What A Difference A Day Makes

It appears Ed Balls has made another U-turn.

Yesterday he said that the Shoesmith report couldn't be released in full on the advice of the Infromation Commisioner.

Yet today, according the Gdaauirn five MPs: Michael Gove, David Laws, Barry Sheerman, Lynne Featherstone and David Lammy: will be allowed to see the document, but only under 'privy council terms'. Which effectively means that they won't be able to reveal or discuss it's contents in public.

Which is bizarre.

Since according the Ed Balls - according to the Telegraph - the report contains clear evidence that Haringey council did not follow statutory procedues in relation to the handling of the Baby Peter case.

So if this is true, how precisely is anyone supposed to discuss serious matters of public policy, if they are forbidden, preseumably by rules of contempt, to discuss the specifics of that public policy and the way it was or was not implemented on the ground?

Clearly the report cannot be simply published in it's current state, as it no doubt contains the names of those convicted, and the other three children - and possibly the fourth daughter who was born while the mother was on remand - and all of these names a subject to court order's preventing them from being named: but surely it is not beyond the wit of humankind to devise a method in which the report could be published, and not contain these names: or in a form that disguised them (a la Baby P), but still allowed those with concerns in this area to study the report.

It also raises another question.

Panorama named David Preece as the man who took the decision to allow Baby Peter to return to his mother - after the period in which he had been in the care of Angela Godfrey. This information was stated as coming from a leaked police document. Yet Hackney council refute this and claim that the decision was made an a multi-agency meeting. Presumably - and this is a large presumption given the reports about the controlled way in which the authors were given access to information and witnesses - the document contains an answer to this question, as to whom did take that decision.

It is only reasonable to conclude from Ed Balls' unwillingness to reveal the information that for whatever reason, this information is politically damaging to the Labour party.

Perhaps in part because he has recieved news of the second inquiry, commisioned by him, and it might well be that this inquiry is so at odds with the Shoesmith review that he cannot risk allowing people to scrutinise and compare the two. If for no other reason than Gordon Brown went to such lengths to defend the Shoesmith review at PMQs as an accurate representation of events, on which the government were going to review and ammend future policy.

peace:)