Douglas Carswell

While Daniel Pelka was starved and beaten, bureaucrats ticked boxes

In the last six months of his life, four year old Daniel Pelka was seriously underfed. Visibly malnourished, he constantly tried to take food from his classmates' lunch boxes.

But here's the really shocking thing. Daniel spent those final, hungry six months of his life at a school.

It was in the classroom that his teachers observed "Daniel's continued obsession with food". It was they who noted how the thin four year old was "always focussed on eating whatever he could obtain".

It was the deputy head no less who noted Daniel was not growing.

It gets worse. He showed up at school with injuries. Not once. Not twice. But repeatedly.

That's right. A starving child was recognised to be constantly hungry and not growing. And injured. Yet none of the adults aware of this seemed able to act decisively. Why?

Reading the serious case review – itself a masterpiece of officialese and obfuscation – it seems there was a culture of compliance, not common sense.

Shortly after Daniel had been reduced to digging up and eating the beans his class mates had planted, what did the Education Welfare Officer decided to do? Complete a Common Assessment Framework.

The boxes were ticked. Training was complied with. Meetings were held. Meanwhile a little boy went hungry and his injuries grew worse.

Officialdom's culture of compliance produced only inertia and incompetence. This should make us alarmed and very, very angry.

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