Profile

Judge David Pearl

If you are wondering what has happened to the Residential Homes Tribunals and the Protection of Children Act Tribunals, log on to www.doh.gov.uk/rht/carestandardstribunal.htm and read all about the new Care Standards Tribunal. His Honour Judge David Pearl has set it up in a remarkably short time. He was appointed President of the Extended Protection of Children Act Tribunal late last year and by April had launched the tribunal under its new name.

The primary function is to hear appeals from people denied jobs under the Protection of the Children Act 2000, but Judge Pearl has also drawn under its umbrella a range of other appeal bodies. These include assuming the duties of the old Residential Homes Tribunal, and hearing appeals concerning decisions by the Commissioner for Wales, and many other disparate groups such as care and nursing homes, social care workers, people considered unsuitable to work with vulnerable adults, child-minding and day care for children under eight years.

The Care Standards Tribunal is a direct result of the Human Rights Act. It mainly provides an independent appeal procedure for child-care workers who are on a statutory list of people forbidden to work with children, or teachers barred from working in schools and further education, or whose right to do so has been restricted.

The lists are confidential and people do not always discover that they appear on a list until they apply for a job and are told they cannot be employed. Their first action can be to ask the Secretary of State of the appropriate Government department to remove their name, and if that request is refused they may appeal. And, as Judge Pearl says: 'Quite clearly there is a human right here as the appellant is being denied the right to work.'

He added: 'They can be difficult cases because the tribunal is assessing risk to children and medical evidence. There may well be evidence from children, provided by video or some other way. There are issues whether a child who gives evidence via video from another room can be asked questions or not. It is rather like the issues I was dealing with in asylum cases . . . assessing the risk of whether you send someone home - is there a risk that this person will be persecuted?'

The team of tribunal panel members have been introduced to IT far in advance of many other tribunals. However, the training - at his instigation - has also laid much emphasis on conducting care tribunals on a more informal basis than most other tribunals and the courts.

'Most of the time, unlike courts, facts are not in dispute. And, whereas courts my be dealing with issues of law, panel members on a tribunal are generally assessing risk and, with each member of the panel having different skills, they can get to the heart of the matter if the hearings tend towards informal discussion.'

However, he is all too aware that wrong decisions can lead to what he describes as 'awful consequences . . . they can have really serious repercussions - lives can be destroyed'.

Judge Pearl began his academic life as a don in Cambridge in1969 and became involved in tribunals 12 years later as a part-time immigration appeals adjudicator. By the mid-1980s he was appointed an Assistant Recorder and in 1989 became Professor of Law and Dean of the School of Law at the University of East Anglia but gave up academic life when appointed a circuit judge and Chief Adjudicator of the Immigration Appeals in 1994.

Three years later he became the President of the tribunal and in the summer of 1999, was appointed Director of the JSB implementing human rights training for the entire judiciary - 'top to bottom'. He said: 'It was a real challenge that brought together some things that I had been doing in my professional career hitherto: the training aspect from my academic background and the human rights perspective which played a very key part in my work at immigration.'

Now Judge Pearl is again combining his talents to lead the new tribunal - as well as, of course, helping his wife (also a judge) to look after their three horses and four ponies at home in 10 acres of Essex countryside.