EDITORIAL : THE GUARDIAN, UK

        

 

Ian Tomlinson death: Thoroughly disappointing

The failure to act promptly on the three officers' evidence prompts serious questions for the City force and the IPCC

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) yesterday published three reports. One was into the death of Ian Tomlinson, in April 2009, a second looked at the police media handling of the case, while the third was a particularly critical one on the police evidence to pathologists. The reports are detailed. The main one is a thorough piece of work, running to 98 pages. But it is not thorough enough.

Here's why. The Guardian reported yesterday that, two days after Mr Tomlinson's death, three Metropolitan police officers reported to their superiors that they had seen a colleague push Mr Tomlinson to the ground. The Met police passed the officers' information to the City of London force, which polices the Square Mile where Mr Tomlinson died and which was responsible for the initial 2009 investigation.

Yet the City police do not appear to have told the IPCC, or the pathologist who was due to examine Mr Tomlinson, or the coroner or, not least, Mr Tomlinson's family any of this. All this happened four days before the Guardian released video footage of the officer striking Mr Tomlinson. It was only then that the Tomlinson investigation went up a gear, setting in train a sequence of events that produced last week's unlawful killing inquest verdict, a new referral to the director of public prosecutions and, yesterday, the release of the IPCC report.

It is, of course, possible that justice will eventually be done to Mr Tomlinson in spite of the initial failures of response. Yet the failure to act promptly on the three officers' evidence prompts serious questions for the City force and the IPCC. The death of any citizen during a police public order operation is a matter of the highest seriousness. Yet the response was slow and not proportionate to the potential and, as it later turned out, the actual importance of the case. Why did the City force not raise its game as soon as the three Met officers' reports were known? Why did the IPCC not start its investigation immediately as it learned of Mr Tomlinson's death on 1 April, or on 3 April when it learned that members of the public saw the pushing incident, or on 5 April when the Observer published the first photographs of the police assault? Why, if the IPCC now knew about the three police witnesses when it finally took over the investigation on 8 April, has it released a report more than two years later which fails to acknowledge their evidence at all?

The IPCC's job is to provide a professional, independent and accountable check on police actions. It does its best with limited resources. But it did not respond effectively enough when the Tomlinson case occurred. Now, two years on, it still seems unable to see the wood for the trees or to get to the heart of this crucial case.

In praise of … dandelions

Irrepressible and raffish, this weed is a rebel, an outsider and saboteur of neat lawns and raked beds

In human terms it would be the child you would rather yours didn't play with, raggedy-muffin, snot-nosed and with a worryingly independent gleam in the eyes. How much more reassuring to go round for the afternoon to the nice, dependable Cowslips, or have tea with that pretty Bluebell girl. But if they can get away with it, children will seek out the Dandelion type every time. Who can blame them, even when cursing your way round the garden with a taproot claw or chasing windblown clocks and trying to stuff them in the bin before the seeds escape? There is something brave about this irrepressible weed, as well as raffish. A rebel, an outsider and saboteur of neat lawns and raked beds, but with seed dispersal arrangements that place it high up Charles Darwin's survival league. With an estimated 97,000,000 seeds per hectare floating from its fluffy mop, the dandelion will be here long after we have gone. But while we share the planet, those same clocks, with a puff for each hour, can help a family through the boredom of an afternoon walk with grown-ups, without cranky arguments. En masse, the flowers set a roadside verge ablaze with gold as efficiently as any daffodil-planting local council, and more naturally. Dandelions are useful in the kitchen, too, the medicine cupboard and for biodiversity as the food plant of many animal species. How better, in short, to celebrate a good, if pointless, day's dandelion-digging during the spring break than with dandelion tea afterwards, or dandelion wine?

Health service: the concession that counts

Unfortunately for Andrew Lansley, the more the small print is studied, the more it is disliked

Coming to the Commons as the face of a bill which is currently being rewritten by other people, the health secretary Andrew Lansley had a horrendous task yesterday. He tackled it by suggesting his masterplan was less about what he wanted than empowering medical staff. A pity, then, that a few hours before the chair of the Royal College of GPs, the very medics he would put in the driving seat, had said the English NHS was skidding towards a crash. The proclaimed "natural break", imposed midway through the law-making process, is in fact quite unprecedented, and it has provoked a degree of scrutiny of the devilish detail that few bills get, though many might benefit from. Unfortunately for Mr Lansley, however, the more the small print is studied, the more it is disliked.

Bismarck likened laws to sausages, saying you would do well not to watch either being made, and in the slow-motion passage of the health and social care bill, everyone can sniff out one ingredient or another than makes them queasy. For top managers the breakneck timetable is the most acute worry, and for many Liberal Democrats it is the abject lack of democratic oversight in the proposed new structures. Meanwhile, Nick Clegg – talking tough after his mauling last week – has now signalled he thinks it folly to foist purse strings on those family doctors who are unwilling or unable to take them. Each of these objections is important, and each must be addressed. But amid the great mass of concessions now on the table, it is essential to keep focused on the one which is, by far, the most important of the lot.

Even before the general election, these columns warned on the basis of documents buried away on the Conservative website that, for all the soft soap in their manifesto, the Tories would unleash a destructive gale through the service by recasting the regulator so that it actively promoted competition, as opposed to merely policing it. This is not to dispute that challenging state monopolies can sometimes improve things. And there is no doubt some public hospitals need improving, if you doubt it think Mid Staffordshire. But the experience of Royal Mail, which underwent a similar regime change some years ago, provides a chilling precedent of what aggressive regulators can do, and also of the snare that European competition laws potentially lay for public services when they are transformed into players in a market.

In medicine, of course, the complexities are infinitely greater than in mail. The patient is not sovereign as other customers might be, but is instead beholden to expert advice. Then there is the need to see to adequate training, the geographical spread and the proper integration of care, all of which requires planning. None will be properly attended to if the invisible hand is left to regulate between rival hospitals bidding for discrete procedures. Mr Lansley can point to all sorts of safeguards in his bill, but the risks can never be decisively banished until the order for competition to set off on a march with no specified end is qualified.

It is true that the Labour party that now presses this case once rigged the NHS rules in favour of private providers, and also that Mr Clegg, who is now charged with seeing to it that it prevails, has said disobliging things about the health service in the past. He also foolishly signed off on the original Lansley plan with excess haste. But none of this detracts from the urgency of what the deputy prime minister now needs to do. His instinctive tendency to regard markets as a medicine for public services is less important than it would be for a Conservative or New Labour leader, since the Lib Dems really are democrats in nature as well as name, and his party has given him explicit instruction. With the wind of public and medical opinion blowing their way, the Lib Dems now have a chance not simply to adjust the timetable and the implementation, but also redirect the marketising thrust of the plans. They must seize it.