In a ground-breaking judgment, with widespread implications for the press reporting of all legal proceedings, the Court of Appeal has this morning ended life-long anonymity protection for doctors in medical cases including in hugely controversial end-of-life cases. The ruling may potentially lead to the discharging of anonymity orders made in dozens of similar cases.
The practice of making life-long anonymity orders by the secretive family courts has escalated in recent times in the wake of the Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans cases where hospitals seeking to withdraw life-sustaining treatment from two babies were subject to intense public comment.
Supported by the Christian Legal Centre, the parents in two such tragic cases, Dr Rashid and Dr Aliya Abbasi, and Mr Lanre Haastrup, challenged the injunctions obtained by two hospital trusts which prevented them naming the doctors responsible for the treatment of their deceased children or from speaking fully about their experiences.
The hospital trusts argued that anonymity orders were necessary to protect from media criticism the privacy interests of their clinicians, as guaranteed by article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. They were supported in court by the BMA, the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine and the Paediatric Critical Care Society who all expressed grave concerns about the effects that lifting anonymity would have on morale within the NHS and on the recruitment and retention of staff.
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