Some years ago when he was Home Secretary, Jack Straw wanted to visit a Youth Court in the South of England. It was to prove a salutary lesson in the extent to which the family courts are closed even to a government minister .

Recalling the occasion in an interview with The Times, Mr Straw - now Justice Secretary - said: "The bench had a debate about whether to allow me in. I thought they were being ridiculous. Justice has to be seen to be done. That is regarded as a cliche, but it's actually a very profound point about the operation of the justice system."

As Justice Secretary, he is now in a position to right the balance. In one of the most fundamental reforms to the way the family courts operate, he announced today that from April 1 reporters will be able to attend family court proceedings and report on cases.

The main stipulation is that they do not name the parties or give out the kind of personal details which would allow nosy neighbours to identify them. "It will be open to parties to apply to court for specific reporting restrictions," said Mr Straw. "But my hope is that the courts are reluctant to grant these".

It is a move for which The Times has campaigned vociferously, arguing that keeping the media out of certain courts has led to miscarriages of justice.

The Times has received hundreds of letters from people who have been gagged and powerless to challenge the decisions of social workers and other experts.

For a long time, pleas to open the family courts fell on deaf ears. Questions about how social workers and other experts make decisions, and whether the right children are taken into care - raised most recently by the cases of Shannon Matthews and Baby P - were met with the mantra that family privacy is paramount, and that professionals must remain anonymous. Yet if you are a parent wrongly accused of abusing your child, you do not want the kind of privacy which gags you from discussing your case. If you are a child tortured by a relative under the nose of the state, you do not want the kind of secrecy which protects professionals from scrutiny.

So what has changed?

Talking ahead of his announcement in the House of Commons, Mr Straw credited The Times with bringing the issue to his attention “more graphically than it would otherwise have done”.

He said: "You have to deal with shedloads of issues in jobs like this…if something isn't a particular issue at the time, you don't go searching around for it. I commend The Times for running such a professional campaign".

But it is also clear that this is an issue Mr Straw feels passionately about.

"It has been a closed world," he said. "If justice is open, there is a greater chance that standards will rise and that egregious practices may be spotted before they become harmful".

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