Climbie official blasted

A senior government social work official was blasted by the Victoria Climbie inquiry today for failing to hand over key documents to the public hearings investigating the child's death.

Denise Platt CBE, the Chief Inspector of Social Services, withheld a report which called into question the competence of her staff when they assessed the performance of social workers at Haringey council, which dealt with eight-year-old Victoria's case.

The document said her inspectors had wrongly painted a glowing picture of the children's social work department when in fact it was a shambles. However, it was not handed over until three weeks after the close of the public hearings of the inquiry last February, allowing the Social Services Inspectorate to escape any embarrassing publicity at the time.

Since the SSI is part of the Department of Health, which ordered the inquiry, that meant one branch of government had withheld information from another.

Today inquiry chairman Lord Laming, forced to reconvene the public hearings to assess the documents' impact, expressed his fury in public at "a diversion which is unexpected and unwelcome and one which will delay the publication of this report".

The inquiry is focusing on how Victoria, from the Ivory Coast, died despite being in regular contact with Haringey social services and other child care agencies. Her great-aunt Marie-Therese Kouao, 45, and Kouao's boyfriend Carl Manning, 29, were jailed for life for her murder last year.

Earlier sessions of the hearings were told that three months before Victoria's death, an SSI team visited the council and concluded that social work clients were "generally well served". Although this surprised many in Haringey social services, the council cited it as proof that they had no reason to suspect a major tragedy was imminent.

However, the subsequent report, set up by the SSI and the Audit Commission in the wake of Victoria's death and in anticipation of the public inquiry, found the conclusions to be deeply flawed and presenting "an overly positive picture".

Lord Laming, who was Ms Platt's predecessor as SSI chief inspector, invited her to attend today to explain why the second report was not handed in on time. Ms Platt sent a written statement instead, saying: "With hindsight I accept that the review was relevant to the internal inquiry. I sincerely apologise for not handing it in earlier."

The explanation and her failure to appear in person are unlikely to endear her to Lord Laming. Today he said it was for him, not others, to decide what documents were relevant.

Ms Platt also claimed to have made him aware of the second report's existence last January and said she thought he had told her it was not relevant to the main public hearings. She said he had asked her to submit it to phase two of the inquiry, which looked at child care systems in general.