Services must share information better when children are at risk

Writing for Lion and Unicorn about the film No Room at the Inn and the death in 1945 of the foster child Dennis O'Neill, which inspired the play on which it was based, I said:

Sir Walter Monckton’s inquiry found what every such inquiry has found since: a need for different services to work together more effectively.

Could it be that government has finally noticed? 

Here's Jacqui Smith - Baroness Smith of Malvern, now a minister in the Department for Education  - speaking during the Lord's committee stage of the government's Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill:

My Lords, since the very first inquiry into the tragic death of Dennis O’Neill in 1945, we have seen time and again that poor information-sharing lies at the heart of serious child safeguarding failures. It is a persistent and deeply troubling issue, and if we are serious about protecting children, we must be serious about fixing this.

I think there has been in this group of amendments with respect to this clause a pretty strong consensus around this House on that point.

The shorter Jacqui Smith

The Liberal Democrats are to be condemned for not overturning my policy more thoroughly.

Live blogging prime minister's questions

I am at home waiting for the man to come to look at my central heating. I think I just need a new timer, but I can't have the fire on in case he does need to look at the back boiler.

While I am waiting I thought I would have a go at live blogging prime minister's questions.

I am promised the gas man will be here some time after noon. Trying to live blog PMQs should ensure that he comes in the middle of it.

Scroll down for my latest comments

The Daily Politics is talking about the Tories plans to reform the BBC. Andrew Neil tactfully says you will probably never have heard of their shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt.

Andrew Neil is by some way the best political interviewer on television. I have never heard Jeremy Paxman get an admission of anything from anyone. Nor have I heard John Humphrys do it on the radio.

But Neil got Michael Gove, who we all assumed came from a humble background, to confirm that his adoptive parents had paid for him to go to one of Scotland's most expensive private schools.

Jeremy Hunt has just shown why you have probably never heard of him.

Now on to the Pope. Not sure if he will be in the studio.

Government is not to press ahead with bringing churches under the same anti-discrimination laws as everyone else. Did we know this already?

Liam Byrne has just said we embrace democratic protest in this country. Andrew Neil points out that the police did all they could to keep demonstrators away from the Chinese head of state when he visited.

Now Richard Madeley is now giving us the benefit of his wisdom on Iraq and WMDs.

Am going to put the kettle on.

Richard Madeley has a certain resemblance to Alan Partridge.

Oh God! "Richard Madeley is going to stay with us."

Guess the year? I make it 1991. You can win a mug!

Two minutes to PMQs.

Tea is good.

Here we go...
PM pays tribute to two more dead soldiers.

Tory David Evennett asks about Gordon Brown's expense claims. Reply "I don't know what he talking about."

Jacqui Smith is still alive! Asks about Tory use of crime statistics.

Brown quotes BBC on falling and stable violence for over a decade.

It's Flashman. Sorry, David Cameron.

Asks about government equipping of British troops in Iraq.

Brown says defence spending has risen every year.

Er, maybe it wasn't spent properly?

Cameron quotes witnesses to Chilcot Inquiry and British troops on lack of equipment.

Brown still going on about overall level of spending. Cameron would have cut defence spending at the last election.

Cameron goes on about Brown's record on defence as Chancellor. Another Chilcot witness is quoted.

Brown goes on with the same line. But there is no virtue in spending for its own sake. Is it effective?

Says last Tory government cut defence by 30 per cent.Given Cold War was over, that sounds sensible.

Jamie Reed wants planning law loosened to allow more nuclear power stations.

Gordon Brown makes a joke! "It is eight minutes past twelve. I understand current Tory policy is..."

It's Nick Clegg!

Asks about spending on Trident. Shouldn't it be part of the defence review.

Brown: We are multilateralists. Unsafe and insecure world.

Nick includes Tories among fans of Trident. Do we need a weapon that can flatten Moscow at the touch of a button.

Brown being noticeably nicer to Nick.

