Baby P: The Untold Story

5 years ago I wrote about the Baby P scandal and how it related to Interactive Democracy. Now there's a new TV programme from the BBC, "Baby P: The Untold Story". I found it a depressing insight into British politics, media and culture.
Perhaps the wisest comment in the broadcast was that a series of small mistakes across multiple organisations caused a failure to protect Baby P from his mother and her boyfriend. Yet it also points out that David Cameron misinformed parliament about the age of Baby P's mother. A small mistake. The Sun newspaper misinformed the public about the number of social service's visits. A small mistake. The media reported that a doctor had failed to diagnose a broken back. Probably a small mistake (his back was unlikely to have been broken at the time of the examination according to a pathologist). Ed Balls expected an emergency inspection and report to take just two weeks when normally it would take months. A small mistake. A significant part of a Great Ormond Street report didn't reach inspectors. A deceitful mistake. Ofsted rated Social Services as good and then changed their minds, possibly after political manipulation (the report was edited numerous times by senior management not directly involved in the inspection and in consultation with Ed Ball's office). A worrying mistake. They then destroyed the evidence supporting their own study, as they do as a matter of course. An admin policy mistake. Sharon Shoesmith was unfairly dismissed and was subsequently awarded damages of nearly £680 000. A costly mistake.
According to the programme, since Baby P's death 260 other children have died. 26 of them were known to social services. These aren't mistakes, they are murder or manslaughter.
All mistakes should be corrected if we are to improve and I believe we should have laws against lying in public life. Incorrect statements should be corrected with as much 'volume' as the original error. I wrote about how this could work, here.
(You can read my original Baby P post here.)

Baby P, Baby Politics

The press, and then the politicians, vilified social workers for their failure to defend Baby P. It seemed as if public anger at this tragic death was focused away from the criminal(s) who perpetrated this barbarous, bullying outrage and instead attacked the social workers without really getting to grips with the real dilemma: as a society, do we take children from their families on the basis of inconclusive evidence, possibly ripping innocent families apart and psychologically damaging them, or do we leave children in situations where we suspect, but cannot prove, they are at risk?

There are other questions here. When the public are angered, can there be a rational and balanced debate that may employ Interactive Democracy to improve things? Do vitriolic campaigns by the media skew our thinking even more when we feel outraged? Is it the role of politicians to pander to public opinion or to act to check and balance public passions? Are scapegoats inevitable?

In my opinion the Interactive Democracy system should benefit from politicians debating issues and from detailed studies. This may be a slow process... time is a great healer and the ID system should be slow enough to allow passions to give way to rationalisation.

Ultimately, after due consideration, if a referendum is required, it may be wise for parliament to present widely disparate alternative choices as a way of "playing devils advocate" and improving the quality of the public debate.