The courts initially ruled that the names of those convicted should be kept secret but there was a vociferous minority online who demanded to know their names and a smaller number who found out their names and spread them. As someone who hadblogged about the case and was moderating comments, trying to comply with with the court ruling required repeated intervention. I was happy to do so, for it was not hard to guess the reasons for the court order – either to protect other children, such as a sibling, or to stop a further related prosecution being prejudiced. (As it turned out, both of these reasons applied.)

What was also clear was that many people who wanted to know the names of those convicted or were happy to spread them had not stopped to consider these possible explanations and – in fairness to them – there was no ‘official’ communication to help explain why secrecy might still be needed. What put the court order under strain on the threads I was moderating was not the principle, but a failure to communicate.

More generally and more significantly, across the media an understanding of these likely reasons for the secrecy order meant that secrecy was supported by media outlets and prominent people. As a result, with some strains and rough edges, the court order was able to do its job.

The contrast with other cases such as Trafigura is stark. Without such wider support for secrecy in this and similar cases, the court orders did not hold.

In those cases the media and others used all sorts of nods and winks to tease out information without quite breaking the law whilst also making use of other channels – especially Parliamentary privilege – to get out information. These routes were all available in the Baby P case, but were not used.

That highlights the usually neglected dimension to maintaining secrecy, whether in the form of super-injunctions or traditional court orders.

What you need is not only the lawyers to get the legals right, but also to win the battle of public opinion as to why the information should be kept secret. Win that battle and the tools to undermine secrecy are left largely unused; fail to win it and they are deployed to the full.

In other words, don’t just pick up the phone to a lawyer – get your publicity and communications work right too.

Cross-posted from Huffington Post UK.

Kim Holt (along with three other senior consultant paediatricians) tried to warn about serious failings in the unit which were, in their view, putting vulnerable children at risk. However, the hospital’s reactions ranged from suspending her through to blocking her return to work and failing to follow up on the recommendations of an investigation into her case.

The belated apology has taken Kim Holt three years to secure and once again raises questions about the judgement of Great Ormond Street Hospital’s Chief Executive, Jane Collins.

Jane Collins previously avoided a GMC investigation into her performance over the death of Baby Peter because she left the medical register shortly before any investigation could start and who has also been under fire for Great Ormond Street’s withholding of key information that was critical about its performance from two outside inquiries into Baby P’s death.

However, what has been less commented on in the coverage in the last few days is the way Jane Collins escaped being investigated by the General Medical Council last year:

The chief executive of Great Ormond Street Hospital has escaped investigation over the Baby P scandal by removing herself from the medical register.

The General Medical Council today confirmed they are now “powerless” to act against Dr Jane Collins since she erased her name. A GMC spokeswoman said: “Once someone has gone off the register then the GMC no longer has powers to investigate that person. Our powers only extend to erasing someone from the register.” (Evening Standard)

Not exactly a reassuring state of affairs is it?

See also:-

• Richard Morris – who points out that last year between 40 and 50 consultants at Great Ormond Street Hospital called on Jane Collins to go.
• Lynne Featherstone’s post about Kim Holt, the Great Ormond Street Hopsital whistleblower who was ostracised for three years after she raised concerns at the hospital – and now finally has received an apology.
• Dan Falchikov whose great aunt has a ward named after her at Great Ormond Street Hospital.
• Jonathan Calder’s blog post on Jane Collins and Great Ormond Street Hospital.
• There’s been further media coverage in the Hornsey Journal and the Daily Mail.

Today The Guardian has a damning verdict from the author of that first inquiry, Edi Carmi:

The author of the serious case review, Edi Carmi, said she was shocked by the BBC’s report and that much of the edited material concerned issues fundamental to her inquiry.

So the author of the first inquiry says fundamental information was withheld from her and the chair of the second inquiry says that Great Ormond Street Hospital is wrong to say it handed over the full information to him.

And the reaction of the hospital trustees to all this? So far, they say they can’t see that the hospital has done anything wrong. Hmm.

An investigation by BBC London found that Great Ormond Street Hospital did not pass on to the first Serious Case Review into the death of Baby Peter several key findings of its own review into the St Ann’s Clinic, which had an important and tragic role in the failures to protect him.

As the BBC says of its Great Ormond Street Hospital investigation:

The BBC London investigation reveals the following key findings and criticisms were left out:

• the head of the unit Dr Sukanta Bannerjee considered it a “clinically risky situation”
• the arrangements for seeing child protection cases there caused “grave concern”
• there was a “clearly unacceptable” four-month delay in Peter’s appointment
• the doctor who examined Peter should not have been appointed by Gosh because she had “little experience and training in child protection”
• there were “significant concerns” in two of only four previous child protection cases she had seen there.

Even worse, Great Ormond Street Hospital responded to the BBC claiming that the full findings were passed on to the second Serious Case Review into the death of Baby Peter, ordered after the first one was revealed to be deeply flawed. Yet Graham Badman, who chaired the second inquiry, told the BBC that he had never seen them.

Alas, the reaction of the Great Ormond Street Hospital’s Chairwoman to all of this has been to say there’s no problem: “The trust board has complete confidence in Dr Collins, she is a first class CEO”.

Moreover, Lynne Featherstone has accused the hospital of issuing a misleading statement to the press, writing on her blog today that:

In their statement they say they met me about my concerns. No – they met me about concerns about one of my constituents (one of the four paediatric consultants who was put on special leave because she raised concerns about the danger to children in St Ann’s Hospital). That meeting was not about the withholding of information from the Serious Case Review. And moreover – even that meeting was only granted after Baroness Blackstone (Chair of Great Ormond Street Board) had refused to meet me on my own without Dr Collins present. I have the emails!

