Child murder is not that rare in Britain. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) says that every ten days in England and Wales one child is killed at the hands of their parents. In 2005/2006 in England and Wales parents were the principal suspect in 24 child homicide cases (44% of all cases). Each week at least one child dies from cruelty. It’s worse for infants aged under one. They are more at risk of being killed at the hands of another person than any age group of child under 18 in England and Wales. That includes knife carrying teenagers.
As if that was not bad enough a study by Dundee University using UNICEF data found that Britain has the second highest child death rate among the 24 richest countries in the world. Infants in the UK are twice as likely to die before the age of five as children in Sweden. The reason? “There is a very strong association between income inequality and under-five child mortality.”
This is a description of what happened to a two year old girl who was murdered by her parents. “Her body had 64 injuries, including at least 10 cigarette burns, scalded feet and scratches when she was found.”
There has been a nauseatingly sanctimonious quality to the synthetic outrage and pity to the killing of “Child P”. For a start a similar story could be written any week of the year. The figures above show that. The sophistication of the parents’ deceit seems to be the most troubling issue for a lot of the pundits. The twenty five per cent vacancy rate which Haringey Social Services is coping with is less of a problem. Though a hospital with a similar shortfall in doctors, nurses and cleaners would most likely see its mortality figures shoot up too. Haringey had the sort of bad luck that must have had every director of Children’s Services in the country thinking “there but for the grace of god go I”. The totemic murder of Victoria Climbie happened there and it was her death which helped reshape work with vulnerable children.
Ultra privileged Tory leader David Cameron banging on about the “seventeen year old mother who couldn’t look after her child” and the “boyfriend who couldn’t read” was the perfect counterpoint to the conditions a lot of the most vulnerable children are raised in. Communities in cities in Britain are a lot more fragile now and dispersed now than at any time in modern history. The benefits on which a single mother has to subsist are not keeping pace with food inflation and the local state’s ability to deliver effective support, especially in poorer city areas, is often barely adequate.
The hymns of praise that New Labour and Cameron’s party have sung for twenty years to risk taking entrepreneurs and City bankers were part of the ideological shift away from the post War welfarist consensus. A not so indirect result of that is that a lot of the caring services which we expect the state to provide are short of permanent long term staff. Even if it wasn’t the case for Baby P it will have helped kill some child somewhere else.
Liam redux 
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