It seems we have to spend a fortune on Trident so we can give it up as part of multilateral agreement at some distant date.

Brown now defends equipment of troops in Iraq, which Nick mentioned in passing.

Scottish MP asks planted question on education spending.

Brown attacks Scottish government.

David Cameron has three more questions.

Asks why Brown is changing voting system so late in the day.

Apparently AV will make the public trust parliament again. Yeah, right.

Not impressive from Brown.

Cameron: "He talks about the hereditary principle. There is only one person in this house who inherited his title." Ouch.

Asks same question. Brown replies with rehearsed answer on Tory policy failings.

Cameron quotes Paddy Ashdown diaries. Blair wanted PR. "But I can't get it past Gordon."

Speaker steps in. He is dressed just like the more traditional masters at Hemel Hempstead School c.1971.

Brown is obsessed with hereditary principle. Not sure the public will care as much about this as he thinks.

Sir Stuart Bell asks on restoring public faith in politics. First step would be for the Commons to find a better public face than Stuart Bell.

Next up, my MP. Edward Garnier, for it is he, asks about defence chiefs' threat to resign.

Brown repeats earlier answer.

Robert Flello asks PM to support Royal British Legion. He agrees to do so.

John Hemming asks on buses in Birmingham. We want same system as in London.

Brown a little cutting. Was that the best subject for a question?

Another planted question from Scottish Labour MP. Are they all toadies?

John Hayes tries to be clever.

Fails.

David Borrow asks on apprenticeships in South Ribble. Brown has dig at Tory policy being unclear and backs apprenticeships.

Crispin Blunt tries again on defence. Brown wanted cuts in spending but was prevented by chiefs of staff. Why are the services wrong and Brown right.

Brown again goes on about overall spending. But if it is not working, there is a deeper problem with systems or British foreign policy.

Now an English planted question. A nice change.

My tea has got cold.

Lembit Opik!

Asks about job losses in Montgomeryshire.

Brown respectful, which is more than this blog often is about Lembit.

Now Andrew Miller asks about job losses in his Wirrall constituency.

It has gone very quiet.

No sign of that gas man.

Paul Beresford asks on CJD and blood filtering.

Brown promises to look at the matter and get back to him.

Another planted question. Did not see who asked it because I was looking at a white van drawn up outside. Don't think it is the gas man though.

Graham Stuart says health spending is skewed to Labour-voting areas. That woke them up.

Brown says Labour has doubled spending on health service, which again misses the point.

Brian Jenkins asks about war widows, but it is a planted dig at Tory policy to favour marriage through the tax system.

Mark Prisk has a dig at Peter Mandelson. Why is 90 per cent of his industry fund spent in Labour constituencies?

Brown again beside the point.

Alan Whitehead asks on houses in multiple occupation. Brown again respectful.

And that is it.
Rather dull to be honest, though Andrew Neil called it "lively".

Marks out of 5. Brown 2.5, Cameron 3.5, Clegg 3.

It is noticeable that Brown talks only about overall levels of spending. He seems unable to entertain the idea that you have to look at what effect that spending is having out in the real world. It is Labour centralisation married to Brown's personal obsession with figures.

Where is that gas man?

Andrew Neil points out that Cameron went on defence and on AV, limiting discussion of the economy.

Liam Byrne: Government has not brought forward PR because it could not get a consensus on it. And when did it try?

Byrne says people want AV. Neil asks where the evidence is. Byrne fails to point to any.

Time for a second mug of tea.

They are now showing a document released under Freedom of Information legislation. It is totally blacked out. Liam Byrne defends this.

Richard Madeley has gone and I have a second mug of tea. Life is good.

The Daily Politics is now taking about a defence green paper.

Now Ming Campbell is on with General Mike Jackson (who has had his eyes done).

Ming was on an advisory panel that helped produce the green paper. Did we know that?

Sensible view from Ming. What sort of world will it be? What sort of country do we want to be? Only when you have answered those can you decide your defence spending levels and priorities.