Haringey was rightly in the spotlight as the lead agency in the wake of the Baby P tragedy – but perhaps that spotlight detracted from the terribly dangerous conditions in which vulnerable children were being left by the management failures by GOSH…

I have called for an investigation into the withholding of this vital information and wait to see whether real justice will be done.

A mother has been jailed for the abuse of 10 children in her care in Haringey, the borough at the centre of the Baby P scandal.

She left the children starving, smelly, crawling with head lice and covered in ingrained dirt.

One child was so hungry that when a foster carer fed her she pressed the milk bottle hard against her mouth, leaving a red mark. The skin beneath her nappy was red-raw.

Police, who were alerted by a member of the public concerned about the children’s condition and the “inappropriate” adult nature of their conversations, discovered rotten food in the home and cockroach infestation.

The abuse happened over four years, from 2005 to 2009. It will prompt renewed concerns about child protection standards in Haringey, where 17-month-old Peter Connelly – Baby P – died at the hands of his mother, her boyfriend and her lodger in 2007, despite 60 visits by social services, police and health professionals…

[A Haringey spokesman said:] ”The Local Safeguarding Children Board is content that our decision to pull together lessons for future best practice is right and that no other process is needed.”

As the paper’s leader puts it,

The case was not brought to trial as a result of the concerns of social workers. It took a civic-spirited neighbour to report the children’s situation to the police before action was taken.

Haringey Social Services is being notably reticent about the case but reticence will not do for a council notorious for its mishandling of the cases of Victoria Climbié and Baby P. Were social services involved in these cases of neglect, going back four years? And if so, why did they not deal forcefully with the abuse? We need answers and explanations.

Absolutely. Perhaps this time the council is right, but after the deaths of Victoria Climbié and Baby P Haringey’s initial response on both occasions fell woefully short of tackling the numerous failings that subsequent investigations uncovered. It’s too big a risk simply to trust that third time round its judgement is right.

Two social workers sacked over the Baby P tragedy have lost their claim for unfair dismissal, it emerged today.

Gillie Christou and Maria Ward claimed they were unjustly fired by Haringey council in response to the public outcry about the toddler’s horrific death.

But an employment tribunal panel ruled that the local authority acted reasonably in dismissing them because of serious failings in their care of the child.

You can read the full report here.

The whistleblower who warned that Haringey social services were failing to protect children just six months before the death of Baby P is to stand for election there as a Liberal Democrat councillor.

Former social worker Nevres Kemal, above, who will contest the Noel Park ward, said she will try to rid the council of a culture of “lying, deception and cover-ups”.

Best of luck Nevres.

As the November edition of Public Servant reports:

An attack by two ministers on parliamentary reports revealing waste and incompetence in their departments has provoked the Treasury to warn that ministers will face public censure if they make immediate statements to the media on future reports.

Statements by defence minister Quentin Davies and higher education minister David Lammy have led to a new Whitehall member to accounting officers banning attacks on Public Accounts Committee (PAC) reports before the Treasury can make a considered response.

In other words: don’t rush to the media saying PAC reports are rubbish before the Treasury has even had time to work out a proper analysis of their reports.

It’s not just when presented with new information though that David Lammy’s actions are suspect. It’s often forgotten that Baby Peter was a constituent of his (rather than of Lynne Featherstone’s) given how quiet he has been about both the tragedy itself and the chaotic and flawed management within Haringey’s social services department that inspections have uncovered. As I wrote in December:

David Lammy was warned by a whistle blower of severe problems in Haringey six months before Baby P’s death. Yet as Paul Waugh pointed out in the Evening Standard, David Lammy was happy to defend Sharon Shoesmith and Haringey Council even after this warning and after Baby P’s death.

And the least said about David Lammy’s Celebrity Mastermind appearance the better… All in all, David Lammy seems to be accumulating a rather unfortunate record as an MP even if he’s managed to escape the expenses scandal by virtue of being several years early with his second home claims.

It’s understandable that many councils are sufficiently frustrated by the paucity of coverage of their activities in the local media and/or the low penetration rate of that media that they are looking to put out more and more information via official publications which includes, in some cases, in effect becoming a rival publisher to their local newspapers.

However, whilst in some cases this may be a good way of getting out news about council services, it also skews the overall balance of coverage of the council in a very positive direction. Yet the big difficulty with local democratic accountability in many councils is that no-one in the media is really covering what the council gets up in any meaningful way. It may be that the local newspapers report very little of the council, or it may be that most of what they report is of the “he said, she said” variety which never ends up exposing very much other than those in power think they are doing a good job and those in opposition think they’re not. Either way though, what is done at the council largely escapes public scrutiny.

I used to live in Haringey, and the performance of the local newspapers through both the Victoria Climbie and Baby P tragedies highlights this all too clearly. Haringey’s social services has been deeply troubled for many years, and on both occassions a high profile tragedy brought in the national media which then uncovered a whole host of stories that had previously gone unreported. But it’s only been when the national media comes in that this has happened. The local media has – with, to its credit, a handful of exceptions in the Broadway Ham & High – failed to unearth anything much. The reports of social services have largely been of the “he said, she said” variety – matching criticisms from opposition politicians with defences of the council from Labour (the governing party) and council people.  The main paid for title – the Journal series – even decided not to make the trial over the death of Baby P the front page story on its Hornsey edition.

I have some sympathy with the individual journalists who haven’t done any real holding to account of Haringey social services, but fundamentally the problem is that they haven’t held Haringey Council to account in a way that, for all its flaws, the national media does for government departments.

So in such situations is more publicity from the council really a good move? It’s all too easy to see how that can make the problems arrising from the lack of proper accountability even worse. It may perhaps be a case of no news of the council being better than adulatory news of the council.