Wednesday, 14 September 2016

The Jay Inquiry- Last words to Prime Minister Teresa May , Lisa Nandy and Lucy Allan?


The future of the Professor Jay chaired Statutory inquiry -.  The last Words?

We may never know if the attempt to stop the statutory Child Care and Protection Inquiry over the past two months was organised and if so who were the interests involved. The family of Lord Janner have been open in wanting the inquiry to drop the investigation and Hearing and for Dame Lowell Goddard to be sacked. Two men, one a barrister Anthony Heaton-Armstrong, the other, David Wolchover published their article in Times on June 9th Time to reign in the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse.  The Express on August 12 reported the Barrister had appeared on Newsnight and said under the headline Child Sex Abuse Inquiry totally unmanageable blasts top barrister after latest chair appointed and complained that Alexis Jay was not a Lawyer. On August 9th Kathy Cygnall the author of Conservative Woman went further and said” May should scrap” the Inquiry. Charles Moore the official biographer of Margaret Thatcher with full access to her paper was also of the same opinion when on August 5th the Telegraph report him as saying that with the resignation of Lowell Goddard, “the great child abuse inquiry should stop too.”  The. in September there was the leak (?) of the Dame Lowell Goddard evidence to the Home Affairs Committee in which she argued for a refocus on the present and the future and not on the past. I had been unable to track down again the editorial in the last few days which called for the Prime Minister to stop the inquiry. On September 6th The Times underlined the Dame Lowell Goddard’s warning that the abuse Inquiry was out of control. All this prompted my angry response against the stop campaign, while recognising there was an opportunity to consider the future work of the inquiry without what is all too frequently a blinkered legal straightjacket.

As anticipated I have not been alone with the counter view brilliantly expressed by Beatrix Campbell in Guardian on September 12th and which should be read in full together with the published comments. She said “The scale of historical sexual abuse in the UK is a catastrophe. We need catharsis” and “The scope of the inquiry into sexual crimes against children must not be narrowed. Until we address the horrors of the past, there can be no moving on “, together with “If child abuse were a disease, we’d see urgent action. Our culture must change."   Another important contribution has come from Will Self on August 19 who repeated in his Blog the article published in the Guardian the previous day. Both writers not only wanted the inquiry not to lose its original focus but the need to ensure that all victims are included.  The MP in contact with Lambeth victims, Chuka Umunna on Newsnight September 13th has suggested that way to overcome some of the criticism is for the individual investigations and Hearing to have a head but accountable to Alexis Jay with the task of ensuring each investigation together with the Truth project is part of the overall terms of reference and objectives.

This is the background to Prime Minister Questions 14th September

·         Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
Q14. It has been two years since the Prime Minister set up the child abuse inquiry, which is now on to its fourth chair, and last week the outgoing chair said that it had become inherently unmanageable. Given that the Prime Minister Appointed Dame Lowell Goddard to her position, will she insist that she comes before this House to explain herself? Surely child abuse survivors deserve an explanation. [906352]
·         The Prime Minister
On the process point, it is not for the Prime Minister to insist who attends before a Committee of this House. I understand that Dame Lowell Goddard has been invited to attend the Committee. I think that the hon. Lady and I share, as do many hon. Members across this House, a desire to see the issues of these appalling crimes of child abuse being properly looked into. That is important. Dame Lowell Goddard has set up the inquiry and the truth project. Many aspects of it are already in place and operating, and I am very pleased that Alexis Jay has taken on the role of chairman of the inquiry. She chaired the Rotherham work, and I think that she will do this work extremely well and we will have answers to questions that so many have been asking for so long.
·         Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
Child sexual exploitation is an issue that affects many communities. Does the Prime Minister agree that shining a light on the events of the past is the best way to learn lessons for the future, and will she agree to an independent review of child sexual exploitation in Telford?
·         The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend has just shown the cross-party concern that there is on the issue of child abuse and child sexual exploitation. It is absolutely right, as she says, that we are able to look into the abuses and crimes of the past. We will need to learn important lessons from that as to why institutions that were supposed to protect children failed to do so. It is for the authorities in Telford to look specifically at how they wish to address those issues in Telford, but I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has heard my hon. Friend’s comments and that she will want to take that up with her.

1 The issue of the Past - Colin J Smart
In 1992 the former Director of Social Services for Norfolk, Emlyn Cassam was contracted by Sunderland Council to undertake an independent investigation and to report on matters I had had raised with the Council, with the Department of Health and which said to me that the then Secretary of State for Health, Mrs, now Baroness Virginia Bottomley had been informed of the attempt to obstruct the instructions and advice being given. I met with Mr Cassam at his request providing the information requested and he subsequently advised of his findings and the approach being taken.  I then accepted an invitation from the Municipal Editor of the Sunderland Council, now a Labour Councillor, to visit her home and she showed me a copy of his draft report adding that Mr Cassam was under pressure to concentrate on the present and the future and not the past.
Mr Cassam also undertook the first independent investigation into allegations at Islington when again the emphasis was on the present and the future. In both instances it became necessary for a second independent investigation, and in both instances these investigations failed to include all the matters meriting attention and indeed in relation to Sunderland Council, negligence by the NSPCC contributed to one set of criminal proceedings being aborted in 2000. In 2014 a representative of the Chief Constable of Northumbria Police mentioned at a witnessed meeting that only recently had a conviction been gained against a former staff member of one of the establishments that had been under investigation by the Department of Health over two decades before and closed for a decade.
This situation has been and continues to be repeated throughout England and Wales as hundreds of former residents of homes or who had contact with staff of the institutions of the state, of religions and of the world of entertainment have come forward to the Statutory child care and protection Inquiry concerned with allegations of child sexual abuse and exploitation. A key aspect of the Truth project that has been set up, by what is now the Alexis Jay led Inquiry,  is for victims to be able to tell what happened to them in past and since, to have this recorded and if requested to have their allegations investigated or reinvestigation by the police, or by the body that investigates allegations that the police did not their job as they should, although in fairness, the obstacle to gaining justice, has also been the Crown Prosecution Services, or the details of the law in force  at the time when the alleged offence was committed. I am writing separately from the perspective of the survivor victim about the importance of the Truth Project, as I am about other aspects of the terms of reference and Inquiry process.
What prompts this writing is that on August 19th of this year the Inquiry announced that the former Stanhope Castle Approved School had been added to the Investigation covering Accountability and[CS1]  Reparations. As an appendix*, I attach in full the details of the Accountability and Reparations Investigation provided on the Inquiry Internet site, together with the details of the case studies included so far. **
The second reason is the written statement made to the Home Affairs Select Committee meeting held on September 7th under the chairmanship of Tim Loughton by the former chairman, the third chair to resign in two years, that the Inquiry should focus on the present and the future. This was roundly condemned by the new Home Secretary, and I believe will be formally condemned by the Home Affairs Select Committee after the appearance of Dame Lowell Goddard QC if she agrees to the request to attend and explains the allegations and consequential recommendations made in her written evidence. I have previously published together with the written evidence of Justice Goddard, the information document about the inquiry and its background circulated to the Home Affairs Committee members, and the verbatim record of the meeting with the relevant exchange of letters. I have separately published my immediate thoughts on the resignation and future of the Inquiry on one of my new Goggle Blogger sites Child Care and Protection. (The main site which reflects my separate ongoing work activity has over 1600 postings).
First I will explain why the announcement concerning the former Stanhope Castle Approved School attracted my immediate attention. In 1997 a local solicitor, now a District Judge, arranged for a group of former children in the care of Sunderland Council to visit my home to seek help which I was able to do by writing to the respective Conservative and Labour (Frank Dobson) Secretaries of State, before and after the General Election, and who invited Sunderland Council to undertake further investigation, appointing a member of the Department of Health to liaise with me. The Group was assisted by the Sunderland Echo who had first contacted me with information in 1991, (information which had been confirmed with my predecessor through his son in law who worked for the paper),  help from the local branch officer of  the National Union of Local Government Officers, the local Members of Parliament who included the Sunderland South Member of the House of Commons and Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, Chris Mullin, and  a  locally based voluntary  worker with contacts with a specialist national police investigation unit. In 1998 following contact with the office of the Attorney and Solicitor Generals, I followed the written advice provided by someone who is now Permanent Secretary at the Department of Justice and who held a similar position at the Cabinet office during the period of Coalition Government 2010-2015.
Through the organisation, now known as Liberty, legal advice was provided by the International law firm Lovells, pro bono, and Counsel Opinion by the Lord Brennen, appointed by the Bar Council, also pro bono, and with this legal assistance, I was able to undertake preparatory work to provide evidence in what became a successful Class Action conducted by a number of law firms on behalf former children in the care of Sunderland Council, settled by agreement out of Court in 2003.
As part of the preparation to give evidence, I was able to check through the information provided by the 60 claimants against my original list of potential victims, and where under a 1993 High Court Order by agreement all the documentation has had to be retained unless I authorise its destruction, which I have not, or Sunderland Council make application. The information provided in 2002 made reference to the individual staff at a large number of establishments by each claimant. On the 2002/2003 class action list the Stanhope Castle establishment was mentioned. I cannot remember the year of the complaint incident(s), and therefore if this was before the establishment became an Assisted or Controlled establishment under the 1969 Children and Young Person’s Act which abolished the Approved School Order and attempted to integrate Approved Schools in the new system of Community Homes with Education on the premises and which were provided through a new mechanism of Children’s Regional Planning and here in the North East with a regional financial pooling system which  enabled children and young people to  be placed within the region at a fixed price, irrespective if the individual costs per resident of the establishments  included in plan.
That children throughout the North East could be placed in any establishment within the region which best suited their needs without reference to its actual running costs was of crucial importance and made even more extraordinary the decision of Newcastle City Council to send 69 of its children in care to the high cost establishment privately owned and the exceptionally profitable Bryn Alyn in North Wales, where the Director of Social Services at the time recommended to colleagues placement in the homes(in my presence), and where its owner has since twice been convicted and imprisoned for offences committed against children in care.
It is likely that Stanhope Castle has now been included because of publicity concerning the Medomsley Short Sharp Shock young offender institution, also located in County Durham  and which is the subject of an ongoing Police Investigation and an Inquiry Investigation, with the Inquiry having established an office  in Darlington and on August 25th announced that LimeCulture had been awarded the contract to provide support to victim survivors coming forward to the Truth Project and assisting the Investigations centred on the North East. For those unfamiliar with the work of LimeCulture their Internet site includes the impressive background of its founding Directors.
On 17th October 2010 the Newcastle based Chronicle reported the publication by Alan and Irene Brogan of their experience in the care of Sunderland Council, “Horrors of Stanhope Castle School days relived” and that in 1963 he had been committed because of a relationship with Irene who was also in care, to the Approved School, living in what he describes as a mixture of fear and brutality until 1969. Alan met Irene again 2004 and they married writing a book of their experience, “Not without You”.  On June 29th 2015, a year after the establishment of the first panel Inquiry Durham Police confirmed to the BBC that “Stanhope Castle approved School sex claims investigated.” The report stated that three people had come forward as victims of sexual assaults at the institution between the 1950’s and 1970’s. The Northern Echo explained in an article on June 20th of the same year that the sexual assaults were not alleged as committed by staff but by a male and a female who had access to the school. The article said the School had been created by the Home Office during the second World War and that in the era of the Community Homes the school was taken over by Cleveland County Council although my understanding is that Durham County Council had responsibility  from the  1969 Children and Young Persons Act 1969 until local government reorganisation in 1974 created Cleveland Council and which has since been abolished leaving the present Middlesbrough Council to inherit any financial liabilities. 
The Darlington and Stockton Times reported on 30th July 2015 that “Man alleges brutal abuse at former approved school. The man a resident of South Shields, which became part of South Tyneside in 1974 when I was appointed Director of Social Services (1974-1990) went to the school for six years, he said, for stealing push bike and that he had been treated more brutally than anything that happened to him as British army soldier. The Community Home closed in 1981. On January 4th of this year Tyne Tees News reported that the head of Durham’s police Safeguarding Team called for complainants to had been at Stanhope Castle to come forward. A member of a group of 20 ex pupils had expressed concern at the failure of the police to bring prosecutions. One former pupil explained that when he first went to the police in 1999 he was told his case had been closed only to be told later the file had been lost. On Jan 29th the North West Durham Member of the House of Commons Pat Glass condemned as deplorable and unacceptable what had happened (Durham Advertiser and the National Association for Young People in Care was quoted as saying the Council should do the right thing. On September 8th an article in the series Blog “The Monsters of Medomsley” on the resignation of Dame Lowell Goddard refers to the former Stanhope school.
Originally the case studies included in the Accountability and Reparations investigations centred on the former Forde Approved Schools and on homes in North Wales which my understanding covers the local authorities and agencies which provided services or placed children in North Wales establishments, such as Newcastle City Council. Since the first announcement St Aidans and St Vincent Homes have been added together with Stanhope Castle Approved School.
My interest in what happened in North Wales was first aroused when a former colleague, John Banham, who was part of the team I led for Cheshire Council Social Services on policy and service development (1971-1974) visited Washington, Sunderland, to seek my advice following his appointment to conduct an investigation for a former North Wales County Council. According to Professor Jane Tunstill in her talk to the Social Work History Network given on 24 November 2015 between 1974 and 1997 Clywd Council held 12 internal inquiries involving children in its care homes. The Jillings Inquiry included Bryn Alyn. I cannot remember if it was in the Waterhouse or Macur Inquiry report that I learnt that John Banham was to have been part of the Jillings Inquiry until the decision was taken to include a female member (Professor Tunstill). Only within the last year did I learn that North Wales Police visited the North East to enquire why children from the region had been placed in Bryn Alyn. I have been unable to confirm the date when this happened.
Thus while there are valid reasons for each Investigation leading to a Hearing and a report with findings and recommendations it will only be when all the work of Investigations has been completed that all the interlinking will be unravelled and for the issue of conspiracy and cover up in the interest of the state and institutional bodies can be established or if it was to avoid prosecution, civil action or reputational damage.
This was my perspective when I read with horror the advice of the departing chairperson that the inquiry should shift its focus from the past to the present and the future. Not only this, but she states in the section on Managing the Inquiry “its vast remit brought realization of the practical need to narrow its focus dramatically, if outputs were to be achieved within any reasonable timeframe.” She then confessed that having divided the work into five broad areas these were “refined” into carefully targeted areas of specific institutional and thematic investigations. She goes on to admit the decisions taken were arbitrary. When earlier this year I wrote to Dame Lowell Goddard about the need to focus on other individual institutions, the response was to disclose that the thirteen were what she described at a subsequent preliminary Hearing as the first tranche and where I had assumed from her original statement on the proposed working if the Inquiry would be five Hearings for each work stream, 25 in total. Frankly these two statements do not add up.

I have had no problem that from the outset the Inquiry appeared to have no clear plan for the Hearings wanting to limit their length to six to eight weeks and then agreeing to 200 core participant application for the first set of Hearings which have reached their preliminary hearings because of the decision to have an advisory panel of individuals representing survivor victim interests although it is now not clear what part they actually have played in influencing the way the inquiry has been conducted or in the selection of subjects for Hearings.  The second reason was the external pressure for some form of public inquisition or show trial where Greville Janner appears to be the selected alleged perpetrator but not Jimmy Saville where there has been  an understandable determination by the establishment to prevent anyone investigating the role of the establishment in  the cover  up of his proven crimes by dividing  inquiries between  the NHS, the BBC and a number of individual councils and bodies. Nor has there been an Investigation announced into the role of Peter Righton, the Paedophile Information Exchange, Government Funding, Liberty and a number of former Government Ministers. I remain puzzled why?

I have had no objection to the input of the survivor advisory committee or leaving the selection of subjects to the chairman and the other panel members without wider consultation, including with Parliament, if decisions had been based on an adequate collation and review of all the available documentation.  I suggest this had not happened and in effect cannot happen until the conclusion of all the police investigations which in fairness was the position of the collation government, and which I shared, until intense pressure from politicians such as Tom Watson. Tim Loughton and Zac Goldsmith, social media and other campaigner appear to have forced the Government to set up the first panel Inquiry in 2014.

It is also difficult to see how any previous police investigation can be considered fully closed until there are no more self-referrals to the Truth project. The same applies to records held for all child care providing bodies and agencies.

When I went to Sunderland Council in 1991, as its only second Director of Social Services, the first time I had any indication of what had happened over the previous two decades was when approached  by the local newspaper, immediately referring this to the Department of Health and advised the Leader of the Opposition on the Council, who had requested an independent investigation, that I was advised this was not needed at that time following an inspection of  files and meetings conducted by two Department of Health officers.   After this I was contacted by the Editor of the paper who had received information which indicated that there had not been full disclosure by the local authority and it was several weeks before discovering that there were two sets of files and this led to advising Northumbria Police and then the Department of Heath who arranged for an independent inspection by officers from outside the region but only in relation to three establishments then identified of concern.
 
