Geoffrey Robinson
Main Page: Geoffrey Robinson (Labour - Coventry North West)Department Debates - View all Geoffrey Robinson's debates with the Home Office
(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
Order. These are very important and solemn matters, fully worthy of the full-length Government statement that I had originally been advised that there would be yesterday or today. I am sensitive to the interests of the House and keen to accommodate colleagues, but some premium on brevity from Back and Front Benchers alike would now assist.
Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)
Although we urge on the Home Secretary the need to get the overarching review under way—the names and all that—we already have Professor Jay’s report. We can learn from the dreadful experience of Daniel Pelka in Coventry, of which the Home Secretary is aware, and we had a report on that. We are not short of reports or action plans for local safeguarding boards, but what we need is a clearer sense of responsibility. That was the lesson, as I understood it, from Coventry. Three major Departments are involved, which have been represented at this urgent question today, but what is lacking is a clear sense of responsibility. Once that is all brought together, what do we do about it? What action do we take? Do we intervene or do we not? That sense of responsibility must somehow be clearly established locally.
Mrs May
The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. We can have all the reports, and perhaps more, and all the action plans we want, but what matters is not whether we have something written on paper but what people are actually doing and, in particular, what people who have responsibility for the protection of children are doing in their day-to-day jobs. That is partly about the cultural issue of ensuring that people understand that this matters and that nobody should be written off.