HHas anything about politics in the past week made you feel at all close to home? The political class suddenly talking about a multi-year scandal just because a tech billionaire starts making noise? Some elements were novel. But other things are a depressingly normal part of Westminster culture. For example, there has been a flurry of activity by ministers announcing they would implement recommendations from an independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, while others resisted calls to launch a new inquiry into the specific issue of grooming. gang.
Resistance to investigation is a step that every government goes through in every scandal. Initially, they argued that re-examination would not reveal anything new and would be expensive and time-consuming. and are more likely to agree to limited non-statutory investigations. It then became clear that the problem with non-statutory investigations was that witnesses could not be summoned to give evidence under oath, and what ministers had not wanted was forced to happen anyway. It will be. We have been involved in ongoing investigations into hospitals, such as the Mid-Staff Inquiry, which was not initially a public inquiry but which we ended up having to take on just to find out what happened, as well as ongoing psychiatric inquiries. I have seen this through research. Healthy deaths in Essex.
Sit everyone down, even the pot muddlers, and discuss known problems with the political class. What I've been wondering about for years is actually not new. Elon Musk may not have garnered public attention for scandals before, but the triggers always come from outside Westminster.
Given that there was a clear structure for ministers to resist and eventually launch a full public inquiry into the scandal, even though the scandal existed and was widely known, until a week of outrage began. There is still a predictable process of being ignored.An ITV drama about the post office and posts on social media have brought attention to it.
The problem is, if a scandal isn't just something that needs to be talked about, but is about something that actually happened and could happen again if we don't take action, then it's time to give it your undivided attention for a week. is also ineffective. Much of the discussion last week has been about which politicians care more about white working-class girls abused by gangs, and what is actually being done to investigate it. Or how to put in place a system to prevent such things from happening or happening. The present and the future are ignored.
There was irony in Yvette Cooper rushing to the House of Commons last Monday to announce that she would now implement some of the reforms recommended by the Government. Independent investigation into child sexual abuse (IICSA). The Home Secretary told MPs that the key is to ensure that change actually happens, rather than “just thinking there's been an announcement and nothing changes and nothing is actually done”. spoke.
She was right. Confusing announcements with action is very common at Westminster, with leaders often thinking they have addressed an issue simply because they have made a speech about it, and the media often criticizing it by not pursuing action. making it possible. Enough problems. But Cooper himself was moved by the turbulent political debate to make the announcement, rather than making it weeks before Christmas. After all, IICSA published its report in 2022, and while the Conservatives did little other than welcome its recommendations, Labor has They could have announced that they would implement the recommendations when there was enough media interest in them. That problem.
It remains noteworthy that it took more than two years for the government to respond meaningfully to IICSA. Given that the common course of action in the event of a final report in a public inquiry is for ministers to issue a statement about past mistakes and errors, then before doing anything to implement the recommendations. said it would seriously consider the recommendations. The worst example I have come across is the Labor Government's August 2024 announcement on death recognition reform. Requiring an independent examination by a coroner or coroner into all deaths in England and Wales.
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What caused this to happen? Public questioning. I'm not sure “quick” is the right word, considering this inquiry was made public. 21 years ago – it was the third report of the Shipman Inquiry – There has been no prompt response from the government to the recommendations regarding death certification. When this report came out, politicians used the usual phrase “never again,” but it took 21 years before anything happened that could happen again. The families of Dr. Harold Shipman's victims and their attorneys raged in 2015 When the then Conservative government again postponed the implementation of these reforms, saying it would not be possible before that year's election.
Governments use elections as an excuse for failing to do something – Kemi Badenoch last week cited the 2024 election as a reason why the latest Conservative government will not implement IICSA recommendations – but 2015 Given the date of the election in 2017, which was known for five years thanks to the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, this was a really bad excuse.
In 2016, I was sitting in the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War in the 'hook-up', where journalists were given a few hours to eagerly plow through a summary document the size of a heavy holiday read. The report itself consists of 12 volumes. When the embargo was lifted that lunchtime, and in the days that followed, there was rapt attention. Much of it is about what Tony Blair said to George W. Bush, and indeed the long, rambling press conference that Blair gave that afternoon as he continued to search his own heart about whether he would do the right thing at the time. was focused on. But the report also talks about learning lessons from interventions and post-conflict planning. It took many years to write this article, but the UK intervened militarily again, especially in Libya, where the government made many mistakes in planning what would happen to the country after the military intervention. of Chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan 2021, five years after Chilcot's publication, shows that these lessons have not yet been applied.
It would have been better if there had been a way to test whether lessons were learned in government that did not involve a breakdown in the country's democracy or security, or indeed a recurrence of scandals in the health service or other institutions. However, there is no mechanism for Parliament to track whether public inquiries by ministers are being carried out. Questions may be asked on this issue on an ad hoc basis in select committee hearings or on the floor of the House of Commons, but at no point will answers that set deadlines or detail the government's progress be made. is not done with a pen. To guarantee that something will never happen again.
In the case of police reform, successive Conservative home ministers have said that Cooper, while in opposition, asked ministers when he would introduce reforms that would allow chief constables to fire or suspend chief constables accused of sexual offences. , could tease Cooper. They often cited other ongoing inquiries as the reason for the delay. Mr Cooper and many others, including Tory backbenchers, did this admirably, but there was never a moment of unbearable pressure to force ministers to act quickly. Thus, the recommendations were published in 2003 and implementation will only begin in 2024.
So, in fact, the question everyone has been asking about whether we need further national research on gang grooming is the wrong question. What Westminster really needs to consider is whether it has the means to make a meaningful “never again'' response to that inquiry. And there's no need to look into that question at all. There are already enough examples to show that the answer is no.
