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Shaun Wright should do ‘decent thing’ and resign says Nick Clegg

by Steve Beasant on 29 August, 2014

Liberal Democrat Leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has accused the police, council and children’s services in Rotherham of the “blatant neglect” of highly vulnerable children in the town after turning a “blind eye” to allegations of abuse.

The Guardian reports:

The deputy prime minister, who said he was sickened by the abuse, said the police and crime commissioner for South Yorkshire, Shaun Wright, who was the council cabinet member with responsibility for children’s services, should “do the decent thing” and stand down.

Clegg, who was speaking on his weekly LBC phone in, accused the head of children’s services in Rotherham, Joyce Thacker, of passing the buck after suggesting that parents should have taken greater control of their children.

The deputy prime minister told LBC: “I feel as sickened as anybody else at the suffering of so many children and the blatant neglect by the people who are there to protect them – people in the council, social services, children’s services, the police – who just turned a blind eye, just turned their backs on some of the most vulnerable people in society. Those people in the first place should feel a sense of responsibility to accept that they were in positions of authority where they could have protected these children and this report says very clearly and unambiguously that they did not do their job properly.”

The deputy prime minister said that Wright should stand aside. He said: “Please: do the decent thing, stand aside and take responsibility.”

Clegg was questioned about the comments by Thacker, who said parents have a duty to protect their children because her staff cannot monitor them round the clock. He said: “A lot of these children were known to social services … I just think the worse thing now for people who were in positions of responsibility is to start appearing at least to pass the buck.

“It is such an indignity on top of the harrowing abuse these children have suffered. It gets in the way of the job that South Yorkshire police didn’t do and, for which they have apologised, which is now to listen to the testimony of those children and go after the perpetrators.”

The deputy prime minister indicated he was interested in a proposal for a separate police force to examine whether council officials and police officers should be prosecuted for a failure of corporate responsibility. He said: “It is an interesting idea. There is always an issue when an organisation fails in its duties, and certainly in this case spectacularly failed, and then is the same organisation that is supposed to remedy those failing. These are not ancient cases, these were cases which were going on under our very noses in Rotherham.”

Clegg also said that cultural sensitivities should never be an excuse for failing to investigate abuse. He said cultural sensitivities could never be “an excuse to turn away from very vulnerable children who are subject to such harrowing abuse.”

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