MP ‘worried’ by government silence on child exploitation

Tim Loughton, who was sacked as Children’s Minister in the department in last year’s reshuffle, said the “complete radio silence” on the issue – even though it was the responsible department – was “deeply, deeply worrying”.

Giving evidence to the Commons Education Committee, he painted a devastating picture of the Department for Education (DfE) as inefficient and bureaucratic with an “upstairs downstairs mentality”.

He likened Education Secretary Michael Gove to Mr Grace, the out-of-touch department store owner in the TV sitcom Are You Being Served? who barely knew the people who worked for him.

“Most officials have never met the Secretary of State other than when he will troop out a few chosen people for the new year party, Mr Grace-like from Grace Brothers, and tell us we’ve all done terribly well and then disappear,” he said.

“That is no way to run an important department. It is terribly anachronistic, terribly bureaucratic, terribly formal.”

Mr Loughton said that when he was a minister children and families had been a “declining priority” within the DfE, which appeared to have been further “downgraded” since the reshuffle last September.

“There is a particular area around child exploitation where the department seems to have gone on complete radio silence at a time when sexual abuse of children has never had a higher profile in public consciousness and the media post-Savile,” he said.

“That is deeply, deeply worrying and I hope that doesn’t signify any downgrading of the priority that it absolutely is.”

He said that when he became a minister he had been alarmed to discover many of the officials in the DfE responsible for drawing up child protection regulations had never even met a social worker.

“These were people who were drawing up the regulations, who were responsible for government safeguarding policy ... and too many people working in the Department for Education had never actually been out with a social worker before, which I found alarming,” he said.

“If the department is going to be a delivery department, we need to have more people who actually know about the job and what it delivers rather than producing a nice glossy brochure and thinking that that’s the end of the story.”

Mr Loughton also complained ministers never met without civil servants present.