Bernadette Murray’s claims describe an administration making loud noises but providing little detail.
Sadiq Khan’s team made a smart decision when they hired ex-Metropolitan Police detective Bernadette Murray as a consultant. The mayor’s auditors wanted to scrutinise the force’s failures when it came to child sexual abuse and, as far as child safeguarding goes, she was something of an expert. Over the course of her 32-year career at the force, she’d become one of the go-to people when it came to tricky situations. For example, after the disastrous period of failings in Haringey, North London, when two young children who were well known to the authorities died in preventable circumstances, Murray was headhunted to join what was then a groundbreaking new inter-agency team.
Placed in an office with social workers, she was able to share crucial information that helped safeguard children, saving huge amounts of time and resources in the process. The problem, she soon discovered, was that these gains were being totally destroyed by the systematic ineptitude she found in other areas of the police responsible for child safeguarding. Important reports related to at-risk children would be ignored and disappear with terrible consequences.
Sadiq Khan’s team is accused of ignoring warnings. (Image: Getty)
In one instance, etched in her memory was a 10-year-old girl who was put in the care of a man described as a ‘pimp’, who’d assaulted both the child and her mum.
When she tried to raise the alarm about these concerns, it was shut down, or she was transferred.
Murray’s main issue wasn’t that the police didn’t have adequate systems for tracking and ensuring children were properly safeguarded; it was that they weren’t being used in the right way.
Tools that could give officers the full picture and, more importantly, provide help in developing evidence if a crime occurred were inaccessible because officers didn’t know how to use them or, in some cases, didn’t have a password.
The horrifying results were clearly visible to everyone. By 2017, the Police Inspectorate determined nine out of 10 child abuse cases handled by the Met were not up to scratch.
Sadiq Khan, who’d only just settled into City Hall at that point, had made it clear he wanted things to improve.
So his auditors called in Murray to help them explain these horrendous failings.
It wasn’t as if they didn’t listen to her, quite the opposite in fact, Murray sings the praises of their enthusiasm for understanding the complexities of the Met’s internal systems.
Clearly, they valued her input too; she was employed as a consultant, asked to train officers in the systems and then assess whether the force had improved.
But when she delivered her final damning verdict that, if anything, the situation had deteriorated, the team took no action.
Now you might say: “Why does this matter? Sadiq Khan has been in office for three terms now; surely the lessons Murray laid out about poor use of data and systems have improved?”
Well, you only need to read this response from the Met police from a couple of weeks ago to a story about the hidden scandal of London grooming gangs, in which they told me: “We are working to improve the quality of data we hold to ensure it is sufficiently comprehensive to enable us to make a definitive assessment about the issue.”
Had Murray been listened to properly in 2017, it’s doubtful this would be the case.
The sad consequence is that data collection and processes are still affecting the safety of London’s most vulnerable children.
