UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian
Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Friday 31 October 2014
When Theresa May, the home secretary, stands up in the Commons on Monday to tell MPs what she intends to do about the child abuse inquiry in the wake of Fiona Woolf’s resignation she will face an almost impossible task.
The loss of Woolf after the resignation in July of her first choice, Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, in the face of similar nebulous allegations of a connection with an establishment figure who may face criticism in the enquiry means that the task has rapidly turned from being flawed to futile.
May is right to say that the child abuse panel should carry on with its work while a new chairman is found and that a pre-appointment confirmatory hearing should be held for the eventual candidate. But it is hard to see how a substantial figure can be appointed who will have sufficient legal or child protection expertise who won’t face accusations of being an establishment figure.
When Lady Butler-Sloss was forced to go it was because the Home Office had failed to do the elementary due diligence that would have established that the role of her brother, Lord Havers, a 1980s attorney general, was already the subject of criticism among child abuse survivors and their campaigners.
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