A Response to Sir James Munby
from Sir Nicholas Mostyn, a judge of the High Court, Family Division from 2010 – 2023
Listen now: Law & Disorder’s November episode debating the recent assisted dying legislation.
Sir Nicholas Mostyn, a judge of the High Court, Family Division from 2010 – 2023.
N.B. In this response I will refer to the person seeking an assisted death as P and will assume that P is male. This piece is a response to “Assisted dying : what role for the Panel? Thoughts on the latest (amended) proposals”.
In his (fifth) paper dated 30 April 2025 Sir James Munby vigorously argues that the procedure laid down by the amended Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (“the Bill”) to be followed by the Assisted Dying Review Panel (“the Panel”) is riddled with so many technical errors that if enacted in its present form the system risks falling into disrepute and worse. He says, “so far as I am aware … there has been no attempt at any stage (and certainly no successful attempt) to challenge either my reasoning or my conclusions.”
As President of the Family Division from 2013 – 2018 Sir James Munby was in effect my boss during that period. I salute him as an exceptional lawyer. He is also a great friend and has supported me through thick and thin. I have never disagreed with him before on the interpretation of the law. Indeed, at the present time we are jointly fighting a lonely battle to try to persuade the senior judiciary that the current “transparency” measures put in place in the Family Court are of doubtful lawfulness.
It is therefore with both regret and trepidation I am forced to say that in his blistering criticisms of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, I fear Homer has nodded.
I believe that if all the criticisms made by Sir James were met and accommodated then what is intended to be a fairly summary, informal, non-legalistic judicial process would become a highly formal, legalistic, prolonged grand state trial, through which it would be the depths of lack of compassion to force a gravely ill person in the final stages of life to undergo in order to be allowed to leave this world in peace and with dignity.
I ask readers to bear with me as I take them through a mass of pretty technical stuff. The differences between me and Sir James may appear at times to be an example of that well-worn metaphor of two bald men fighting over a comb. But it is important that my disagreement with him is well understood given the approaching third reading of the Bill on 16 May 2025.
Sir James’s over-arching criticism is the “extraordinary degree of discretion” given to the Panel in relation to the procedure it is to adopt. I agree that the Bill does not spell out comprehensively how the Panel should exercise its powers and duties. But I would not expect it to do so, for two reasons.
First, there are long-standing, ingrained, rules of evidence and procedure that apply automatically to all legislatively created judicial bodies, which do not need to be spelt out. The statute creating the judicial body (“the primary statute”) will take as read, and will not mention at all, the common law requirements that (a) when the body decides an issue of fact the burden of proof will fall on the applicant, and the standard of proof will be the civil balance of probability, and (b) the body will observe in its proceedings the rules of natural justice. It will also take as read, and not mention at all, that P, and any other party to the application, is entitled to a fair hearing pursuant to Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) (incorporated into domestic law by the Human Rights Act 1998).
Second, the primary statute will invariably provide for the practice and procedure of the judicial body to be regulated by Rules made by a Rule Committee (or, less commonly, by Regulations made by a Minister, as the Bill at present provides), which will be separately approved by Parliament as secondary legislation.
The burden and standard of proof
Although an attempt was made in Committee to impose the criminal standard of proof on the issue of voluntariness (i.e. that the Panel had to be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the application was not the product of coercion or pressure), this was rightly defeated on a vote, as no UK statute explicitly states that the criminal standard of proof must apply in specified civil proceedings. The House of Lords decided in 1995, and confirmed in 2009[1], that the standard of proof remained the same irrespective of the seriousness of the subject matter being decided. Therefore, when an application under clause 14(2) or 16(4)(a) is referred to the Panel, P must persuade the Panel, having regard to the evidence it has received, that each of the items listed in clause 15(2) is more likely than not to be true.
Rules of natural justice
Equivalently, the rules of natural justice will apply with full force to the proceedings of the Panel notwithstanding that the Bill says nothing about this. The two rules of most direct application are first that the Panel must not be biased or perceived as biased (nemo judex in causa sua) and second that a person potentially affected by a decision must be given a reasonable opportunity to be heard (audi alteram partem). This second rule aligns closely with Article 6 of the ECHR which states that “In the determination of his civil rights and obligations or of any criminal charge against him, everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law…”
Therefore, even before consideration is given to the Rules which will assuredly need to be made - which I discuss below -, the imposition of these standard precepts means that it is incorrect to say that the Panel has an “extraordinary degree of discretion” and can basically do what it likes in the discharge of its powers and duties. The fact that the Bill says nothing about the standard of proof obviously does not mean, for example, that the Panel has the discretion to refuse to issue a certificate of eligibility where it believes that it is possible, but unlikely, that P was coerced or pressured into making the application.