At the request of the Department of Health, their letter to me is clear, I established a special team securing the files, and placing the team at a secret location to work with the police team. I would have placed the specialist child protection officers under the control of the Northumbria Police had I the authority to do so. I did not need Department of Health Advice about collating and securing documentation. In 1980 South Tyneside Council agreed to my secondment to participate in a non-statutory judicial panel of inquiry with core participant representation and a key aspect was the disappearance of records and the negligent failure of the local authority to recreate records from other records held in the department and from all the agencies and authorities with previously recorded information.  The most important witness refused to attend as the Inquiry although judicial led and run had no statutory powers. The statutory Inquiry has the power to compel witnesses to attend while individual Committees of the House of Commons do not have this power and they cannot compel Dame Lowell Goddard to attend although the committee asked the Home Secretary to some strong arm twisting on its behalf.

After meeting two leading campaigners for a national Inquiry on January 2nd 2014 I immediately wrote to the then Secretary of State for Education urging the collation, securing and reviewing of all records mentioning how important this had been in relation to the Hillsborough cover up and the associated political, police and media negligence. I also wrote to the Chief Constable of Northumbria Police and again to Sunderland Council where I had offered assistance in a letter to its then Chief Executive in 2013 on learning that the Council was publishing documentation following a Freedom of Information request from a third party and where the documentation was protected under the 1993 High Court Order. The Council has since published information which I had marked personal and confidential at the time without redactions thus revealing the names of those circulated as well as their designations. I was surprised to learn that the first act of the original panel inquiry was not to insist on all documentation being collated and secured before review.

I have also been surprised that the Inquiry appears to have proceeded with selecting subjects for Investigation and commenced preliminary hearings and appointing core participants without completing the basic ground work. The first thing I did when appointed to the Gates Inquiry by the London borough of Bexley and the Bexley and Greenwich Health Authority was to acquire copies of as many previous published inquiries that had taken place, studied them and make contact with some of the panel who I knew. It was not until 1982 that the Department of Health published its first limited study of Inquiries 1973-1981. This study did not include the most important investigation of child sexual abuse in an individual local authority in England and Wales to date which occurred in Newcastle because the then Director of Social Services had been allowed to conduct his own investigation into why the local authority had failed the children in its care. 

Since 1982 the Department of Health published a second study to 1989 which avoided covering the most important investigation into the role of a Director of Social Services and the abuse of children in his case (Calderdale) and where the inquiry was led by the then Director of Social Services for Newcastle. In 2000 Corby, Doag and Roberts in Public Inquiries into the Abuse of Children in residential care attempted a comprehensive listing and since then social media activists have attempted to collate and publish information of existing and ongoing relevant police operations (Operation Greenlight in particular is an important source) but only through direct contact with every service providing agency can  a comprehensive  list of all investigations  known to have been taken place be created and a search made for any documentation  which has not been destroyed or misfiled. Has this been done?

I raise this issue because on August 25th that is two weeks ago the Inquiry announced it was seeking bids to carry out research for a rapid evidence assessment on social and political discourses on child sexual abuse going back to 1940 which is being commissioned by the Inquiry research team with the self-evident implication that this has not already been done (The details are available on the site).  Why now?  Was this blocked for financial reasons or to limit the timescale of the Inquiry before the departure of its third chairperson?) This announcement was after a similar request (August 15th) from recognised research bodies to conduct two reviews in relation online sexual exploitation looking at victims and perpetrators separately. Again one must ask why now: coincidence or related to the departure of Lowell Goddard? This also suggest that in fact the research team has already been undertaking the kind and level of research necessary within permitted resources.  I hope this has included the commencement of a relationship database timeline covering everything from all forms of inquiry to all convictions and if there is evidence that those convicted were in contact with each other, and who were the government Ministers, the national and local government or agency managers and officials and had they any direct contact with convicted perpetrators?
It would be wrong of me to conflate the self- stated loneliness of Dame Lowell Goddard at being separated from her family with the decisions which appear to try and limit the thoroughness and comprehensiveness in which the Inquiry was set up by Government with the support of Parliament, but where because of Parliamentary privilege the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee is in a position to ask, ideally through a personal appearance or through a further exchange of letters.

As was stated during the questioning of the Home Secretary by the Committee government, the Home Affairs Committee and Parliament are between a rock and a hard place because if there is any attempt to ensure the inquiry is on the intended right track the complaint will be that the Inquiry is not independent and is government controlled.

The issue which appears to be of great concern to survivor groups concerned with the Lambeth and Medomsley inquiries according to recent reports by the BBC and Guardian is the possible influencing by the Home Office and by other government staff which will lead to further covering ups and a failure to address the issues which concern survivor victims. This is to confuse the necessary links between government and the enquiry to provide official information especially in relation to the provision of state secrets. It is also important for the inquiry to have the right overall management, organisation, legal, financial and human resource skills to get the job done and these were readily available when the statutory inquiry was established and there is nothing to stop the Inquiry appointing who or when it wants as long as the normal rules for appointing anyone to anything are applied. As was made clear on September 7th the Inquiry returned £2 million underspent and no one has set a limit on expenditure or time.

The need for due process, compliance to employment law, confidentiality and data protection should be obvious and as was also mentioned on September 7th it is possible for anyone or body with the money to seek an injunction and a prevention Order from the High Court, and to raised issues with the Appeal Court system and the European Court at any time, and where the threat from the newspaper owners to go to court prevented the panel appointed to the Leveson Inquiry having any role in the Hearing sessions. There is still no decision if Leveson 2 intended to deal with the collusion and the cover up, and protectionism will take place.  The Iraq Inquiry went on for years because of the need for due process and some victims and victim families in Northern Ireland have to wait another thirty or forty years before Inquests can be held. It is also important to underline that even a statutory Inquiry cannot change anything directly. This will be for Government and the Institutional bodies involved. I have also repeatedly pointed out in broad terms we already know, and government has known what happened and why in broad terms. The Catholic Church of Rome is the most obvious example of a religious body in this respect where every priest from Pope to parish priest will confess every sin in the process of gaining salvation. Priests confess to Bishops, Bishops to Cardinals and Cardinals to Popes as well as their peers so any notion that the church did not know is preposterous and the issue is to establish the extent of damage to individuals as a consequence and to what extent the cover up was to avoid damage to individual careers and reputational damage to the institution as well as to the organisation finances.

The idea that the issue of Accountability and Reparations can be dealt with in a six to eight-week Hearing with selected case studies is irresponsible and unacceptable.

One of the problems has been that general media perception and from social media discourse is that the Hearings is what the Inquiry is about or that it is about the prosecution or bringing down of national politicians and other VIP alleged perpetrators.  In fact, the Inquiry was set up under intense political and media pressure to draw a line for victims, campaigners and institutional bodies on the past so everyone’s attention and resources could be spent on the present and the future.

It is the failure for a number of reasons, some good, and some very bad, to examine the past critically but objectively and to do so in an open way, in so far as national interests and state security permit, that has led to the present mess.  What is needed from the new chairperson, as soon as practical is a restatement of what the Inquiry will do and how it is doing it, of the work achieved to date and still to do and the need to for flexibility and adjustments as the information is available and reviewed. Those who want the work to stop I simply say damn you and no and for once I am sure I am not alone in saying this.

*
ACCOUNTABILITY AND REPARATIONS FOR VICTIMS AND SURVIVORS OF ABUSE

An inquiry into the extent to which existing support services and legal processes effectively deliver reparations to victims and survivors of child sexual abuse and exploitation 


Scope of investigation


1.           The Inquiry will investigate the extent to which existing support services, compensation frameworks and the civil justice system are fit to deliver reparations to victims and survivors of child sexual abuse. The investigation will incorporate case specific investigations and a review of ​information available from published and unpublished reports and reviews, court cases, and previous investigations in relation to the delivery of reparations to the victims and survivors of child sexual abuse. 

2.           The Inquiry will consider the experiences of victims and survivors of child sexual abuse and investigate:

2.1.       what amounts to adequate reparation in the case of child sexual abuse, including a consideration of what weight should be attached to the right to an independent and impartial investigation, the right to truth, accountability, compensation, guarantees of non­recurrence, and support services;

2.2.       to what extent support services, the civil justice system, and/or alternative compensation frameworks (including the criminal courts and the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority) have delivered each of these elements to victims and survivors of child sexual abuse, including consideration of:
a.    the adequacy of support services provided by public, private and charitable organisations; 
b.    the extent to which the current civil litigation framework may have obstructed the delivery of some or all elements of reparation; 
c.     the extent to which the current model of insurance, and/or the practice of insurance companies, may have obstructed the delivery of some or all elements of reparation; 
d.    the extent to which other factors may have obstructed the delivery of some or all elements of reparation;
e.    the extent to which any of the factors above may also have obstructed the implementation of effective safeguarding measures by institutions. 

3.           To investigate the issues set out above the Inquiry will identify case studies including, but not limited to, the experience of victims and survivors of sexual abuse at Forde Park Approved School and children’s homes in North Wales. 

4.           In light of the investigations set out above, the Inquiry will publish a report setting out its findings, lessons learned, and recommendations to improve child protection and safeguarding in England and Wales.


ACCOUNTABILITY AND REPARATIONS
Description of scope for case studies

1.       The description of scope for the Inquiry’s investigation into accountability and reparations states that it will examine two specific case studies: North Wales children’s homes and Forde Park Approved School.

2.       The Inquiry has decided to add three further case studies in order to obtain as broad a range of evidence as possible. The additional case studies are: St Leonard’s children’s home, St Aidan’s & St Vincent’s children’s homes and the Stanhope Castle Approved School. The selection of these case studies does not prevent the inclusion of additional case studies at a later date.

3.       The accountability and reparations investigation focuses on the aftermath of child sexual abuse. The Inquiry is limited by its terms of reference to considering experiences of child sexual abuse. It is not able to examine other forms of child abuse.

4.       We will be seeking evidence on the following issues in the four case studies:

a.       The process of making a civil claim for damages;

b.       Criminal compensation schemes (criminal compensation orders; Criminal Injuries Compensation   Authority             (CICA), formerly               Criminal               Injuries compensation Board (CIBA) awards) ; and

c.       Support services for victims and survivors who have disclosed child sexual abuse, whether or not they were involved in a criminal or civil case.

5.       The investigation will not examine or resolve disputed factual issues relating to the underlying allegations of child sexual abuse. 
The Statutory Child Care and Protection Inquiry now chaired by Professor Jay
For the past two years I have supported the original Panel Inquiry and then the Statutory Inquiry despite reservations about the terms of reference because of what was included and what is not. My concerns increased with the choice of subjects for Hearings, their number and the failure to begin with presentations of the law, the history number of previous investigations, including police operation completed and now underway and any kind of time table. I attach a copy of my notes which I recently submitted to members of the Home Affairs committee and to others.
I have also now had opportunity to read through a number of important documents as well as two recent press reports and my present conclusion is that without radical changes the inquiry will fail in its objective of being comprehensive, thorough and daring the line. In this first posting I am including all the available relevant documentation to hand and over coming days I hope to add notes and then list the issues which I suggest urgent attention must be given.
 Ideally all the survivor support groups and the legal firm representing them should meet together, review the position and then ask to meet the Chairperson and panel members to express their concerns and seek assurances,
1   The List of reference   Parliament Search site,
o    Home Affairs Committee Chair writes to Dame Lowell and Amber Rudd MP following Inquiry Chair's resignation
o    May, announced that a new, statutory, inquiry would take place into child sexual abuse. An Inquiry Panel was formed, led by the New Zealand judge, Lowell Goddard, although she subsequently resigned on 4
o    Sexual Abuse, into the handling of investigations into allegations of child sex abuse in the past. The inquiry is chaired by the New Zealand High Court Judge, Dame Lowell Goddard, who was appointed http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/LLN-2016-0033
o    The Home Affairs Select Committee endorses Justice Lowell Goddard, the Home Secretary’s Nominee to Chair the Historic Child Abuse Inquiry. Report: Appointment of the Chair of the Independent Inquiry
o    believes that the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which the Home Secretary has established under the chairmanship of Judge Lowell Goddard, is the most appropriate channel for these very
o    will cover the Government’s counter-radicalisation and counter-terrorism strategies, the migration crisis in the Mediterranean, Justice Lowell Goddard’s inquiry into historic child sex abuse, police funding
o    4 Feb 2015: Column 255 4 Feb 2015: Column 255House of Commons Wednesday 4 February 2015 The House met at half-past Eleven O’clock Prayers [Mr Speaker in the Chair] Business before Questions Rotherham
o    Justice Lowell Goddard, Chair-designate of the Statutory Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse Chair's comments Keith Vaz said: “I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement to the House announcing the name of her
o    tell the House that I plan to appoint Justice Lowell Goddard as the new chairman of the independent panel inquiry into child sexual abuse. Justice Goddard is a judge of the High Court of New Zealand
o    to the wider independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, chaired by Justice Lowell Goddard, to aid its investigations. It has also been seen by the Director of Public Prosecutions, the CPS and representatives
2. The Library of the House of Commons briefing document
www.parliament.uk/commons-library | intranet.parliament.uk/commons-library | papers@parliament.uk | @commonslibrary


Contents




   

Cover page image copyright: Child by Marcela Ramos.  Licensed under CC BY 2.0 / image cropped.

Summary

On 4 February 2015, the then Home Secretary, Theresa May, announced that a new, statutory, inquiry would take place into child sexual abuse.  An Inquiry Panel was formed, led by the New Zealand judge, Lowell Goddard, although she subsequently resigned on 4 August 2016.  Professor Alexis Jay, a panel member of the inquiry, was announced as the new Chair on 11 August 2016.
The Inquiry Panel was formally established by Mrs May on 12 March 2015, and following preparatory work the Inquiry was formally opened by the then Chair on 9 July 2015.
Justice Goddard described the Inquiry’s task as “daunting” and hoped that the Inquiry’s work will be concluded before the end of 2020.  In the mean-time, the Inquiry Panel would have published annual reports from 2016 and updates on its work.
The inquiry is limited in scope to England and Wales (with some exceptions) but as a statutory inquiry has the power to compel people to give evidence.  Exemptions from the Official Secrets Act 1989 for whistleblowers has been granted by the Solicitor General.  
The Inquiry Panel wishes to hear from survivors of child sexual abuse:
•       an online form is available to submit evidence at:
•       a guide on submitting evidence is available, entitled Truth Project – Sharing your experience: what to expect.
The current Inquiry replaced the previous, non-statutory, Inquiry established in July 2014.  As well as having less powers than the current Inquiry, its terms of reference limited it to matters dating from 1970; there is no cut-off date for the current Inquiry.
In addition, the previous Inquiry lacked a Chair for most of its existence: the two Chairs of the Panel who were appointed both resigned over concerns from victims and survivors of alleged links they had with individuals under the remit of the investigation.  


                 

The statutory inquiry

Establishment of a statutory inquiry

In February 2015, the then Home Secretary, Theresa May, announced a new Inquiry would be established under the Inquiries Act 2005, thereby replacing the non-statutory Independent Inquiry Panel into Child Sexual Abuse that was established in July 2014 (see section 2).
The alternatives were to form a Royal Commission – rejected because there would be a less “clarity over its powers to compel witnesses to give evidence” – or to convert the existing Inquiry into a statutory Inquiry.   Mrs May said that the decision to dissolve the non-statutory Inquiry “is by no means a criticism of the current panel members”, and said she hoped that they would put themselves forward to join the new Inquiry Panel.[1]

The Chair of the inquiry

The appointment of Justice Goddard

Mrs May announced that the Chair of the inquiry would be Justice Dame Lowell Goddard, a judge of the High Court of New Zealand with experience of criminal law and who had conducted an inquiry into the policing of child abuse in New Zealand.[2]
Justice Goddard’s appointment was subject to a pre-appointment hearing before the Home Affairs Committee.  The Committee’s report of 13 February 2015 read: “based on the information available to us, we are pleased to endorse the appointment of Justice Lowell Goddard to the post of Chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse”.[3]
The then Home Secretary confirmed the appointment of Justice Goddard as Chair of the Inquiry on 12 March 2015,[4] and she took up her post on 13 April 2015.[5]  

The resignation of Justice Goddard

Justice Goddard resigned with immediate effect on 4 August 2016 in a move that was reported as being unexpected.  Her resignation letter to the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, gave no indication as to her reasons,[6] although in a statement published the following day she noted that it had been a difficult decision to accept the role because it meant “relinquishing my career in New Zealand and leaving behind my beloved family”.  She added:
The conduct of any public inquiry is not an easy task, let alone one of the magnitude of this. Compounding the many difficulties was its legacy of failure which has been very hard to shake off and with hindsight it would have been better to have started completely afresh.[7]
The Mail on Sunday subsequently reported that “when probed as to whether Dame Lowell was effectively fired, a Home Office spokeswoman last night insisted it was ‘her decision’ to offer her resignation.  But asked whether this had been suggested to Dame Lowell by officials because her position was becoming untenable, she refused to comment”.[8]  A Home Office spokesperson later said: “was she asked to resign following concerns about her performance or anything? The answer is no, from our sense...From the Home Office perspective, we did not ask her to resign”.[9]
The Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee has asked Justice Goddard to give oral evidence on 7 September, and has stated that it will be seeking information on this matter from the Home Secretary when she gives evidence on the same date.[10]

Next steps and appointment of Alexis Jay

In her letter accepting Justice Goddard’s resignation, the Home Secretary said:
I know you will want to be reassured that work continues without delay, and most importantly that victims and survivors know that the Government's commitment to this Inquiry is undiminished. I want to be absolutely clear. The success of this Inquiry remains an absolute priority for this Government. I am determined to keep the process on track and am taking immediate steps to appoint a new Chair as soon as possible. I will, of course, consult with victims and survivor’s groups before making a public announcement about the appointment.[11]
A week after Justice Goddard’s resignation, Ms Rudd announced that Professor Alexis Jay, who had been a member of the inquiry’s panel (see section 1.3 below), would be the new Chair.  The Home Secretary said: “She has a strong track record in uncovering the truth and I have no doubt she will run this independent inquiry with vigour, compassion and courage”.
In accepting her appointment, Professor Jay said: 
Be in no doubt – the inquiry is open for business and people are busier than ever working hard to increase momentum. The panel and I are determined to make progress on all parts of the inquiry’s work, including speaking to victims and survivors.
I am determined to overcome the challenges along the way. I will lead the largest public inquiry of its kind and together with my fellow panel members we will fearlessly examine institutional failures, past and present and make recommendations so that the children of England and Wales are better protected now and in the future.[12]
It is not clear at this stage if a new member will be appointed to the panel.

