Councillors at Haringey and Brent Councils were placed firmly in the firing line at the opening of the Victoria Climbie Inquiry yesterday (Wednesday) over spending cuts in children’s services prior to Climbie’s death writes Lauren Revans.

Making his opening statement, counsel to the inquiry Neil Garnham QC said questions would need to be answered by members of both London councils about decisions to spend significantly less on children’s services than the amount earmarked by the government’s Standard Spending Assessment.

Haringey and Brent are two of the three councils that came into contact with Climbie during her brief life in England before she died in February 2000 at the hands of her great-aunt Marie-Therese Kouao and her boyfriend Carl Manning. Climbie was also known to Ealing Council, the North Middlesex and Central Middlesex Hospitals, and the Metropolitan Police.

Garnham told the inquiry that Haringey Council appeared to have spent “at least £10m less” on children’s services than the £27.9m the government would have permitted them to spend in 1998-9.

“That is perfectly lawful but if our analysis of the figures is correct, the council should not be blaming central government for providing inadequate resources; they should instead be explaining the political decision to take money earmarked for children’s services and use it elsewhere,” Garnham said. “The question is whether a greater proportion of the Standard Spending Assessment which could have been spent on children’ services, should have been spent on children’s services.”

In Brent, only £14.5m was spent on children’s services in both 1997-8 and 1998-9 despite the SSA earmarking £26.5m and £28.1m respectively.

“During this two-year period, Brent decided that over £26m that might have been spent on children was spent on something else,” Garnham said. “We await their evidence on this subject with interest.”

Garnham began his opening statement with a reminder that Climbie’s death was not an “isolated act of madness” by two individuals, but a prolonged period of ill-treatment that was not out of sight of the authorities. “The signs were there,” he said. “In fact, it seems as if the signs were on display time and time again. But they went unheeded.”

He said the agencies charged with duties of child protection had missed at least 12 chances to save Climbie, including their repeated failure to undertake a proper assessment of her needs despite numerous reports of concerns, their failure to follow-up allegations of sexual abuse, and finally the closure of Climbie’s social work and police files “on the hunch of a social worker to the effect that the family might have moved abroad”.

Garnham said the evidence to date on Climbie’s case seemed to bear “so many of the hallmarks of previous fatal child abuse cases” and urged inquiry chairperson Lord Herbert Laming to ensure that the lessons were not allowed to be ignored again.

“If the cost and effort involved in this inquiry are not to be wasted, it will be essential that a mechanism is found to ensure recommendations you make are properly considered and acted upon by those in a position to make a difference,” Garnham told Laming.

“In that context, there may be merit in your making your first recommendation that the department of health appoint an officer charged with the task of reviewing periodically the implementation of recommendations made by this inquiry and reporting and publishing the results of that review.”

Lawyers for the 13 parties that came into contact with Climbie between April 1999 and February 2000 were due to present half-hour summaries of their cases to the inquiry today (Thursday). The first phase of the inquiry is expected to last until late December.