UNITED KINGDOM
Scotsman
ELIZABETH Butler-Sloss is a woman of admirable intelligence and integrity who has contributed a great deal to public life, notably as a High Court judge. She served as president of the High Court Family Division in England and Wales, and her inquiry into the Cleveland child-abuse scandal resulted in landmark legislation on child protection.
She is the very model of a public servant, who can be proud of a long and illustrious career. And yet, despite all this, she should recuse herself from the job she was given this week by Home Secretary Theresa May.
Ms May asked her to lead a wide-ranging inquiry into the handling of allegations of child abuse by politicians and other members of the establishment in public institutions such as churches, the NHS and the BBC over a number of decades.
But questions have been raised as to whether Baroness Butler-Sloss’s ability to carry out this task is compromised by family and other connections. Labour’s Simon Danczuk yesterday said her position was tainted because her late brother, Sir Michael Havers, was the Attorney General in the 1980s.
Legal decisions taken by the government during that period might well form part of the scope of the inquiry.
It matters little that the baroness can credibly claim that she would not allow anything to get in the way of producing an honest and transparent analysis of the situation as she finds it.
Rather, the question now is whether an inquiry into an alleged establishment cover-up can be carried out by someone who is absolutely a member of that very establishment.
Those arguing yesterday that Baroness Butler-Sloss was the right woman for the job are failing to recognise the depth of public distrust of key institutions at the heart of our public life.
Rightly or wrongly, in the wake of revelations about child-sex abuse in the churches and in private schools, and the blind eye turned to paedophile Jimmy Savile, the public is in no mood to have the establishment investigated by an insider.
The common view from the outside is that the establishment, at times of crisis, closes ranks and looks after its own.
Given this inconvenient perception, any report from Baroness Butler-Sloss that concluded there was no establishment cover- up would inevitably be regarded by many as just another example of an establishment cover-up.
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