ANOTHER VOICE
Why nobody knows, and nobody cares, how many children are missing
MATTHEW PARRIS
Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat MP for Southwark and Bermondsey, is a good and kind man. Earnest and assiduous, he is driven by a happy combination of inexhaustible energy, a genuine spirit of public service, and a flair for publicity. But nobody should sign up to one of Mr Hughes's causes without a long period of research, thought and prayerful contempla- tion, for Hughes is also an inveterate busy- body, and some of what he says is tosh. It is, then, in the tentative manner of one who finds himself impelled almost against his better judgment to a conclusion, that I say that Childline, the Children's Society, Simon Hughes and many others are right: the case for a national missing persons database is now very strong.
Two different arguments drive me to this conclusion. Both arise from last week's report (leaked to BBC Radio 5 Live) about Gloucestershire County Council's chil- dren's homes, and the curious fate of that report.
The first argument is the substantive one: the case for cutting through the tangle of documentation and communications-failure between different authorities across the land. My second proposal reflects the frus- tration shared by all who report local gov- ernment: that there seems no way to interest the national press in any issue, however grave, whose research involves making a telephone call to a town hall, or whose headline includes the words 'local authority'.
I shall deal with each argument separate- ly. An independent report, commissioned by Gloucestershire County Council after the Fred and Rosemary West mass murder trial, showed that files on 396 of the 2,268 young people who had stayed at the Coun- cil's children's homes from 1970 to 1994 could not now be found. It also showed that 50 young people were recorded as 'miss- ing', while a further 47 could not be traced. The report concluded that this trend of missing files and runaways was repeated throughout the country, and Gloucester- shire's muddle was not unusual. Fleet Street has largely ignored the report. Before we conclude that all — or any — of these children have been murdered, we need to examine more closely the real meaning of the disclosures. They may be somewhat less dramatic than at first appears. In most cases it is the files which are missing, not the children. In some cases it seems that documentation may have been transferred between authorities so that, though one authority had lost track, the track continues elsewhere. It is also true that, since the investigation began, Gloucestershire police have been trying to trace the 50 missing children, and have now traced 46. It is tempting to conclude — and spokesmen for local government no doubt will conclude — that the public should be reassured. Once this unfortunate little both- er about local authority filing systems has been sorted out and the police have made a few checks, we can return to normal.
But this begs a huge question. Why did it take a mass murder for anyone in local gov- ernment to look into these irregularities? Why did the police only start trying to trace missing children once a major investigation was under way? If up to one in six chil- dren's files may be lost, how was such a dis- grace overlooked for so long? And what further horrors of bureaucratic incompe- tence and official callousness lie hidden from our gaze, being of no current interest to local authority professionals, local coun- cillors or the national press — no interest, that is, until some grisly 'story' suddenly arouses national concern?
Isn't there a social services committee on the Gloucestershire County Council? Did councillors know about all this? Do local councillors actually know anything at all? In how real a sense is an elected local authority actually in control of its professional staff? Is democracy working at this level?
The draft report stated that 'the least trained and least experienced staff ulti- mately care for the most vulnerable chil- dren and young people in society'. I know from my own contacts that this is true beyond Gloucestershire. In September an investigation conducted jointly by Cardiff University and the Children's Society found a shocking crossover between local authori- ty children's homes and street prostitution. I know that in London hostels for the homeless, single mothers and their children are housed together with alcoholics, drug addicts, the mentally ill and the elderly and confused. Is it surprising that in this Hogarthian world people go missing and nobody knows? Is it acceptable? In a world in which what David Willetts did or didn't say to a Whip is front-page news, how are Classifieds — pages 76-78 we overlooking these children?
An attempt to provide some national description of the missing persons picture — to knock local and police authorities' heads together and co-ordinate facts seems overdue. Hughes is right. But one adds one's voice to his campaign with the gloomy thought that 'missing persons' is newsworthy but only a minor part of the problem. For every absent person whom nobody knows about, there must be scores of present persons whom nobody cares about. This brings me to a larger concern. Are local authorities the right people to be responsible for children's homes, for hos- tels, for major social provision? We have 500 MPs with nothing to do, yet central government has sloughed off responsibility, probably with insufficient funds, to a sec- ondary power whom it knows to be in prac- tice unaccountable and far from the focus of the national media.
Watch what happens to that Gloucester- shire report. I predict that it will sink with- out trace. Never underestimate the extent to which what we call 'the news' is shaped by the whim, caprice and sheer sloth of those we call `newsgatherers'. The press are simply not interested in local government. If a story falls within the competence of a minister, we know how to pursue it. We understand the mechanisms of central gov- ernment and its accountability to Parlia- ment; we know how the party battle works at Westminster, and how to play it. We have the telephone numbers of those we need to speak to. We lunch them.
Local government is different — a mat- ter, surely, for our 'local government corre- spondent', and the inside pages at most. What happened to the Monklands story? To the Birmingham story? To the Islington children's homes story? We just about get Shirley Porter onto the front pages by call- ing Westminster a 'Tory flagship', and Wandsworth 'Mrs Thatcher's favourite council'. Otherwise — sorry: local govern- ment? No story.
This only reflects our readers' prejudices, as local election turn-outs prove. The theory of local government is not working in England and Wales. It is time to remove from the town halls those important responsibilities which remain under their unscrutinised and erratic control.
Matthew Parris is parliamentary sketchwriter of the Times.
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