Home AffairsWritten evidence from Chris Longley MBE [LCG 20]

I have watched today’s session of the Home Affairs Committee in regard to the systemic abuse of children in Rotherham at which Martin Kimber and Joyce Thacker, two paid officers of Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council (RMBC), gave evidence.

I am pleased that Keith Vaz MP, Chair of the Committee, insisted that RMBC must now provide to the Home Affairs Committee copies of all internal RMBC reports regarding the systemic abuse of children in Rotherham.

I hope his insistence will go as far back as at least 2002. The Committee may find early reports in these matters enlightening. It should be possible for all these reports to be made available to the Committee within the working week since the only permission needed is that of the current responsible RMBC elected member.

I would counsel also that when Keith Vaz MP writes to RMBC insisting on the provision of these reports that he should also insist that the reports are in un-redacted form. It will save his having to write to RMBC twice.

Further, I suggest strongly that he insist also on the provision of all the Agendas and Minutes of all RMBC internal committee and of the Rotherham Children’s Safeguarding Board meetings at which these reports were discussed dating back to 2002.

It is vital that these Minutes are available un-redacted because only in this way will it be possible to establish the following:

1.Which RMBC officers and elected RMBC members (including Councillor Shaun Wright, now the South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner) received these Reports, when did they receive them and at what RMBC committees and/or joint working arrangements were the reports decided upon?

2.At RMBC committees, what recommendations to RMBC elected members were made by the RMBC officers in regard to these reports, and did the elected members adopt the recommendations?

3.In the case of Safeguarding Board (a joint arrangement) meetings, what recommendations to members of the children’s safeguarding board were made by the officers, and were they adopted?

4.What decisions did elected RMBC members take in respect of these reports and their recommendations in RMBC internal committees?

Only by knowing the answers to these questions will the Home Affairs Select Committee know the answers to the vital questions:

1.What did decision maker s decide to do or decide not to do?

2.Who knew what and when did they know it?

Only when this information and decision trail is complete will the picture of the distinctions between officer responsibilities and the elected politician responsibilities become clear.

Simply having the reports themselves, although helpful, will not be enough to draw these vital distinctions.

I suggest therefore that the Select Committee should not interview Councillor Wright until it is in possession of a full and un-redacted set of reports and Minutes dating back to 2002, and therefore has a clear “audit trail” of the information and the decisions made over the 2002 to 2011 period.

The half decade in which Councillor Wright was in charge of the Rotherham safeguarding board/panel falls in the middle of this period.

I hope you will now see more clearly why I have also said that Councillor Wright and the current Chief Constable David Crompton QPM should be asked to give evidence on separate occasions.

January 2013