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26 September 2014 / Graham Lyons
Issue: 7623 / Categories: Opinion , Mediation , Family
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No Minister!

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Graham Lyons shares his reservations about the future of mediation in an open letter to the Rt Hon Simon Hughes MP*

Dear Minister,

This open letter is in part a response to your recent letter (your ref: 13422), which outlined what the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) plans to do in response to the Family Mediation Task Force Report (TFR ) published in June. It is also partly a critique of what happens when a task force committee of 18 people dealing with family mediation has barely any full-time family mediators sitting on it. The letter I wrote to you in May about the abolition of the MoJ helpline was not acknowledged. Ditto my letter to the MoJ.

The TFR rightly looked at what can be done to increase awareness through the court forms. But why did it not produce recommendations regarding awareness of mediation among GPs, health personnel and Housing Departments?

The idea of a free first session is flawed. The first family mediation session is seldom a negotiating one. In our service

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