Andrew Neil says you can never foresee the next war. So how can we plan?

Ming defends green paper - obviously invested in it. But he also backs Nick Clegg on Trident.

Nick Clegg has asked Ming to do a review on Trident options. We did know that.

That tea got cold quickly. No heating, you see.

Meals on wheels are here for the old people's flats next door. Maybe they could spare one for me?

Last defence review in 1998 made assumptions, and then Blair trashed all the planning by fighting lots of wars.

Jeremy Thing the Tory culture man wants aircraft carriers. Perhaps they could stage operas when there is no war.

The General does not like bean counting. Just give him lots of expensive machines that go Bang!

The Daily Politics is ending, so it is goodbye from me too.

Jacqui Smith's sleeping arrangements

The front page of today's Guardian tells us:

Smith, who employs her husband on a salary of £40,000 a year to run her office, was said to be "mortified" after she was forced to apologise for the claim. A close friend of Smith's said Timney would be "sleeping on the sofa for a while. To say she's angry with her husband is an understatement."

But a "close friend" of Smith's would know that she spends most evenings in her sister's spare bedroom in London. That means her husband is free to sleep wherever he chooses in the family's second home in Redditch.

Once you start telling lies, you need a good memory.

Wouldn't it be easier for Jacqui Smith to move to North Korea?

The Guardian reports:

The private sector will be asked to manage and run a communications database that will keep track of everyone's calls, emails, texts and internet use under a key option contained in a consultation paper to be published next month by Jacqui Smith, the home secretary.

If that is the sort of society she wants to live in, the sooner she fucks off to Pyongyang the better.

And that's swearing.

Arrest of Damian Green by counter-terrorism police is an outrage

The arrest of a shadow cabinet minister under anti-terrorism powers can only have taken place with sanction from the highest level. And, if the Daily Telegraph is correct, then it is clear that Green's offence is embarrassing the government:

It is understood that the inquiry is focusing on four Home Office documents allegedly obtained by the Conservatives. Last November, documents from the private office of Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, were leaked to the opposition.

They showed that ministers had known for four months that thousands of illegal immigrants had been cleared to work as security guards but had not told Parliament.
Other documents included information about an illegal immigrant working at House of Commons and a list of Labour MPs preparing to vote against the Government's anti-terrorism measures.

Moreover, by acting in this way the government will only strengthen the public perception that it has something to hide on immigration. You would have to be quite extraordinarily stupid to think anthing else. In fact, it hard to think of anyone who who could be so mind-numbingly stupid as to approve this action.

Hello, my name is Jacqui Smith.

Jacqui Smith's fingerprints are acquired by No2ID

The Register reports that the anti database state pressure group No2ID has "borrowed" a glass thought to have Jacqui Smith's fingerprints on it from a Social Market Foundation event where the home secretary was speaking.

Earlier this year the group offered a £1000 reward to anyone bringing them the dabs of Smith or Gordon Brown.

It seems that personal biosecurity is something our rulers will have to get used to if they are determined to inflict identity cards upon the rest of us. When Bill Clinton had a drink at a city centre pub during the G7 summit in Birmingham, his secret service goons took posses ion of the glass and then smashed it to prevent this sort of thing happening.

House Points: Is Jack Straw the new Sarah Palin?

Today's House Points column from Liberal Democrat News.

A moose in the lobby

Chris Huhne told us in his speech at the Bournemouth Conference that this government has introduced 3,600 new criminal offences since it came to power in 1997. "Labour’s new legislation takes the same amount of shelf space as 200 copies of War and Peace," he said. "And it is twice as heavy as John Prescott."

So it’s no surprise that a few of those offences have slipped through without anyone noticing. At Home Office questions on Monday the Labour MP David Drew raised the case of a friend and constituent who had been arrested at Kingsnorth climate camp for "aggressively picking up litter". Is it any wonder the Wombles are threatening to move to New York?