Membership of the Panel

On 12 March 2015, the then Home Secretary informed the House of the membership of the new inquiry’s panel, and the skills and experience that they would bring:
•       Drusilla Sharpling – “a qualified barrister with expertise in both policing and the Crown Prosecution Service”
•       Professor Alexis Jay (who is now the Chair) – who had “expertise in social work and led the important work on the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham”
•       Ivor Frank – had “extensive experience in family and human rights law, and expertise in child protection matters”; and
•       Malcolm Evans – “Chairman of the United Nations
Subcommittee for the Prevention of Torture and professor of Public International Law at the University of Bristol. Malcolm also brings with him a Welsh perspective; which survivors have called for”.[13]
The Home Office published the criteria against which the selection of panel members was judged.[14]  The panel members were chosen by the then Home Secretary “in consultation with Justice Goddard”.[15]
Mrs May added that the Panel “will be informed by a number of expert advisers in the fields of health, education, and a psychologist with expertise in this sensitive area”.16

Terms of reference

In her March 2015 written statement, Mrs May told the House:
I have consulted with Justice Goddard and have agreed with her the final Terms of Reference which will also be placed in the House Library today and published on the Inquiry website. 
The terms of reference set out the purpose, scope (in terms of institutions to be considered and geographical extent) and principles of the inquiry.  A full copy can be found in Annex A at the end of this paper.
The purpose of the inquiry was stated as:
To consider the extent to which State and non-State institutions have failed in their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation; to consider the extent to which those failings have since been addressed; to identify further action needed to address any failings identified; to consider the steps which it is necessary for State and non-State institutions to take in order to protect children from such abuse in future; and to publish a report with recommendations.[16]

Opening remarks by the then Chair

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse was established by the then Home Secretary, Theresa May, on 12 March 2015,[17] and was officially opened by its Chair at that time, Justice Goddard on 9 July
2015 following “intense and essential preparatory work”.[18]
In her opening statement, Justice Goddard admitted that “the task ahead of us is daunting”, saying:
An Inquiry on this scale requires a focused approach, with defined objectives from the outset, and a working structure that is clear and practical. It also requires complete objectivity. That implies a commitment to hear all sides with an open mind, without any pre-judgment about the issues, and under conditions which provide a fair opportunity for all of those affected by the Inquiry to share their experiences and put their points across.[19]
She added that “the Panel has adopted three guiding principles that will shape the Inquiry’s work – it must be comprehensive; it must be inclusive; and it must be thorough”, and in regard to transparency said that she was “determined to put as much information into the public domain as I properly can, as soon as I can”.[20]

Timescale for the final report 

The then Home Secretary did not set a date by which the inquiry was to publish its final report, although the terms of reference state that the inquiry was to “produce regular reports, and an interim report by the end of 2018”.[21]
Previously, during questions on her February statement, Mrs May had said:
it is important that it does not go on endlessly, seemingly being pushed ever and ever further into the future, with no report. This will of course be for the chairman of the inquiry to determine, but my own view is that it would be helpful to set a date by which a report will be made, even if at that point the inquiry says that it needs to do further work in certain areas. People need to see that there will be a report. Indeed, the inquiry will need to consider how to keep people updated on an ongoing basis during its work so that they do not feel that it is just going on behind closed doors.[22]
In her opening remarks, Justice Goddard noted that “this is the largest and most ambitious public inquiry ever established in England and Wales”, but expressed her “sincere hope and expectation … that it will be possible to conclude the Inquiry’s work before the end of 2020”, adding that the Inquiry Panel was “committed to fulfilling its terms of reference within a credible timescale”.[23]
In the mean-time, the Inquiry Panel would publish “regular annual reports, beginning in 2016” which would “include tangible and achievable recommendations, so that the Inquiry process can itself act as an engine for driving accountability and change”.  In addition, it would “also publish more frequent updates on the Inquiry’s work as it proceeds”.[24]

Information gathering powers

In February 2015, Mrs May said the Government had “received a very clear message that the inquiry needed statutory powers, which is why I have brought them forward. It is important that the inquiry is able to compel people to give evidence and that appropriate sanctions are in place in relation to that”.[25]  She was therefore “clear that the inquiry should have the power to compel witnesses to give evidence”, and decided the establishment of a new statutory inquiry under the 2005 Act was the best approach.[26]  
In terms of other information gathering, Mrs May told the House:
I wish once more to reassure the House that the Official Secrets Act will not be a bar to giving evidence to this inquiry. I am clear that the inquiry will have the full co-operation of Government and access to all relevant information, including secret information where appropriate. I shall be writing to Secretaries of State to ask for their full co-operation, and I will ask the Cabinet Secretary to write to all Departments and agencies, and to public sector organisations, including local authorities, setting out the need for full transparency and co-operation with the inquiry.[27]
In contrast to the previous inquiry,[28] there is no cut-off date specified before which the Inquiry Panel could not investigate.  In her March 2015 statement, Mrs May said that the “removal of any cut-off date for the work of the Inquiry” was one of the two most important changes compared to the previous inquiry’s terms of reference, the other being “the explicit statement that survivors will be able to bear witness to the Inquiry and that support will be made available”, which “reflected[ed] the importance of survivors to the Inquiry”.[29]
Noting that the Inquiries Act 2005 “makes it clear that while a statutory inquiry cannot determine criminal or civil liability, it can make findings of fact about alleged conduct that would amount to a crime or a civil wrong”, in her opening statement in July 2015 Justice Goddard said that “this Inquiry will use its fact-finding powers to the full, and will not hesitate to make findings in relation to named individuals or institutions where the evidence justifies this”, adding that “the naming of people that have been responsible for the sexual abuse of children, or institutions that have been at fault in failing to protect children from abuse, is a core aspect of the Inquiry’s function”.[30]
In addition to the powers of the statutory Inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005, it was announced that whistleblowers would be able to submit information to the inquiry without fear of prosecution.  Justice Goddard said:
an agreement was reached pursuant to which the Attorney General issued an undertaking on 15 June 2015 that no document or evidence provided to the Inquiry will result in, or be used in, any prosecution under the Official Secrets Acts or any prosecution for unlawful possession of the evidence in question.[31] The full text of the undertaking is available online.

Geographical scope

In her February 2015 statement to the House, the then Home Secretary told the House that, as with the previous inquiry, there were “good reasons for confining the inquiry’s scope to England and Wales”, explaining:
The Hart inquiry in Northern Ireland and the Oldham inquiry in Jersey are already under way, while the Scottish Government have announced their own inquiry into child abuse—but I shall discuss this with the new chairman. In the event that the geographical scope remains the same, I propose that a clear protocol is agreed to make sure that no information falls through the cracks and that no people or institutions escape scrutiny, censure or justice.[32]
The issue of the geographical scope was raised by the Home Affairs Select Committee in its report, Appointment of the Chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.  The Committee recommended that “the scope of the inquiry be extended to include cases of abuse in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where there is reason to believe that material relevant to the case might be held by the UK Government”.[33]
The then Home Secretary returned to the matter in her March 2015 written statement, where she reaffirmed the scope of the new inquiry:
I know that survivors were also keen that the Inquiry extended beyond England and Wales. However, as child protection is a devolved matter, it is right that other jurisdictions in the United Kingdom look at the issues within their own geographical remit so that they can take the action which is right to address the specific issues uncovered. I have said before; I am clear that no institution or individual should be able to fall through the gaps because of geographical boundaries.
The Terms of Reference make clear that the Inquiry will liaise with its counterparts elsewhere in the United Kingdom. To that end my officials have had initial discussions with the Scottish Government, who are in the process of setting up their own inquiry, the Hart Inquiry in Northern Ireland and the Independent Jersey Care
Inquiry and have agreed with them and with the Child Sexual Abuse Inquiry that joint protocols will be set up with each inquiry to ensure that information can be shared and lines of investigation can be followed across geographical boundaries.
The protocols will be published by the Child Sexual Abuse Inquiry in due course. Additionally, as I made clear when I addressed the House on the 4 February, the Inquiry will have the full cooperation of Government and access to all relevant information.[34]
While the Inquiry was limited to England and Wales, the Inquiry Panel would be seeking a “reciprocal approach” in terms of information sharing with abuse inquiries in Scotland and Northern Ireland.  Further, “in certain circumstances the Inquiry may need to look at events occurring outside England and Wales”; examples cited were the Armed Forces overseas, and where children in English and Welsh institutions had been abused outside of the jurisdiction.  Additionally, the remit of the Inquiry was limited to institutional sexual abuse, but Justice Goddard noted that cases involving both this and familial sexual abuse or other forms of abuse “are squarely within our terms of reference”.[35]

Workstreams and investigations

Workstreams

Justice Goddard explained that in order to manage investigations effectively, the Inquiry Panel had “decided to divide the various institutional sectors that fall within the terms of reference into five distinct but complementary workstreams”, with each workstream led by a member of the Panel or the Chair.[36] The five workstreams are:
(a)            Allegations of abuse by people of prominence in public life
- led by the [then] Chair, Hon. Lowell Goddard DNZM
(b)            Education and religion - led by Panel member, Prof. Malcolm Evans OBE
(c)            Criminal Justice and law enforcement - led by Panel member, Drusilla Sharpling CBE
(d)            Local authorities and voluntary organisations - led by Panel member, Prof. Alexis Jay OBE
(e)            National and private service organisations - led by Panel member, Ivor Frank.[37]
In addition, the Inquiry’s work was divided into three projects that reflected the Inquiry’s three principles – comprehensive, inclusive, and thorough – and each would contribute to the work of all five workstreams:
(a)            The Research Project will involve a comprehensive literature review to bring together, for the first time, analysis of all the published work addressing institutional failures in child protection. Led by an expert Academic Advisory Board, the Inquiry will also commission sector-specific research to better understand the scale of the problem and to identify recommendations for change. The Research Project is already under way.
(b)            The Truth Project will allow victims and survivors of child sexual abuse to share their experiences with the Inquiry. Those who wish to take part can contact the Inquiry via our dedicated helpline, by email, post or online. They will have the option to attend a private session to share their experience with a member of the Inquiry. Their accounts will not be tested, challenged or contradicted. Every person who shares their experience with the Inquiry will be given the opportunity to leave an anonymised message to be published alongside the Inquiry’s reports. The first Truth Project sessions are likely to commence in October 2015.
(c)            The Public Hearings Project will resemble a conventional public inquiry, where witnesses give evidence on oath and are subject to cross examination. The Inquiry will select case studies from a range of institutions that appear to illustrate a wider pattern of institutional failings. Evidence is likely to be taken from both representatives of the institutions under investigation and from victims and survivors of sexual abuse. Each hearing will last for around six weeks and the Inquiry expects to hold up to 30 separate hearings. Collectively, the evidence heard in the range of case studies will assist the Inquiry in drawing conclusions about the patterns of child protection failings across a range of institutions in England and Wales. The first Public Hearings are likely to start in 2016.[38] Also:
•       a Victims and Survivors’ Consultative Panel (VSCP)[39] was established “to advise the Inquiry on its engagement with victims and survivors generally and will also assist in the substantive work of the Inquiry” – the terms of reference are currently under development;[40]
•       a Victims and Survivors’ Forum to act as a “self-nominating network to discuss the work of the Inquiry and to contribute its views on progress”.[41]

Investigations

The Inquiry published its criteria for the selection of investigations and, based on this, announced 13 investigations which “constitute the first phase of the Inquiry’s work and further investigations will be announced as the Inquiry progresses”.  The investigations are:
•           Accountability and Reparations
•           Cambridge House, Knowl View and Rochdale
•           Children in Custodial Institutions
•           Children outside the UK
•           Child Sexual Exploitation by Organised Networks
•           Lambeth Council
•           Lord Janner
•           Nottinghamshire Councils
•           Residential Schools
•           The Anglican Church
•           The Internet
•           The Roman Catholic Church
•           Westminster.[42]
The Inquiry began its preliminary hearings in relation to seven of the investigations during the last full week in July 2016.[43]

Hearing from child abuse survivors and how to submit evidence

The Inquiry has stated that: 
Although we are investigating institutional failures, rather than individual cases of sexual abuse, the experiences of victims and survivors are central to our task. We cannot begin to understand the patterns of institutional failures without hearing from those who suffered as a consequence of those failures.[44]
As noted above, the Truth Project “will allow victims and survivors of child sexual abuse to share their experiences with the Inquiry”.  
The Inquiry has published a guide entitled Truth Project – Sharing your experience: what to expect which is available online.
The Inquiry’s website also has an online form, which notes that:
We want to hear from:
•               anyone who was sexually abused as a child in an institutional setting like a care home, a school or a religious, community or state organisation, or who first
came into contact with their abuser in an institutional setting
•               anyone who was sexually abused as a child, and reported their sexual abuse to a person in authority, like a police officer or teacher, where the report was ignored or not properly acted on.[45] The online form is available at:
https://www.iicsa.org.uk/share-your-experience  The Inquiry can also be contacted at:
•               Telephone: 0800 917 1000
•               Email: contact@iicsa.org.uk
•               Post: Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, PO Box
72289, London, SW1P 9LF

The previous, non-statutory, Inquiry

Announcement launching the Inquiry 

In a statement to the House on 7 July 2014, the then Home Secretary, Theresa May, announced the launch of the Independent Inquiry Panel into Child Sexual Abuse:
I can now tell the House that the Government will establish an independent inquiry panel of experts in the law and child protection to consider whether public bodies and other non-state institutions have taken seriously their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse. The inquiry panel will be chaired by an appropriately senior and experienced figure. It will begin its work as soon as possible after the appointment of the chairman and other members of the panel. Given the scope of its work, it is not likely to report before the general election, but I will make sure that it provides an update on its progress to Parliament before May next year. I will report back to the House when the inquiry panel chairman has been appointed and the full terms of reference have been agreed.[46]
In terms of the form of the Inquiry, Mrs May told the House that it would be a “non-statutory panel inquiry” which “means that it can begin its work sooner”.  However, the then Home Secretary said that she would convert it to a statutory inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005
“if the inquiry panel chairman deems it necessary”.[47]

Terms of reference and time limit of the Inquiry’s remit

On 21 October 2014, the then Home Secretary announced the terms of reference of the Inquiry; a copy of them can be found in Annex B at the end of this note.[48]  
In particular, the terms of reference stated the period that the Inquiry would consider was to be “from 1970 to the present”, with the caveat that “the Inquiry Panel may be presented with evidence that will lead it to conclude that this timeframe should be extended further”.[49]

Chair and membership of the Panel

Appointment and resignation of the first Chair,

Baroness Butler-Sloss

In her statement to the House on 7 July 2014, the then Home Secretary announced that the Chair of the Inquiry would be an “appropriately senior and experienced figure”.[50]  A day later, the Home Office announced that the Rt Hon Baroness (Elizabeth) Butler-Sloss GBE would chair the Inquiry Panel; a day later, in a statement to the House, Mrs May said that Baroness Butler-Sloss “brings with her many years of experience in the field of child protection and law, and I am confident that she will deliver the thorough, robust and independent review that I have promised”.[51]  Her experience included being the former President of the Family Division of the High Court.
However, the appointment was immediately met by negative coverage in the media: the Daily Mail’s headline “Can a member of the House of Lords investigate an Establishment cover-up? Surprise as ex-judge
Butler-Sloss leads wide-ranging review into sex abuse claims”, while The Guardian’s headline was “Butler-Sloss's child abuse role in doubt as conflict of interest row grows”, which highlighted that “she has been criticised on the basis that her brother, the late Lord Havers, was attorney general at the time some of the controversy over the failure to prosecute child abuse cases may have occurred”, quoting one lawyer who said she was “just too close to the establishment”.
On 10 July 2014, the Daily Telegraph reported that the Chair “was compromised by the refusal of her late brother, Sir Michael Havers, to pursue a case against a paedophile diplomat when he was attorney general in the Eighties”.  The article also noted that Baroness ButlerSloss had led a 2011 investigation into how the “Church of England handled the cases of two ministers in Sussex who had sexually abused boys … Eight months after her report was published she had to issue a six-page addendum in which she apologised for ‘inaccuracies’ which, she admitted, arose from her failure to corroborate information which was given to her by senior Anglican figures as part of the inquiry”.[52]  On 12 July 2014, The Guardian said that Baroness Butler-Sloss’s 2011 inquiry had been a “cover-up” after it emerged that she had allegedly told a child abuse survivor that the report would not include claims against a bishop “because she ‘cared about the Church’”;[53][54] the bishop in question subsequently pleaded guilty to charges of indecent assault.[55]
On 14 July, Baroness Butler-Sloss resigned as Chair of the Inquiry Panel, saying:
It has become apparent over the last few days, however, that there is a widespread perception, particularly among victim and survivor groups, that I am not the right person to chair the inquiry. It has also become clear to me that I did not sufficiently consider whether my background and the fact my brother had been attorney general would cause difficulties.[56]
Mrs May said that she was “very sorry” that Baroness Butler-Sloss had resigned, adding: “I reject entirely any suggestion that she was not the right person to do the job, but she has taken the decision herself. I am disappointed. I continue to consider her to be somebody of impeccable integrity”.[57]

