Lack of justice for Baby J is rooted in way we are governed

At just 11 weeks old, a baby begins to engage with the world around them. Their concentration as they listen intently for a familiar voice is unmistakable.
The way they track moving objects with curious eyes gives them an air of comical alertness. However, for most parents, it’s that first heart-melting smile at around the three-month mark that symbolises the emergence of their personality.
At a time when other babies are being cooed over and welcomed to their families, Baby J was taking his last breath, neglected, abused and left, ultimately, to die. A post-mortem examination revealed a string of internal injuries: seven broken ribs, a broken collarbone and a fractured leg. The suffering and death of such a young baby at a time when unconditional love and protection is the norm is as shocking as it is rare.
• We’ll reassess child protection after Baby J inquiry, says Swinney
The stories of infants who are harmed by their parents or carers are so profoundly disturbing that we remember their names for decades: Peter Connelly (Baby P), Liam Fee, Victoria Climbié, Daniel Pelka, Khyra Ishaq, Dylan Seabridge. It is a deeply disturbing roll call of young children whose deaths have led to grief, soul-searching and a re-examination of how we protect the most vulnerable in society.
Usually, in such scenarios, a serious case review uncovers the missed opportunities, the thinly stretched resources or the lethal shortcuts taken by those charged with protecting such children. It’s a miserable, grim, but ultimately vital, epilogue to a budding life quashed in the most horrific of circumstances. However, in Baby J’s case, nobody has been held to account.
He died a decade ago, his short life and death shrouded in mystery. There has been no prosecution and no accountability. The sparse information in the public domain raises more questions than answers. That we know anything about Baby J is due in part to the Scottish Tory MSP and leadership candidate, Russell Findlay, and an ongoing campaign by this newspaper.
Findlay, a former crime reporter who has faced death threats and an acid attack on his doorstep as a result of his job, has repeatedly raised the issue at Holyrood and is calling for an inquiry. The boy, known only as Baby J for legal reasons, was found dead in West Lothian on June 15, 2014. His parents were originally from England, where they were known to social workers.
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Earlier in 2014, his 19-year-old mother, who was pregnant at the time, and his 18-year-old father moved to Scotland, allegedly to evade social services in their native Lancashire. A nurse and a social worker, who knew the family, petitioned to have the baby placed on the child protection register a month before his birth.
Heartbreakingly, this request was overruled by members of West Lothian child protection, made up of representatives from NHS Lothian, Police Scotland and the local authority. The cross-border element of this case is disturbing and has allowed those responsible for Baby J’s abuse to evade justice for ten years. After his death the parents, who have never been named and never been prosecuted, returned to England.
Specialist homicide investigators for the Scottish Crown Office looked into the baby’s death following an initial police report. However, Scotland’s Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) previously stated that it had found insufficient evidence for a criminal prosecution. Of particular concern is the decision by West Lothian child protection to recommend that no serious case review be carried out, after an initial case evaluation.
Findlay’s tenacity has led to a reopening of the case. The lord advocate, Dorothy Bain KC, is re-examining aspects of the case. She says COPFS’s experience and expertise in investigating deaths such as Baby J’s has “developed significantly” in the intervening decade. It seems a remarkable admission that ten years ago the expertise was not available to prosecute.
• Parents of Baby J ‘must be held to account’, says senior MSP
Bain has also warned that the investigation could take some time because of its complexity, even though Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister, told parliament two years ago that “clearly lessons need to be learnt” in the case. More recently, the first minister, John Swinney, said the case was likely to trigger a review of Scotland’s child protection regime and Clare Haughey, the children’s minister, has invited West Lothian’s chief social worker to discuss it.
Meanwhile, the parents are protected by anonymity. It is important not to prejudge the findings. However, given the emphasis Sturgeon and her successor as first minister, Humza Yousaf, placed on child welfare, Baby J’s parents’ ability to evade the system designed to protect children — in part by slipping over the border — is astonishing. The case highlights the urgent need for cross-border co-operation between authorities in England and Scotland of a kind that the Scotland Act of 2016 was meant to foster and which has never been a priority in Scotland.
It also speaks to a wider malaise: the SNP government’s track record of devising policy that grabs headlines rather than changes outcomes. We have Finnish-style baby boxes when what we need are more midwives and safer labour wards. We have the now aborted Named Persons Act, with its mooted state-sponsored guardian for every child, when professionals dealing with the most troubled families are struggling to access resources and are stretched too thinly.
A populist administration that came to power nearly two decades ago on a wave of freebies has shied away from implementing difficult, unpopular, but more effective, strategies. It, and we, are now paying the price.
Make no mistake, Baby J’s death is a rare tragedy and those responsible are the perpetrators of his abuse and neglect. That is not the authorities and not the government. But the buck-passing and evasion that have led to a lack of justice in this case have their roots in the way Scotland is governed. The thistle is endlessly contemplated but never grasped.