Tonight:
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THE Children's Secretary, Ed Balls, has today announced a series of measures to make local social and health services more accountable for keeping children safe. All councils will be forced by law to establish Children's Trusts made up of doctors, police and social workers. Yet he admitted that these new safeguards would not have saved Baby P.
In this child's case, one of the most remarkable aspects of the dossier into his short life was that, despite the multiplicity of contacts between him and officialdom, he was still not protected. There was every possible intervention, from normal health visitor checks to unannounced visits by social workers to repeated medical examinations by doctors and paediatricians.
Today we report that at least two doctors warned that the injuries he had sustained were “suggestive of non-accidental harm”.
Yet the child was not removed from his home. Even in his last weeks of life, there was the grim irony of the series of parenting classes he and his mother attended. She did go to those classes and she did get that support; the boy was still abused to death under the noses of every agency of the state.
It would be wrong to blame only Haringey social services. As a BBC Panorama programme showed, the fact that the mother was seeing a new boyfriend was put on the record at the first strategy meeting about the child between police and social workers. Yet that lead was not followed up.
Health professionals failed, too. Sabah al-Zayyat, a paediatrician at St Ann's, decided not to examine the little boy on the grounds that he was “cranky”, thereby missing his broken back and his broken ribs. She is now contesting the termination of her contract.
The truth is that the faults that led to Baby P's death were not primarily procedural; procedures, including meetings between different agencies, were in place. And however good the new Children's Trusts, they are no substitute for the exercise of good judgment and practical common sense on the part of those individuals who administer the system. And if people in positions of responsibility do not show judgment, they should not be in their jobs.
Price drop
THE drop in inflation — down from 5.2 to 4.5 per cent in September — is good news, although it also carries a risk. The fall in the Consumer Prices Index is thanks to drops in the prices of oil and other commodities: after months of soaring food and energy prices, it brings a bit of welcome relief to consumers. It also increases the chance that the Bank of England will cut interest rates further. With almost no risk of inflationary pressure, many commentators believe the present base rate of three per cent will drop to two or perhaps even one per cent by early next year.
The danger is that such a dramatic slump in prices, the biggest in 16 years, could herald deflation. Falling prices and consumers spending less can lead to a deflationary spiral, such as the one which afflicted Japan for most of the Nineties. That means businesses have less to invest; worse, it means debt becomes a heavier burden for both businesses and homeowners.
In the UK's case, it would be premature to panic over deflation: today's figures are largely the result of the spike in commodity prices falling, and will in any case be counteracted in part by the weakness of the pound. But it is not for nothing that the Bank of England has a minimum as well as a maximum target for inflation. Falling inflation is the latest evidence of the multiple shocks hitting our economy: ministers would be wise to treat it with caution.
And celebrating...
VELIBS. Boris Johnson has approved plans for 6,000 hire bikes, known as Vélibs, in London by May 2010. These chunky bikes have transformed transport in Paris; we look forward to seeing them on the streets of London.