Appointment and resignation of the second Chair,

Fiona Woolf

On 5 September 2014, the then Home Secretary announced that Fiona
Woolf, the then Lord Mayor of London, would be the new Chair of the Inquiry Panel.  Mrs May said that Mrs Woolf “had a long and distinguished career holding high-profile and challenging positions, including President of the Law Society and Chairman of the Association of Women Solicitors”.[58]
However, on 6 September the Mail on Sunday reported that it had “discovered her astonishing links to [former Home Secretary] Leon Brittan – a key figure embroiled in the scandal”.[59]
Mrs Woolf did not comment on the reports, but on 21 October she gave evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee.  During the hearing, it transpired that Mrs Woolf’s letter to the Home Secretary explaining her links to Leon Brittan had been drafted with the assistance of Home Office civil servants; Mrs Woolf told the Committee that in drafting the letter “I sat down with the Home Office and the QC to the inquiry and explored this in enormous detail”, although Mrs Woolf contested the reason for involving Home Office officials in the drafting process was so that “the lawyers to the Home Office and the lawyer to the inquiry were absolutely satisfied that I met the test in section 9 of the Inquiries Act”.  The Committee asked to see the drafts.[60]
A day later, it emerged that Mrs Woolf had met Leon Brittan’s wife in
October 2013, whereas she had told the Committee they last met in April 2013.[61]
Further, on 29 October Mrs Woolf submitted further evidence to the
Home Affairs Select Committee, including the drafts of her letter to the Home Secretary.  This revealed that there were seven drafts of the letter, with the first draft written by the Solicitor and Counsel to the Inquiry, and the drafts were “copied to the Inquiry secretariat and Home Office”.[62]  The Chair of the Committee observed that “The final version gave a sense of greater detachment between Lord and Lady Brittan and Mrs Woolf than her previous attempts”.[63]  The Daily Telegraph observed that “the letter gave the impression of being a personal statement of impartiality by Mrs Woolf. However, the truth was very different. The final draft had been altered beyond recognition when compared with the original version.  Furthermore, an unknown number of lawyers and civil servants were allowed to have input into the letter”.[64]
In addition to the matters before the Select Committee, on 22 October, the BBC reported that Peter McKelvie, a former child protection manager, had said that child abuse survivors he had spoken to had "no trust in the whole process", adding: “It's [the Inquiry Panel] a process that survivors I'm talking to say they really don't want to be part of. I really don't think they will cooperate with this particular process at all".  It was also reported that a victim of historical child sexual abuse “had launched a legal challenge to the choice of Fiona Woolf” through a judicial review.[65]
On 31 October, Fiona Woolf resigned as Chair of the Inquiry Panel.  It was reported that “victims' groups earlier told government officials they were ‘unanimous’ she should quit, citing her social links with ex-Home Secretary Lord Brittan”.[66]  Mrs Woolf said:
"I've clearly destroyed their confidence in the inquiry with me leading it. These are the last people I had wanted to upset."
She said: "I was determined that the inquiry got to the bottom of the issues and if I don't command their confidence to run the panel fairly and impartially then I need to get out of the way".[67]
The then Home Secretary said in a statement to the House on 3 November:
Almost four months after I announced my intention to establish a panel inquiry, it is obviously very disappointing that we do not yet have a panel chairman, and for that I want to tell survivors that I am sorry. To put it bluntly, it will not be straightforward to find a chairman who has both the expertise to do this hugely important work, and has had no contact at all with an institution or an individual about whom people have concerns. I still believe, however, that it is possible to find somebody who is suitably qualified and can win the confidence of survivors.[68]

Membership of the Panel

The other members of the Inquiry Panel were Sharon Evans, Ivor Frank,
Dame Moira Gibb, Barbara Hearn, Professor Jenny Pearce, Drusilla Sharpling, Professor Terence Stephenson and Graham Wilmer. They were supported by Ben Emmerson QC, counsel to the Inquiry, and Professor Alexis Jay, the Panel’s expert adviser.

Work of the Inquiry Panel

In a November 2014 debate in Westminster Hall, the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, Karen Bradley, explained that, despite the lack of a Chair:
the panel will continue to go about its vital work. It is meeting weekly in the run-up to Christmas. Panel members have already attended two listening meetings with victims and survivors. Two further regional meetings will be held before Christmas, and four regional meetings will be held in the new year. The meetings will provide an early opportunity for survivors to give their views, and they will help to inform the panel on how to go about its work.
[…]
The panel is considering as a priority the best ways in which to engage with victims and survivors, and how to ensure that the right package of support is available to those who take part in the inquiry. Those giving evidence will share and relive some of the most appalling experiences anyone can live through. The panel will endeavour to make the process of giving evidence the most supportive and least traumatic for survivors that it is possible to make it.
[…]
The panel is working on the approach it will take and the methodology it will use in the collection and analysis of information and evidence. These fundamentals for the inquiry will be the way in which it ensures that the terms of reference are met, that survivors and victims of sexual abuse are given a voice, and that that voice is heard and makes a difference for future generations. The panel is also seeking to learn lessons from the Australian royal commission into institutional responses to child
                                         sexual abuse about what worked well and what did not.[69]                                                                     

Annex A: Terms of reference of the statutory inquiry

Independent Panel Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse
Terms of Reference
Purpose
1.                   To consider the extent to which State and non-State institutions have failed in their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation; to consider the extent to which those failings have since been addressed; to identify further action needed to address any failings identified; to consider the steps which it is necessary for State and non-State institutions to take in order to protect children from such abuse in future; and to publish a report with recommendations.
2.                   In doing so to:
(a)                Consider all the information which is available from the various published and unpublished reviews, court cases, and investigations which have so far concluded;
(b)                Consider the experience of survivors of child sexual abuse; providing opportunities for them to bear witness to the Inquiry, having regard to the need to provide appropriate support in doing so;
(c)                 Consider whether State and non-State institutions failed to identify such abuse and/or whether there was otherwise an inappropriate institutional response to allegations of child sexual abuse and/or whether there were ineffective child protection procedures in place;
(d)                Advise on any further action needed to address any institutional protection gaps within current child protection systems on the basis of the findings and lessons learnt from this inquiry;
(e)                Disclose, where appropriate and in line with security and data protection protocols, any documents which were considered as part of the inquiry;
(f)                  Liaise with ongoing inquiries, including those currently being conducted in Northern Ireland and Scotland, with a view to (a) ensuring that relevant information is shared, and (b) identifying any State or non-State institutions with child protection obligations that currently fall outside the scope of the present Inquiry and those being conducted in the devolved jurisdictions;
(g)                Produce regular reports, and an interim report by the end of 2018; and
(h)                Conduct the work of the Inquiry in as transparent a manner as possible, consistent with the effective investigation of the matters falling within the terms of reference, and having regard to all the relevant duties of confidentiality.
Scope
3.                   State and non-State institutions. Such institutions will, for example, include:
(a)                Government departments, the Cabinet Office,
Parliament and Ministers;
(b)                Police, prosecuting authorities, schools including private and state-funded boarding and day schools, specialist education (such as music tuition), Local Authorities (including care homes and children’s services), health services, and prisons/secure estates;
(c)                 Churches and other religious denominations and organisations;
(d)                Political Parties; and
(e)                The Armed Services.
4.                   The Inquiry will cover England and Wales. Should the Inquiry identify any material relating to the devolved administrations, it will be passed to the relevant authorities;
5.                   The Inquiry will not address allegations relating to events in the Overseas Territories or Crown Dependencies. However, any such allegations received by the Inquiry will be referred to the relevant law enforcement bodies in those jurisdictions;
6.                   For the purposes of this Inquiry “child” means anyone under the age of 18. However, the panel will consider abuse of individuals over the age of 18, if that abuse started when the individual was a minor. Principles
7.                   The Inquiry will have full access to all the material it seeks.
8.                   Any allegation of child abuse received by the Inquiry will be referred to the Police;
9.                   All personal and sensitive information will be appropriately protected; and will be made available only to those who need to see it; and
10.               It is not part of the Inquiry’s function to determine civil or criminal liability of named individuals or organisations. This should not, however, inhibit the Inquiry from reaching findings of fact relevant to its terms of reference.[70]
                 

Annex B: Terms of reference of the disbanded non-statutory

Inquiry

Purpose
To consider the extent to which State and non-State institutions have failed in their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation; to consider the extent to which those failings have since been addressed; to identify further action needed to address any failings identified; and to publish a report with recommendations.
In doing so to:
•       consider all the information which is available from the various published and unpublished reviews, court cases, investigations etc. (hereinafter “the reports”) which have so far concluded;
•       consider whether such institutions failed to identify such abuse and/or whether there was otherwise an inappropriate institutional response to allegations of child abuse and/or whether there were ineffective child protection procedures in place;
•       advise on any further action needed to address any institutional gaps or failings within our current child protection systems on the basis of the findings and lessons learnt from these reports;
•       disclose, where appropriate and in line with security and data protection protocols, any documents which were considered as part of the inquiry; and
•       publish a report with recommendations.
Scope
•       State and non-State institutions. Such institutions will, for example, include:
o       Government departments, Parliament and Ministers; o Police, prosecuting authorities, schools including private and state-funded boarding and day schools, Local Authorities including care homes and children’s services, health services, prisons/secure estates;
o       Churches and other religious denominations and organisations;
o       Political Parties; o The Armed Services.
•       The Inquiry Panel will cover England and Wales. Should the Inquiry Panel identify any material relating to the devolved administrations, it will be passed to the relevant authorities;
•       The Inquiry Panel will consider these matters from 1970 to the present. However, the Inquiry Panel may be presented with evidence that will lead it to conclude that this timeframe should be extended further;
•       The Inquiry will not address allegations relating to events in the Overseas Territories or Crown Dependencies. However, any such allegations received by the Panel will be referred to the relevant law enforcement bodies in those jurisdictions;
•       For the purposes of this Inquiry “child” means anyone under the age of 18. However, the Panel will consider abuse of individuals over the age of 18, if that abuse started when the individual was a minor. Principles
•       The Inquiry Panel will have full access to all the material it seeks, unless there is a statutory impediment to it doing so;
•       Any allegation of child abuse received by the Inquiry Panel will be referred to the Police;
•       All personal and sensitive information will be appropriately protected; and will be made available only to those who need to see it;
•       It is not part of the Inquiry’s function to determine civil or criminal liability of named individuals or organisations. This should not, however, inhibit the Inquiry from reaching findings of fact relevant to its terms of reference.[71]



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Written evidence submitted by Hon Dame Lowell Goddard QC

Independent Inquiry into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse

I make this memorandum available to the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee in response to Mr Vaz's letter of 5 August and his and my subsequent exchange of letters of 31 August. I request that this memorandum be placed before the full Committee. In it I have set out for the Committee's consideration the responses Mr Vaz specifically sought and have also included a brief outline of what I see as various critical issues facing the Inquiry. This I do for the purpose of assisting the Inquiry in the future.

I commence by briefly traversing the history of the Inquiry in its various iterations.

A brief history and the early legacy

As you are aware, the Inquiry was first established in July 2014 as a non- statutory Inquiry. I understand this was in the interests of getting it up and running as quickly as possible. It was however contemplated that the Government could move to have it reconstituted as a statutory Inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005, if the Chair thought that were necessary.

It is a matter of history that two Chairs were briefly appointed, the first in July 2014 and the second in October 2014. In conjunction with the second appointment, broad ranging terms of reference were promulgated and 8 Panel members appointed, together with Counsel to the Inquiry, Ben Emmerson QC, and an expert adviser.

It is unnecessary now to traverse that early history in any detail, except to note there were reports of difficulties within the Inquiry Panel, as well as conflicting political views over its composition in the wider victim and survivor communities. Of more critical moment is that the absence of leadership during that early period meant the Inquiry could not undertake any fundamental planning or initial scoping of its task nor develop a clear sense of direction.

As is also evident from media reports and commentary at the time, those two false starts served to engender or further fuel negative perceptions about the Inquiry's overall prospects of success. One example is the article by Andrew Gilligan in the Daily Telegraph of 4 November 2014, entitled "Whether Fiona Woolf heads it or not, the child abuse inquiry will fail."

After traversing the breadth of the terms of reference (which at that time were delimited by a start date of 1970 and did not contain the later provision that survivors of child sexual abuse must have the opportunity to bear witness to the Inquiry), the author then went on to describe the Inquiry's task as "impossible to complete, at least in under a decade or two ...without a dramatic narrowing of focus."

The establishment of a new statutory Inquiry and my appointment as its Chair

I was first approached about considering the role of Chair in November 2014, through the British High Commission in Wellington. The next approach was a phone call from a Home Office official in London on 22 December. In January 2015 a series of three video conferences took place with London, including one with the Home Secretary. It was evident that there was an urgent deadline by which the appointment of a new Chair had to be announced. This necessitated my making a very significant career and lifestyle decision within a very short timeframe.

On 4 February 2015 the Home Secretary announced her intention to appoint me as Chair and on 11 February I appeared before the Home Affairs Committee. There followed brief consultation over Panel membership and expanded Terms of Reference and on 12 March 2015 the statutory Inquiry was formally set up and I was appointed as its Chair, with an effective start date of 13 April 2015.

Managing the Inquiry

Early experience of managing the Inquiry and its vast remit swiftly brought realisation of the practical need to narrow its focus dramatically, if outputs were to be achieved within any reasonable timeframe. This was done by establishing three core projects: a Research Project, a Public Hearings Project and a Truth Project; and by an initial division of institutional sectors into 5 broad work streams. Those broad work streams were subsequently refined into carefully targeted areas of specific institutional and thematic investigation, twelve of which were announced by me on 27 November 2015. A 13th investigation (concerning the late Lord Janner of Braunstone QC) was launched on 18 January 2016.

The adoption of this carefully targeted institutional and thematically based approach was designed to ensure the Inquiry could reach conclusions on as broad an evidence base as possible. However, at the same time it had to be acknowledged that running 12 or 13 investigations in parallel was ambitious, and an organisational challenge that was unprecedented for a public inquiry in the United Kingdom.

Additionally, the practical necessity to identify and settle on selected specific areas of investigation did not, and does not, sit entirely comfortable with the three guiding principles the Inquiry set for itself: of being comprehensive, inclusive and thorough.

Each of the thirteen investigations was given a description of scope. While carefully crafted, these were nevertheless arbitrary and intended as a working guide only to "delimit and focus" the Inquiry's operation. However, and while the Inquiry remains bound only by its Terms of Reference and not by these descriptions of scope, they have in practice assumed a rigidity and status beyond mere guidance which may be open to challenge.

In terms of the early operation of the new statutory Inquiry, a matter of ongoing consequence deriving from its early legacy was forecast by the Committee in its recommendation in paragraph 13 of its Twelfth Report on Session 2014-2015 (following my appearance before it in February 2015).

In its recommendation at paragraph 13, the Committee said:

"Careful thought needs to be given to the composition of the secretariat, in which Home Office secondees currently appear to be very well represented. Members of the secretariat should be chosen for their skills and the Panel should look well beyond the Home Office and the civil service if that is necessary to produce the right skill mix."

Although it was reconstituted as a new statutory Inquiry on 12 March, in practical effect the Inquiry proved in operational terms not to be a new Inquiry with a completely fresh start, but rather a continuation and expansion of the previously existing Inquiry in terms of its administration and management. The existing secretariat of about 30 personnel was simply expanded and the Panel and I have had little or no input into either the composition of the senior management team or the recruitment of secretariat staff during the lifetime of the current Inquiry. Thus recommendation 13 in the Committee's Report has not been able to be complied with.

The administrative arrangements made by the Home Office as the inquiry's sponsor meant that in the recruitment of staff priority was given to civil servants and any non-civil service staff had to become civil servants unless they were employed on contract through the Solicitor to the Inquiry. In practical terms this meant that the skills and qualifications of many recruits did not fit the tasks which they were called upon to perform, as none of the secretariat or senior management team had previous experience of running an inquiry of this nature. Therefore, they did not fully understand or appreciate its organisational and operational needs. Their approach has been bureaucratic and the Inquiry's progress has been impeded by a lack of adequate systems and personnel, leading to critical delays.

I felt as Chair handicapped by not being given a free hand to recruit staff of the type that I judged to be essential.

A further compounding factor was that despite my expressed desire to scope the Inquiry myself from the ground up on arrival and to build an early operational plan based on that, this did not happen. Critical building blocks were not put into place either appropriately or swiftly enough.

