Children are the most vulnerable members of our society.
They rely on adults to make the right decisions in the best interests of their welfare.
And it is vitally important that professionals charged with this responsibility get it right when their parents don’t.
Claire Boyle clearly wasn’t capable of looking after children.
That had been made clear in court on four previous occasions, before she appeared for a fifth time.
It is worrying then that social workers allowed this repeat offender to continue to have children in her care.
One of her victims was wandering the streets in his pyjamas at just four years old prior to Boyle’s latest court appearance.
The other boy was two and was kept in a homemade cage.
Boyle’s miserable track record of neglect started in 2014 and lasted until 2018.
On one sickening occasion, she tried to sell a baby for £1million.
The Significant Case Learning Review has, predictably, found that the needs of one of the boys in Boyle’s care was “lost”.
Investigators have said that those tasked with monitoring Boyle need more adequate training.
Thankfully her victims were rescued, avoiding a more tragic outcome.
It is crucial the recommendations of this report into her cruelty are properly implemented.
Tories put Brexit before pandemic
No country was fully prepared for the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
The speed with which the virus spread around the world caught all experts by surprise.
But some governments managed to respond faster than others. Tragically, Westminster was not one of them.
UK ministers locked down too late and allowed stocks of personal protection equipment to dwindle.
A report by the National Audit Office now gives an idea why.
In the year before the first lockdown, many civil servants were being told to prepare for a no-deal Brexit.
It meant contingency planning for other potential emergencies fell by the wayside.
We’ll never know the full extent of the damage caused by the Tories’ obsession with leaving the EU.
Yet when the history of the pandemic in the UK is written, it’s likely Brexit will feature prominently in the reasons why ministers took so long to respond.
