Recently in Child protection Category

With child protection so prominent on agencies' radar, the insouciance accorded child trafficking by some politicians strains credulity at times.

The exchanges in the House of Lords between Liberal Democrat peer Dee Doocey and the Conservatives' transport spokesman, Earl Attlee, underline this shocking oversight to the point of shame.

Baroness Doocey asked Attlee what measures were in place at the Eurostar terminus at King's Cross St Pancras to prevent children being trafficked into the UK. 

None, replied Attlee; immigration is cleared in France and Belgium by specially trained United Kingdom Border Agency officials and checks were made there. The primary function of officers at St Pancras was to look for prohibited goods and restricted items.

Necessary as it is for officers to intercept weaponry and drugs, it rather suggests that goods and contraband are more important to the authorities than children.

Never mind, Baroness Butler-Sloss, co-chairman of the all-party group on human trafficking, was also in the House to accuse Attlee of being "unduly optimistic" about the way children came into the UK.

Attlee rolled out his puny escape clause: trafficking was a hidden crime, he said. He is right, of course. If there are no patrols looking for trafficked children, the numbers will never be recorded, never known. Surely Attlee could make the connection.

Lord Laming, who chaired the Victoria Climbié and Baby P inquiries, appealed for the UK to sign up to the EU trafficking directive. "The government have been looking at that directive for some considerable time," he pointed out, emphasising the apparent apathy.

Attlee's response? "The noble Lord makes an important point." Important? How important, we wonder. "The issue is coming to fruition." Of course it is...

Attlee went on to excuse British Transport Police of responsibility, having already given the impression that the UKBA's responsibility ended with the training of officers abroad, and came up with the stunning observation that few trafficked children turned up at St Pancras while also admitting that trafficking was a hidden crime.

With the huge mass of people travelling into and out of the UK and around the capital just over a year from now during London Olympics and Paralympics it is imperative that this issue is treated more seriously than it is and some sort of permanent action plan is launched.

And that response must lie with government.

You can read the full transcript of the House of Lords proceedings here.

Update: Immigration minister Damian Green has now said that the UK is to opt in to the EU directive on human trafficking. There is no indication of when...as you would expect.

Picture: Rex Features/Tony Kyriacou

The "right" answer is no. The correct answer is yes: everybody is equal before the law (unless you can't afford to exercise your right of defence or are the head of state, but that's for another day).

However, the Supreme Court's decision that those on the sex offenders' register ought to be able challenge their place on it is further denting the reputation of the Human Rights Act 1998. 

David Cameron waded in yesterday with a promise to review the legislation and investigate replacing it with a bill of rights, although, as is customary with the PM, details were vague even if, like the Big Society, the label was good.

It was a three-way triumph for Cameron. His remarks cheered the Tory right, pandered to populist feeling about sex offenders at a time of opinion poll dissatisfaction, and probably satisfied the human rights sneerers in some sections of the media.

What Cameron has on his side is evidence to suggest that the nature of sex offending is different from that of many other crimes.

Radio 4's Today programme carried a short interview with child protection expert Mark Williams-Thomas who compared paedophiles to leopards: they do not change their spots. They are characterised by furtiveness and cunning; merely pleading that they have changed and showing a police record that they have not re-offended may mean only that they have not been caught.

This proposition is supported by a 2003 Home Office study which showed that recidivism among sex offenders was five times higher than the reconviction rate.

None of which resolves the future of the Human Rights Act. Despite the claims of its detractors, its very existence serves to protect people. Indeed, only this week, Community Care has carried articles on how the act can be used to fight social care spending cuts and support service users.

The issue is that the temptation to make exceptions to the law - however much we dislike paedophilia - is a dangerous road on which to travel. If paedophiles were denied the right to appeal, who would be next?

Read social worker and solicitor Allan Norman's view: Can paedophiles change their spots?

Picture: Rex Features

I would have expected better from a former national newspaper editor. But Charles Moore, reasonably challenging our national "obsession" with paedophilia, this week went on to fuel the preoccupation that he so decries with the most sweeping of statements.

To the former editor of the Daily Telegraph and now head of Conservative Party think-tank the Policy Exchange, "a significant number of good teachers have paedophilic tendencies", a postulation he described as a "fact".

Astonishingly, he added: "Their urges towards children, if they control them, may make them more interested in their pupils' welfare than the rest of us would be."

As a devout Roman Catholic, Moore must suspect that he has come into contact with rather more paedophiles while indulging in his passion for worship than children do in their schools. Fact.

But I wouldn't want to exaggerate the problem.

With a snip of the court's scissors, Roman Polanski's electronic tag was removed and the 76-year-old child sex offender was once again a free man in Switzerland.

Amid the brouhaha in the wake of George Osborne's emergency Budget and the sense of national tragedy then hyperbole that tracked the varying fortunes of England's football team, it would have been easy to miss the latest developments in the Baby P case.

If only the apologies of social workers were accorded the same respect as the one uttered by Pope Benedict on child abuse in the Catholic Church.

It was a headline waiting to happen: the "British Fritzl". And although the appalling incidents occurred in the past, the issue of what is taboo for social workers remains a relevant one.

The national roll-out of the Sarah's Law pilots has been welcomed and there is no doubt that any scheme that denies paedophiles access to children has its merits.

Three weeks ago the Daily Telegraph carried a letter praising social workers. It is incumbent upon me to convey the news that normal service has resumed.