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6.3 pm

Mrs. Gillian Shephard (South-West Norfolk): I am really pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to this extremely important debate, not least because it is clear that no hon. Member could fail to be moved by the fate of Victoria Climbié. No one could fail to be impatient for action some six months after the publication of the distinguished and comprehensive

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inquiry into her death. As the Secretary of State said, I also have a constituency interest. Several hon. Members will know that I had the opportunity to make a presentation to the Climbié inquiry on behalf of an all-party group of Norfolk MPs. I must place on record my gratitude to the Secretary of State for giving his unreserved support to our conclusions when he was in his former post. The presentation detailed some of the lessons that were drawn from the harrowing case of my six-year-old constituent Lauren Wright, who died after months of abuse at the hands of her stepmother on 6 May 2000—about the same time as Victoria.

I shall be very brief as others wish to speak. I shall give the bare facts about the circumstances of Lauren's death and then, equally briefly, lay out some of the conclusions that the all-party group drew from that sad affair. It was characterised, like the case of Victoria, by a series of errors, muddles, communications failures and general professional sloppiness—the same sort of failures that, all too often, are revealed by the cases of the 80 or so children who die each year in this country from abuse or neglect.

Lauren Wright, my constituent, died from a blow to her abdomen, with extreme bruising all over her body, on 6 May 2000, two days before the date of the case conference that Norfolk social services had finally organised to discuss her plight. From her birth she had been known to Hertfordshire social services. She was known to Norfolk social services for the three years before her death. For the 16 months before she died she was at primary school—a two-teacher, 29-pupil primary school in which she could hardly get lost. During that time, aged six, she lost four stone in weight. She was seen by a community paediatrician and a general practitioner, and again by a paediatrician just a couple of months before she died. She was visited by social workers. Too late they alerted the area child protection committee, and too late the case conference was finally convened for a date after her death.

The real concerns about this case are that Lauren's treatment at the hands of her stepmother, who was eventually convicted of her manslaughter, took place in public, observed by the local community, and under the supervision of doctors, social workers and teachers. Trial evidence revealed that the stepmother was seen hitting the child and screaming abuse at her; that she fed her pepper sandwiches; that she put bugs from the garden in her food; and that she turned off the taps so tightly that the child could not get a drink of water.

Lauren's class teacher said at the trial that she saw marks on Lauren

"lots of times, often she was covered with lots of small bruises and with major bruises about once a month. These included black eyes, bruising on her face and scratches across her back."

As I said, at the time of her death, she weighed little more than two stone. In the words of her head teacher, her physical deterioration had been

"apparent for at least five months before she died."

Of course, Lauren was killed by her stepmother. The hon. Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Woodward) rightly makes it clear that not all blame can be placed at the door of professionals, and that is definitely so. The stepmother was clearly very plausible. The trial was told that she had an IQ of 78. She certainly deceived doctors, teacher and social workers, and Lauren died as a result. But from this sad case we see illustrated a number of the same failures shown in the Victoria Climbié case.

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As Lord Laming said in the introduction to his report:

"I recognise that those who take on the work of protecting children at risk of deliberate harm face a tough and challenging task. Staff doing this work need a combination of professional skills and personal qualities, not the least of which are persistence and courage."

I agree. We should not underestimate the difficulty and sensitivity of the work undertaken by social workers, police, medical professionals and teachers. But of course when decisions and judgments are so difficult, procedures are more, not less, important. As Lord Laming said about the Victoria Climbié case:

"Even after listening to all the evidence, I remain amazed that nobody in any of the key agencies had the presence of mind to follow what are relatively straightforward procedures on how to respond to a child about whom there is concern of deliberate harm."

I agree with that too, in the case of Lauren. The investigations that I undertook on behalf of the Norfolk all-party group of MPs leave little room for doubt.

In a letter to MPs, the director of Norfolk social services, Mr. David Wright, admitted

"There were failings in other agencies but I believe that our Department should have been able to intervene to save her".

