Child Protection

Debate between John Hemming and Graham Stuart

Thursday 12th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

I refer the House to my chairmanship of the Justice for Families campaign and of Care Leavers Voice, which is a group of care leavers who are concerned that the voice of care leavers is excluded from the system.

On 14 August Jana Tokolyova, who is the press officer of the Slovak Republic’s equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service, the General Prokuratura, reported that their equivalent of the Director of Public Prosecutions had agreed with the deputy director of their national police to appoint a special agent to investigate a criminal complaint by Silivie Maher that relates to care proceedings in the UK.

This is an interesting process, because it is an extra-jurisdictional process. I believe it relates to the Rome statute and, as such, could lead to the end result of members of the Government facing questions about why they have tolerated the amount of malpractice that goes on in care proceedings in England and Wales.

On 5 December 2012 Leicester city council fired a very experienced social worker because she wanted to send a baby home to their mum and dad. Her assessment was that the parents were competent, but Sir Martin Narey and Education Ministers want a rapid movement to adoption—hence, the baby remained in care. This pressure by local authority managers on a social worker to lie to the court is, of course, a criminal offence. However, I think the Slovak Republic is more willing than the police in England to investigate criminality in our courts. Happily, however, on 5 September 2013 the case was set down for a full hearing by an employment tribunal next year.

I have for some time been worried about what I was told by a social worker some years ago, which is that at times the legal aid-funded solicitors for parents conspire with local authority staff in order to ensure that the parents lose. One example where that appears to have happened is that of Jaqcue and John Courtnage, whose two sons were taken into care because one had a lump on his head. The doctors were not sure whether it was because of a fracture or a fissure. The child was neurologically sound, which implies a fissure, but the parents did not see the evidence that it could have been a fissure until after the court had decided in 2010 that it was a fracture, and the question was never considered in any court judgment.

A court order on 30 October 2008 had said that all evidence should be provided to the parents. That did not happen. The hospital provided Derbyshire county council with the information in December 2008, but this did not get to the parents until after the finding of fact hearing of 2010, when they made a subject access request.

The question is whether the council colluded with the parents’ solicitors. Chris Sedgewick of Miles and Cash has been asked about the issue by his client and me. Although he denies the allegation, he has refused to give a detailed response, which confirms to me that Miles and Cash colluded with Derbyshire county council to keep this evidence from the parents.

Additionally, there was a single metaphyseal fracture, but Thomas, Rosenfield, Leventhal and Markowitz found as long ago as 1990 that

“femur fractures often are accidental and that the femur can be fractured when the running child trips and falls.”

Their article can be found on pages 471 to 476 of volume 88, No. 3 of the journal Paediatrics, published on 1 September 1991. Again, here we have an essentially criminal allegation that escapes investigation and prosecution in England, but which could be prosecuted by the Slovak Republic.

Article 3 of the European convention on human rights was almost certainly engaged with regard to the removal by the police of the newborn baby that appeared in the video that Staffordshire county council failed to injunct last Friday. Interestingly, Mrs Courtnage assisted the father in resisting imprisonment at an earlier stage. Was the action of removing the newborn baby inevitable, and therefore permissible under article 3, or even necessary, under article 8? The risk is future emotional abuse. The authority accepts that the parents are no immediate risk to their child. Why, then, take this action? The Government are moving towards removing such babies and immediately placing them with adoptive families. This does not appear to me to fit with traditional English family law or the European convention on human rights.

I have mentioned Toni McLeod before. She featured in the Sunday Express because Durham wanted to take her unborn baby into care because she went on an English Defence League demonstration. She went to Ireland. Sadly, the Health Service Executive in Ireland is now trying to force back to England all the family court refugees. More recently she returned to England and was refused permission to appeal. The case reference is [2013] EWCA Civ 1007. In paragraph 10, the court said

“Happily, on one basis, this case is not about a mother who is incompetent or unable to provide ordinary, good enough or even good physical and practical care for her children. Unhappily, and frustratingly for all involved, I dare say, particularly the mother and the children, the concern about the mother's ability to parent is more subtle and harder to pinpoint, but it arises from her personality and the potential for the children to be upset by unpredictable actions or words that she may from time to time exhibit.”

