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Health and Education

But the Healthcare Commission drew attention, too, to the fact that there were areas of serious concern. Ian Kennedy, the chair of the Healthcare Commission, focused on patient safety, and I want to concentrate for a few minutes on the area of most significance—child protection, particularly the tragedy involving baby P. Again, it is important again to acknowledge that the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families acted commendably fast in recognising the seriousness of the failings and in mapping out a way forward. However, it is also right to say that so far, the emphasis and focus, particularly in the media, have been on the failings of the local authority—and there were many—rather than on the failings of other agencies. I think that there are lessons to be learned, and it is important to reflect on them for a moment, particularly the situation in the local health service, because serious concerns have been raised with me. I understand that the paediatric service for child protection in the borough was outsourced to Great Ormond Street. I understand that there was a team of four doctors, of whom two have resigned, one has been on special leave for a year, and one is off sick. Given the fundamental importance of that work—I make these comments not in any sense in a partisan way, as we all have a common view of the importance of addressing these issue—that is an alarming situation in itself. Incidentally, if either Secretary of State is unable to respond to these points today, I am happy for them to respond in writing later. What factors have led to this situation? Why has one of the doctors whom I mentioned been on long-term special leave for a year? Is it the case that the primary care trust cut funding for a designated doctor post, and is it the case that the paediatrician who did not recognise the broken back and ribs in the case of baby P was a locum employee? I have heard concern expressed that when children are brought into St. Ann's hospital in Tottenham as possible victims of abuse, there is a tendency for no information to arrive with the child to put the medical team fully in the picture about possible concerns. That relates to the issues of co-ordination and the sharing of information between agencies dealt with in the report released by the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. I understand that when one doctor filled in a critical incident form at that hospital, in relation to another case, he was told not to do so because it would show up poor record keeping. I do not know whether there is any truth in that allegation, but it is a serious matter and it clearly needs to be investigated. What short-term steps have been taken to ensure that there are proper safeguards in place for other vulnerable babies and children in that borough? What are the longer-term lessons for the NHS—as opposed to the local authority, which has had its fair share of attention—particularly with regard to the responsibility and accountability of the clinicians involved? That takes me to the wider question of child protection. Such tragic cases open up a debate on parenting and on how we can best protect children. The case of baby P is a stark case of failure, but throughout the country, every day, social workers are grappling with the genuinely difficult dilemma of whether to remove a child from their parent or parents and to place them in care. It is massively challenging work, and the last thing we should do is to stigmatise social workers and make that an unattractive profession, thus putting able people off going into it. After such a disaster, there is a risk that policy is shaped in response to it, and that there is a swing of the pendulum into a different approach, which may not itself be right. I would like to mention the other side of the coin. There are many cases in which there are genuine concerns about the failure of authorities to remove a child who is at risk, but in my constituency I have been dealing with the case of the Webster family, which was covered in the national press last year. They had a little boy who was taken into the Norfolk and Norwich hospital complaining of pain, and it turned out that he had multiple fractures. The child was removed, along with his two siblings, and after a long process the three children were adopted. That family lost their three children. Subsequently, it was proved through further medical evidence that they were innocent, and that there was an innocent explanation for the fractures—a nutrition deficiency. That case is a disaster. It is a disaster in the system and a gross miscarriage of justice for a family to lose their three children when they are innocent. It cannot get much worse than that. My plea is for us to avoid another swing of the pendulum, and to focus instead on ensuring that procedures are exacting, rigorous, thorough and professional, and that we focus on standards of professionalism in social care and in the NHS.