THE death of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes at the hands of his father and stepmother raises uncomfortable questions not only for the government but for society as a whole.
Nadhim Zahawi said that “a single, national review of Arthur’s death to identify where we must learn from this terrible case” was the government’s priority.
The Education Secretary gave a dramatic flourish to the department’s response, saying: “We will not rest until we have the answers we need.”
The minister has pressed the social care, health, police and probation services to urgently investigate the safeguarding agencies in Solihull and he appears on Monday in Parliament to make a statement that will spell out the tasks of the review.
The tragic circumstances of the six-year-old’s death has moved football crowds to sympathetic applause and millions to anger, to pity and increasingly to a concern that can only be assuaged by a forensic inquiry into the circumstances that led to his death.
Even a government as routinely tone-deaf as this one knows it must make sure every aspect of the case is investigated.
The past history of such inquiries suggests that the focus will fall most intently on any failings by the agencies involved and particularly on the performance of any individual with professional responsibility in the case.
We can predict with a fair measure of certainty that the government will strive to minimise any consideration of the reasons why the human and material resources of these agencies are so constrained, and the workloads of their staff so onerous.
And with equally predictable certainty the Justice Secretary Dominic Raab said he thought that the prison sentences imposed on those responsible for Arthur’s death were too lenient, that the government was planning to raise sentences for child cruelty and was pressing for a review of the sentence.
There will be few people willing argue that the sentences are too high, but in narrowly framing the question in this way the recently demoted Raab deflects attention from the wider context in which human beings become capable of such inhuman acts, and how.
A more reflective note was introduced into the discussion by the Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, who said that a review into Arthur’s death was not a quick fix.
The particularly tragic nature of this case and our collective sense that this will not be the last of this nature — and it is certainly not the first — compels us to demand a scrupulous investigation with a wide remit.
Already there is a dispiriting reaction which seems predicated on the medieval notion of the inherent evilness of the human subject, and equally medieval suggestions that in extinguishing the life of the perpetrators of these appalling crimes a problem is thereby solved.
But child abuse exists on a continuum which cannot be divorced from the material conditions in which people live and in which the perpetrators of abuse, who are often abused themselves, grow up.
We know that substance abuse is a factor, mental illness another, that family problems related to money often result in child abuse.
Families can be a pressure cooker for emotions with unpredictable consequences and in times of stress, unemployment, social isolation, and with complex and conflicted personal relationships, children are often the victims.
Framing the question in this way does not mitigate individual guilt and it is the task of professionals in the justice system, including psychologists, to investigate the individual pathologies.
But a responsible political approach to this question must see the human subjects, most especially the victims, in the full social setting in which lives are lived and, tragically, ended.
