Exclusive: Shannon review to stay secret after court injunction

Leon Rose obtained an injunction to stop the Government’s planned publication of the full serious case review, placing a fresh question mark over David Cameron’s pledge that detailed reports on the care of children subjected to cruelty will always be made available to the public.

Mr Rose, who played no part in the 2008 abduction of his daughter, won an injunction barring publication on April 10 at a family court hearing in the High Court. Since then, the injunction has been set aside but only on the understanding the Department for Education (DfE) and Kirklees Safeguarding Children Board (KSCB) do not publish the report ahead of a full hearing at the High Court in October.

Karen Matthews and her former boyfriend’s uncle, Michael Donovan, were jailed in 2009 for plotting the abduction of her daughter Shannon, then aged nine, who was missing from her Dewsbury home for 24 days in 2008. She was eventually found hidden in a divan bed at Donovan’s home in Batley Carr. Matthews was released in April this year after serving half her eight-year term.

An executive summary of the serious case review was published in June 2010. If the full report is eventually published it is expected to give more detail about why social services twice decided not to take Shannon into care despite warnings about her welfare.

Dan Wallace, of Eaton Smith solicitors which represents Mr Rose, from Huddersfield, said he was unable to comment on the injunction because of family court confidentiality rules.

Bron Sanders, independent chair of KSCB, said: “Clearly the outcome of the hearing is something that we will await with interest. At the same time, as we would not wish to pre-judge or potentially prejudice a legal process, it would not be appropriate for us to comment any further.”

The DfE told the Yorkshire Post it remained committed to full publication of serious case reviews, but the successful application to stop publication of the full Shannon Matthews report, for six months at least, provides further evidence the Government’s pledge is proving difficult to deliver.

In June 2010, the Government announced serious case reviews would, in future, be published in full to ensure greater accountability for any failures by social work staff or other public agencies. Previous policy was to only publish executive summaries, prompting concerns that some failings remained hidden from public view.

But since then publication has been sluggish. In January, the Yorkshire Post revealed only seven of 40 reviews completed since the new policy came in had been published. The picture has improved marginally since, though of 65 reviews completed since June 2010 only 20 have been published.

At the time, it was also announced that full serious case reviews of four high-profile cases completed prior to June 2010 – including the Shannon Matthews case – would be published.

However, plans to publish the four reviews, which included the cases of Baby P (Peter Connelly), Khyra Ishaq and the notorious attack on two children by two young brothers in Edlington, near Doncaster, also ran into difficulties.

Although the Baby P and Khyra Ishaq cases were published relatively promptly, the Edlington review was only published in March this year and only then on the eve of an Information Tribunal hearing brought by the Yorkshire Post after the DfE and Doncaster Council refused a freedom of information request to provide a copy.

Witness statements submitted ahead of the planned tribunal hearing made plain senior social work staff in Doncaster did not believe the report should be published at all.

Vicki Lawson, Doncaster Council’s assistant children’s director, said she “strongly disagreed” with the Government’s intention to publish.

The two brothers, aged 10 and 11 when they carried out the attack, were sentenced to a minimum of five years in a secure unit and Ms Lawson said all the professionals involved believed that publication would not be in their best interests.

When publication was finally pushed through by the DfE, Education Secretary Michael Gove criticised its content and said it had “insufficient analysis” of what went wrong.

As well as commissioning Lord Carlile to carry out a further independent review of Doncaster’s failings, Mr Gove has ordered a fresh look at how serious case reviews are published.

A DfE spokeswoman said last night that the Government remained fully committed to publication and added: “We are currently consulting on a revised model for serious case reviews (SCRs) which makes them both more effective as learning tools and easier to publish.”

The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) said it supported Government policy.

Nushra Mansuri, BASW England professional officer, said: “It’s really important that information is shared across the professions and is placed in the public domain.

“It’s important the public has some degree of confidence about how these things are managed, I would never shy away from that.”