The following is the statement Jon Platt said he would be reading outside Supreme Court following the ruling.
The Supreme Court judges ruled in favour of the Appeal by the Isle of Wight council and sent the case back to the Isle of Wight Magistrates Court.
Sub headings have been added by OnTheWight. Ed
I want to start by thanking a few people. Firstly my legal team of Michael Spoors, Lee Peckham Paul Greatorex and Clive Sheldon QC. They have all been outstanding advocates and I can’t thank them enough for their work on this case over the last two years.
Craig Langman of Parents Want A Say and Karen Wilkinson of Parents Union who have campaigned on this issue for years, thank you for your support and hard work. Thanks too to all the people who have sent messages of support and to the school teacher Karin Siemund who has spent hours helping me respond to messages from parents who need help and advice.
To my family, who have put up with this nightmare for two years because I was too stubborn to pay a £60 penalty notice, thank you and sorry. Finally my wonderful wife Sally who has been forced to live almost every second of this and put up with so much, thank you, it is almost over.
As you all just heard, the Supreme Court has just reversed decades of judicial precedent. They didn’t just say that a High Court Judge who heard my case, Lord Justice Lloyd Jones, misinterpreted the law, they have concluded that earlier high court decisions from 2006 (the Bromley judgement) and 1969 (Crump v Gilmore) were also wrong in their interpretation of the law and should no longer be followed.
I followed the law
Be in no doubt, despite today’s judgement, I followed the law, precisely as laid down and interpreted by High Court judges in two different cases from 1969 and 2006. To attend regularly, they told me, was to attend ‘very frequently’ so I decided not to pay a £60 penalty notice because my daughter had otherwise near perfect attendance.
The decision of those High Court judges from 1969 and 2006 informed my decision making process, but here I stand outside the Supreme Court having just been told that I was wrong to rely on the decisions of those High Court judges to guide me on the law. With this judgement those precedents have been swept away and the consequences can only be described as shocking.
Regularly not longer means frequently
To attend school regularly no longer means to attend very frequently – it now means to attend at all times and on all days that the school requires it. Every unauthorised absence, including being a minute late to school is now a criminal offence.
If you share custody of your child with a former partner and they are late getting your child to school…. You have committed a criminal offence even if you weren’t aware of it.
If you decide to keep your child off school for a day because they look exhausted after having a difficult night of bad dreams, you have committed a criminal offence if the head teacher second guesses that decision and marks it as unauthorised.
This issue is no longer, if ever was, about term time holidays, it is about the state taking away parents ability to make decisions about what is best for their children.
Many of you might have thought, given in 2015 when I took my family on this now infamous term time holiday, as I was, at that time following the law as laid down by several High Court judges, that it would be grossly unfair to retrospectively criminalise me. That was very nearly not the case.
No intention of pleading guilty
The first draft of the court’s judgement that I received yesterday remitted this case back to the Magistrates with a direction to convict. It was only when my legal team pointed out that I have not even had a trial yet that this reference was removed. I now have to go back to the Isle of Wight Magistrates court where this all started two years ago for a trial.
I can tell you today that I have absolutely no intention of pleading guilty to this offence.
To parents all over England, I say this. The legal battle is over. There is no right of appeal beyond this place. It will be a generation or more before this court revisits this decision if ever they do. You can no longer make a decision to take your child out of school, even for one day, without the permission of the state.
Not the end of this matter
That does not mean this is the end of this matter. Petitions have been signed by hundreds of thousands of parents.
Parliament has debated this issue multiple times.
Nothing has changed.
Vote against judgement
So I would urge each and every parent and grandparent that finds the consequences of this judgement to be shocking, to vote on the 4th May.
Local elections are being held all over England and that will be your opportunity to express your views on this judgement. A Conservative Secretary of State for Education sent lawyers to this place to argue for the judgement that was handed down today and she now has that judgement.
They won, but we get to vote on that victory on May 4th.
Remove Conservative leader
Vote to remove people like Colin Noble the Conservative leader of Suffolk County Council who issued more penalty notices to parents last year than any other council – 6,000 of them. I’d urge you to vote for a Green Party candidate if at all possible, but if one isn’t standing in your area vote for a Lib Dem or an independent.
Most council seats are held by very small majorities.
A few hundred parents could change face of local politics
A few hundred parents in each council ward could change the face of local politics all over England in less than a month.
If everyone who has received one of these penalty notices was to vote Green, this Government would pass emergency legislation overnight to reverse the consequences of this judgement here today.
Please vote on 4th May and tell this Government that we as parents will be the final arbiters of what is right for our children – not the state.
Image: © With permission of Solent News Agency