Another difficulty is that the huge amount of hard work the Inquiry has been putting in over its first 16 months has not been sufficiently visible or communicated widely enough. During my tenure the communications capacity of the Inquiry was never adequate for the formidable and important function of interacting with the public and I suggest that capacity in that regard needs to be radically strengthened for the future.

These are but some of the aspects as to why the legacy of fallout, both in fact and in the public perception, from the two false starts, has not been able to be decisively dispelled.

At the time of my resignation, the Panel and I were in the process of implementing a review of the Inquiry's overall operating efficiencies and were identifying measures required for greater quality assurance and to improve performance and increase outcomes; with consideration being given to engaging an external agency to validate any findings from the review and assist in developing an Inquiry plan to end of 2020. I trust that initiative is continuing post my resignation.

Positive Achievements

Having commenced this report on something of a negative note, I wish immediately to say that on the personal front, I feel privileged to have had the opportunity of chairing the Inquiry during its first sixteen months and I am satisfied that despite the many difficulties encountered during its start-up phase, much has been achieved and there is now a sound platform and body of work to build on. Of central importance has been the establishment of an effective and dedicated Victims and Survivors Consultative Panel. They are an integral component of the Inquiry and their continued input and guidance will be pivotal to the Inquiry's ultimate success. I wish to say how indebted I and the inquiry are to them and to all of the victims and survivors who have been brave enough to come forward.

As I said in my report to the Home Secretary, the most important issue that now needs to be addressed is how the very real progress that has been made by the Inquiry is best to be consolidated, so that its work can be enhanced. What is particularly important is that the Inquiry does not go backwards and that it learns from the lessons of the past. It is paramount that it is able to fulfil its purpose by successfully and fairly addressing the welfare of victims in a focussed manner and that it is able to make soundly based, achievable and workable recommendations that will be effective in protecting children now and for the future.

My resignation

It was with great sadness that I concluded, and on 4 August announced, that I was unable to continue to chair the Inquiry and see it through to its conclusion. It is a critical and fundamentally important inquiry, which is why I made the initial decision in 2015 that I should relinquish judicial office in New Zealand and make a firm commitment to it.

However, the criticisms that had been mounting came to a head in July when it became evident that the Inquiry was not able to deliver on its commitment to hold public hearings in 2016, as it had undertaken to do.

The delays in proceeding to hold any substantive public hearings have regrettably resulted from the Inquiry’s inability to obtain in any timely way the vital infrastructure necessary to prepare for and conduct public hearings. The lack of an Evidence Management System (EMS) fit for purpose has severely hampered the Inquiry's ability to manage the thousands (if not millions) of documents the Inquiry has been receiving, and the Solicitor to the Inquiry has consequently been unable to prepare the documentation for public hearings. That issue has been ongoing since late last year and is of fundamental importance not only as a serious process concern but more importantly in relation to the delivery of natural justice to all. As at the date of my resignation, the EMS that had at last been procured was still not in place. I trust that it now is.

There have also been difficulties with securing a hearing centre. At the end of 2015 we had planned for preliminary hearings to be held in March of this year with the first substantive hearings initially planned for June or July 2016. The preliminary hearings duly took place in March in the Royal Courts of Justice, thanks to the Lord Chief Justice. However, Courtroom 73 in the Royal Courts was never going to be available for more than occasional preliminary hearings and the Inquiry had known from the outset that it would need its own hearing centre. As at the date of my resignation however the Inquiry had still not succeeded in securing its own Hearing Centre.

When it became clear that substantive public hearings would not be possible in July, because there was still no EMS to prepare the documentation for hearings, the date for the first substantive hearing was pushed back to 26 September.

When it then became clear in July that there was still no guarantee the Inquiry would have an EMS fit for purpose - or a hearing centre - in time to prepare for any public hearings in 2016 (as had been announced), the hearing dates had to be moved once again and could only realistically be announced as next year. That was hugely concerning. It also caused justifiable criticism and a loss of confidence, for which I, as Chair, had to take ultimate responsibility.

A fresh start: review of the current Inquiry model?

What has always set this Inquiry apart is, that while all Inquiries are unique in their subject matter, their focus is almost always defined by one essential issue, and thus a reasonably clear course is able to be mapped with linear certainty from the outset. While many of the numerous issues the Inquiry is charged with examining can fit that model, the difficulty for this Inquiry is the huge multiplicity of issues and events within its remit. Those issues and events often relate to very different institutions or have arisen from situations that occurred during very different time periods. Many of the issues do not fit a classic panel inquiry model and the wide ranging nature of the terms of reference necessitates a variety of methodological approaches. This variety of methodological approaches and the bringing together of people with professional backgrounds in different academic disciplines produces natural tensions which must be managed within the Inquiry team but can be difficult. An inquiry has to follow the rules of natural justice and many other elements of legal fairness but differences in disciplinary approaches, coupled with the multiplicity and variety of issues to be inquired into, made the task of coordinating the various strands of this Inquiry complex, difficult and time consuming. The maintaining of a necessary degree of separation between investigative and fact-finding functions was not always well understood and much of my time was involved in endeavouring to broker these differences in approach and understanding and in arbitrating between the different points of view as to how the tasks might be approached and where responsibilities lay.

Another major logistical hurdle arising out of the multiplicity and variety of issues for examination is that a panel inquiry constituted under the Inquiries Act 2005 requires a quorum approach. There is no power under the Act for the Chair to delegate hearing responsibilities to panel members, which precludes expediting the work of conducting the public hearings by convenient division. This is in contrast to the Australian Royal Commission of Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, the Chair of which has the ability to delegate hearing responsibilities to the various Commissioners.

Also, as I earlier said, notwithstanding the Inquiry's adoption as its guiding principles that it would comprehensive, inclusive and thorough, it's work has, for practical reasons, had to be broken down into selected investigative modules and search related projects. While this has improved the prospect of achieving at least some outcomes that are representative and proportionate to its vast work-load, as well as enabling a more timely delivery of interim reports and recommendations, the inherent difficulty of overall size and multiplicity of issues remains. That means that, in reality, the terms of reference in their totality cannot be met.

With the benefit of hindsight - or more realistically - the benefit of experience, it is clear there is an inherent problem in the sheer scale and size of the Inquiry (which its budget does not match) and therefore in its manageability. Its boundless compass, including as it does, every state and non-state institution, as well as relevant institutional contexts, coupled with the absence of any built-in time parameters, does not fit comfortably or practically within the single inquiry model in which it currently resides. Nor is delivery on the limitless extent of all of the aspirations in its terms of reference possible in any cohesive or comprehensive manner.

I have recommended in my report to the Home Secretary that my departure provides a timely opportunity to undertake a complete review of the Inquiry in its present form, with a view to remodelling it and recalibrating its emphasis more towards current events and thus focussing major attention on the present and future protection of children.

Alongside that should be an overhaul of its operating model.

The Australian Royal Commission of Inquiry

I have referred to two key features of the Australian Royal Commission of inquiry into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse: the ability to delegate hearing responsibilities; and their conduct of Private Sessions which has provided the model for the Inquiry's Truth Project.

In company with Inquiry officials I spent time at the Australian Royal Commission in Sydney during two separate weeks, examining their experience and also conducting Truth Project work for this Inquiry with their assistance. I believe there is yet more to be learned from the Australian experience and I recommend that your Committee consider this. Although it is a project of somewhat lesser scale than this Inquiry, given population and historical differences, the Australian Inquiry was funded at approximately twice the level of this Inquiry in its initial stages.

The Truth Project

Given the pledge in the Terms of Reference that all victims and survivors would have their voices heard in a safe and confidential environment, a Truth Project modelled on the lines of the successful Private Sessions conducted by the Australian Royal Commission, was established. The Project, as envisaged and set up by the Inquiry, is a conceptually appropriate vehicle by which to fulfil that pledge in the terms of reference and, at the same time, to provide important information about child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation in England and Wales. However, it is a logistically huge component of the Inquiry with enormous management demands and if there is to be a restructuring, it may benefit from being re-established as a stand- alone and more holistic entity. The information it receives could still be fed into the Inquiry’s database and analysed and absorbed into recommendations; and the individual stories of victims and survivors could still be anonymously published.

The Truth Project also has other aspects and possible ramifications that require a serious rethinking of it as an integral component of the Inquiry. While the Inquiry has carefully put in place appropriate support for those victims and survivors who want to share their experiences in a confidential manner through the Truth Project, the experience is not a therapeutic exercise and the Inquiry cannot provide long term or ongoing support post the experience. All the Inquiry can do is to signpost participants to local support organisations following their experience. Panel members and I have listened to concerns expressed by such support organisations around the country, who are in the main voluntary, about their lack of resources to take up the demand that will inevitably be created by Truth Project experiences. I suggest these issues require careful review

Meetings with the Home Secretaries.

The Committee has specifically requested advice of the dates in which I have met with the Home Secretaries.

On the day following my appearance before this Committee on 11 February 2015, I met with the then Home Secretary, the Rt Hon Theresa May MP. Following my formal appointment as Chair on 12 March 2014 I never met with Mrs May again, although she wrote a letter of welcome on my arrival in April 2015, in which she stated that her door would always be open to me. I provided her with copies of my opening statement of July 2015 and my statement announcing the launch of the Inquiry's first twelve investigations. I am sure we both understood the need for an Inquiry that is both independent of the Government and not run by a Government department to be seen to be operating entirely independently.

A tentative appointment of 4 August 2016 was made for me to meet with the new Home Secretary, the Rt Hon Amber Rudd MP, but that was not confirmed. As it turned out that was the day I tendered my resignation.

In conclusion

May I reiterate that it was with enormous sadness that I tendered my resignation and I wish to thank Her Majesty's Government for having afforded me the privilege of leading this important Inquiry during its first sixteen months.

I wish to also thank the Committee for endorsing my appointment as Chair of the Inquiry. I can assure the members that over the sixteen months I have worked as Chair, there has never been a time when the Inquiry and its objectives did not dominate my life. I made a firm commitment to undertake it and was determined to see it through to its conclusion. I am disappointed that that this has not been possible. It was never easy operating in an environment in which I had no familiar networks and there were times when it seemed a very lonely mission. However, I am pleased I was able to set it on its way. Ultimately however I had to face a situation which I could not solve and which would continue unless challenged. I resigned to make that challenge occur

Finally, it is important to re-emphasise that, despite the impossibility of fulfilling the Inquiry's mandate in its present boundless form and despite the operational difficulties encountered, there have been very positive achievements and I am satisfied there is now a very solid platform of work upon which to take the Inquiry forward. The task ahead will however be simplified and less open to challenge and disappointment if its compass is sensibly narrowed.

Hon Dame Lowell Goddard DNZM QC













Home Affairs Committee

Oral evidence: The Work of the Home Secretary, HC 138

Wednesday 7 September 2016

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 7 September 2016.


Members present: Tim Loughton (Chair); James Berry; Mr David Burrowes; Nusrat Ghani; Mr Ranil Jayawardena; Stuart C. McDonald; Naz Shah; Mr Chuka Umunna; Mr David Winnick.

Questions 370-478

Witnesses


I: Rt. Hon. Amber Rudd MP, Home Secretary, and Mark Sedwill CMG, Permanent Secretary, Home Office.

Examination of witnesses


Witnesses: Rt. Hon. Amber Rudd MP and Mark Sedwill CMG.

Chair: Home Secretary, welcome.

Amber Rudd: Thank you, Mr Chairman.

Q370 Chair: First, apologies that we are in this room, where the air conditioning is not terribly good, rather than our normal room. We are looking very informal already, so gentlemen may remove jackets and ladies can do as they wish in that respect. We will try to keep as cool and collected as possible.

Anyway, welcome to your first session with us, Home Secretary. The Permanent Secretary has been in front of us many times. You will have seen that there is a small change in regime at the moment and I have been asked to act as Chairman as best I can for the next few weeks until a new permanent Chairman is elected. We know you have to be away by 5 and we certainly want to finish before then. This is a bit of a tour d’horizon of your huge responsibilities within your Department and there are various issues that colleagues want to focus on. We will try to keep it as organised as possible.

Perhaps you could just kick off with a few opening words on what your priorities are going to be—is it business as normal?—and on the strengths and weaknesses you may have picked up from your predecessor, who has obviously gone on to even greater things and is now even more your boss.

Amber Rudd: Indeed. Thank you very much, Mr Chairman. I am delighted to be here today and to have the great honour of having this office to execute on behalf of the Government. I am also delighted that you have been able to take over as temporary Chair so swiftly, so that the business of the Committee can continue.

I think the priorities of the Home Secretary are always going to be about safety—about keeping the communities and the country safe and making sure that all our efforts are focused on delivering that. Straightforwardly, that means looking after police and fire and following through on the reforms there; it means looking after issues to do with counter-terrorism and extremism; and it means focusing on issues of immigration. Those are the three pillars that everything else comes through.

I have made two discoveries that I would like to share with you. One is that I am in awe of the work that our police service and our security and intelligence services do to keep us safe. We are very fortunate with the high level of expertise that they have and the excellent work they do. The second is that in terms of my priorities, apart from the key one of keeping everybody safe, I am going to try to focus on vulnerable people, building on some of the work that the former Home Secretary did, but also, I hope, making some of it my own in terms of working out how we can assist the people in society who are most left behind. I want to see where we can focus our efforts, and potentially funds, to assist them.

Q371 Chair: Thank you. I will kick off with the child sexual abuse inquiry, which of course was set up by Theresa May as Home Secretary. Some 16 months ago we had a hearing with Lowell Goddard on her appointment. When we were looking to have her back in front of the Committee to give us a progress report, which we hadn’t got round to organising, lo and behold, out of the blue, she tendered her resignation in a very short resignation letter, which had a very short acceptance by you, and with very little explanation of why she had gone and what had happened. She was then summoned before this Committee and declined to come. Instead, on Monday of this week, she furnished us with a comprehensive statement giving her side of why she had left and what, in her view, was going wrong with the inquiry. Why did she go?

Amber Rudd: The answer to that lies in the full letter that the Committee received from her. She sent a not dissimilar letter to me basically pointing out where she thought the strengths were, where she thought the flaws were and what she thought she had added. I looked at the letter that she sent to you this week—I was shown a copy of it—and my attention was drawn to some of the areas where she felt she couldn’t deliver. I was particularly drawn to her comment that she felt it was a lonely existence. I think she went—I have to say that it is a matter for her, but I have the information that you have—because she found it too much and, although she could contribute to it and some good work was done in the past year, ultimately she found it too lonely, she was a long way from home and she decided to step down. That is all the information I have about why she decided to go.

Q372 Chair: Was she out of her depth?

Amber Rudd: I have to say that I never met her, so I can only conclude from what she set out in the letter that she knew what she was doing. I

thought the letter was pretty well informed about what the issues were, and it really showed that she cared about the issues, but she did set out in the letter that she didn’t feel that she could actually deliver on it. As I say, I never met her. I have the information that you have. Clearly, as a professional, she made the judgment that she couldn’t continue with it.

Q373 Chair: Do you think her letter is an accurate representation of the facts?

Amber Rudd: I can only say that I think so, because I only have the information that you have. It is quite a substantial letter that she wrote to you setting out what she thought was right and what she thought wasn’t right, and it seemed to me that coming through that letter was a personal decision that she couldn’t continue in this enormously important role.

Q374 Chair: There are very clear things within that letter that could be challenged by knowledge that is either in the public domain or certainly in the domain of the Home Office. For example, one of the reasons why she criticises the inquiry, and one of the reasons why she couldn’t carry on, is because she claims it was under-resourced. Is it not the case that last

year the inquiry refunded £2.5 million to the Home Office because it had underspent its budget?

Amber Rudd: It is correct that last year was underspent, and I think it is incorrect to suggest that the inquiry would be under-resourced because the Home Office and the now Prime Minister were always determined to ensure that there were sufficient resources available.

Q375 Chair: In that respect at least, her letter is factually incorrect and is a misrepresentation of the circumstances that may have led to her resignation.

Amber Rudd: The fact that there was an underspend last year does suggest that.

Q376 Chair: There are a number of other allegations and accusations in that letter that, when more information becomes available, may be challenged. My concern in terms of your role in all this as Home Secretary, as the Department responsible for having set it up, is, exactly what is the relationship between the Home Office and Home Secretary and the inquiry and, indeed, what is the remit of this Committee in having any oversight over that? I preface that with the caution that this is of course an independent inquiry.

Amber Rudd: Yes.

Q377 Chair: And part of the target of that inquiry, as we know, is institutions that include political institutions and Westminster itself, so we must be very careful not to try to compromise the independence and integrity of that committee to look at people within this building and connected with this building. However, what this Committee would like to understand more is, first, what is the relationship between the Home Secretary and the independent inquiry in terms of the fact that somebody has to have oversight of whether the inquiry is doing the job it was set up to do and is fit for purpose to do it—there have been question marks about whether it has been achieving that—and, secondly, whether it is spending the not inconsiderable amounts of public money in a suitable fashion? So what do you think your role is, without compromising the integrity of the inquiry, to make sure it is doing the job it was set up for?

Amber Rudd: Mr Chairman, you have pointed to the very difficult balance which is there, because you’re right: it is an independent inquiry. It is essential that those of us in Government do not have extreme oversight over it, because it must be independent. This independent inquiry has to be able to operate without feeling that it has to defer to the Home Office or to Government at all in order to fully deliver on its independence.