Rules
As stated above, whenever a primary statute creates a new court, tribunal or judicial body it does no more than to sketch out a broad framework for the body’s procedures, leaving the details to be supplied by Rules made by a specialist committee (or by a Minister as Regulations), to be approved by Parliament as secondary legislation.
In the Appendix to this article I examine the Mental Capacity Act 2005, which created the Court of Protection; the Tribunals Courts and Enforcement Act 2007, which created the First-tier Tribunal and the Upper Tribunal; and the Crime and Courts Act 2013 which created the Family Court (at a time when Sir James was President of the Family Division and head of Family Justice).
Therefore, Sir James’s vision of cases being decided entirely subjectively by the Panel pursuant to an unbridled discretion is, with respect, a fallacy. It is another example of the condition described by Lord Bingham in his book The Rule of Law (2010): “there are areas in which judges are required to exercise a discretion, but such discretions are much more closely constrained than is always acknowledged.”
In his paper Sir James does not address, or even mention, the procedural Rules (or Regulations) that will inevitably have to be passed to regulate proceedings before the Panel. His entire case rests on the assumption that there will be no further procedural rules beyond those mentioned on the face of the amended Bill. If that were true, I could see some force in his concerns. But it is a totally unreal premise as it is inconceivable that the Panel could begin operations without the necessary procedural Rules (or Regulations) having been made.
Sir James’s specific criticisms
Taken shortly, Sir James strongly criticises the following procedural powers and duties of the Panel as laid down in the amended Bill:
1. The “troubling” power to dispense with the requirement to hear directly from P in exceptional circumstances.
2. The “very troubling” failure to require that a proxy must be heard directly.
3. The “potentially undesirable” powers to have recourse to pre-recorded material where it is appropriate for medical reasons, and to take oral evidence by audio link.
4. The “profoundly inadequate” power of the Panel’s chair to decide not to hold the hearing or part of it in public.
He then identifies the following alleged omissions in the Bill:
5. The “astonishing” failure to spell out who must be made parties to the application or be notified of the application.
6. The “extraordinary” failure to allow an application for reconsideration to be made, or for any other relief to be sought, where a certificate is granted and facts emerge which were not known to the Panel.
7. The failure to spell out how the Panel is to be satisfied (a) of the various matters listed in clause 15(7) and (b) that the application itself is voluntary.
8. The failure to specify how and by whom the evidence should be tested and challenged and how that should be paid for.
9. The omission of public funding arrangements for P, the two doctors, and any other parties or expert or lay witnesses.
10. The failure to say whether the media can be heard before an order to hear matters in private can be made.
All of the criticised matters relate to the practice and/or procedure of the Panel when dealing with an application referred to it under clause 14(2) or 16(4)(a).
The Panel will be highly qualified. It will have three members: a lawyer, a psychiatrist and a social worker. The lawyer must be either a serving or retired, full time or part-time, High Court judge; a serving or retired Supreme Court or Appeal Court judge; or a KC.
Sir James’s complaints in Nos 1 – 3 rest on a shadowy imputation that there is a risk that the highly qualified Panel will either be incapable or (surely not) unwilling to do its job properly, carefully and conscientiously in accordance with its judicial oath. If there are exceptional circumstances which prevent the Panel hearing directly from P but the Panel is satisfied that it can make the necessary findings of fact after having taken P’s evidence indirectly, then that is a decision that falls squarely in the remit of legitimate judicial case-management. It would be open to the Rule Committee to prescribe the types of exceptional circumstances which allow the panel to take this course.
Sir James’s strongest complaints are reserved for No. 5 (who should be parties) and Nos 7 & 8 (method of proof).
He says that unless the primary statute specifies who are to be parties to the application, the process will not have the “degree of rigour” needed to identify and prevent possible abuses, and in particular to detect what may be “very subtle external pressures”. Nor would it command public confidence. I deal with the question of parties below.
