Pressure on police over Soham blunders

David Blunkett will today condemn police blunders which allowed Soham killer Ian Huntley to land a job as a school caretaker.

The Home Secretary will throw his weight behind a scathing report which identifies a series of failures in the way forces stored intelligence and conducted vetting checks.

Humberside chief constable David Westwood, 55, will find his job on the line as he is accused of failings which allowed a string of earlier sex allegations against Huntley to be deleted from the records.

His Cambridgeshire counterpart, 52-year-old Tom Lloyd, will also come under fire in the report by former Whitehall mandarin Sir Michael Bichard.

Sources close to Mr Blunkett said he expects police chiefs to join with him in acknowledging that "there were things that should and shouldn't have happened".

He will brief MPs in the Commons on Sir Michael's findings and recommendations for measures to strengthen vetting and the use of intelligence by police.

But the Association of Chief Police Officers will seek to deflect the crititicism by pointing to recent improvements in the way forces share intelligence.

Child protection charities will seize on the findings to demand stronger protection for children, including police investigations into all under-age sex allegations, even where relationships appear consensual.

The Home Secretary ordered the Bichard Inquiry after it emerged that Huntley was cleared to work with children in Cambridgeshire despite a string of rape and under-age sex against him in his old home town of Grimsby.

He went on to murder 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, shocking the nation and triggering a 13- day manhunt which became Britain's biggest police investigation.

After his conviction it emerged that Humberside police had deleted records of the earlier incidents.

Mr Westwood initially blamed the decision on data protection laws but it emerged that his force had twice been warned that it was taking the wrong approach.

When Huntley applied for the job of caretaker at Soham Village College, Cambridgeshire police failed to request a vetting check from Humberside, and carried out other searches using an incorrect name and date of birth.

Both chief constables appeared before the Bichard Inquiry, where they apologised for failings by their forces but insisted they wanted to stay on to see through reforms.

Possible moves to tighten procedures include issuing regularly updated vetting "passports" for people seeking to work with children, and setting up a national database for police intelligence reports, which are currently held on a force-by-force basis.

A separate report today from former Royal Ulster Constabulary chief constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan will identify mistakes made by Cambridgeshire officers in the days following the disappearance of Holly and Jessica.