The terms of reference are unchanged and were set up previously. My immediate role, when Lowell Goddard decided to resign, was to appoint a new chairman. That was the acting role that I had to take to make sure that the independent inquiry could continue, and I’m happy to comment on the new chair if we move on to that. But you asked me what particularly is my role, and I think that that was the key role. I have then looked at the terms of inquiry and inquired about what further role I have, and it’s very little, although we have been told that we will get an interim report by 2018. I will, as far as I can, ask for reports as we go, although it’s up to the inquiry whether they give them to me, just to be kept up to speed with progress.

Q378 Chair: So who is responsible for making sure the inquiry is doing its work properly and in a timely fashion?

Amber Rudd: We have the expert panel, the four expert panellists, of which Alexis Jay was one. We now have three, because she is going to be chairing it. So they will have the prime responsibility. I don’t know whether my Permanent Secretary, if I may ask him, has any further—

Mark Sedwill: I think, Mr Chairman, it’s simple. It is clear in statute and it is the chair. The chair is independent and the chair is responsible for delivering the inquiry and the terms of reference set by the Secretary of State.

Q379 Chair: You see the concern here is that this is a very important inquiry.

Amber Rudd: Yes.

Q380 Chair: The Committee realises it is an important inquiry and wants it to succeed. There is a lot riding on it. We have done interviews with survivors of the exploitation that the inquiry was set up to look into, and I personally, as you know, was one of those MPs who were lobbying for it to be set up in the first place and very much welcomed it when Theresa May did so.

But given the slowness, on the face of it, with which the inquiry appears to be conducting its work—the public hearings have not started yet—and given the fact that we have now lost a third chairman and all sorts of criticisms have come out, the public and in particular the survivors clearly need to be reassured that this is still the right committee, fit for purpose, able to do its job, and it will continue in a revised fashion or in its current fashion.

So we would just say that, without trying to compromise the job the inquiry is doing, some clear messaging needs to go out to assure everybody that this is still the right body, under the right chairman, getting on with the job that it was tasked to do and spending its money in the best interests of achieving that task.

I think we will want to interview the new chair of the inquiry as well, but there is an interesting demarcation as to what role the Home Secretary can have to give assurances without appearing to be in some way trying to influence the work.

Amber Rudd: I agree, and one of the things I did do before I appointed Alexis Jay was to discuss with her how she saw the inquiry continuing, so I could satisfy myself that she would proceed in a way that did convey that confidence.

I note that the phrase Alexis Jay used this week, in answer to some questions from people about timing and about reassuring people, was that she intended to make sure that the inquiry proceeds “with pace, confidence and clarity”, which I think is an encouraging description of how we hope it will proceed. I also point out that, just before I appointed her, I called the former chairman during August to let her know that this was the plan.

Mark Sedwill: Perhaps I might just add a point. Home Secretary, I think you also spoke to the survivors—

Amber Rudd: The survivors and victims panel. I did. I spoke to them; they came into my office and we had a discussion about who might be the best chair. They supported—largely—the choice of Alexis Jay.

Q381 Chair: Given the problems with previous false starts in the chair, for all sorts of reasons, it is very important that the survivors are part of that decision making.

Amber Rudd: Exactly. She was somebody who they knew and had already developed confidence in.

Q382 Mr Winnick: It would be useful, of course, if Judge Goddard, who is not in the UK, was willing to give evidence to this Committee—but that is not an issue for you, Home Secretary. Am I right that the salary and general package given to her amounted altogether to half a million a year?

Amber Rudd: That is correct.

Q383 Mr Winnick: And is it also correct that Judge Goddard, for whatever reason, spent 44 working days out of the UK since taking up that post? She took up the post, as we know, in April last year, so in effect it seems her absence amounted to a total of three working months. Were you aware of that?

Amber Rudd: I have been told that that is the case. I expect I have seen the same information as you, Mr Winnick; I haven’t checked it.

Q384 Mr Winnick: Would it be possible, before I ask you any more questions on this subject, for us to be given information—say within the next week—on how much public money has been spent on Judge Goddard’s salary, housing and the rest? Would that be possible?

Amber Rudd: Of course. I will write to you on that matter.

Q385 Mr Winnick: If the Chair is willing to accept that, perhaps by sometime next week?

Amber Rudd: If I may say so, I think her salary and her package are a matter of record already, but I am happy to further confirm them and write to you.

Q386 Mr Winnick: Well, not the package, but how much was actually spent.

Amber Rudd: How much has been spent during the time she has been here?

Mr Winnick: Yes, precisely.

Q387 Chair: Because there have been some suggestions that she might like to refund some of that, given the amount that was spent on not being able to see her job through. To latch on to that point, before I come back to Mr Winnick, has it been agreed what Alexis Jay will now be paid?

Amber Rudd: Not quite, but we are shortly hoping to arrive at a settlement. There is another Department that needs to be fully consulted on this matter, as I am sure you are aware, Mr Chairman.

Q388 Chair: The salary package for Lowell Goddard was something of a moot point in the first place, and it was some time before it was reported to us, despite several requests. So, as soon as they are available, we would be grateful to see the figures, which we assume will be substantially lower than the package agreed for Lowell Goddard.

Amber Rudd: You would be right. I will probably not have the final numbers for a few weeks—just to let you know, Mr Winnick—but I am nearly at the final stage of concluding both the final terms with Judge Goddard and the final terms with Alexis Jay, which will be substantially less.

Q389 Mr Winnick: Well, as soon as is possible. In a statement—not, interestingly, in the letter sent to the then Chair of the Committee—Judge Goddard said that taking the job on was incredibly difficult, as it meant leaving her family in New Zealand. I don’t know whether you have seen the oral evidence that Judge Goddard gave us on 11 February last year.

Amber Rudd: I have.

Q390 Mr Winnick: She was asked, “So you will come and live here?” She said, “Yes.” The Chair asked, “We know that your husband is also a very distinguished lawyer. Will he and your family come with you or will they remain in New Zealand?” She said, “My husband will come with me for as much of the year as he can each year that the inquiry takes. I am afraid the family will not relocate. They all have their own lives.” Well, that is understandable.

Later on, the Chair said that to come “halfway round the world… you must be very committed to taking on this task, giving up so much, arriving with such huge challenges. Are you absolutely sure this is what you want to do for four years?” Judge Goddard said, “As I said earlier, I don’t think ‘want’ is quite the most accurate word but I am prepared to undertake this.”

Q391 I quote all this because it does seem to be a contradiction between the commitment that she gave, recognising that she would not be able to live in New Zealand for a period of time, and the rest, and the statement that I have already quoted.

Amber Rudd: I share your confusion on that, and I am afraid that the only person who can answer that accurately would be Judge Goddard.

Q392 Mr Winnick: Perhaps if Judge Goddard is reluctant you may wish to suggest to her that it would be useful if she did give evidence to us.

Amber Rudd: I would be happy to do that.

Q393 Mr Winnick: Can I just ask you about the inquiry itself, because the absolute need for justice to be done to the victims of child abuse is so obvious? One of the points made by Judge Goddard, which I have some sympathy with, is the time scale. Is this an inquiry which could last for five years, 10 years, 15 years, and is it practical?

Can I just say to you, Home Secretary, that I asked a question of your predecessor in the Chamber about how long it would last? Perhaps I was wrong at the time to suggest a short period of two or three years, and your predecessor, now the Prime Minister, obviously said it would probably be longer. But how much longer? Is this the sort of inquiry that can go on endlessly?

Amber Rudd: I certainly hope not. As you rightly say, this is a very serious inquiry with a substantial remit, because it is a big issue and a major problem, and one that we all take very seriously, and needs to have proper justice done to it. I think it is something that the new chair is acutely aware of—that she does not want it to go on, as you put it, endlessly, which is why she said that she wants to proceed with pace. I think the evidence is that she is very aware of that. I don’t think it is for me to suggest a time frame for it, but I have certainly conveyed to her that we hope that it can be done with, as she put it, pace, confidence and clarity.

Q394 Mr Winnick: My last question: are you fully committed, as your predecessor was, that justice should be done—that the victims should have every opportunity of putting their case, albeit with, in my view, a time scale; that the promise and the pledge that was given, supported by the whole House of Commons, should be carried out?

Amber Rudd: I am completely committed to ensuring that we do that.

Q395 Mr Umunna: Congratulations on your appointment, Home Secretary. My interest in this comes from the fact that I am a Member of Parliament for Lambeth, and Lambeth is one of the 13 investigations that forms part of the overall independent inquiry.

Some of the representatives of the primary survivors group, the Shirley Oaks Survivors Association, are sitting to your left. I have two queries: one is in relation to time frame. In her memo, Judge Goddard appears to suggest that there needs to be a narrowing in the scope of the inquiry, so that it tends to focus more on the present and the future, as opposed to incidents that happened in the past. I have to say, Home Secretary, that that would not be acceptable to my constituents who are still living with the gross, awful injustice of what happened to them and still have not had redress.

What is your view on what the focus should be? Do you agree with Judge Goddard that there needs to be a move away from looking at events that happened in the past to more future orientation?

Amber Rudd: I do not, no. I think that the terms of reference that were set up originally were the right ones; that we must be frank and look at the historic elements of these abuses. There are survivors and victims who are older than me who want to see that justice is done, and they should be able to see that that is ensured.

The fact is that understanding what happened, however long ago it is, is important to getting right what we think is going to help, now and in the future, so there is no plan to change that. I have discussed it with other people. Judge Goddard did raise this, and other people—some Members of Parliament—have raised it with me; but I share your view that it is very important to leave it as it is, to ensure that we use the past to learn for the present and the future.

Q396 Mr Umunna: That will be of great comfort to them. My second question is this. It seems—please correct me if I am wrong; your Permanent Secretary might want to step in—that the overwhelming majority of personnel who have been assigned to the inquiry are actually Home Office officials of some type or form.

Given that part of the concern is, as revelations tend to suggest, that there was an establishment stitch-up on an industrial scale in this case, would it not make more sense to have personnel drawn from a greater variety of organisations?

The Home Office itself and its role—I know, for example, that it approved certain things that happened at children’s homes in Lambeth in the past— is going to be the subject of this inquiry, so there is a bit of a danger of the appearance of a conflict of interest if you have an inquiry staff dominated by Home Office officials. I mean no disrespect to any particular individual, but I make a general point.

Amber Rudd: It is a fair point. The only thing I would say is that the chair can appoint who they want. One of the things that Judge Goddard pointed out in her letter to this Committee was that she did not have enough independence to do that. In fact, that is not correct. The chair, apart from appointing the expert panel, which is in place, can appoint who they want, so I would urge you to consider putting that to the chair if you think it is of such importance. I would not want to interfere, obviously, but it is up to the chair to draw those staff from where they want.

Mr Umunna: Thank you.

Q397 Mr Burrowes: On the hiring of staff, Justice Goddard says in her submission to the Committee that she was “handicapped” by not being able to hire the sort of staff needed to run a major inquiry—this is why it is particularly relevant to seek your assurance and response—because the Home Office required civil service appointments to be prioritised. Is that true?

Amber Rudd: I was very surprised to see that statement, because the chair has the authority to appoint who they want, apart from the expert panel. We will see how the new chair decides to execute that independence, but it would be quite wrong for us to limit the amount, the type of the people or the sources of where they want to recruit the expertise from.

Q398 Mr Burrowes: Perhaps you could confirm whether it was the case during Justice Goddard’s chairmanship that the Home Office were handicapping her in appointments.

Mark Sedwill: Absolutely not. We were very clear. As you know, I went through this entire process, and we were very clear to pick up the point that the acting Chair made earlier, that not only the actuality but the clear public confidence in the independence of the inquiry was crucial following some of the false starts and allegations about the establishment, Government, Parliament and so on in the past. As the Home Secretary said, as Secretary of State, she appoints the chair and the panel. The chair then appoints the statutory offices, the secretary to the inquiry, counsel to the inquiry and the solicitor to the inquiry. Those are statutory appointments set out in the Act. Then you have all the staff to the inquiry as well.

Usually, in most inquiries, the secretary takes that burden on from the chair but will do it under the chair’s authority, and subject to the usual public appointments rules—that is just standard rules about propriety, openness, transparency, fair competition and so on in appointing people— it is the responsibility of the inquiry to do so. They can draw them from wherever they wish. Of course, there are people in the Home Office who care deeply about this issue and who have expertise in it, so it is natural that people from the Home Office volunteer to go and help out with this inquiry, but in the end the appointments were made by the inquiry themselves.

Q399 Mr Burrowes: Finally, to nail the concerns expressed by Justice Goddard, you would say there is no “inherent problem” in the sheer scale and size of the inquiry—those are the words of Justice Goddard. She considers there is an inherent problem, but as far as you are concerned, there is not.

Amber Rudd: No, I don’t believe there is. I say that not with any expertise in an inquiry of this size, but because the person who does have the expertise and is going to be chairing it has taken that view, and that is Alexis Jay.

Q400 Mr Burrowes: And therefore there is no need for any review or recalibration.

Amber Rudd: Of the terms? No.

Q401 James Berry: Welcome, Home Secretary, and congratulations. Welcome back, Mr Sedwill. I want to pick up on something that the Chair covered at the outset. Having been involved as a lawyer in part 1 of the Leveson inquiry, I want to confirm that I am right about this: in terms of the public inquiry, the sponsoring Department is responsible for calling the inquiry, setting the terms of reference, appointing the chair and for the budget. All other matters are for the chair of the inquiry and if there are

any complaints about how the inquiry were being run—and in terms of our standing as a Committee—those complaints would not go to the Home Secretary. The way those complaints should be made are by an interested party to the inquiry making a complaint to the chair or by someone else with standing, or who thinks they have standing, making a claim for a judicial review. That is how a challenge would be made.

Amber Rudd: That is exactly right. The other part that the previous Home Secretary was involved in appointing was the expert panel. But it is as you say. It is a complete unit in how it is set up.

Q402 Chair: Home Secretary, it sounds as though there is a good deal of variance in terms of fact and interpretation of what was wrong or not wrong with the inquiry—between what you have heard here and the evidence you have given and what Lowell Goddard stated in her submission. That makes it even more important to impress upon her that she might want to give us oral evidence. If she is now back in New Zealand, I am sure we could fix up a video conference link to facilitate that so, in your continued discussions with her severance terms, we would be grateful if you might impress that upon her.

Amber Rudd: I will certainly do that.

Amber Rudd: I met with our staff while I was in Paris seeing the Interior Minister. They have told me about the work they do. As was pointed out, for instance, by Mr Burrowes in House questions earlier in the week, there are children who are waiting for transfer. We know who they are. There are 30 who have been approved under the Dublin regulation. We only have half of them here so far. We hope the other half will come in September—during this month. The key thing is not the identification of the children but actually working sufficiently swiftly with the French— French law, EU law, French territory; it is the French who then supervise the transfer. We are proceeding as fast as we can. Those conversations with the French are critical to actually removing the children.

Q427 Stuart C. McDonald: The point is that we don’t want them to end up in the camps in Calais in the first place. If processes work properly in Greece they can be identified as having family members in the United Kingdom and a safe transfer can be arranged without having to go through that hell.

Amber Rudd: That is why we have seconded people to Greece.

Q428 Stuart C. McDonald: But there are only two on Dublin transfers compared to 75 focusing on—

Amber Rudd: I see your point. We think that there are plenty of children who will qualify in Greece. Having two people there, we believe, will be sufficient to identify the right children and then to begin the process of repatriating them; but rest assured, you raised it with me—I will take a look.

scheme? Why not a broader attempt at integration?

Amber Rudd: Because this is a particular scheme where we are asking communities, who are being guided by their local councils, to welcome families. Half of these people coming over under the scheme are children, and it is so important that this group, who are going to come from the most difficult circumstances and who are sent to us by the UNHCR, are well integrated into the community in which they arrive. It is because of that that we decided they needed a bespoke fund to ensure that the adults are well looked after.

Q431 Stuart C. McDonald: But will you look at expanding it to other refugees as well if it is seen to be a success?

Amber Rudd: Other refugees have different routes to try to learn English—obviously the children tend to go to school—and we think it is important that people mostly contribute to their own learning of the language in order to integrate here. It is just that we thought this scheme particularly needed the additional language support, because we are asking local authorities to step forward. Within those local authorities we have community groups, churches and mosques stepping forward to say how they want to participate and help. We felt that in order to support that particular group, which we need to be a success, they need this extra support.

?

Amber Rudd: One of the things I discussed with Bernard Cazeneuve last week was how we make sure that we can speed up the process, and how we can make sure that, when he does try to phase out the camp, we do take the children who, as you rightly say, we have a legal obligation to take. That is an ongoing piece of work. We recognise our obligation and will do our best to ensure that we deliver on the fact that we want those children who have a family representative here to be brought here.

I am not running away from our obligations at all, but I ask you to appreciate that we always have to go through the French. We have no way of going directly to the children who are in Calais. We have to make sure that it is they who begin the process. We will work with them, and they are now working helpfully with us—we do it partly through working with their organisations, but partly through seconding our people to their organisations—but we have to work at their pace.

