Dame Lowell Goddard: Concerns Were Raised, Home Office Reveals
By Sandra Laville
The Home Office admitted for the first time on Friday that concerns about the conduct and professionalism of Dame Lowell Goddard had been raised with it six days before she resigned as chair of the national public inquiry into child abuse. Goddard had earlier branded the claims made in the Times, including the suggestion that she linked Britain’s child abuse problem to its population of Asian men, “totally false”. In a statement, the Home Office said that concerns were raised about Goddard by people within the inquiry on 29 July. They were advised to take their worries up with the chair. Six days later, Goddard resigned. The admission that there were issues of concern that led to the resignation raised questions about the evidence given by the home secretary, Amber Rudd, to MPs on the matter. Rudd told the home affairs select committee last month that Goddard had quit in August because she was lonely. She made no mention of her department being made aware of concerns about the conduct of the New Zealand judge. Making her debut appearance in front of the influential home affairs select committee in Westminster, Rudd, citing a letter from Goddard, said: “I think she went … because she found it too much for her, and although she could contribute to it and there was some good work done in the past year, ultimately she found it too lonely.” The Home Office statement indicated that Goddard, who was appointed in February 2015 by Theresa May after the previous chair, Fiona Woolf, stepped down, had resigned after being confronted with concerns about her conduct. The department was unable to say whether similar concerns had been raised before that date, as questions were asked about how much May had been told during her time as home secretary. A Home Office spokeswoman said: “On July 29 the Home Office was made aware of concerns about the professionalism and competence of Justice Goddard. The permanent secretary advised the inquiry that as they were independent, they should raise this directly with the chair. It is understood that they did this. No formal complaint was made to the Home Office. Justice Goddard resigned on August 4.” Goddard issued a detailed rebuttal of allegations of racist and abusive behaviour made by the Times on Thursday. In her statement on Friday, she revealed “the time pressure” on her appointment in 2015 as the then home secretary, May, was preparing to announce it just weeks after the New Zealand judge was first approached. May has insisted that Goddard was fully vetted before being appointed. She told MPs last February: “Justice Goddard has already been through substantial checks and in-depth interviews as part of the due diligence process.” Prof Alexis Jay, the fourth chair to be appointed since July 2014, will soon publish a review of the inquiry’s workings in an attempt to streamline the vast investigations into a more manageable undertaking. Victims who are core participants in the inquiry into institutional child abuse and possible cover-ups are to be sent a statement by Jay on Monday, before it is released to the public. The following day, she will give evidence to MPs on the home affairs select committee in an attempt to drive the troubled inquiry forwards after major setbacks in recent weeks. The home affairs select committee will raise the claims about Goddard when it questions Jay, who has been involved in the inquiry since it was set up. Goddard said in her statement that she had “never used racially derogatory language” at the inquiry’s headquarters, as the Times’s sources claimed. She said she had not been motivated to take the role at the helm of the inquiry by money, but “out of desire to help the country solve its awful problems with institutional child sexual abuse”. “I have never used racially derogatory language at IICSA’s Millbank headquarters ... I was never warned by a ‘senior [unnamed] official’ that ‘you can’t say those things in our country’,” she said. “The specific allegations of racially derogatory remarks are totally false. I categorically never said that ‘Britain has so many paedophiles because it has so many Asian men’.” She added that it was “totally untrue” that she had threatened to “take this inquiry down with me”, and absolutely rejected being rude and abusive to junior staff. “I had a very warm relationship with the inquiry staff, particularly with members of the victims and survivors panel,” she said. She also rejected claims that she was “overly impressed by breeding” or “judged people according to their social status”. “The concept of social status, or ‘class’ as it is often referred to in the UK, is not a concept familiar to those who live in New Zealand and certainly not a concept espoused by me,” she said. Labour MP Chuka Umunna, a member of the committee who is campaigning to be its new chairman, said: “I will certainly be asking questions about this. What we are hoping is that on Tuesday Prof Jay will give us some confidence that the appearance of chaos and crisis from the outside is not borne out by the reality of the work of the inquiry.” Since Jay took over, the inquiry has seen its two most senior lawyers, lead counsel Ben Emmerson QC and his deputy, resign, and also lost a barrister who was working on the investigation into the late Greville Janner. Goddard was appointed by May to succeed two previous chairs – Elizabeth Butler-Sloss and Woolf – who had stepped aside after concerns were raised over their links to the establishment and potential conflicts of interest. Her own abrupt resignation in August, when she described the inquiry as being weighed down by a “legacy of failure”, prompted calls for a reassessment of its work and scope. Jay’s review, it is understood, may conclude that some investigations and public hearings should become discussion forums and case reviews to air the issues in a more concise way, rather than the agreed quasi-judicial public hearings where witnesses give evidence under oath. The review may also recommend that many of the victims who expect to give evidence in public hearings should be channelled into the Truth Project, the arm of the inquiry in which victims give private testimony about their abuse. Jay has said she will inform core participants of the results of her review to tell them about the changes and invite their views. In a letter to participants on Friday, inquiry lawyers said: “The chair is due to appear before the home affairs select committee next Tuesday. In advance of that, on Monday afternoon, I expect to circulate a statement to all core participants from the chair before it is published on the website later that day.”
|
.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.