Before Lord Laming was infallible

In Friday's House Points I commented on the way that Lord Laming has come to be treated as the sole arbiter of what is good practice in child protection. So much so that:

After the death of Peter Connelly (“Baby P”), Lord Laming was asked to consider whether the reforms he had suggested after Victoria Climbie’s death were adequate. Not surprisingly, Lord Laming came to the conclusion that Lord Laming had done a pretty good job.

As a reader has reminded me, Lord Laming has not always enjoyed this status. In fact, he was a controversial choice to lead the inquiry into the Climbie case.

Controversial, because in 1990, when he was still plain Herbert Laming and director of social services for Hertfordshire, the local government ombudsman had recorded a finding of "maladministration with injustice" against his department, which was the strongest criticism open to him.

This finding followed as case in which the father of a young girl raised his fear that his daughter was being sexually abused by her mother's boyfriend with Hertfordshire social services.

The father later complained that she had been interviewed about the alleged abuse in the presence of her mother, against official guidelines. She was then removed from him in a late-night raid by police and social workers and handed over to the mother and her boyfriend.

When the father went to court over the case, Lord Laming denied him access to the reports of internal inquiry into the affair.

An Independent article from the time he was appointed to chair the Climbie inquiry quotes the father as saying:

"I don't see how he has the qualifications or experience to be able to lead an investigation into another borough which has been failing to protect a child in exactly the same manner that his own authority failed to protect a child in 1990."

Interestingly, the article also refers to Paul Burstow, who was then the Liberal Democrat health spokesman. It says he had:

called on Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, to say whether he was aware of the case when he asked Lord Laming to head the inquiry into the death of eight-year-old Anna. Her killers were jailed for life earlier this month at the Old Bailey in London.

Mr Burstow told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the issue demonstrated the need for an independent children's commissioner.

None of this seems to have affected Lord Laming's career. In fact his standing with this government is even higher than I had realised.

His Wikipedia entry records that he was its original choice to lead a private inquiry into the murders committed by Harold Shipman. Only after the media and the families of some of his victims went to court did the government conceded a public inquiry, which was chaired by the High Court judge Dame Janet Smith.