is no indication at all that they believed they were acting in any other than a completely acceptable way.

We simply do not know how many cases of child removal would, if competently examined in the manner of Mr Justice McFarlane, reveal comparably appalling behaviour, for most are never subject to this kind of examination. There are certainly some, as I know, because I have seen the documents which identify them. But there could be hundreds or there could be thousands of examples of needless and wrongful removals of children from their parents every year. It is a staggering indication of the failure of the system that it is impossible to discover the truth on so critically important a matter.

A recent Court of Appeal decision into a forced adoption case, published on May 1, shows that such conduct is indeed far more widespread than is suggested by the bland reassurances that it “is exceptional”. All of the three judges on the Appeal Court agreed that the conduct of the local authority (East Sussex) was “disgraceful....[Its behaviour] demonstrates a total misunderstanding of its functions under the 2002 Act. … The local authority quite deliberately set out to prevent the father from being heard. The conduct of the local council was an abuse of power, and wholly unacceptable”.

But as with the case heard by Mr Justice McFarlane, the way the council and its officials and social workers behaved suggests that they were used to acting in that “disgraceful” way. Lord Justice Wall noted, for example, that the social workers in the case “do not appear to see the need for good management. It is the arrogance of the agency’s behaviour in this case which is its most shocking aspect”.