His strongest criticism is reserved for what he claims are irremediable omissions as regards the methodology of proof. He says that the Bill must on its face mandate a rigorous procedure in every case for testing, and if needs be challenging, the evidence, including an independent evidential investigation, perhaps by the Official Solicitor. Without this, he says, alarmingly, it would not be proper for a serving judge to be involved in the process as a member of the Panel. I have explained above how this particular criticism is misconceived as it disregards the automatic imposition of the precepts about burden and standard of proof and about natural justice, as well as the procedural rules that will assuredly be made.
In essence, Sir James’s contention is that the Bill should provide that the evidence of P must be corroborated. That is what his demand for P’s evidence to be challenged, tested and independently investigated amounts to.
Although in times past there were a number of crimes where corroboration of the evidence of the complainant was required, these have now all been abolished with the exception of perjury and treason (see sec 13, Perjury Act 1911, and sec 2, Treason Act 1695). In civil law the only requirement for corroboration I can think of was in sec 4(2) of the Affiliation Proceedings Act 1957 in relation to the evidence of an unmarried mother seeking child maintenance for an illegitimate child. This was repealed in 1987. For a requirement of corroboration to be reintroduced in a case under what will become the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Act 2025 would be a strangely regressive and ahistorical step.
Lying behind this criticism is, as I have already remarked, a shadowy imputation that unless the evidence relied on by P is challenged, tested and independently investigated by the Official Solicitor, the Panel might well deliberately act in breach of proper judicial standards.
Sir James posits a hypothetical case where a Panel reaches a decision to grant a certificate
· in secret,
· without having heard from P,
· with no input of any sort from P’s partner or relatives,
· with no testing nor challenging of the evidence, of any sort,
· with no independent evidential investigation whatsoever, and
· with no written reasons.
Such an outcome would of course require the Panel members to act in breach of natural justice, in breach of their judicial oaths and contrary to the ECHR. It is impossible to conceive of circumstances where such a decision could lawfully be made.
Sir James says that he does not believe in the omniscience and infallibility of judges and of tribunals. Neither do I. But it looks as though his lack of faith in tribunals extends to a belief that some Panels will act in breach of the law.
I completely disagree and hold no such belief. A direct analogue for the Panel is the First-tier Tribunal (FTT). This often sits in panels of three with a legally qualified chair. They are expected to deal with very serious matters, such as the right to receive a benefit that would keep a family out of poverty. Anyone who went to watch a FTT hearing there would be likely to see the FTT:
· acting with complete fairness, efficiency and professionalism to all before it, none of whom is likely to have professional representation,
· applying the rules of natural justice scrupulously, while at the same time
· conducting proceedings with sufficient informality to allow necessary evidence to be identified and adduced,
· testing and challenging statements made by the parties whether from the witness box or otherwise, and
· generally doing their utmost to adhere to their judicial oaths.
As a result, I believe that the rate of successful appeals to the Upper Tribunal on the ground of procedural unfairness is negligible.
I believe that the Panels will be equally conscientious, and that miscarriages of justice deriving from procedural unfairness will be vanishingly rare. Of course, however amour-clad the safeguarding process may be, there will always be a chance that the Panel makes the wrong decision and P dies a few months earlier than nature would have otherwise dictated. But occasional serious miscarriages of justice happen in every sphere of litigation. I am satisfied that the Bill should not be expected to contain any further safeguards beyond those that are already there.
The Bill’s present procedural terms
In my opinion the Bill in its present form goes considerably further than is conventional or necessary in its taxonomy of procedural requirements. For example, clauses 15(4) – (6) prescribe who must give direct oral testimony to the Panel; Schedule 2 para 6 requires Panels to sit in public; and Schedule 2 to para 9 requires Panels to give decisions in writing. There are no corresponding provisions to these in the statutes discussed in the Appendix.
Clause 49 gives the Secretary of State power to make by Regulations such supplementary incidental or consequential provision as is appropriate for the purposes, or in consequence of, any provision made by the Act.
