Privilege for child protection conferences

W v Westminster City Council and others QBD TLR 7 January

The 70-year-old father of a child with whom social services were concerned was said in a report for a review child protection case conference to be suspected of being a predatory paedophile who was grooming another child of the mother with a view to abusing her sexually, and for prostitution and abusing her trust in him. Publication was alleged to have been made to five people who, in addition to the claimant, and the second and third defendant social workers, attended the child protection case conference. The claim was not directed to obtaining a retraction by the council, since the claimant already had that. His objective was to establish how the words complained of came to be included in the report. A communication at a child protection conference was protected by qualified privilege, which met the public interest. While the publication could still cause grave harm, the extent of that harm could be mitigated by the subsequent actions of the defendants and by the denials of the claimant himself. Accordingly, the judge had to decide whether either or both of the first or second defendants acted in good faith in the discharge of their duty under the Children Act 1989, or whether the claimant could and did establish that they acted from some other, unjustifiable, motive.