An inconvenient truth

February 1st, 2010

Having been involved in the campaign for better protection for vulnerable children over many years, I have endured the highs of the successes and the lows of the disappointments.

Despite the obvious frustrations, I only have to pick up a paper and read about the horrible consequences of leaving these children in homes where drugs and abuse are rife to remind me why this is important.

This week though set a new low in the battle to get proper scrutiny and real action on this issue.

Part of that scrutiny involves wading through long reports and research papers and it was while doing this I discovered an inconvenient truth for the government in Edinburgh.

You could imagine my dismay in learning that 144 children have died over the last six years despite being referred to the Children’s Reporter.

I confronted the Children’s Minister Adam Ingram in the chamber with this shocking statistic and forced him to concede that it needed further investigation.

This week, he replied to my representations with a response that was breathtaking in its complacency.

He insisted that no such inquiry was going to take place and it was ‘not a good use of government resources’.

His reasoning was that not enough was known about how these children died to merit an investigation.

Well, that sounds like a contradiction in terms to me – surely that would the very reason you would look in to this.

This man draws a ministerial salary for supposedly being Scotland’s children’s champion.

Yet he has admitted in the past he doesn’t know how many children in Scotland are at risk.

And now he reveals that even the ones he does know about, he can’t say how they died or where they are.

With this level of complacency, Adam Ingram isn’t worthy of the title Children’s Minister.