Michael Mansfield Willing to Replace Emmerson in Abuse Inquiry

By Matthew Weaver
The Guardian
September 30, 2016

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/sep/30/michael-mansfield-willing-to-replace-emmerson-child-abuse-inquiry

Michael Mansfield QC said the inquiry needed a lawyer at the top. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

Michael Mansfield QC says he is willing to replace Ben Emmerson as the top lawyer on the inquiry into institutional child abuse, but only if the inquiry is broken up.

Mansfield, a prominent barrister whom many of the survivors of child abuse have nominated to lead the process, said the inquiry had been “chaotic from beginning” and dogged by “catastrophic appointments”.

Interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme after Emmerson resigned as lead counsel to the inquiry, Mansfield said the inquiry needed a lawyer at the top, but that it was too complex to be run by one person.

He also questioned the credentials of the fourth and current chair Prof Alexis Jay, a leading social worker who led the Rotherham abuse inquiry, but insisted he could work with her.

Asked if he was willing to serve, Mansfield said: “I am very willing to consider it. They need a lawyer, because there are legal decisions to be made and I’m afraid the present chair isn’t a lawyer. I’m saying there should be an overarching chair and a panel of different chairs all co-ordinated ... I think you have got to have more than one chair.”

When it was put to him that he would not get on with Jay, Mansfield said: “I’m not known for not getting on with people. I’m forceful yes, but that doesn’t mean to say that you fall out or anything like that. Certainly not, part of a team.”

Mansfield suggested Emmerson, whom he described as a “colleague and a friend”, had been unfairly treated by Jay. He said: “He is not abrasive. He is very sharp. His mind is well tuned to all the issues that are necessary and I think most people would have complete confidence in his intellectual abilities.”

Emmerson’s resignation on Thursday, a day after he was suspended, was the latest setback to the inquiry after the resignations of three previous chairs. It has fuelled fears that the inquiry is “careering out of control” and left many survivors questioning whether it can carry out its work.

On Thursday, Theresa May insisted that the inquiry, which she set up while she was home secretary, would not be scaled back. In his resignation letter, Emmerson made no reference to the chaos of the last two days. He said he would be sad to leave and remained “totally committed to securing a fair and just result for those who matter most – the victims and survivors of childhood abuse”.

Mansfield said Emmerson’s suspension was the latest mistake in how the inquiry had been run. He said: “This has been chaotic from the beginning, appalling appointments made without any consultation – that’s the real problem. The survivors have not been consulted on each of these appointments and certainly up to the present they have been catastrophic. There should have been far more consultation, not just about the terms of reference but about how it is going to be managed.”

Mansfield called for the inquiry to be broken up, with one section examining historical abuse and another aimed at preventing current and future offences.

He said: “One person cannot possibly cope with this as an overarching inquiry. It is the most challenging public inquiry probably there has been historically. And it obviously needs to be broken up into rather obvious parts. First you have got to deal with how do you investigate and record and bring about accountability for historic offences. And then you have another part which is deal with the future, in other words on the assumption that abuse still exists how do you ensure that abuse is rooted out now rather than waiting another 27 years?”

Sarah Champion, the Labour MP for Rotherham, said she backed the current structure of the inquiry. “We ought to be more supportive of the aims of this inquiry,” she told Today.

She added: “Effectively it is broken up, it is 13 separate inquiries. The reason we want it to be whole and have this overarching inquiry is we need to know in this country is the establishment predisposed to covering up child abuse? If you do separate the inquiries into individual ones rather than keeping that overarching feature, which is what the survivors wanted, we are to lose a lot.”