The work of reducing our liberties is now so great that Gordon Brown has been forced to split it between two cabinet ministers. While Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, was busy at the Commons dispatch box, Jack Straw, as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, was making a speech down the road at the Royal Society of Arts.

There he invented something called the ‘criminal justice lobby’ and announced that it has been running Britain’s prisons for the past decade. This of nonsense, of course, and not just because it is ministers who runs our prisons. Anyone who works with public sector professionals will know how quickly they come to endorse every new twist of government thinking. They know which side their bread is buttered.

But try telling that to Straw. According to him, the members of this lobby are obsessed with the needs of offenders when they should be worrying about the victims of crime - though he was notably short of practical proposals for helping those victims. More punishment was his recipe. Worse than that, they insist on using long words like "criminogenic".

Believing in left-wing conspiracies, vengeful, anti-intellectual. Does Jack Straw remind you of anyone?

It’s Sarah Palin, of course. If you gave Straw a beehive hairdo and he started wearing his glasses again, it would be impossible to tell them apart. You betcha!

"Now on 'Autumn Watch’ we are going over to Simon King who is with some moose in Blackburn" "Thank you, Bill, and the news here is that the moose are looking distinctly nervous."

Chris Huhne on Jacqui Smith's climbdown

My new friends at the New Statesman have just posted an article by Chris Huhne on the government's defeat over 42 days' detention for terrorist suspects:

In reality, the Counter Terrorism Bill was all about making Labour look tough on terrorism by reducing public debate to a number: those in favour of higher numbers are meant to be tougher than those in favour of lower ones. Our opposition will be thrown back in our face in the rhetorical aftermath of an atrocity. When parliament rejected 90 days, Kitty Ussher MP warned that opponents would be left with ‘blood on their hands.’ This time Jacqui Smith has accused us of ignoring ‘the terrorism threat, for fear of taking a tough but necessary decision.’

But this is nonsense, as history teaches us an entirely different lesson. Governments that go over the top by implementing disproportionate and repressive measures lose the sympathy and co-operation of the very groups they need to combat terrorism.

Now read Shami Chakrabarti on the same subject

A ballroom dancer or snooker professional

Today's House Points column from Liberal Democrat News.

Identity crisis

On Monday a woman Home Secretary took questions for the first time. It was a piece of parliamentary history, but passed off with little comment.

In part this was because Jacqui Smith had already made a statement after the recent attempted bombings. Yet it remains a mystery that, though she has achieved far more, Smith attracts little of the sisterly adulation that surrounds Harriet Harman.

And maybe having a woman in this role will make a difference. The questions covered the usual depressing litany - antisocial behaviour, terrorism, child pornography - but Smith did not promise a single new law in response.

Charles Clarke or John Reid would each have committed themselves to half a dozen new bills before the hour was up.

One problem Smith will have to tackle is one of her junior ministers, Liam Byrne. Dapper and balding, in an earlier age he would have been a ballroom dancer or snooker professional. Today, he is an expert on immigration.

And doesn't he know it? True, he has been doing that job for a while and Jacqui Smith is new to her post, so from time to time it is reasonable for him to whisper advice to her while MPs are asking their questions.

But Byrne does it every time. And he makes considerable efforts to be inconspicuous. In fact, he makes sure that everyone in the House sees how inconspicuous he is being.

So Smith promises to be a breath of fresh air, but don't get carried away. When Nick Clegg asked a full, detailed analysis of the costs of the identity card project from beginning to end, she gave a long, rambling answer that could have been paraphrased in one word: No.

It was good to hear Nick keeping up the pressure on ID cards. There is a danger that we will decide to be "realistic" and endorse the things just as the public comes to realise what they will involved. The long journeys to register and be photographed feel like the sort of humiliation that conquerors inflict upon a conquered people.

The more policies we have that differentiate us from the other parties the better. Long may opposition to ID cards remain one of them.