----- Original
Message -----
From: dave.mortimer@tiscali.co.uk
To: David.NORMINGTON@dfes.gsi.gov.uk
Sent: Friday, October 07, 2005 2:28 PM
Subject: Mr Bruce Clark - Consensus
Sir David
Normington
Permanent Secretary
Sanctuary Buildings
Great Smith Street
London SW1P 3BT
7 October
2005
Dear Sir
David,
DfES
INTERNAL MISMANAGEMENT: Policy on Children
Thank
you for your letter of 20 September 2005 proffering the results
of your internal investigation. Perhaps you will accept that this
inquiry evinces a certain lack of rigour?
I
am sure we can agree your explanations do not cover the facts.
The upshot is:
Private
family law cases: Section 8 Contact Disputes
Two years’
work, by two government departments, has been wasted:
-
-
the benefits innate to the EI project (killed by its Fam Res
substitute) are the stated objective of Government policy
-
-
you concede that EI was replaced by Family Resolutions before
work on EI started
Government
family policy is now inoperable: it is based on an elementary
factual error.
Public
family law cases: Social Services and MSbP
The
DfES’s agreed objective was to develop diagnostic criteria
for MSbP to protect the innocent and identify the guilty. Instead,
and as you concede, the DfES launched a nationwide protocol -
on the basis that innocent activities are indicators of guilt.
In
one sector, Ministers were misled. In both, family policy is distorted.
The problem, which remains unaddressed, passes in enlarged form
to Ministers, professionals and the public.
David Mortimer
MISMANAGEMENT
of FAMILY POLICY (Private Law)
The
DfES Internal Investigation: 20 September 2005
Sir
David Normington, Permanent Secretary, DfES (re Mr Bruce Clark)
What Went
Wrong: - the EI project went into the DfES - but the Fam Res
project (the opposite of EI) came out. Government policy is
based on EI - but work on EI never started
CHALK:
Sir David’s Explanation
“At
no point did the responsible Minister agree to pilot the NATC
(Early Interventions) project”
This assertion
is used as a platform for Sir David to concede an otherwise
inexplicable fact (hitherto denied): that work on the NATC EI
project never started. This new stance underpins the denial
that Ministers were misled – because, according to this
version, Ministers never believed that the NATC EI project was
being progressed.
CHEESE:
The Stated View of the Ministers
“In
no sense has there been any abandonment of the Early Interventions
initiative proposed by the NATC”
Lord Filkin,
Parliamentary Under Secretary for State, Children and Families
(13 April 2005 2005/0015774 POLF). This assertion is one of
an extended line of documented official pronouncements made,
and Ministerial meetings held, on the basis that the EI project,
and/or the principles in the EI project, continued in progress.
The
Central Mistake
Sir
David, in giving his departmental officials a clean bill of health,
writes: ‘[The] pilot project had been outlined in a paper
submitted by the ad hoc group chaired by District Judge Nicholas
Crichton… This was the project which was implemented by
DfES officials’
The project
proposed to Government by the ad hoc group was the NATC Early
Interventions project[1] - submitted in fully-defined form by
the Ad Hoc Group on 8.10.03 in the NATC document (entitled Early
Interventions: Towards a Pilot Project) endorsed by the judiciary.
[2]
What
Actually Happened
After
Mr Bruce Clark decided (in or around October 2003) to ignore the
EI project, the EI papers were mislaid, possibly without being
read. Instead, Mr Clark consulted almost exclusively with those
opposed to, or ignorant of, the EI project. The project name was
changed amidst assurances that this was no more than a name-change.
Mr Clark (unaware of first principles in this area) then began
a different project, from scratch, unwittingly reversing the specific
EI (or ‘Florida’) principle adopted by Government.
Meanwhile
- as DJ Crichton confirms - Mr Clark maintained that the principles
in the original EI project (which he had buried) continued under
development. The judiciary, and hundreds of others, were misled.
The Government
remains under the misapprehension that the cornerstone presumption
on which its policies are based, and which it supports, and
which EI would have introduced, is already in place.
MISMANAGEMENT
of FAMILY POLICY (Public Law)
The
DfES Internal Investigation: 20 September 2005
Sir
David Normington, Permanent Secretary, DfES (re Mr Bruce Clark)
What Went
Wrong: the Government undertook to develop diagnostic criteria
to establish if-and-when parents were ‘guilty’ of
MSbP. Instead, the DfES launched a nationwide scheme enabling
innocent parents to be processed for MSbP on an assumption they
might be guilty.
Sir
David’s Explanation? : To offer no defence
Sir
David’s response merely recounts the salient facts, agreeing
them with no particular demur. In this vein, he cites a new text
- which re-confirms that the DfES’s remit was to find ways
of correctly identifying MSbP cases.
Otherwise,
the inquiry advances nothing to counter the main charge (which
is, by virtue of what the Guidelines say, impossible to deny).
The
Obvious Difficulty
The
Guidelines introduced by Mr Bruce Clark:
(i)
define swathes of ordinary domestic behaviours as possible indicators
of MSbP
(ii)
say a possibility that MSbP may be involved should lead to a referral
to Social Services
Guidelines
based on these twin premises [(i) and (ii)] are irresponsible
and dangerous.[3]
A
Mitigating Factor ?
The
DfES Internal Inquiry puts forward the point that, in preparing
and launching these Guidelines, Mr Clark (who led the small and
inappropriate Working Group) did not mislead Ministers.
The question
at issue is not whether Mr Clark misled Ministers[4].
Elementary
Error
The
actual issue is due diligence.
It
is not easy to understand how the obvious problem with the Guidelines
was overlooked.
Irrespective
of whether the elementary safeguards were omitted from the Guidelines
deliberately - or whether Ministers were misled - the Guidelines
are misconceived, substandard and untenable[5].
[1]
Suggestions to the contrary face insurmountable difficulties.
If the project submitted by the Ad Hoc group was significantly
different from the NATC EI project it submitted, it would follow
that (if Sir David is to be believed) the EI proposal endorsed
by the judiciary and embraced by Ministers was never even submitted.
[2]
Ministers accepted and routinely stated, first, their policy was
based on the specific benefits to be derived from the EI project;
second, that the EI project (or a project adopting core principles
identical to EI) was under continuing DfES development. The Green
Paper, and the empty Bill now before the House, are on this basis.
[3]
The obvious dangers of the Guidelines (e.g. wrongful removal of
a child) flowing from (i) and (ii) above are compounded by the
facts that (a) Social Service investigations are innately damaging
to families (b) the Guidelines concede in passing that there is
no significant MSbP problem (c) the Guidelines promulgate on a
national basis the work of a medical practitioner struck off the
register for his medical work.
[4]
Consensus has no firm information on whether Ministers were misled
about the nature of Guidelines. However, it must be a possibility
in Britain that fully-briefed Ministers are unlikely to approve
Guidelines based on a de facto presumption of guilt.
