Peer pressure

Lord Laming’s Climbié inquiry pointed the finger
directly at managers. And he doesn’t see why another recent
inquiry by a peer skirted round the issue of blame, he
tells Mark Ivory.

In his Victoria Climbié inquiry report, Lord Laming said
that “the single most important change in the future”
would be to create a clear line of accountability from the front
line right to the top of the child protection system.

Apart from the recommendations that led ultimately to the Children
Bill, the report was notable for its attack on managers for leaving
practitioners to carry the can for their mistakes. Laming spoke of
the “breathtaking unwillingness of some of the most senior
people… to accept that they were in any way accountable for
these failures”.

It was in this context that the recent Butler report into the
intelligence that led to the Iraq war caught Laming’s eye. In
that report Lord Butler said there had been a collective failure in
the handling of intelligence but refused to blame anyone in
particular for what had gone wrong. It looked, Laming believes,
suspiciously like one law for central government, another for
everyone else.

Butler’s failure to blame anyone ran against the grain of
other recent inquiry reports – not just Laming’s own,
but also Sir Michael Bichard’s into Ian Huntley and Lord
Hutton’s into the death of David Kelly, where the bosses of
Humberside Police and the BBC respectively found themselves in the
limelight. Laming thinks that Butler was misguided.

“Lord Butler talks of collective failure, but there’s
no place for it in a hierarchical organisation,” Laming says.
“Collective failure is an outdated notion that I don’t
recognise – you’ve got to go on to say who was
responsible.

“Butler said there was intelligence coming through from Iraq
that changed in tone. It was translated into bolder, more definite
language with no caveats. Someone was responsible for changing
question marks into exclamation marks, speculative statements into
certainties.”

Even more important, says Laming, is Butler’s reliance on
good faith. Since no one intended to cause harm in the process of
interpreting the intelligence, no one was individually to blame,
according to Butler. Laming begs to differ. Good faith, he says,
never exonerates anyone on its own, since satisfactory answers must
also be given to awkward questions about the following of
procedures, the gathering of information and the judgements that
came afterwards.

“Good faith is only the start of an evaluation and analysis.
There was no one social worker, doctor or police officer who
intended any harm to come to Victoria [Climbié] – they
all acted in good faith.”

Laming argues that if local “operational” services,
including social care, are to be subject to more intensive scrutiny
and more demanding standards than public services at the centre,
there are huge implications for the recruitment and morale of
staff. This applies even more so given that the stakes are
typically so much higher in central government – for example,
a decision concerning the welfare of one family versus a decision
whether to go to war. 

“Inquiries are a really important part of our open and
democratic society, but there must be consistency of treatment. As
things are, we’re in danger of saying that in some parts of
our public services you have to bear a heavier burden of
responsibility.”
He hopes that two new reports on the future of inquiries will put
the emphasis back on accountability. The House of Commons public
administration committee, to which he gave evidence, is due to
publish one, while the Department for Constitutional Affairs has
just finished consulting on another. The reports are both expected
in the autumn.

So should heads have rolled after Butler? Laming responds with his
characteristic caution, though he does think it odd that John
Scarlett, the new head of MI6, received special treatment.
“What did surprise me was that Butler, having declined to
criticise individuals, then suddenly became an advocate for one of
them, John Scarlett.  Matters of employment are the responsibility
of employers once the inquiry is over. It is not for inquiries to
interfere.”

But he doesn’t think Butler let Tony Blair off the hook.
“By the time the material got to the prime minister, the
caveats had already been removed. The question is, how did it get
to the PM in that form?” CC