The one tiny crumb of comfort many took from the miserable life and brutal death of the little girl, in February 2000, was that at least nothing like that would ever be allowed to happen again.

After all there was an extensive – and expensive – inquiry under Lord Laming, a raft of recommendations and a wholesale reorganisation of children's protection services throughout the country.

The best way of honouring the eight-year-old – tortured and murdered by her aunt and her boyfriend – was to ensure no child suffered like that again.

For all the good it has done, the Laming Inquiry might have not bothered. Because it has happened again – and just a few streets away from where Victoria died in Haringey, north London.

This week we learned the heartbreaking details of the death of Baby P, treated as a "human punch-bag" by his mother, her sadistic boyfriend and a lodger – right under the noses of the social services.

The tragedy has been repeated partly because Laming ignored a significant problem – the inability of anyone in authority to take responsibility for clear failings.

Take, for example, Sharon Shoesmith, the £100,000-a-year director of children's services at Haringey, who refused to apologise and insisted that her department had done nothing wrong, adding: "We can't stop people who are determined to kill children."

Remind me again why we fund social services departments? If Shoesmith really is incapable of doing the job for which she is paid so handsomely, perhaps it's time she stepped aside for someone who is.

When pressed, Shoesmith produced a blizzard of statistics and graphs purporting to show her department is a top performer. This tells you all you need to know about Labour's box-checking and target-setting culture in the public sector. Children might be abused and killed on her watch, but no matter, at least the graphs are pointing the right way.

Could social services have prevented Baby P's death? By the time he died, the 17-month-old was suffering from a catalogue of 50 horrific injuries – not all of them recent – including a snapped spine, broken ribs and bites to his head.

You would think that in more than 60 visits by social workers in the run-up to his death, someone would have acted decisively to rescue the baby.

Putting aside the physical injuries, the mother's home was filthy, with dog faeces and dead chicks and mice on the floor.

You don't need a degree in sociology – just a smidgeon of common sense – to realise that this is not an appropriate environment to raise a child.

But common sense is in short supply in social services. When the baby was briefly taken into foster care, he was speedily returned to the arms of his abusive mother.

Why? Because social workers are terrified as being thought of as "judgmental". It is as though filth and neglect are valuable aspects of an alternative lifestyle, and to insist that the mother cared for the baby and kept the house clean would smack of "cultural imperialism".

Yes, I'm afraid many social workers really do think like that.

The scheming mother played on this middle-class guilt trip. She was determined to keep the baby because of the benefits that came with him. She persuaded the council to pay for child care, even though, naturally enough, she was out of work.

So now we are to have yet another inquiry, announced, on Wednesday, by Children's Secretary Ed Balls. No doubt there will be another raft of recommendations and more organisational musical chairs.

But, unless the corrupt philosophy at the heart of social work is tackled decisively, I'm afraid that it will not make the blindest bit of difference – and more abused and neglected children will die, surrounded by squalor and indifference.