I recommend that the Bill be amended to align it with the 2005 and 2007 Acts mentioned in the Appendix (and numerous other pieces of legislation) to provide that Rules as to the practice and procedure of the Panel should be made by a Rule Committee rather than by Regulations made by the Secretary of State. The process whereby Rules are made by a Rule Committee is much more transparent and exhaustive than Regulations made by the Secretary of State. For three years I was a member of the Family Procedure Rule Committee and can testify to the exhaustive (and exhausting) nature of the process whereby Rules are proposed, drafted and promulgated. Rules are invariably the subject of public consultation before being finalised and made. There is also the advantage that the Rule Committee will be diverse in its representation.
I now address Sir James’s criticisms individually and explain how those which have merit can be met by appropriate Rules being passed.
Joinder of parties
This should be dealt with by the Panel in the same way that the FTT deals with the addition and substitution of parties as explained in the Appendix. Rules should provide that if P is willing to do so, he should specify in the application who might be affected by an assisted death. The Panel should then decide, without a hearing, who should be given notice of the proceedings and who should be made a party. If P is not willing to do so, the Rules should provide that the Panel should immediately convene a procedural hearing to determine whether the case should be permitted to proceed without giving notice to potentially affected persons, and if so on what terms. In my opinion Rules along these lines would ensure compliance with the second rule of natural justice and Article 6. I accept that the question of who should be parties and who should be given notice of an application will have to be considered very carefully by the Rule Committee.
Admission of evidence
As regards the admission of evidence, Rules should be passed which mirror Rule 15 of the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) Health, Education and Social Care Chamber) Rules 2008 which give the First-Tier Tribunal a discretion to decide the nature of the evidence it is prepared to accept, and how it should be admitted. Those Rules state that evidence may be adduced whether or not it is admissible in a civil trial.
Hearings
Rules should be passed providing that the Panel must hold a hearing before making a decision which disposes of proceedings unless, in exceptional circumstances, it
considers that it can decide the matter without the hearing. On the other hand, the Rules should provide that case-management decisions may be made without a hearing. The Rules should say that hearings before the Panel should be conducted on the same basis as hearings in the Court of Protection, that is, in public but subject to a reporting restriction order preventing identification of P. They should provide that all parties should be entitled to attend a hearing.
Decisions
Rules should also provide that the requirement of written, published, decisions should only apply to the final decision, so that while Panels would be at liberty to publish interlocutory decisions, they would not be obliged to do so. Decisions must contain notification of the right to seek reconsideration under clause 16(2) and the time within which, and the manner in which, such right may be exercised.
Legal aid
No legal aid is available for proceedings before the First-Tier Tribunal, and for this reason the procedure is always extremely informal and, to a significant extent, inquisitorial. I cannot see that legal aid would ever be made available to applicants. Rules should be made dealing with the fees to be paid to the doctors and the Panel members.
Injunctions
Finally, I would point out that if a situation arose akin to the Canadian case of AY v NB (2024) BCSC 2004 it would be open to any interested party (whether or not a formal party to the application ) to apply for an injunction to the King’s Bench Division of the High Court under the greatly expanded injunction jurisdiction recently approved by the Supreme Court in Wolverhampton City Council & Ors v London Gypsies and Travellers & Ors [2023] UKSC 47 (29 November 2023) at [145] – [158]. Such an injunction could be sought by an affected party, whether or not a formal party, where a certificate has been granted but new evidence has arisen, thus meeting the charge that the terms of Clause 16 are “extraordinary” in its failure to provide a right to seek reconsideration in such circumstances.
Scope of Panel Rules
In my opinion the scope of the needed Panel Rules is illustrated by the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) Health, Education and Social Care Chamber) Rules 2008[2]. In addition to the maters mentioned above, the Panel Rules would need to transpose to proceedings before the Panel the following key aspects of procedure before the FTT:
· Permitting the Panel to give a case management direction, either on its own initiative or on application made orally or in writing by one of the parties in relation to the conduct or disposal of proceedings at any time, including a direction amending, suspending or setting aside an earlier direction.
· Permitting the Panel to deal with the consequences of a failure to comply with any requirement in the Rules or a case management direction including waiving the requirement, requiring the failure to be remedied, striking out a party's case or restricting a party's participation in the proceedings.
· Imposing the obligation on the Panel to strike out a case referred to it without a hearing if it is satisfied that it does not have jurisdiction, for example where it is clear that P was not aged 18 or over at the time the first declaration was made.
