Comments on: More regulation is clearly not the best way to stop another Baby P

By: Shaun Pilkington

Shaun Pilkington — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:19:29 +0000

If you’ve nothing of substance to say or are incapable of either explaining a complicated message, or conveying that you have a complicated message and the proles can’t understand it because 60 years of British education have failed to deliver cognoscente voters, then you are left with going for the lowest common denomentator: attacking the other fella…

By: LFAT

LFAT — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:07:42 +0000

With the greatest of respect, the IEA didn’t talk about the political points-scoring that infuriated me almost as much as Labour’s obsession with regulation.

By: Obnoxio The Clown

Obnoxio The Clown — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:39:54 +0000

The IEA said this slightly more succinctly.

By: LFAT

LFAT — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:09:37 +0000

I hope they can’t sleep at night.

By: alastair harris

alastair harris — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:09:18 +0000

what is clear is that social services visited 60 times or more, and despite the horrific injuries reported in the press they were unable to save thie baby’s life. I don’t know how they sleep at night.

By: LFAT

LFAT — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:07:57 +0000

Indeed. Social services cannot be run from Whitehall. Local authorities must have every necessary power at their disposal, including taking children into care, and decisions made about children’s safety cannot be bound by some centralised dictat cooked up in the spur of the moment by a government desperate to placate the public and look busy.

By: jameshigham

jameshigham — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:45:07 +0000

It’s so clear. Less regulation, better people employed as employers, better people employed, less incompetence, smaller government.

By: LFAT

LFAT — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:24:06 +0000

Sounds like we agree that Balls has ballsed this up. Labour’s first and only instinct is to bring control higher up the chain, which is precisely what Balls is doing, but I also believe that problems lie with the individuals who made the decisions.

I’m sure that the 1989 children’s act does place some constraints on social services, but when the police say that a child needs to go into care yet social services refuse their request, individual heads need to roll.

By: Shaun Pilkington

Shaun Pilkington — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:15:15 +0000

I agree Patently – this wasn’t a systemic failure except insofar as the system permitted such an appalling failure of judgement as seems to have been collectively exercised by the leadership of Haringey Social Services. Tragic as it is, what happened is that some people broadly in possession of all the facts made the wrong decision with deadly consequences.

We can’t regulate common sense. Perhaps there’s a case to be made at how systems can be constructed to catch such errors in the future but there’s no reason to believe that these should be centrally controlled from Whitehall.

By: patently

patently — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:00:38 +0000

But how could more regulation possibly help?

The social workers whinge that it is the regulation and paperwork introduced after Climbie that keep them from doing their work. Yet they managed 50-60 visits to P.

The fact remains, they knew of P, and they knew P was at risk. They had the resources to visit P, and they were aware of their duties to P as shown by the extensive discussions between social services and the police. The resources were there to protect P; the powers were available; the regulatory structures worked. They simply made the wrong decision.

The question is therefore quite simple; could a reasonable person, without the benefit of hindsight, have reached a better decision based on the evidence that was available to them through their many visits?

If so, it is time to replace the people who took the decision with reasonable people.

If not, it is time to recognise that the State cannot guarantee perfection for all and will, from time to time, fail to prevent people from doing terrible things.