During the week I had a piece up on the Guardian website:

I refuse to shrug my shoulders and accept the inevitability of horrific tragedy as Haringey Council fails to prevent another child’s death. They say lightning never strikes twice – in my home borough, it has.

Calm reflection in the wake of media frenzy is a sensible response. However, turning this intense scrutiny to something purposeful that will help to prevent it happening again is extremely important.

After the national spotlight moves away, Haringey residents will still be left wanting answers – ultimately, are our children safe? Guaranteeing zero risk of malicious harm to children is of course impossible. We can never eliminate risk. But children’s services, like many of our frontline services, are supposed to do their utmost to manage and minimise risk. Their training, their support networks and the organisation behind them must support them to make these difficult judgments.

Haringey Council’s defence has been that no one could have protected against deceitful carers and parents. But closer scrutiny of the case reveals that Baby P’s bruising stopped when he was removed for a short while from his abusers. It would not have been overly cautious to have put two and two together.

Social workers have a difficult and often thankless task. After the death of Victoria Climbié, it was her social worker who was offered up as a sacrificial lamb. My wrath now is not towards the social workers who made mistakes, but towards the system that let them. As a local councillor when Victoria Climbié died, I was told lessons would be learnt. This time I am going to make sure they are.

After a decade of fighting Haringey Council, first as a councillor and now as an MP, I have come to realise that there is an endemic institutional culture that accepts and defends failure. As I write, Haringey Labour leadership are holed up in their bunker hoping they can weather the storm again. They have only just issued a statement expressing their “deepest sorrow” over the tragedy.

In his report on Climbié’s death, Lord Laming said there should be no place to hide when it comes to responsibility. The head of Radio 2 resigned over corporate failure, and that was over a distasteful broadcast. We are talking about the death of a child that might have been prevented. Who will resign for Baby P

There are many – so many – questions about the death of Baby P rattling about in my mind. About how on earth any fellow human being could inflict those cruelties on him. About how safety net after safety net could fail to protect him.

Increasingly there is one question looking to me as key to understanding what went wrong – it’s around the four plus months gap between a decision that Baby P needed to be seen be a paediatrician and that actually happening.

Haringey’s report own report tells us:

“From March, a main element of the child protection plan was to obtain a developmental paediatric assessment” [Paragraph 2.1.6]

But he wasn’t seen by a paediatrician until 1st August [Paragraph 2.1.15]. There are serious questions about how that inspection was carried out and why Baby P was returned to his mother after it. But it only took place four plus months after it was decided that this inspection was a “main element” of the plans to ensure Baby P’s well being. How can you leave such a key inspection for so long?

There’s a hint in Haringey’s own report that something went very wrong, for one conclusion – even in this report, for all its whitewash features – is that Great Ormond Street Hospital (who provided the paediatric care services) should develop, “a waiting list priority system that acknowledges the needs of the child, including the implications of a child subject of a child protection plan” [Paragraph 4.3.7]. You don’t say that unless you think the opposite is the case at the moment, do you?

Other Baby P news: Haringey Council kept information back from police and prosecutors – Telegraph – and whistleblower warned ministers about problems in Haringey several months before Baby P died – The Independent.