H (Children)

Judgment

Lord Justice Hughes:

Mrs M seeks permission to appeal against an interlocutory order made by Deputy Judge Brunning in a long standing contact dispute between her and her husband. The two girls who are the subject of the dispute are now seven and a half and four and a half or thereabouts. Clearly the issue has been the subject of a great deal of contest over a period of some years. There have been at least two fact finding hearings thus far. It has been necessary for an order to be made making the children parties to this private law case and appointing a Guardian ad Litem who has been provided through the offices of CAFCASS.

It would appear that at present both of the principal parties are acting in person. On 7 October 2008, on the application of the guardian, an order was made giving leave for her to obtain a psychological report on mother, father and the children. A necessary consequential order which went with that was an order for the disclosure of the various medical records held by general practitioners in relation to those people, all of them. The papers that we have seen do not, I think, disclose whether the making of those orders was in October a matter of dispute or not, but what is perfectly clear is that the order has never been challenged. It follows that it stood and it had to be complied with.

That was October 2008. On 27 February 2009 the case came before the court for further directions, and it appeared that the order had not yet been complied with in relation at least to mother’s records. I say that appeared because mother appears to have accepted it. She certainly told the judge that she had been doing her best to comply with it. She apologised for the fact that the material had not yet reached the appointed psychologist but she assured the judge that it was en route and had been sent just the previous Monday. In other words, in February mother was, far from challenging the order for the disclosure of the records, asserting that she was doing her best to comply with it.

On 31 March 2009 the case was listed again for further directions at the request of the guardian’s solicitor. The guardian’s assertion was that the medical records had still not been provided, and in due course Deputy Judge Brunning made an order directed at the general practitioner himself to supply the necessary records. Mother now seeks permission to appeal against that latter order only. The test for us at this stage is whether there is a proper basis f