The Voice of Reason: Claire Khaw or Laura Cha possible candidates to head the inquiry on historic child sexual abuse?

Saturday 1 November 2014

Claire Khaw or Laura Cha possible candidates to head the inquiry on historic child sexual abuse?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04mpr60

Eddie Mair:
What do you make of where we are now?

Tessa Munt:
It is pretty sad, I think that we have come to this, but it might have been anticipated and probably I support a lot of things that was said by your previous interviewee [Lucy Duckworth http://www.surreymirror.co.uk/Abuse-victim-travels-Vatican-lobby-Pope/story-12669219-detail/story.html].

Edie Mair:
Where do we go next then?

Tessa Munt:
Well, I had discussions with my other colleagues and with Theresa May back in July and made some suggestions about how one might find somebody who would chair such an inquiry with a panel as it was then and I think we need to be acutely aware of the fact that we are in an era of new media and so there's a part that the public can play in all of this in that we could put together a list of 25 names, one might ask the public through the world of Twitter or email or whatever and ask for the names people might suggest. I think this will balance itself out and there will be comments from people and I think we shouldn't entertain the idea that people might trash someone's reputation by putting something out on Twitter but if somebody's got a serious objection to one of the names that the Home Secretary might put forward then of course what could be done is that one could report this to for example the Chief Constable of Norfolk or some other body, but it certainly needs to be a more transparent process and we could actually let the names go out and say "Look, just because someone has been selected doesn't mean that they haven't done something dreadful in the past but we've got to make sure that we find somebody that is trusted and this process is trusted and transparent and this is the Leveson of child protection. We need to make sure that we have a system and a process that is trusted.

The other thing I suggested to Theresa May was that maybe she should look off our shores. We have a very large Commonwealth and a large number of people who live in countries who have had administrations that are very simple and similar to ours that are parallel to our administration so people will understand the process of British law and they will understand our culture and society and this is something that's gone very very wong and we have a deeply entrenched social problem within our culture. We need to expel this evil and make sure that we can start again.
We have a Governor of the Bank of England who is a Canadian. Why on earth should we not choose somebody from another country who certainly will not be on dinner party terms [with Leon Brittan].

http://www.libdemvoice.org/tessa-munt-find-new-abuse-inquiry-from-abroad-and-involve-public-in-selection-43147.html

To have the trust and confidence of the British public all that is necessary is that I satisfy the following requirements:

I understand British politics.
I understand British social problems.
I am legally-trained.
I am known for my impartiality.
I am known for speaking without fear or favour.
I have never had dinner with Leon Brittan.

If I am somehow considered not quite the thing, perhaps this other Chinese lady could also be considered to head the inquiry though she is more likely to have had dinner with Leon Brittan than me.