On Monday the Commons discussed the consequences of Angela Cannings’ successful appeal against conviction for killing her two baby sons. Something was missing: a sense of outrage.
Margaret Hodge’s presence as minister for children did not help. This is a government that claims to support children’s rights. But study Islington council’s record on education and social services while she led it and you will conclude that, if children have rights, the right to be kept well clear of Margaret Hodge stands high among them. But when a row blew up over her appointment she apologised, paid money to charity and clung on to the job. What she lacked was a sense of shame.
This lack was also a consequence of a society in which everyone is a victim. We heard of paediatricians who feel vulnerable and adoptive parents who feel distress. Both have legitimate concerns. But if we use such language about them, what is there left to say about parents who have had their children taken from them?
Above this overwrought language you could hear the mealy-mouthed tones of officialdom. Hilton Dawson got it right, hoping the courts would look sympathetically on applications for contact from parents “who have been placed in such dreadful and tragic situations”. Hodge replied “I am sure that the courts will examine such situations sympathetically where it is appropriate to do so.” The more you look at it, the less it means.
Then there is the mantra that the best interests of the child are paramount. No one would argue with that, but who judges what those interests are? In the first place it will be council social services departments as they review past care orders. So, having provided the impetus for prosecution, they are now being asked to act as a court of appeal.
As Dominic Grieve, revealing himself as the Jonny Wilkinson of understatement, said: “My experience in representing local authorities in care proceedings and appearing against them suggests that bureaucracies are often ill placed to review their own past assumptions and the errors flowing from them.”
The best Margaret Hodge could manage in reply to such arguments was “We have to trust the common sense of social services departments.” What she lacked was a sense of the ridiculous.
It’s half-term at Westminster and there is time to explore the streets around. In recent years Politco’s bookshop in Artillery Row has become one of the area’s attractions, but it is soon to close. Business will continue by post while the proprietor attempts to become a Tory MP, and he will still run bookstalls at the party conferences.
On one visit I picked up a slim pamphlet by James Dowsing called Byways of Westminster. Dowsing is clearly a sound judge because he likes 4 Cowley Street – "A splendid town house setting off one of London's most inspired byways" – so here are some more of his discoveries.
St Armille was a Welsh holy man who founded a monastery in Brittany, slew a dragon and was revered by Henry VII. A cul-de-sac behind St James Park tube station marks the site of a shrine to him erected during Henry's reign.
In the same era Elizabeth Woodville, the widow of Edward IV, sought sanctuary in the shadow of Westminster Abbey with her younger children. Her eldest child, the young Edward V, was already in the Tower of London and she was persuaded to allow the nine-year-old Richard, Duke of York, to join him.
Soon, of course, the Princes in the Tower disappeared from history and their uncle and protector was crowned Richard III. The area is remembered today in the street names The Sanctuary, Broad Sanctuary and Little Sanctuary.
Other, more fortunate, residents of Westminster include Henry Purcell, William Hazlitt and the poets Edmund Spenser, Robert Herrick and John Milton.
I recently came across another intriguing piece of local history on the internet. The world's first attempt at a tube railway was the Waterloo and Whitehall line authorised in 1865. It was to have been a pneumatic railway, where trains are pushed though the tunnel by air pressure, with the cast iron tube crossing the Thames in a ditch dredged in the river-bed.
The work was started, but a financial crisis made it hard to raise capital and it was soon abandoned. The excavations south of the river were later incorporated into the Bakerloo line.
And the tunnel on the north bank? It is now the wine cellar of the National Liberal Club in Whitehall Place.
We know what Michael Howard’s Conservative Party believes. The state “has grown so much that it diminishes the people it is meant to serve.” Instead, “the people should be big and the state should be small”.
Unfortunately, Mr Howard has neglected to share these insights with his MPs. During Monday’s work and pensions questions Desmond Swayne complained that the government has made no progress with plans to control antisocial behaviour by withdrawing means-tested benefits.
Then the House turned to the Morecambe Bay tragedy. James Paice wanted more deportations and closer supervision of asylum seekers. Tim Collins wanted stricter border controls. Few signs of a small state there.
Which was no surprise, because what the Tories really mean is that their sort of people should be big while the state keeps the rest firmly in place. There are few Socialists as class conscious as the average Conservative member.
I remember our local Tory councillors’ reaction when we wanted council tenants to be able to choose the colour their front doors were painted. It was a mixture of outrage and incredulity. You could read their thoughts: “We do too much for these people already.”
Later on Monday, Gregory Barker wasn’t much interested in a small state either. He complained about the level of government funding for Rother District Council in East Sussex. His constituents were angry, he said, and many of them were desperate.
He did not get far. Ministers who reply to these debates (on Monday it was Phil Hope from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) always come armed with a sheaf of statistics to show that the MP’s constituency has never been better off. If you believed Hope, they were dancing with joy in Bexhill and the streets of Rye and Winchelsea would be paved with gold by the end of the fiscal year 2005-6.
Barker probably had a point. In the days when I was serious about front doors we always complained that our settlement failed to take account of the cost of delivering services in rural areas.
But until the Tories show they want all people to be big, they will not get within a hundred miles of election victory. If they continue on their present course, it’s the Conservative party that will be small.
We all know what a hoon is: a subordinate kept so he can resign if his boss runs into trouble. Leon Brittan was Mrs Thatcher’s hoon at the time of the Westland affair. Norman Lamont was John Major’s hoon after the ERM débâcle. Both winced at Elvis Presley’s words: “You ain’t nothing but a hoon dog.”
For the past few months Tony Blair’s hoon has been, well, Geoff Hoon. It was widely expected that he would have to resign when Lord Hutton’s report appeared. So much so that his colleagues rallied round to ensure he wasn’t forced to resign over British troops’ inadequate kit in Iraq. A hoon too soon is no hoon at all.
Now Hutton’s report is out, Hoon is off the hook. He has lived to resign another day. In the interests of balance, however, House Points has invited someone from the Today programme to put his side of things.
John Humphrys writes: “Let me begin by…”
I’m sorry, that’s all we have time for. Because Monday’s statement by Tessa Jowell on the appointment of a new Chairman of the BBC Governors saw the emergence of another creature. Alongside the hoon, we have the fritchie.
Jowell was at pains to emphasise how independent the process was. She had fun with practice under the Tories: Marmaduke Hussey was on a salmon fishing holiday in Ullapool when Douglas Hurd phoned out of the blue to offer him the job.
Labour, she said, was different. It would all be placed in the hands of Dame Rennie Fritchie, the Commissioner for Public Appointments. No doubt she is an excellent woman: good at her job and kind to animals and small children. But the way every difficulty raised was met with the assurance that Dame Rennie would see things went well failed to convince.
For a fritchie is an obscure public servant suddenly raised to great eminence. Remember Ron Dearing? He was a fritchie. For years every question about higher educaton was met with the replies “ask Dearing” “it’s all in the Dearing report” or “you ought to read Dearing, he’s very good on this”.
We wish Dame Rennie well, but the career of the Drugs Czar Keith Halliwell shows that today’s fritchie can easily become tomorrow’s hoon.