The commentator William Barclay recalls a fable about three demons
who were being sent by their leader Satan to destroy the human race. “How are
you going to do this,” Satan asked them. The first said: “I will tell them that
there is no God.” Satan responded: “You will not fool many. They know God
exists.” The second said: “I will tell them there is no hell.” Satan answered: “They
won’t believe you.” The third demon said: “I will tell them there is no hurry.”
“Ah, that is good,” Satan replied, “you will ruin thousands.”
I was thinking about that in reading part Ben Shenton’s
submission to the Jersey Care Inquiry. Ben was Assistant Minister for Health
and then, briefly, Minister for Health.
So we are on about 7 to 10 years from
the time that Paul Le Claire described when Health and Social Services Operated
under the Committee system.
It is a culture in which there are still failings and delay –
as Ben says: “you could probably fill this room with reports that have been
commissioned by States and not acted upon. It is a political process normally
to keep something at bay or to just keep complainants happy.”
While some items were kept out of the minutes with the
Health and Social Services Committee, the change from a committee system to
Ministerial government seems to have had a far greater impact on how records
were kept – when Ben asked “can I have a copy of the outstanding issues and the
minutes of meetings you had with the previous minister”, he was told that it
was just informal conversations which were not recorded.
This seems to have been done certainly with the connivance
of the officers, as they did not like him bringing in a regime of minuting
discussions – so that he could monitor progress. Verbal briefings are much
better, I am sure, at concealing procrastination.
And it also allowed strategic developments to take place
which would be unrecorded. The Police Chief, Graham Power, was present at a meeting
of Chief Officers who were discussing – informally, and without minutes – how to
remove the Health Minister Stuart Syvret.
It is only because Mr Power had the
foresight to make a written file note immediately after that meeting that we
know it took place. This does not make for transparent government, to use the
popular cliché which is such a favourite today.
There was clearly a culture of closing ranks against Stuart
Syvret and that certainly led him to react in way which paved the way for his
dismissal. But Ben Shenton, who was at one time quite outspoken about Lenny
Harper, also found the same culture endemic when he took over.
Have lessons been learned? It is difficult to tell because
those in positions of power tend not to rock the boat, and of course, the Quangos
of Jersey – Telecoms, JEC, Jersey Water, Housing Shadow Board, and the new
Ports Committee are littered with ex-politicians – usually with rather a tidy remuneration
for relatively little work. They are not going to spill the beans and lose out
on what is rather a nice way of easing their retirement from the States. It is usually those who are assistant ministers who become marginalised that will tell us what is really going on, and most of those don't want to rock the boat while the "greasy pole" of preferrement awaits.
A Culture of Delay
Ben Shenton
I think when you have to look back you will no doubt be well
aware or become well aware that the person that was removed as head of the
Child Protection Committee was Iris Le Feuvre. Iris Le Feuvre was a very, very
good friend of Senator Frank Walker, who was the Chief Minister at the time.
We will never know whether if the Head of the Child
Protection Committee had been Ms Jane Doe whether we would then have had the
events that followed.
The Council of Ministers has no control over individual
departments on business that doesn't overlap
and I don't think a lot of people realise this. So when you are Minister
for Health, if you have an area of responsibility that doesn't overlap with
another department, you are not beholden to the Council of Ministers in how you operate that policy.
This system works okay in the UK, because they have a party
political system. So in the UK if you have got your Health Minister, he is then
constrained by the policies of the party and the political whip to keep him in
line.
Because Jersey has no political parties, it is down to an
individual that has no control to actually keep them in line. So this was a
weakness of the ministerial system. We, in my opinion, we had a system designed
for parties operating with independents.
So when one of these strands of government, i.e. Health,
when the minister didn't start acting in the way that the rest of the Council
of Ministers felt that he should be acting, there was no real mechanism, as in
the UK where you have whips and policies, to actually bring that person back
into line. So it was almost like the nuclear option of you have to remove
someone if they are not acting and therefore you need to establish some sort of
event or something that would allow you to remove that person, because you also need the
support of the chamber.
Well, within Children's Services, when I became Assistant
Minister for Health, Iris Le Feuvre had been
removed as head of the Child Protection Committee and she had been
replaced by June Thoburn. Now, if we go all the way back to when I started this
and I said I'm an investment manager, I don't give -- I don't tell a consultant
how to operate on a patient or give any sort of things outside my expertise, I
have got expertise in management and pushing things forward, but I'm not an
expert actually this the day to day detail of it.
Now, this was a very positive step because Iris Le Feuvre
was not an expert in child protection issues and yet she was appointed to that
position because of who she knew and who she hung round with, as opposed to her
competency and her professional qualifications.
So putting an expert in charge of the Child Protection
Committee, which is something Senator Syvret
did, was very much the first step to making the States of Jersey a
little bit more professional. But it upset a lot of people, that is the problem.
