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Jane Colby: Supreme Court Appeal hearing, Named Person, 2016

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The Chair of Trustees and Executive Director Jane Colby of Tymes Trust attended the Supreme Court Appeal hearing in Westminster, 8-9 March 2016

I wanted to speak. I hadn’t anticipated that. I wanted to speak out, but as you know, it wasn’t that kind of hearing. And yet, an unexpected moment arrived when I really wanted to give evidence. Impossible of course. This was an Appeal to the Supreme Court, a war where the weapons are points of law, wielded by lawyers, before five Supreme Court Judges with minds (as was said of Miss Marple) like a bacon slicer.
It was forensic, a relentless examination of legal arguments put forward by QCs, on the one side for the Appellants (against the Named Person/state guardian Law) and on the other, representing the Scottish Government (determined to impose it). And the arguments piled up, one on another, by little and little, till they made a great mountain.

The compulsory Named Person state guardian scheme. What it was, how it came to be what it was, and why it was illegal.

Why it was not illegal.

Why it was “mission creep”, a “service” morphed out of all recognition into a monstrous Jabberwock, gobbling up family rights and shredding their liberty to raise children in freedom.

Why it was not. And why sharing data without permission, without telling parents, was quite permissable.

Why it was not.

And that was where I wanted to speak. Data sharing? Information sharing? What data? What information?
“So often,” I wanted to say, “it’s not data and it’s not information. Not in the true sense of those words and all that they imply. Through being recorded, through being written, through being shared and passed on, it becomes data, it mutates into facts, irrefutable, immutable information about a family, any family. Your family.
“And how did some of this data start out?” I wanted to ask. And I wanted to answer: “As a rumour. Nothing more than over the fence, back of the cab, tittle tattle. Eventually, no-one remembers the fence. Or the chat between neighbours. Or the cab, or the gossip the driver overheard. What do they remember? They remember the documents.”

The Supreme Court building is in every sense, awesome. A Gothic beauty designed, ironically, by a Scot, transformed inside into a glass and leather palace. Each nation of the United Kingdom is symbolised in national emblems formed in illuminated glass and coloured like jewels. Hanging high above us, high above the judges.
“All rise.”
Why would we not? This was an occasion of wonder, demanding of full respect and a supreme test of these lawyers’ skills, but it was also a battle for freedom.
This is why Tymes Trust – The Young ME Sufferers Trust – agreed to join this genuine modern day struggle.

Jane Colby, Tymes Trust Executive Director
www.tymestrust.org @tymestrust www.facebook.com/tymestrust