Q435 Mr Burrowes: I was there at the last dismantling as it was happening. It was chaotic, and children were traumatised. It was not the appropriate way to do a phased removal of a camp. Doesn’t there need to be some assurance? We have not only our legal obligations to what we can call the Dubs children, but our Dublin legal commitments, and there are also those children who are in the application process—there are 170 or so who claim a link to the United Kingdom. Surely it would also be in France’s interest that every effort is made to clear up our legal responsibilities to those children in Calais. It is obviously very different for those who have been drawn into the camp for different reasons.

Amber Rudd: We will do our best to do that.

Chair: Right. We are going to leave Brexit for the moment, you will be relieved to hear, and go on to counter-terrorism, extremism and related subjects.

Q447 Nusrat Ghani: I welcome you to your new role, Home Secretary. We will be seeing you many times over the next couple of years.

I am referring mostly to the Committee’s report, “Radicalisation: the counter-narrative and identifying the tipping point”. We took a lot of evidence over the past year on how and when young people become radicalised. One of the themes that came through was of being radicalised online. The Committee came to the conclusion that social media companies are consciously failing to combat the use of their sites to promote terrorism and killings. What more can be done to convince companies that network, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, not only to take down content frequently and regularly, but to report content to the police?

Amber Rudd: Thank you. I am grateful for the Committee’s report. I have seen it, and it has raised some important points. I do think more can be done, and we are in discussions with industry to see what more they are prepared to do. What we would like to see is a form of industry standards board that they could put together, in order to have an agreement to have oversight and to take action much more quickly on sites that do such damage to people in terms of making them into terrorists or communicating terrorist information. We are cognisant of what the Committee has drawn attention to. We are working with industry to see if they will set up an industry standards board, which is what we have for children. On child sexual exploitation, there is already such a board. I would like to see the same thing in this area.

We are also looking internationally. Minister Baroness Shields is in discussions with US counterparts to see what we can do on a global level to get international service providers to agree an international standard. There is more we can do with them. I think they need to take responsibility more, because the speed at which these damaging YouTube videos, for instance, get put up—at the moment, my Department takes down through RICU about 1,000 of these sites a week, which is too slow compared with the speed at which they get communicated. So we are working with industry to persuade them to take more action themselves.

Q448 Nusrat Ghani: What was interesting to hear from these companies— Twitter, Facebook and YouTube—was that they were very good at collecting data on who is using the sites for promotion, but somehow they were not that good at or tended to have not enough staff to take down content that was radicalising people. They wanted to be told this content was online, instead of them being responsible for it. I felt personally that they were prepared to use their brand as a social media site where

people can go on and chat, but they were not prepared to have their brand tinged with the fact that people are using the sites to radicalise others. Is there any way we can calculate or get them to tell us how many sites they are taking down? We could then publish those and make them far more responsible for the content that is available on their platforms.

Amber Rudd: It is a very good point. I certainly share the direction in which you are going, which is that they need to take more action themselves and take more responsibility for the damage being done, rather than just focusing on customers. So we are going to have those conversations with them, and I will certainly let the Committee know whether we manage to progress what you have suggested.

Q449 Nusrat Ghani: The evidence provided was that young people especially tend to use their mobile phones and iPads a lot more, but there is always the good old-fashioned TV. There are broadcasting companies that put together programmes that are involved in radicalising people or preach content that we would not deem appropriate. You have a number of TV channels that are broadcast or available in the UK. One channel, which I don’t want to name because I don’t want to promote it in any way, has been banned in a number of countries, including Bangladesh, but is still available here in the UK on satellite. Is there any way that we can sue, take down or stop these sites being promoted within our country?

Amber Rudd: I suggest that the hon. Lady might write to me with the details, if she quite rightly does not want to share them in an open Committee. I will certainly look into it.

Q450 Nusrat Ghani: We took evidence from the sister of Siddhartha Dhar, who is sometimes called Jihadi Sid in the newspapers. She told us she was in a very difficult situation coming to terms with what her brother was doing overseas. She felt there was nowhere for her to go to get any counselling. That also came forward from some of the families involved in the Trojan Horse incident in Birmingham. We had a discussion with your predecessor on what more can be done to support families who feel they have nowhere else to go to get support. How can we get local authorities to provide these families with some support over a long period of time, especially if someone within their family has become radicalised? There is nowhere for them to deal with the emotions that come with this. Is there any way the Department could be involved a bit more in providing this help?

Mark Sedwill: Of course we have the Channel programme, where there is a particular case concern around an individual. I think that is a very effective programme. It works with families who are concerned about their children and with local education authorities, housing and so on. The broader point that I think you are making, Ms Ghani, is one we should probably talk to local government and potentially the devolved Administrations about. I sense you are making a point about supporting families where the risk is more the impact on them of a child already having been radicalised and gone overseas.

Q451 Nusrat Ghani: Yes, it is not about the families themselves becoming radicalised, but the fact that they have reported a member of the family or the community and then feel ostracised within that community. They have nowhere to go and are never going to leave that community. They are not going to find another home or a job elsewhere, so they need to be supported through this process, especially if they are helping us identify young people who have become radicalised or have come back from being involved in terrorist activities overseas.

Mark Sedwill: We have a lot of relationships with local non-governmental organisations, community groups, local mosques and religious leaders, and it may well be that that kind of programme is the vehicle for the issue that you are raising. I suggest that if you are okay, Home Secretary, we will take a look at that and respond to you separately.

Chair: We are waiting for the formal response to the report, which was published a few weeks ago.

Nusrat Ghani: If the Committee would oblige me, I just want to read out a definition of an act of terror: “the calculated use of violence… against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear.”

At Theresa May’s first PMQs, I raised the issue that the term “honour” should be removed from “honour killing”, and that we should use the term “an act of terror”. The victims are not only being terrorised, but are victims of domestic violence. The term “honour killing” might have been appropriate in the 1960s and ’70s, when the broader British community wasn’t aware of the cultural nuances in this kind of domestic violence, but it has now moved on. The woman is not only a victim of domestic violence; she is also being controlled ideologically. I know it is very early days, Home Secretary, but I wonder whether you have any thoughts on that.

Amber Rudd: I recall Ms Ghani raising it at PMQs, and I think it is an important point. I think that most people who refer to it tend to share your views—and, indeed, mine and the Government’s—about these despicable acts of terror and violence. They tend to call them “so-called honour killings” to make the distinction between what they actually are and what they are not, so people understand what we are talking about. People understand what it is when they say “an honour killing”. I would reflect on the fact that, by referring to them as “so-called honour killings”, you explain to people in that phrase what it is and highlight the fact that you don’t think there is any honour in it at all. I think that is an important point, and I will reflect on it.

Q452 Nusrat Ghani: What I was trying to encourage the Prime Minister to do, which is very difficult in a PMQ, is to see whether we can stop using the term across all Government documentation, and use either “the act of terror” or “domestic violence”. It is an initiative that has been championed by many organisations, including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2014 and many charities globally. I feel that it is something on which we, as a country, can lead the way by saying we will

stop using that term because it diminishes the role of the woman within that situation. She then has to reflect on the fact that someone’s honour somewhere is being removed. All we are doing is reinforcing the notion that she is the property of the male who has perpetrated the crime. I believe that the psychology of those men is very close to those who are involved in other terrorist activities, given that they want to ideologically control the other individual. I look forward to continually challenging you on this, Home Secretary.

Amber Rudd: You make a very compelling case.

Nusrat Ghani: Thank you so much.

Chair: One final point.

Q453 Nusrat Ghani: Finally, I was able to ask the previous Home Secretary about sharia councils, and we have also set up our own inquiry, which we hope will take evidence later in the year. We have struggled to get women to come forward and give evidence, because they were incredibly concerned about the impact on their families and their community. Mr Sedwill, can you give an update about where that inquiry is going, or when it might be taking place?

Amber Rudd: The inquiry is ongoing, as you are aware. We think it is an important inquiry; it will get to the bottom of what is actually happening. As you will be aware, Mona Siddiqui is chairing it—I will be meeting with her shortly—and we expect it to conclude by the end of the year.

Q462 James Berry: Home Secretary, one of the distinctive parts of the Prime Minister’s tenure as Home Secretary was modern slavery. She identified the issue, she led the debate, and she took great steps to tackle it. Is that something you will continue as one of the centrepieces in your tenure as Home Secretary?

Amber Rudd: Yes. It is one of the scourges of modern society. The UK has provided very important leadership in this. I know that when the Prime Minister is at UNGA at the end of September, she will be working with other countries to make sure that we continue that leadership. It is incredibly important to address it. I have other countries asking us about our Modern Slavery Act so that they can follow our lead.

Q463 James Berry: In terms of so-called honour-based violence, forced marriage and FGM—I should declare I am a trustee of a charity dealing in honour-based violence—do you agree that funding should continue for the very important work of educating and training the teachers, social workers, nurses, police officers and doctors that we rely on to identify these terrible crimes? From what I can see, your predecessor and the previous Labour Government did a lot of work to put the mechanism in place to deal with these cases when we identified them, but identifying them is very difficult. That is what is holding us back. Do you agree that funding needs to be continued to train the people we rely on to identify cases?

Amber Rudd: I certainly think that training the people on the front line to spot these situations and that they are sufficiently trained so that they know how to address them and assist the women in those situations—it is so often women—is absolutely essential.

Q464 James Berry: Picking up on something that Ms Ghani mentioned, do you think there is something amiss when we have dozens of police officers in New Scotland Yard and police officers in Europol scouring the internet for extremist material on platforms put up by social media companies, who make huge amounts of money from those platforms, but, from what we can tell as a Committee, do precious little to control extremist material?

Amber Rudd: I do think that the industry needs to do more itself. I think it can do more. That is why I am having conversations with them to ensure that there is some sort of industry regulatory board. It will be similar to the one that is already in place for child sexual exploitation. That is what we are asking them to put together.

Q465 James Berry: I can tell you that my suggestion that they should pay for those police officers did not go down very well, but you might want to revisit it.

Amber Rudd: I can imagine.

Q466 James Berry: In terms of integration, I should say I am vice-chair of Mr Umunna’s APPG on social integration, which is doing very good work at the moment. The Prime Minister spoke about the importance in countering radicalisation of providing English language lessons, particularly for women. I think, and I certainly think our all-party parliamentary group thinks, that English language is vital for social integration more generally. Can you update us on how the funding that the Prime Minister outlined for English language lessons is being distributed, and how much has been distributed so far?

Amber Rudd: I am afraid I do not have that material, but I am happy to write to the Committee and update you.

James Berry: Finally, on Brexit— Chair: We are returning to Brexit.

Amber Rudd: Top subject for you.

James Berry:  I apologise. I asked Mr Goodwill this, and he was unable to answer.

Amber Rudd: What a snitch!

Q467 James Berry: Well, it’s all on the record. What is being demanded of you by Mr Umunna and others is to give a unilateral and unequivocal guarantee of the continued rights and status of EU citizens living in the UK. Many in my constituency play a fantastic part in our community. Can I check with you whether any of your counterparts have given the same unilateral and unequivocal guarantee about British citizens living in their country?

Amber Rudd: It is a very good point, and no, they haven’t.

James Berry: Thank you.

Q468 Chair: Before we come to the next subject, knife crime, on the Prevent strategy, our report is with you, and will be the subject of a formal Government response. We had a very interesting trip to Bradford, organised by Naz Shah, to meet younger members of the community. We also had lots of testimony from schools and universities. There is clearly a problem with the brand and image of Prevent. However much you may think it is a good brand and successful, certain parts of certain communities have a very serious problem with it, and you will need to address that in your response.

One thing that struck me in Bradford is how completely untrusting young people from Muslim communities and others were of the mainstream media. They do not go to BBC News, ITV or Sky to get their information about what is going on in the world. They do not trust them, for starters. They are much more likely to access social media, some of which may be tainted with all sorts of agendas, as sources of information. We took the view that we are not doing enough to try to inform those types of social media, which younger people are more likely to access, to help give them a more balanced view.

We referenced that within our report, but I think it is quite a big gap in the Government’s approach at the moment: the heavy reliance on Prevent. It is far from perfect; it may be able to be improved hugely, but it is not trusted by a great many people who need to trust it in order for it to be effective. I lay that there as a point for you when considering your response.

Amber Rudd: That’s fine; thank you for drawing attention to it. I have seen that it is in your report. You have drawn attention to the issue of media, particularly for young vulnerable people, and I will make sure that we address it in my response. We do have some activities in that area, and wherever possible, I will draw attention to them when I write back to you.

Chair: Home Secretary, I think we have a final subject—prostitution— which Mr Burrowes wants to raise. I note there have been no declarations of interest before we do so.

Q472 Mr Burrowes: What is your view on buying sex from prostitutes?

Amber Rudd: Let’s face it: this is a difficult and controversial issue. The Committee has a report out on it at the moment, so I am going to hold my position before coming back to you and giving a full answer. It is complicated and I would like to consider it further before giving a full answer.

Q473 Mr Burrowes: Are you satisfied with the current law on prostitution as it stands?

Amber Rudd: Again, I would ask for a little notice to consider carefully my answer before I come back on that. I was involved with a Labour party Member, Gavin Shuker, on an inquiry that looked at this. I do have concerns about the current legislation. I do have concerns about the trafficking of women. I do have concerns about a lot of different elements of this, but before giving you a simple answer, I would ask for some time to consider it and come back to you.

Q474 Mr Burrowes: So that means you are open as we further our inquiry—we have not in any way finished our inquiry into prostitution—to considering the recommendations?

Amber Rudd: I am absolutely open to looking at what your recommendations are.

Chair: On that, we obviously produced a short report, which we called an interim report. We hold by the findings, which were always going to be controversial findings for what is not an easy subject, as you have said, and there are various recommendations that we have asked the Government to look at and perhaps bring in. Subject to that, we may then be returning to that whole issue in a further report, but we are relying a good deal on what the Government’s response will be to guide us as to where we go on it. Clearly, it was always going to be a controversial issue and there has been even more subsequent correspondence on the back of recent events, but it in no way alters the observations and recommendations that we made, and I think that is worth putting on the record.

Mr Jayawardena: Just for the record, it was not unanimously agreed. There is a difference of opinion in the Committee, and this reflects—as you said, Home Secretary—the complex and controversial nature of the issue.

Chair: But as I say, it is not the end of the work that we propose to do on it.

Mr Burrowes: We could say it’s just the beginning.

Chair: I think there is one further point on hate crime that Mr Winnick wants to raise.

Home Secretary, Permanent Secretary, thank you very much for covering quite a lot of areas in the last two hours. I think we have given you quite a lot of tasks: to provide us with further information and some particular observations on some of the reports that are outstanding, waiting for Government response, and the extra information, as soon as you have completed it, on the CSE inquiry. Whatever you can give us ahead of our likely calling of the new chair of that inquiry will be exceedingly helpful. Thank you very much for your debut today.









A letter to Core Participants from Professor Alexis Jay OBE


News | 8 September

It is nearly a month since I took up my post as the new Chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. I have spent my working life trying to help some of society's most vulnerable people, investigating institutional failure, and recommending ways to stop past failures being repeated. Its scale and scope are a substantial challenge, but the Panel and I are absolutely committed to delivering results with pace, confidence and clarity.

I would like to reassure any victim or survivor who is concerned that their experience may be excluded from our work that I have no intention of asking the Home Secretary to revise or reduce our terms of reference. I am confident that we can adapt our working methods to make our task more manageable and to progress with our work more quickly. For that reason, on my second day as Chair, I ordered an internal review of the Inquiry's approach to its investigations. My aim is to explore new ways to deliver the Inquiry’s investigative work while remaining faithful to its terms of reference.  I will write to you again when the review process has concluded to tell you about any changes that we propose to make and to invite your views.  

There has been some criticism that too many of our staff come from the Home Office.  In fact, less than a quarter of our staff are formerly from the Home Office. Their duty and loyalty is to the Inquiry and not to any Government Department.  Regardless of their background, the Inquiry staff are bound together by a commitment to make this Inquiry a success, drawing on skills and expertise from the public and private sectors.

It is an operational challenge to mount an Inquiry of this magnitude.  We are making progress. We have a new evidence management system in place which will help our legal teams process the evidence we have been receiving. We have opened Inquiry offices in Cardiff, in Darlington, and in Liverpool. In the coming months, we will open our office in Exeter.  We have held eleven preliminary hearings across seven of the thirteen investigations.  

Inquiry staff are busy working with grassroots organisations that represent victims and survivors of child sexual abuse. In this task, the Inquiry has been greatly assisted by the members of the Victims and Survivors Consultative Panel to whom I extend my personal thanks. We have started hearing directly from victims and survivors via our Truth Project, and we are preparing to hold our first victims and survivors forum following a successful pilot last month.

The Panel and I intend to be more visible as we move forward and to keep you regularly informed about the work of the Inquiry.

My appointment as Chair marks the start of a new phase. I very much look forward to working with you as the Inquiry continues.





The use of medication to change the behaviour of children in care and young offender institutions. the role of the statutory Inquiry now chaired by Professor Jay and of Parliament-   Colin J Smart

Serious allegations have been made concerning authorised use of medication by the NHS with State knowledge to achieve short and long term change in the behaviour of children and young people in the care of local authority and other authorised bodies, in addition to their use on those committed to young offender institutions and the former approved schools, including the experimental use of medication, and which also raises the issue of legal approvals.

