Lord Laming obituary

Herbert Laming, Lord Laming, who has died aged 89, was the outstanding public servant of his generation in children’s and social care. Few exercised greater influence over the development of English social services over the last quarter of the 20th century, and none commanded greater respect across the political and professional divide. It was therefore no surprise when, following the murder in 2000 of Victoria Climbié, an eight-year-old girl, ministers turned to Laming to chair what became the most consequential child protection inquiry of modern times.

Victoria died after months of sustained abuse at the hands of her great-aunt, Marie-Thérèse Kouao, and Kouao’s boyfriend, Carl Manning. Laming’s inquiry sat for 18 months and exposed profound failures not only in frontline practice, but also in leadership, management and inter-agency communication.

No one who sat through the hearings, held at Elephant and Castle in London, could doubt the seriousness with which Laming approached that task or his determination that Victoria should receive justice. His conclusions were measured rather than rhetorical, but they fundamentally altered the organisation of children’s services in England. Whether every subsequent reform proved wise remains open to debate; but few disputed that his inquiry exposed failures that could no longer be ignored.

His report, published in January 2003, criticised senior managers as firmly as practitioners and condemned the London borough of Haringey, where Victoria lived, for a culture in which social workers lacked what he called “respectful uncertainty” – looking beyond the obvious without causing offence – when faced with possible child abuse.

Its impact was immense. The Children Act 2004, the policy programme Every Child Matters, the creation of the Children’s Commissioner for England and a wholesale restructuring of children’s services all owed much to his recommendations. Although he welcomed many of the reforms, he remained unconvinced by the subsequent integration of children’s social care into local authority education departments.

It was poignant then that the notorious “Baby P” case occurred only seven years after Victoria’s death and in the same borough. Many of the failures and shortcomings identified in the Climbié case featured in Laming’s report into the death of Baby P – the 17-month-old Peter Connelly, who suffered more than 50 injuries and had been seen by social workers, doctors and police before his death in 2007. His mother, her partner and the partner’s brother were all convicted of causing or allowing the death of a child.

Laming’s exasperation bubbled over finally at a subsequent seminar for councillors and directors of social services in London. When they confessed they were surprised at the deficits in the quality and quantity of their services, he famously told them “I am surprised that you are surprised!”

Laming was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, the son of William Laming, a public house manager, and his wife, Lillian (nee Robson). He rarely spoke about his childhood, and only a few of those who knew him appreciated how profoundly it had shaped him.

During the second world war, with his father serving in the armed forces, the family experienced periods of acute insecurity and homelessness before relatives came to their assistance. A further episode of homelessness followed after the war. Herbert failed the 11-plus examination, left school at 15 after failing his O-levels and embarked on national service in the Royal Navy as a stoker onboard HMS Flatholm.

He was rescued by a train failure while returning to his ship in Liverpool. During the delay he struck up a conversation with a fellow passenger who served on the city’s probation committee. The chance encounter led to an introduction to Liverpool’s chief probation officer and transformed his career. He retook his O-levels by correspondence – “from a hammock”, as he later recalled – while still serving at sea.

After qualifying for the probation service in Newcastle, he began work as a probation officer on the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire coalfield. The post included accommodation, enabling him in 1962 to marry Aileen Pollard, whom he had met in Newcastle. Following postgraduate study in mental health at the London School of Economics, completed in 1964, he returned to Nottinghamshire, eventually becoming assistant chief probation officer.

At only 35 Laming was appointed deputy director of social services for Hertfordshire, helping to establish one of the new social services departments created after the Seebohm reforms. In 1975 he became director, a post he expected to hold until retirement. Instead, his reputation for sound judgment and administrative ability brought him national recognition.

A complicated child abuse case in the county was not deemed serious enough to prevent his appointment, in 1991, as chief inspector of the Social Services Inspectorate when Sir William Utting announced his retirement. His tenure coincided with a period of sweeping reform, including implementation of the Children Act 1989 and the NHS and Community Care Act 1990. Almost immediately he faced the uncertainty created by John Major’s Citizen’s Charter programme, which placed the inspectorate’s future under review. He later told me that he believed he “might be out of a job within a month”.

Laming used the period to modernise inspection. Under his leadership, service users and lay assessors became integral participants in inspection work, reflecting his conviction that public services should be judged not only by professionals but also by those who depended on them. The approach has since become commonplace, but at the time represented a significant departure.

Knighted in 1996, Laming retired as chief inspector in 1998 and entered the House of Lords as a crossbench peer.

Soon afterwards he was invited by Alan Milburn, the health secretary, to chair the proposed inquiry into the safeguards surrounding the murders committed by the GP Harold Shipman. Although he accepted, a successful legal challenge by victims’ families led to a broader inquiry under Dame Janet Smith. Laming was then asked instead to chair the Victoria Climbié inquiry.

If he had one abiding disappointment, it was the abolition of the Social Services Inspectorate, whose functions passed through a succession of independent inspectorates before eventually becoming part of the Care Quality Commission. He regarded the loss of a strong social care presence within the Department of Health as a strategic mistake, though he took some satisfaction from the later creation of a national social care directorate, the Commission for Social Care Inspection, under David Behan.

Laming’s many public appointments reflected the esteem in which he was held. He served as president of the Association of Directors of Social Services, vice-president of the Local Government Association, and president of the National Homecare Association, and as a patron of Coram, the children’s charity.

In the Lords he was convenor of the crossbench peers from 2011 to 2015, and chairman of committees from 2015 to 2016. In this latter capacity he lost the battle to end the costly centuries-old practice of using vellum for recording acts of parliament, but only because Matt Hancock MP stepped in and promised that Cabinet Office money would be used to fund the £100,000 per annum process in future.

Laming was a man of unfailing courtesy, intellectual rigour and quiet determination. He possessed no appetite for self-promotion and never allowed public prominence to diminish either his humility or his respect for colleagues. In a profession frequently buffeted by political fashion few public servants have left a more enduring mark on the ideals and principles for which that profession stands.

Aileen died in 2010.

Reporting from The Guardian contributed to this story.