Scottish Parliament petition for inquiry into alleged mishandling of child-safeguarding concerns deserves your signature – John McLellan

A petition calling for the Scottish Parliament to launch an independent inquiry into the treatment of whistle-blowers, particularly within Edinburgh’s children’s services, has received over 500 signatures in under a week. Revelations in the city council this week show why it’s badly needed.

A petition is calling for MSPs to launch an independent inquiry into claims about children services in Edinburgh and other parts of Scotland (Picture: Press Association)

Two reports have been produced and dismissed as a whitewash by staff who were brave enough to raise the alarm about abuses going back years, and many more had their concerns dismissed by the supposedly independent report team.

When the second report was published this year, there were assurances everything would be sorted, robust procedures introduced, and the bad apples had left. Everything was now rosy, we were told.

The SNP-Labour administration of the time then did its best to close down debate on one of the worst scandals to hit any Scottish local authority in recent history. It was, apparently, all a political game being played by the detested Tories.

But purely by chance, a random audit sample has revealed that subsequent recommendations for effective management had been changed by a senior officer without consultation which, according to a report presented this week, meant there was no way of knowing if some reforms had been implemented or not.

“The whistleblowing register and summary table omitted some wording from the original investigating officer’s recommendation,” said the audit report. “The officer revisions meant some context from the original recommendation was not tracked through to completion.”

It confirmed “the wording was changed by the service director responsible for completion of the recommendations,” and that the council’s whistleblowing team had not been told an officer had unilaterally decided that a recommendation was not appropriate.

The petition’s authors, including ex-SNP councillor Alison Dickie who was ostracised by her own group for standing up for victims and what she believed to be right, maintain that the cover-up culture within children’s services is still in existence and this new evidence is ample proof they have reason.

Almost as bad, at this week’s governance committee meeting when this matter was raised by Conservative councillor Phil Doggart, no relevant officers were on hand to offer an adequate explanation and chief executive Andrew Kerr belatedly joined the meeting and promised an update within a week.

There should be no need for updates because after all the council has been though on these harrowing issues, the senior team should be all over it, but when those at the highest levels feel empowered to alter instructions without notice, the serious questions about Edinburgh Council’s management culture remain.

It’s all very well to blame strikes and the death of the Queen as distractions, but the signs of carpet-sweeping were there long before the summer’s events.

The petitioners, amongst them whistle-blower representative Christine Scott and ex-Labour councillor Bill Cook, deserve credit for their determination and at least now there’s a chance this sordid affair will be discussed in the Scottish Parliament, as it should always have been.

Its roots are in the Edinburgh scandals, but the need for a national inquiry goes much further, with allegations of child-safeguarding concerns being mishandled by Borders, Aberdeenshire and East Lothian councils and even the General Teaching Council for Scotland.

If you want to help ensure those raising concerns about public services do not have the system turned on them, sign the petition now.