Theresa May was urged by one of her ministers in the Home Office to pick former deputy Children’s Commissioner Sue Berelowitz to run the ill-fated child sex abuse inquiry eventually chaired by Dame Lowell Goddard, a judge from New Zealand.
Former Home Office minister Norman Baker told Heat Street he put forward two names to May, then Home Secretary, in 2014 when she was desperately seeking a replacement for the two previous inquiry chiefs who had quit the post – Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, and Fiona Woolf.
Baker, a former Lib Dem MP and part of the coalition government, said: “I recommended Sue Berelowitz and one other person at the time but was kept out of the loop on appointments even though it was my portfolio. My suggestions were ignored – not by the civil servants, but by Theresa May or her special advisers.”
Berelowitz had previously chaired an inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Gangs and Groups. While it was no way as vast as the inquiry Goddard ended up chairing, its scale was certainly ambitious, involving 800 children and young people; 100 pieces of submitted evidence; 25 site visits; and 100 agencies.
Another possible replacement understood to have been considered within the Home Office in 2014 was Elizabeth Filkin, the former parliamentary standards commissioner. Seen by many as the scourge of the New Labour government following her fearless investigation into Peter Mandelson’s undeclared £373,000 home loan, Filkin was hounded out of her job in 2002.
Whatever one thinks of Berelowitz or Filkin, one thing is beyond dispute: neither woman would have expected any perks on top of their £360,000 salary and both, hopefully, would have been sufficiently versed in what Goddard apparently referred to as “local law”.
Goddard’s deal comprised: a housing allowance of £110,000 a year plus £12,000 for utility bills; four return flights a year to New Zealand for her and her husband; two economy return flights a year for her family; and a car and driver for official business.
May has been remarkably quiet on the topic of the Goddard fiasco considering her fingerprints are all over it.
Who else did she veto?