There are still parents leaving the UK to escape the system. I know of two pregnant mothers who have done so: one has gone to France and the other to live with a Belgian social worker, who is appalled at what is being done in England and is therefore willing to look after a mother and child at home.

I welcome the work of Sir James Munby. He is a good appointment to the challenging task of president and his initial practice directions have been good. However, the Government remain complacent and Parliament should really look at the individual cases. The care system continues not to be accountable. The independent reviewing officer will never be independent while they are on the payroll of the local authority.

The case of Jimmy Savile have been raised by various people. What is not widely known, although it is in the public domain, is that a journalist, Leah McGrath Goodman, aimed to go to Jersey to investigate what had happened in 2011 before it became public. However, she was banned by the UK Border Agency. With some effort from me, the ban was removed and she received a visa earlier this year. She has now been to Jersey, but the issues are already in the public domain. The CCTV that might explain the basis on which somebody was prevented from investigating a serious case of child abuse that came out at a later stage has still not been provided. The Government need to provide some answers on that issue.

I wrote to all the embassies this year asking whether somebody would like to come to a meeting in the House of Commons to discuss problems with child protection. Fifty-nine people came, representing 30 countries. Although not all those countries have complained formally, we should recognise that there are serious concerns about how the system operates.

Child protection is a complex process that covers a wide range of circumstances. There are some very good practitioners and lawyers who work in the area. As I said, Sir James Munby is a very good judge. However, there is also bad practice. If we tolerate the bad practice, we undermine the more competent people. It is therefore important to look at the wider issues.

In a sense, there is a constitutional problem. When hon. Members receive complaints from their constituents and write to the Minister, the Minister says, “We don’t comment on individual cases.” Unless we are able to look at the details of individual cases and see whether there are collective problems, we cannot be certain what is going on. I know that the system does a very good job at times, but it also does a very bad job at times. We are not looking at the process systematically.

Ministers say, “We want more children to be adopted.” That message goes to council leaders who talk to their cabinet member for children’s services. The cabinet member talks to the senior managers and they talk to the more junior managers. The social worker who wants to send a child home then gets fired. I have also heard of a council that, because the expert witness recommended that a child be reunited with their parents, would not pay for the expert witness’s report. That pressure on people to go in a particular direction is driven unintentionally by the Government. I am not saying that the Government intend to achieve that, but that is what is happening on the ground.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I am working hard to follow my hon. Friend’s argument. There will undoubtedly be injustice in the system, as there is in any system. However, the case that he talked about in which a social worker in Leicester was fired for wanting to send a child home seems incredible. Will he say more about it?

[John Hemming]

I have the defence that Leicester city council made to the employment tribunal. I can give the hon. Gentleman a copy of it. The defence was, “We told her not to send the child home, but she wanted to do that, so we fired her.” That went to appeal and the councillors in the authority endorsed the process.

This is a question of the balance in the civil procedure rules for expert witnesses. Social workers are expert witnesses and they provide assessments. If their assessments are driven by management priorities, they are not following their duty to the court. In fact, they are driven by management priorities a lot of the time. Another error that the Government are making is to reduce the use of independent social workers. Although the repeat player prejudice can be a problem, an independent social worker is not necessarily managerially driven to come to certain conclusions, whereas employees of the council often are. Civil servants make the error of assuming that an assessment is the same, whatever the managerial pressure on the person who made it. The Lashin v. Russia case considered the question of expert evidence and concluded clearly that such evidence has to be produced by somebody who has no interest in the outcome or the conclusion of the case, otherwise they are untrustworthy.

I am coming up to my 10 minutes, so I will draw my remarks to a close. The fundamental issue is the quality of expert evidence. Much of the expert evidence is driven by the management priorities of the local authority. That is why there are many very bad cases. The Education Committee could look at individual cases, as could the Justice Committee. I have made my point, so I shall sit down.