Andrew Williamson came in, and that was at the behest
primarily of the Council of Ministers, to look at Children’s Services and again
we had someone, a professional in their field, coming in to look at the
department. And then further down the line we had the Howard League, which –
that was Senator Syvret's recommendation, coming in to look at the way we held
vulnerable children.
So these were all steps where we were replacing the old
system of people taking roles because they were known on the Island or because
they knew the right people and replacing them with professionals, and this was
a very important step, and long may it continue, because there is still a lot of work to be
done.
Q: To what extent has the introduction of statutory
ministerial collective responsibility made a difference?
Well there is no opposition now; I don't know whether that
counts. Well there is collective responsibility, but there is no policy to be
collectively responsible for. So again, it is a bit of a mess.
I mean, you could probably fill this room with reports that
have been commissioned by States and not
acted upon. It is a political process normally to keep something at bay
or to just keep complainants happy that you will get an independent review. The
Kathie Bull Report was not fully implemented.
Q: You go on to say that ministerial government was set up
without any proper checks and balances and that you therefore decided your own
remit and made your own decisions. What sort of checks and balances do you
think would have worked and may work in the future?
A. I think what they need to do, or the government needs to
do is to have a strategic plan that is not a woolly, mama and apple pie
document, but is actually a detailed document as to what they will achieve and
put timeframes in, as to when they will
achieve it. So that people can see whether the government is actually
performing to their expectations.
Q: Mr Shenton, during your time as a minister and given
specifically your private sector experience in financial management, when you
took over the department, were you provided with any management information,
for instance in respect of performance and outcomes?
No. In fact, I would have to say that I have never come
across such a complete mess in my whole life. I took over and I said "can
I have a copy of the outstanding issues and the minutes of meetings you had
with the previous minister" and they said "we don't keep any records
of that", it was all just conversations and so on and so forth. So I had
to institute a regular Friday minuted update and with that, we would have
recorded outstanding issues and deadlines and then we would revert back to find
out whether things had been done, and if they hadn't been done, why they hadn't
been done, but none of that was in place when I took over.
Q. A very quick follow-up on that: did you implement audits
on performance and outcomes, or ...?
I wasn't there really long enough. We were just starting to
get -- I was only in the job 20 for 12, 13, 14 months, I think. We were getting
there, but then the new Chief Minister didn't want me there, so ... I had
outstayed my welcome.
In paragraph 30 you address what is called the culture of
closing ranks, and you say the greatest weakness of the States, which you
describe as being still very much prevalent within the public sector, is
closing ranks. You give as an example the way in which the department had
reacted to the mistreatment of children by the Maguires and I am sure you are
aware, Mr Shenton, the Inquiry has heard extensive evidence about the Maguire
scandal. You say this has been the default position of the States. What exactly
do you mean by closing ranks? It may be very obvious, but in the context of
politicians, what should we understand by that?
I think it means dealing with a matter in a manner which
causes the least amount of ructions within the service. It is far easier for
the States to pay off or to make someone exit quietly than have a full-blown
criminal investigation or inquiry or so on and so forth. The Civil Service
themselves have a cultural problem which exists today where they find it very,
very difficult to take criticism, and instead of taking criticism positively
and using it as a sort of robust two-way sort of argument as to how something
should be done, they tend to, and they still react in very much a retrenchment,
sort of put the barricades up manner, and I'm not quite sure how you are going
to change that, to be honest with you.
Q: How do you say the department or the service closed ranks
over the Maguire scandal?
A. Well, obviously they found -- I mean, again, and this is
something that I wasn't -- if you are asking me as Ben Shenton now, because as
Minister of Health & Social Services that wasn't an issue, because that was
before my time, it was long before my time as minister. That had been dealt
with long before. So this is just my opinion as Ben Shenton. I mean, it was far
easier for them to pay off the Maguires and sort of give them a good reference
to move on than it was to actually look at the issues. And unfortunately for
the children that were affected, if you got a child in care and a respectable
person in authority, the onus up to now would always to believe a respectable
person in authority, as opposed to the child in care.
I think through this whole saga if you -- no one within this whole Inquiry comes out with any
credit, not myself, nobody, nobody comes
out with any particular credit through this, and there has been some pretty
horrendous victims as results of negligence and the systems in place and so on
and so forth.
And I know most of the players on the judiciary, the
political side, within the services themselves and I can honestly say that I
don't think anyone operated with any malice or any bad intention. But if you
are used to doing things in a certain way, you can perceive that you are doing
good when you are not, because you are not aware of the damage that you are
actually doing.
And I think -- you know, you are going to interview the
Police later on, and, you know, certainly I'm not 100 per cent happy with the way they handled
the affair, but I can understand the frustrations they had with the judiciary.
