Today, the Prime Minister David Cameron will announce that teachers, social workers, councillors and police officers who turn a blind eye to child abuse could face up to five years in prison. “It is about making sure that the professionals we charge with protecting our children do the jobs they are paid to do,” says Cameron.
This all seems reasonable enough, doesn’t it? Something had to be done in the wake of the shocking events that occurred in Rotherham and now, it appears, Oxfordshire. “Professionals who failed to protect children will be held properly,” adds Cameron. If a police officer, a social worker or a councillor overlooks a situation of child abuse, she or he will face the full force of the law. And that’s as it should be. Everyone should be accountable.
Doubtless this will be referred to as a ‘crackdown’ following the usual ‘summit’ that will be held. Now I have first hand experience of crackdowns from my previous life as a benefit fraud investigator for the Department for Work and Pensions. When the newspapers were on the government’s case, I attended one of these summits at Richmond House in London which was chaired by Alistair Darling, the then DWP Secretary of State. There was no real agenda, there was certainly no change to government policy but it gained decent kudos in the media. The government had done ‘something’, even if that something was little more than a meeting.
When Cameron came into office, he ordered a benefit fraud crackdown which consisted of setting up a remote team in Essex sending out forms, huge reductions in the numbers of investigators and a move away from criminal investigations. But the Mail and the Sun were happy because ‘something’ was being done.
That’s why I am concerned by Cameron’s announcement. There is nothing in the newspaper article that I am reading that makes it clear who the real criminals are; the sick perverts who abuse children. Everyone else is guilty by association, as an accessory or by negligence.
I have no issue with those being guilty of neglect being made accountable for their inaction but I have great concerns with the ‘turning a blind eye’ aspect. I would like to think there is a high degree of proof that someone has been negligent, particularly since Cameron’s own government has wilfully slashed resources to social services and policing and these organisations are having to prioritise like never before. And how high should responsibility go? To the heads of social services? The the chief constables? To the politicians who make the ultimate decisions on policy and resourcing, eventually going right to the top? Do we blame George Osborne for cutting police funding by 20% so far with even bigger cuts to come? The easiest thing to do is to send a copper or a social worker to jail.
If people have a case to answer for allegedly ignoring child abuse, then set up the necessary channels, but I can easily see situations whereby hardworking, committed professionals are set up to fail because of a woefully under-resourced public sector. ‘Something must be done, there must be someone to blame’, as long as it isn’t the politicians at the top of the shop is the clarion call of the politicians at the top. I don’t trust summits and I know from experience that a ‘crackdown’ is merely rhetoric dressed up as action.
Above all, I don’t trust politicians, particularly just before an election.