· Permitting the Panel to strike out a case where P has failed to co-operate with the Panel to such an extent that it cannot deal with the proceedings fairly and justly; or it considers there is no reasonable prospect of P’s case succeeding.
· Permitting an order for costs but only where the Panel considers a party or its representative has acted unreasonably in bringing, defending or conducting the proceedings.
· Allowing a party to appoint a representative (whether a legal representative or not) to represent that party in the proceedings.
· Providing for the means by which documents are provided by a party to the Panel and served on any other parties.
· Permitting the Panel (a) to vary the automatic reporting restriction order and (b) to make an order prohibiting the disclosure or publication of specified documents or information relating to the proceedings.
· Permitting the Panel on the application of a party, or on its own initiative, to make an order requiring any person to attend as a witness at a hearing at the time and place specified in the order, or to answer any questions or produce any documents in that person's possession or control which relate to any issue in the proceedings.
· Permitting P to withdraw the application.
Conclusion
In my respectful opinion Sir James’s arguments disregard the foundational premise of an application for a certificate of eligibility to undergo an assisted death. It is that P’s natural death is very close – no more than six months away. Let us take as an example what is likely to be a very common case. In this example P is physically in a very poor condition, doubly incontinent, wheel-chair bound, wracked by excruciating pain. Mentally, he is suffering intolerably. He genuinely and authentically wishes to end his dismal existence at a time and place of his choosing in peace and with dignity. There is no suggestion of that wish being the product of any external coercion or pressure. He therefore seeks an assisted death.
Sir James’s contention is that P’s wish for a peaceful, dignified death must be the subject of a grand state trial containing a rigorous procedure for testing and challenging the evidence, including an independent evidential investigation by the Official Solicitor or someone of equivalent status.
If that were accepted one would have to ask if the human quality of compassion has somehow been lost along the way?
The Panel will have all the talents. It will have the evidence of the doctors in writing as well as the oral evidence of at least one of them. It will have the oral evidence of P. By skilful questioning it will be able to establish whether the application is valid or whether it is questionable. If the latter, it could perhaps embark on the type of investigations suggested by Sir James. But if it is the former, it should let P depart in peace and with dignity in accordance with his clear, settled and informed wish. Where there is no hint of any questionability in the material before the Panel it would be, with respect, fundamentally lacking in compassion to impose on P the type of elaborate state trial envisaged by Sir James.
In my opinion wavering legislators should give no weight to Sir James’s arguments. The procedural requirements that have been specified in the Bill are as far as the legislature needs to go. All other procedural requirements should be dealt with by Rules made by a Rule Committee and approved by Parliament as secondary legislation.
Sir James’s suggestions also give rise to serious resourcing problems. If only 2% of deaths were assisted this would be 13,000 cases a year. The government has estimated, based on data from eight US states, the District of Columbia and New Zealand, but not the Netherlands or Canada, that in the first full year of operation there could be as few as 933 applications for an assisted death rising in year 10 to a maximum of 7,100[3]. I think these estimates are implausibly low, not least because it is likely that dying Americans are more likely to be influenced by religious arguments than their counterparts here.
I would estimate that for each case Sir James’s “rigorous procedure for testing and challenging the evidence, including an independent evidential investigation” would take at least 2 days to undertake. The following table sets out the resource demands for varying numbers of applications on the basis that there are about 250 working days each year.
The state will therefore be looking, for every weekday, at 50 -100 separate Panels sitting. This would obviously be an insurmountable resourcing challenge. If Sir James’s proposals were adopted the scheme could not function.
APPENDIX
The Mental Capacity Act 2005
The Court of Protection addresses matters of profound personal and social significance on a daily basis, including critical issues related to life and death.
In proceedings under the Act the Court must make numerous factual determinations.
For example, section 16 of the Act gives the Court power to make a declaration as to whether a person has, or lacks, capacity to make a decision. Nowhere in the Act does it say how the Court should satisfy itself that a person does or does not have capacity. For sure, the Act defines what constitutes capacity but it does not say who has to prove what, or that evidence must be tested and challenged, or that matters must be independently investigated
Plainly, where capacity is in issue, the long-standing rules as to burden and standard of proof will apply. The omission in the Act to spell out the burden and standard of proof for cases proceeding in the Court of Protection signifies nothing. It is simply taken as read. The applicant will have to adduce evidence that demonstrates to the Court that it is more likely than not that the protected party lacks capacity.
