A High Court judge has criticised a social worker who took a child away from his mother because she refused to give him an ice cream.

The social worker said the woman was failing to meet her son's "emotional needs", and also highlighted how she did not allow him to get his hair to be cut "in the way that he liked".

Mr Justice Mostyn, who is based in the Family Division of the High Court in London, said the social worker's criticisms were "utterly insubstantial" and "obviously inconsequential".

The judge said the social worker had outlined her evidence in a 44-page witness statement which was "very long on rhetoric" but "very short indeed" on "concrete examples" of "deficient" parenting.

He said it was "very hard" to pin down within the "swathes of text" what exactly was being said "against" the woman.