It was only after a great deal of pressure from Norfolk MPs, the public and the media that the Norfolk health authority agreed to mount an independent review of its role in Lauren's case. The review's findings were shattering. The Eastern Daily Press reported on 26 March 2002 that there had been

"a series of errors and poor NHS management which culminated in a failure to safeguard the little girl."

There was also the role of the education service. The Minister will want to take careful note, given her background in the Education Department. Lauren attended a 29-pupil school. She presented at school with bruising. She lost four stone in weight. She was listless and tired. Despite all that, as far as we know her teachers did not report to the education welfare service concerns that they might have had about her health, as they were required to do under local education authority guidelines. I say "as far as we know" because the Norfolk local education authority declined to make public any inquiries it might have made in the wake of Lauren's death. She was therefore failed by no fewer than four chief officers and professionals in social services, the health service and the education service, just as Victoria Climbié was failed by a multiplicity of professions.

The all-party group suggested to the Climbié inquiry that the following issues should be tackled. The first was accountability, which the Secretary of State touched on in his remarks. The Norfolk MPs concluded that a statutory duty should be placed on the chief executive of each local authority to convene the area child protection committee in cases of repeated child abuse and neglect, and that he or she should have a statutory duty to ensure that appropriate action is taken. If it is not, the chief executive should ensure that disciplinary action follows. We thought that a similar duty should also be placed on health authority chief executives. To ensure that professional staff are not unduly put at risk from that arrangement or structure, we also decided that the same chief executive should have a statutory responsibility to ensure that all staff have clear information about exactly what is expected of them in a given child abuse situation.

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The group also felt that authorities should have more regard to transparency in their conduct of such matters. As Members of Parliament representing all the people of Norfolk we had difficulty in getting information out of the authorities concerned. We were greatly helped by the energies of local media and by public support, but it should not be so. Paradoxically, professionals get more blame from the public if there is less transparency about what happens in a given case. Trade unions and professional organisations understandably worry about witch hunts. Everyone can see that. The public, equally understandably, know only what the media tell them. They cannot understand why child abuse tragedies continue to occur while no one is ever seen to be blamed. We all thought that there should be more transparency and an open and public debate about responsibility and blame in society. We thought all those things important.

I add this plea. I ask the Minister to pay attention to the problems of rural isolation with respect to professional agencies. In particular, there could be a reluctance in a small rural school that is close to its community to suspect—let alone denounce—people in that community of child abuse. In such areas, there could be a series of different solutions, such as a special unit at the LEA, or even—I hesitate to suggest this because I think it is a generational point—a return to the old-fashioned role of the school nurse. If the school nurse had gone in and out of that school to examine the children regularly, professionally and objectively, Lauren Wright would not have died, because her injuries would have been uncovered. I understand that school nurses do other things now. I know that my suggestion may seem old-fashioned, but it is a practical idea that might help in future. I am grateful that last summer Ministers accepted amendments to the Education Act 2002 which, in effect, made statutory for teachers, school governors, local education authorities and further education colleges the observance of child abuse guidelines.

It is truly inexplicable that, when there is agreement among Members on both sides of the House, policy and practice changes should be urgently required to reduce an unacceptable number of child deaths. The Government themselves announced that the Green Paper would be issued in spring, but changed that to before the summer recess. However, today we are not much nearer to knowing what they have in mind. The Secretary of State, rather skilfully, I thought, said that there was a delay of one parliamentary week, but in fact it is a delay of several months on the date announced by the right hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn), then Secretary of State for Health, on 28 January. The Minister for Children is a former local authority leader and has experience of these matters. I hope that she agrees that the Government should not have spent three years since the appalling death of a helpless, hapless and innocent child considering what should be done. They should not be obfuscating the reasons for the delay in their action. The hon. Lady has only just begun her important job. In the name of all the Victorias and all the Laurens, we want her to get on with it.

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