Further, the 2005 Act says nothing about the procedures that the court should follow, beyond saying in section 51 that rules will be made in respect of the practice and procedure of the court. It states that rules may make provision:
(a) as to the manner and form in which proceedings are to be commenced;
(b) as to the persons entitled to be notified of, and be made parties to, the proceedings; …
(e) for enabling the court to appoint a suitable person (who may, with his or her consent, be the Official Solicitor) to act in the name of, or on behalf of, or to represent the person to whom the proceedings relate;
(f) for enabling an application to the court to be disposed of without a hearing;
(g) for enabling the court to proceed with, or with any part of, a hearing in the absence of the person to whom the proceedings relate;
(h) for enabling or requiring the proceedings or any part of them to be conducted in private and for enabling the court to determine who is to be admitted when the court sits in private and to exclude specified persons when it sits in public;
(i) as to what may be received as evidence (whether or not admissible apart from the rules) and the manner in which it is to be presented;
Thus, the 2005 Act allows the Court of Protection Rule Committee to address those very matters which Sir James now argues simply must be present in the Bill. I do not recall anyone suggesting when the Mental Capacity Bill was proceeding through Parliament that delegating these important matters to the Rule Committee was troubling, extraordinary or astonishing, or that it would mean that no serving judge could sit in the new court, or that, as a result, the new court would fall into public disrepute.
Rules were duly made – the current rules are the Court of Protection Rules 2017 – which deal with exactly the sorts of matters that Sir James now argues should all be specified in the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. As one would expect, the Court of Protection Rules do not tell the judges of the Court of Protection how It should make decisions in relation to things such as mental capacity or best interests.
As seen, the Act allowed rules to be made as to whether proceedings should be held in private or otherwise. Those rules have been made and provide that, subject to the court’s direction, every case will be heard in public subject to a reporting restriction order preventing identification of the protected party. I would expect Rules to be made, following enactment of the Bill, to like effect.
Tribunals Courts and Enforcement Act 2007
The same drafting methodology was followed two years later with the enactment of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007. The Tribunals created by that Act deal with matters of the utmost importance including immigration, disability, discrimination and employment. Section 22 states that rules will be made to govern the practice and procedure to be followed in the Tribunals. It states that further provision about procedure is made in Schedule 5. Rules were duly made.
For example, the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) Health, Education and Social Care Chamber) Rules 2008 deal comprehensively with many of the procedural matters identified by Sir James, and which he now argues should be specified in this primary legislation. Interestingly, the 2007 Act does not expressly empower the Tribunals Rule Committee to make rules about the joinder of parties, but the Committee nevertheless passed rule 9 dealing with the substitution and addition of parties.
Unsurprisingly, , neither the 2007 Act nor the Rules tell the Tribunal how it should exercise its powers to decide an issue.
The Crime and Courts Act 2013
This created the Family Court on 22 April 2014 by inserting Part 4A into the Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act 1984. Previously, family proceedings had been dealt with in the High Court, County Court and Magistrates Courts. Procedure in those courts back then was regulated by the Family Procedure Rules 2010 passed under the Courts Act 2003.
The new Family Court was given the duty to make decisions of the utmost importance including forced adoption of children (described in one case as the most serious power vested in the judiciary following the abolition of capital punishment[4]).
Yet the 2013 Act says almost nothing about the practice and procedure of the new Family Court. Deeply buried in para 91 of Schedule 10 is a provision that extends the rule making power of the Family Procedure Rule Committee to proceedings in the Family Court. Those Rules were duly amended to reflect the transfer of jurisdiction to the Family Court. It is those Rules, approved personally by Sir James, which govern issues comparable to those which he now argues must appear on the face of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill.
[1] Re H (Minors) (Sexual Abuse: Standard of Proof) [1996] AC 563, Re S-B (Children) [2009] UKSC 17
[2] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2008/2699/contents.
[3] Dept of Health and Social Care Impact Assessment https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/59-01/0212/TIABImpactAssessment.pdf
[4] Re EK (A Child) [2020] EWFC 25 at [2]