The allegations have been made in comments to a Needle Blog on the publication of the report on Kendall House. One correspondent mentions being asked to provide information to the Statutory Inquiry (under the Truth project and I have submitted a note on the two aspects about which I have direct knowledge from my experience first as a child care officer and then as a Director of Social Services.

I believe that the use of medication in an attempt to make permanent changes to the personality and behaviour of children and young people in care or to temporarily prevent self-harm or harm to others is a relevant matter for the Inquiry to investigate despite its focus on sexual crimes and their perpetrators. The departure of Justice Goddard and the appointment of a non-lawyer as chairperson and Inquiry leader, together with a new national political administration under the former Home Secretary who commissioned the inquiry for the Coalition government, also provides the opportunity for Parliament to seek clarification of what the inquiry is doing, the presently estimated timetable and costs, and if Professor Jay and her team now wish to change any aspects in light of the information already obtained.

The House of Commons Select Committee on Home Affairs will meet on September 7th at 3pm to question the new Home Secretary on the departure of Justice Goddard, the appointment of Professor Jay and hopefully also raise some of the issues which cut across party political considerations.

My interest and concern has been that in several respects the remit of the Inquiry was too narrow and potentially flawed if one objective is to draw a line for victims, their families, and campaigners on the past and to provide solutions which will work for the future.

The problem can be summarised by saying that it impossible to separate the causes of sexual crimes against children whether in public care establishments or in domestic situations from those involving crimes of violence- physical, emotional and psychological and this quickly became evident when the Inquiry gave priority to what happened at Medomsley,  the inclusion of the role of the of military and where the ongoing contributions from victims to Blogs is about the physical and other forms of violence as well as sexual. I suggest that no line will be drawn on the past until all unresolved crimes against children are addressed and which is one aspect of the Truth project may have already developed with its referrals to the police and other appropriate bodies if may already have been developed.

I suggest that in the public mind and that of the media there is confusion about the reference to institutional abuse. The decision was taken to separate allegations of a sexual crime committed in a domestic setting from those in an institution. The broad investigations of the extent of crimes against children in a domestic setting was referred to the separate Children’s Commissioners for England and Wales and where in fact the devolved administration for Wales has devoted proportionately more resources to the work of the Children’s Commissioner that the British Government has for the Commissioner for England.

However, the line is not so clear cut because sexual crimes against a child by a representative of an institution, a school teacher, a priest, an army officer, a Member of Parliament or Government Minister may take place in any location, including a home for children, a foster home, or in a custodial environment[CS2] .

Early on in my managerial career attention was drawn to a young person who righty today is now regarded as still a child rather than a young person who had courageously reported that her father had raped her and invited his drinking partners to rape her at weekend, and the reason why she had decided to come forward was because her mum had grown weary of also being offered and raped and had proposed that a younger daughter join her older sister. Because of the courage of that child action was possible, but in how many other situations has a child been raped, their life changed negatively and without the recognition or redress now being provided to those where the representative of an institutional body was the perpetrator? Is that child former child to be treated as second class where it comes to national attention?

Whatever the limitations of the UK People’s Tribunal it has not made this arbitrary separation and I suggest that the summary at the commencement of its recent Interim Reports says much of what the Statutory Inquiry will say but at dramatically less cost.

This brings back to the issue of the use of medication to achieve a permanent change in social behaviour and in a particular instance to stop a child at school from coming to the repeated attention of the police, the juvenile court and being sent to an Approved School.

This used of ‘medication’ was developed in the 1960’s by Dr Milner, the Psychiatrist superintendent of the Staffordshire County Psychiatric Hospital, and promoted by Dr and Mrs Kahan, a Child Psychiatrist and the Children’s Officer, for Oxfordshire and subsequent, Deputy Chief Inspector at the Children’s Department of the Home Office and who then transferred to the Social Work Advisory Service of the Department of Health with the creation of Social Service departments in 1971 in England and Wales.

The Kahan’s organised a presentation by Dr Milner attended by Councillors, Magistrates, management and staff from the Oxfordshire County Council where I worked as a child care officer and at which I believe a number of subsequent Directors of Social Services were also present (Donal Morrissey- Trafford, David Clifton- Bedfordshire, and Louis Minister-Richmond, and Deputy Directors Jenny Fells- Oxford City and Keith Hall- Essex). There were also representatives from Oxford City and at least one neighbouring County.

In summary the medication, a form of LSD, sent the subject on a controlled bad trip as part of regression therapy and where Dr Milner, a fundamentalist Freudian, argued that contemporary and previous behaviour was being governed by sex and death wishes or actions which occurred in childhood. The subject was played back recordings of what had emerged and because the behaviour causative event occurred as a child, was persuaded that the event should not be allowed to govern the rest of their lives.

I was asked to undertake one case before the Juvenile Court where the subject was placed on an interim care order rather than sent to an Approved School and where the school age subject and parents had to give consent following a visit to the hospital to meet Dr Milner where the process was explained to us both and then there was a private visit between the Dr and the subject. The treatment had an amazing positive outcome and with the approval of the Court the subject was immediately returned home under supervision with the order discharged. I met the subject and the parent by chance a year later when having a haircut and they insisted on taking me to tea so I could see and hear of the transformation that had taken place. The substantive causation presently falls within the remit of the Peoples Tribunal but I not thought by the Statutory Tribunal but is now more likely.

Some years later I became aware through Community Care and Social Work Today in a particular that that the use of the medication was discredited and the subject of litigation. I cannot remember if there was any kind of formal investigation and I cannot recall further issues about this kind of permanent personality changing use of medication since. This is something which members of the Social History network may have more knowledge or be aware who has. The Departments of Health and Education as well as the Home Office may have records or be aware where records are located in national archives.

What I became more familiar with, as I assume are former colleagues who worked as managers or social workers in care and protection within Social Services Departments after 1971, was the use of medication for short term control of behaviour to prevent self-harm or harm to others. In the North East the main centre where, I believe medication was used was Aytcliffe, a former Approved school and which became a Community home with education on the premises (Controlled/Assisted Status) and which also provided the Regional Observation and Assessment Centre and which included a secure unit.

As stated I was alerted to the issue through a 36-page discussion in the Needle Blog following the publication of a report on Kendall House and which covered the use of medication with devastating consequences. I have been directly contacted by one victim survivor who previously had not pursued a potential referral involving a now convicted individual because there was no memory of the event and the allegation had been made to another individual from the same care establishment in question who had been present. Reading the Kendall House discussion reminded the individual that according to their local authority care record they had been prescribed medication used to help those with epilepsy but where there had been no event or diagnosis and therefore the medication may have been used as a sedative or to behaviour control.

From the viewpoint of the those who worked for a Children’s Department Authority or Social Services Department was the legal guardian for the child or young person consulted in advance and permission gained? This would have been even more significant if the medication was experimental and the side effects or potential long term implications of the ‘treatment’ were unknown.

We now know that medication is used in order to rape and that some victims have no memory but only the physical evidence afterwards.  Is the statutory Inquiry focussed on this aspect or will it be?

Coinciding with the Needle discussion the important and influential Cathy Fox Internet site republished an extraordinary writing alleging the influence of the London Tavistock Institute on personality behaviour changing on the United States and includes references to the role of social workers.

The Institute has been separate from the Clinic since WWII although there was continuous cross over in terms treatment theory and practice and for once the Wikipedia entries are inadequate, given failure to make reference to the Winnicotts, with Clare one of the key founders of professional child care and social work based on fundamentalist Freud who ‘bossed’ the child care course for many years at the London School of Economics and where her husband bossed the Clinic with its Advanced Child Care Course. Dr Donald Winnicott who started as a paediatrician and became a psychoanalyst Changing Minds (See Cathy Fox Tavistock-The best kept secret in America)

It is also important to appreciate that the use of medication has always been one aspect of changing behaviour and mind control with psychoanalysis and behaviourism two commonly known methodologies.

Mrs Kahan was a major force in the Inquiry led by Sir Alan Levy called Pindown 1990/1991 on the importation the Approved School and Young Offender Institutions of the use of behaviour control and behaviour change methods in Staffordshire Social Services department and where government then asked all local authorities and care bodies to undertake an audit of past and ongoing practice in all establishments.

As emphasised earlier there can be no drawing of the line on what happened in the past if physical mistreatment of children in care is kept separate from situations where the physical violence was part of a sexual crime.

It is also significant that the Inquiry has separated the search for Truth from the Hearings where my understanding is that the Hearings are about the establishment of fact according to due process and where I am puzzled about how those already announced and underway fit into the promise of comprehensiveness and thoroughness, especially if the six to eight weeks of length is to be adhered to.

I was involved in one inquiry with a number of core participants where three weeks of hearings became eleven and where the recent Hillsborough Inquest took significant longer than anticipated, that involved the decision to go to war in Iraq spread between Parliaments. Leveson II does not appear to be taking place and the belief that the Bloody Sunday Inquiry would draw a line is being shown misguided. It is not clear to me if the decision to hold up to twenty-five Hearings was part of a clearly worked out plan in terms of meeting the core objectives of comprehensiveness and thoroughness and it is difficult to understand their point if they are not to be open in terms of streamed media, or what part they play in determining who participated in the cover by  state institutions, religious and other bodies, and why and where presumably if there is any suggestion of an illegal purpose, especially attempting to pervert the course of justice,  then  this is  a separate  matter for the police and  related professional bodies, if  for example,  the use of medication was unauthorised.

When I contacted the Inquiry to clarify if the Hearings announced was an amended total I was advised they were the first tranche and Justice Goddard then made this public at a preliminary hearing

I am puzzled that the Inquiry is concentrating on only one individual at present, Lord Janner (a Labour man) than say Jimmy Saville,  Cyril Smith (Liberal Democrat and Labour) or Lord Leon Brittan (Conservative) who all are dead and where police investigations have concluded or are more advanced, and in terms of officers, the roles of Peter Righton for example  and the paedophile Information Exchange,  or that of the former Director of Social Services Newcastle who recommended placement in the homes of  the twice convicted owner of Bryn Alyn  Homes sending 69 Newcastle children to the homes (both also dead) would appear  merit just as great attention. Given the ongoing Parliament concern that the Macur, Waterhouse, Jillings and Banham inquiries were limited or constrained to get to the truth it is puzzling the Bryn Alyn privately owned homes are not the focus of a Hearing in the context of the mentioned inquiries.

By now the Inquiry should be a in position to provide some idea of its overall timetable and expenditure plan and to confirm that it will issue individual reports, findings and recommendations in relation to each Hearing and if a mechanism has been established for making interim recommendations which have a more general or wider significance than arising from an individual hearing and if the recommendations are  being made direct to Government or will be available to Parliament as they are made rather than await the concluding report of the Inquiry. Clearly service providers, future victims and their families do not want to wait five or ten years for a recommendation if it could prove of significance now.

It was always debateable whether the Home Affairs or Education Select Committees were the best forum for considering the work of the inquiry, its Chair persons and terms of references and the issue of medication now brings in the Health Select Committee and which was responsible for Child Care and Protection service policy and resources 1971-2006 the greater period of the Inquiry investigations, together with the role of the justice department and services.

The most obvious way for Parliament to learn the plans, the progress and developments of the Statutory Inquiry is for some form of Joint Select or ad hoc committee representing all the relevant interest in both House to be invite attendance and the provision of information in advance, but if this is not possible or appropriate then I suggest the Inquiry would be wise to issue progress, plans and budget reports to sustain parliamentary and public support.

The is also a need to make available the work of the research group at appropriate times together the established historical narrative about what was done in the past: the changes in the law, the completed national, agency and local inquiries and the completed police operations. There has been some attempt to publish lists of completed Inquiries. The Department of Health published  information and analysis of Inquiries in two publications covering the period 19731-1990  Child Abuse 1973-1981 with a forward by Norman, now Lord Fowler, and  but covering 1980-1990 but because the Director of Social Services (Newcastle) was allowed to conduct his own investigation into the most serious crime of an  officer in charge of an establishment committing crimes against children in the home (and for which he was convicted) uncovered to that that time 1975/1976, the 73-81 Government report on Child Abuse made no mention. 

There was a further attempt to list investigations by Corby, Doig and Roberts in Public Inquiries into Abuse of Children in Residential Care 2001 and various social media interests and bloggers have attempted compile lists including completed police operations, but my understanding is that each individual survivor support group and lawyer group has to try separately to locate information in relation those they represent, the individual perpetrators, institutional bodies and locations. The early publication of the information centrally by Government, or the Inquiry would be helpful again once police inquiries and the judicial processing has been completed.

I suggest it would also be helpful for publication of the key research and other publications upon which the narrative of what happened and why is being based. The failures and limitations of residential and fostering care 1948-1966 was covered by the National Children’s Bureau in two summaries and overviews of research in its studies of Child Development Facts and Fallacies (Dinnage and Kellmer Pringle 1967) and which included research in the USA, Western Europe and Israel.

As the Home Affairs Committee and interested parties have been aware much of the work of the Inquiry on establishing what happened and why, especially on the issue of failure has already been undertaken. The first Blair administration spent a year considering findings of the Utting inquiry and report People Like Us. Over a decade and a half before the Lord Tebbit explained the British Way of cover up on the Andrew Marr programme, Frank Dobson on behalf of the government wrote in 1998, “This was not just a failure by the care staff. The children had been failed by social service managers, councils, councillors, police, schools, neighbours, the Social Services Inspectorate, Government Departments, Ministers and Parliament. Some people from all these categories and institutions had worked hard to do a good job for these children but many did not. The while system had failed. “The Government then concluded Additional Resources are being made available (my insert £450 million over three years). There can be no more excuses.  On November 5th in the statement made to House of Commons by the Secretary of State for Health and Baroness Hayman in the proposed action was outlined and John Bercow established the money was additional, and not recycled, while former Minister of State, Virginia, now Lady Bottomley, explained the problem was intractable. A similar study and conclusions took place in Scotland in the Systematic Historical review of abuse in Residential Homes and Schools 1950-1995 and online via devolved administration.

The other key documentation available on line is the Fourth Report of the Home Affairs Committee Cm 5799 April 2003 into the Conduct of Investigations into Past Cases of Abuse in Children’s Homes together with the seventy plus responses to a questionnaire from the Committee under the Chairmanship of Sunderland South MP Chris Mullin and where former Prime Minister David Cameron and present Deputy Leader of the Labour Party Tom Watson  were members and where many believe it was the PMQ from Mr Watson to David Cameron which kicked off  events which have led to the current Police Investigations and the Statutory inquiry.

Hopefully everyone next week will be focussed on the needs of victim survivors and those who have not survived and their families given the Parliament returns for the political knockabout before the conferences to enable the broad strategy and tactics for the rest of the Parliament to be launch




[3] Home Affairs Committee, Appointment of the Chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, 13 February 2015, HC710 2014-15, p11, para 20
[4] HCWS371 [Statutory Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse], 12 March 2015
[5] Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, Opening Statement, 9 July 2015, p1, para 1
[6] Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, Dame Lowell Goddard letter to the Home Secretary, 4 August 2016
[7] Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, Statement from Hon. Dame Lowell Goddard, 5 August 2016
[13] HCWS371 [Statutory Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse], 12 March 2015
[15] HCWS371 [Statutory Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse], 12 March 2015 16  As above
[17] HCWS371 [Statutory Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse], 12 March 2015
[18] Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, Opening Statement, 9 July 2015, p2, para 6
[19] As above, p1, para 2
[20] As above, pp1 and 2, paras 3 and 4
[21] DEP2015–0320, p1, para 2(g)
[23] Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, Opening Statement, 9 July 2015, pp5 and 7, paras 13 and 15
[24] As above, p7, para 15
[29] HCWS371 [Statutory Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse], 12 March 2015
[30] Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, Opening Statement, 9 July 2015, pp7– 8, para 16
[31] As above, pp7–26, para 78
Child Sexual Abuse, 13 February 2015, HC710 2014-15, p13, para 27
[34] HCWS371 [Statutory Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse], 12 March 2015
[35] Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, Opening Statement, 9 July 2015, pp8– 9, paras 17 and 18 
[36] As above, p9, para 21
[37] Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, Opening Statement – Key Announcements, 9 July 2015, p9, para 21
[38] As above, pp1–2, para 3
[39] The members of the VSCP are Sheila Coates, Lucy Duckworth, Peter McKelvie, Fay Maxted, Michael May, Peter Saunders, Chris Tuck and Daniel Wolstencroft.
[40] Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, Victims and Survivors’ Consultative
[41] Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, Opening Statement – Key Announcements, 9 July 2015, p2, para 5
[42] Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, Investigations, webpage [taken on 9 August 2016]
[43] Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, Inquiry to hold preliminary hearings for seven investigations, News, 21 July 2016
[44] Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, About the Inquiry – Victims and survivors, webpage [taken on 25 September 2015]
[45] Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, Share your experience, webpage
[taken on 25 September 2015]
[52] “Brother of sex abuse inquiry head 'failed to prosecute paedophile'; Baroness Butler-
Sloss under pressure over decision by Sir Michael Havers”, Daily Telegraph, 10 July 2014
[54] July 2014; “Baroness Butler-Sloss hid claims of bishop's sex abuse”, Daily Telegraph, 12 July 2014
[57] Home Affairs Committee, Oral evidence: The work of the Home Secretary, 2014–15 HC 500, 14 July 2014, p2, Q3
[60] Home Affairs Committee, Oral evidence: Historic child abuse, 2014–15 HC 710, Qq13–19 and Q65



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