MPs failed to take on safeguarding issue, choosing to posture over Phillip Schofield instead - David Behrens

Some of that has spilled into the open this week with the downfall of Phillip Schofield, the too-good-to-be-true co-host of ITV’s This Morning, who carried on a secret affair with a male colleague before “coming out” to viewers as gay.

I know what you’re thinking – and you’re right; I don’t care, either. I’ll just say that when he revealed himself to the nation I’d never been less gobsmacked in my life.

But what does irk me is the sanctimony that has greeted his downfall, especially from politicians spewing spurious concerns about safeguarding people in the workplace and protecting employees from predatory bosses. It’s an easy stance for MPs to take because they know they will never have to do anything about it.

We don’t know who was controlling whom at This Morning or whether anyone was coerced. It would be different if it had happened at the BBC because public money would have been involved. Different, too, if there were an alleged cover-up in parliament itself over – oh, I don’t know – someone’s WhatsApp messages from during the pandemic. Taking sides on something as divisive as that could seriously harm an MP’s career prospects.

But an inquiry into Phillip Schofield and his co-host Holly Willoughby, such as the one the Commons media committee is planning next week, is gesture politics at its most self-righteous. It’s pointless, too, because it has nothing to do with MPs; it’s an in-house disciplinary matter for the HR department at ITV.

There is, however, a manifest real-world example of safeguarding that falls squarely into MPs’ laps and it’s one they have failed conspicuously to take on.

While Phil and Holly were hogging the headlines, Professor Alexis Jay was complaining to those who would listen that ministers were failing to grasp the need for action on her widely publicised report into child sex abuse.

This, you may recall, was commissioned after repeated sexual offences against young girls in Rotherham. More convictions followed across the North, all of them connected by the common thread of victims being ignored or disbelieved by police and social workers.

Professor Jay said the gutless ministerial response to her latest report would mean the abuse would now be allowed to continue unchecked.

So much for safeguarding.

Her inquiry had taken seven years and concluded that children were being sexually exploited by networks all over England and Wales, in the most degrading ways possible.

But while reports such as this are easy to commission, they are harder to implement. The protagonists are not synthetic TV stars with microphones clipped to their jackets; they are victims without a voice, whose plight is compounded by sensitive social issues that policymakers are afraid to confront.

So while ministers are keen to say how much money they spent on the report – somehow it cost £186m – they are reluctant to commit more to wreak change. Words are cheap; action less so.

Suella Braverman’s response in the Commons last week was a masterpiece of disingenuity: change would take time, she said; there would be more safeguarding but not the new child protection authority the report had recommended because its functions were “already covered by other bodies”.

Really? Would these be the same bodies that turned a deaf ear for so long while children suffered in silence?

As Professor Jay saw it, the Home Secretary’s forensically-worded statement betrayed her determination to do as little as possible. Some recommendations were deemed to be ‘accepted’ when they clearly were not; others were conditional on yet more consultation. None had a timeline or action plan attached. The problems were simply being pushed down the road.

Seldom has there been such a convincing demonstration of the shallowness of contemporary politics – a world in which unlimited lip service is paid to buzzwords that trend on Twitter but not to running sores that actually need ministering.

Protecting Phil from Holly, or vice versa, is one thing; keeping vulnerable young people safe on the streets outside the studio is quite another.