…and Neil Terry is that quick internet troll.

What she should have said is that she will conduct a through investigation of this tragic incident and will take any action necessary to ensure that those responsible are dealt with.

The children who grow up in care are those who were removed from their families *despite* the strong presumption against that in the current system, *and* whose behavioural/other problems are sufficiently serious that they aren’t able to be matched with adoptive or long-term foster parents.

If council care were run excellently by Mary Poppins, outcomes for people leaving on average would still be far worse than the population at large *and yet* it’d still be better for the marginal child (ie the child with the worst environment under the current system who would nonetheless be left with their parents) to be taken into care than not.

This is why asking questions like who will resign for Baby P, as the usually admirable Lynne Featherstone does is not the way to go. The Sun puts it even more coldly: “a price must be paid for his life.” This is despite no one now being able to resign for Baby P; the chance to save him has gone. Likewise, pretending that resigning or sacking those responsible is in some way going to bring some sort of legacy from his death is similarly doubtful. The result of a witch-hunt, especially against the social workers, is likely to have the opposite effect: more children taken from families into a care system which often does not merit that very name.

Appreciate you coming on here, but I have to take issue with your views – I think the Lib Dems have to put their hands up to some extent and take responsibility for their part in jumping on the ‘cutting frontline services in local councils’ bandwagon in recent times.

It’s all very well to point the finger at the senior management team at Haringey – and I really do mean that it is all very well to point the finger at them, and the council leader there – but there is a bigger, global picture here in which most of the major parties who’ve slavishly followed the ‘rationalise public services’ vision of recent years have played an active part in pursuing.

As we speak, the SNP (of all parties)/Lib Dem adminstration is under fire for its service cutting programme:

http://stopthecuts.blogspot.com/2008/01/snplib-dems-cut-60-of-home-helps.html

and the cuts programme the Lib Dem administration is pursuing at Camden:

http://cutsincamden.blogspot.com/

has caused great concern among locals since your party made council there at the last local elections. In both, and other, instances, your party stands accused of a slavish devotion to a dated, cost-cutting-through-frontline-service-cuts theory of public service provision, and a lack of imagination on the topic. Labour and the Conservatives are as guilty of that line as your own party, and I’m in no hurry to defend either: last week, I published the first piece in a series about the vicious service cuts being made by Hammersmith and Fulham council as the Tories there hit their stride, and I’ll be following that with further pieces about that dated, costly, and failed approach to service provision to which government across the planet seems irrevocably glued.

What I’d like to know from you is – what’s the Lib Dem plan? What is your vision – except for more of the same?

How do you propose to provide public services to those in need (surely a growing group as the recession bites) while keeping council tax down? Are you going to go after the consultants, top-heavy management structure and Blair-inspired culture of targets and KPIs which somehow allow councils to keep coming up with four stars?

What would the Lib Dems do at Haringey? How would you provide social services there?

Do you have to be an “expert spinologist” to work out when an apology, as opposed to the opposite, might be a good idea??

You have to be an “expert spinologist” if you expect to work out how to deliver a sincere apology that doesn’t make your colleagues or organisation legally liable.

Is such a senior – and well paid – bureaucrat not capable of working out what the impact of her approach might be?

There are grounds for resignation in Harringey Council and possibly among members of the responsible NHS Trust. No one expects to see any of those resignations. There are grounds for suspending resposible officials at management levels ‘until the comclusion of the enquiry’. No one expects those either. Still less do we expect to see Ministers considering resignation.

The only general answer is to set out the basis local responsibility for local actions, and to act upon it..