I can understand why the judiciary did what they did, I can understand why
Senator Syvret did what he did, and I can understand why the Council of
Ministers did what they did. There was no malice there, but if you are
operating almost with blinkers, you are not going to see the damage that you
are doing. And me as a politician didn't see it either. And it is only with the
benefit of hindsight and looking back that you can say yes, the judiciary
didn't take notice of the experts in Social Services. They were not experts in
childcare.
Yes, I can understand why Harper and Power were frustrated
at the actions of the judiciary. Yes, I can
understand that Stuart Syvret was frustrated at not being told what was
going on in his department. Yes, I can understand the attempt of the Council of
Ministers at the time to calm the waters. So there is an awful lot to be learnt
from this. But unfortunately no one is
going to come out of it well. But there was no malice by anyone.
Q: We know from Council of Ministers' minutes that the
discussion of the Howard League invitation by
Senator Syvret was taken up by the Council of Ministers and they set out
their concerns, as it were, about him acting unilaterally without reference
back it his colleagues. When Senator Syvret was effectively dismissed from his
position, was there any move to withdraw the invitation to the Howard League?
Yes, there was, yes.
Q. Who made that attempt?
It was done through the Chief Officer of Health, Mike
Pollard.
Q. And why was that done?
It was the usual "we don't think it is necessary"
type of response.
Q: At paragraph 81 {WS000636/24}, where you are agreeing
with the conclusions reached in a particular passage of the Howard League
Report, where they have said at paragraph 80, you are quoting: "... powerful interlocking networks may
exclude and disempower those outside of the groups and make it hard for those
outside of those networks who have genuine concerns to raise them or make
complaints in an effective way. This is likely to be particularly true of
deprived, disadvantaged and powerless children."
And you go on to quote:
"An enlightened authority will recognise these risks and put in place independent checks and
balances, and methods of redress that will mitigate these risks." You say, Mr Shenton, paragraph 81: I would
agree wholeheartedly with these conclusions. I cannot imagine how hard it must
have been for a young child in care to disclose allegations of abuse when faced with this culture of
closing ranks and with the 'the power interlocking networks'. The child would
have been discredited and would not have had the power to change
anything." Then you conclude:
"Unfortunately, I do not think that anything has changed since this report was written. I do
feel that this is an issue that still needs to be addressed within the
service."
How do you come to the conclusion that nothing has changed?
I don't get the impression -- and again I'm a layperson now,
I am not in politics -- I don't get the impression, being outside the States as I am, that there
has been sufficient change within the system to do that. And I think the
children within care, I still think they
lack a voice to be heard, because if I go back to another part of my
statement, I still don't think it is coordinated
enough. If, you know, one of the children we got into care when we were
fostering came into care because
Education had noted that he didn't have any lunch, they were coming to school
without lunch, they were malnourished and everything else like that; you know,
you have Education, you have Home Affairs, you
have Social Services, and I still don't get the impression that anyone
is -- you know, if you have little
Johnny in the middle, I don't think anyone is actually taking responsibility
for little Johnny.
Education does when he is at school, Home Affairs does when
he has run away and they bring him back, and Social Services do if he has at
risk or something like that, you know,
if it becomes serious. But there is no one actually looking after him. And this
is where, going back to the children's minister concept comes in.
Q. You may recall also, Mr Shenton, that the Howard League
criticised the function carried out by the Greenfields independent Board of
Visitors; do you remember that?
I do. I mean it is a long time since I read the Howard
League Report
Q: At paragraph 73 you suggest that your own department had
lost confidence in you, I think is how I summarise what you say there. Why do
you think that had happened?
A. I'm not sure whether they had lost confidence in me. I
don't think they particularly enjoyed working with me. I think that is probably
a thing -- all of a sudden they started getting the meetings with them minuted,
they started getting set deadlines to implement things, they were starting to
be chased as to why things weren't done. It was quite a cultural change for
them.
Q: Finally, Mr Shenton, the Inquiry is in a position to make
recommendations. I know you have already qualified your view about the success
or otherwise of those recommendations being carried through, but what would you
want the Inquiry to consider in particular?
I think my own view is that there does need to be a
children's minister and I'm not totally convinced that Social Services and
Health make good bedfellows: because Health is such a large budget and Social
Services so small, it doesn't necessarily get the attention that it deserves.
There has to be a cultural change within the Island to open
up and accept the problems -- or not problems, but accept that mistakes were
made. You know, we all make mistakes. We all make mistakes. If you make a
mistake, don't try and defend it, just open and say "yes, I made a mistake".
And the judiciary made mistakes. They kept children with
parents that quite frankly had no right to be
parents, and rather than try and say "Oh yes, oh yes", they
made a mistake. And it is only with the benefit of hindsight that we know that.
But the reason they made that mistake is because they were
lawyers -- with all due respect, they were lawyers and they were not childcare
experts. And they made decisions in areas that they had no expertise and if the
Children’s Services, if you have faith and confidence in the Children’s
Services, you will accept the recommendations put to you.
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