Arthur Labingo Hughes: Starting a review of the murder of a six-year-old | child protection

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The government launched a national review of the murder of six-year-old Arthur Labingo Hughes to protect other children from harm and identify needed improvements in the agencies that contacted him before his death.

The Minister of Education, Nazim Al-Zahawi, announced the review on Sunday, that the government will not rest until it gets the answers it needs.

Arthur was tortured and killed after weeks of mistreatment during last year’s lockdown. Social services were notified of the concerns of family members who found bruises on the boy’s body, but the home visit found ‘no protection concerns’.

Arthur suffered an unavoidable brain injury while in the care of 32-year-old Emma Tustin, who on Friday was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of murder by assaulting a child in Solihull on June 16, 2020. Tustin carries a minimum sentence of 29 years, while Arthur’s father, Thomas Hughes, was sentenced to 21 years in prison for manslaughter.

Arthur’s murder shocked and horrified the nation. “I am so saddened by this horrific condition and the senseless pain inflicted on this poor boy, who was robbed of the opportunity to live his life,” Al-Zahawi said.

I can announce that this government is in the process of conducting a national review of the circumstances that led to his tragic death to determine the improvements needed by the agencies that contacted him.

“This will identify lessons to be learned from Arthur’s case for the benefit of other children elsewhere in England, led by the National Child Protection Practices Review Committee that will work with Solihull to protect the children’s partnership.”

The national review will in fact “upgrade” the existing domestic review, which was launched shortly after Arthur’s death in June 2020 but paused in the court case.

Al-Zahawi also said the government was assigning four inspection departments, covering social welfare, health, police and probation, to urgently check protection agencies in Solihull who were aware of Arthur’s case.

“All agencies tasked with protecting children at risk of abuse and neglect in Solihull will be subject to a joint targeted inspection to look at their effectiveness and advise where improvements should be made,” he said.

“We are determined to protect children from harm, and where concerns are raised, we will not hesitate to take urgent and strong action. We will not rest until we have the answers we need.”

Zahawi is expected to make a statement to the House of Commons on the Arthur case on Monday.

On Sunday, hundreds of people gathered in Solihull near the former Tustin address to commemorate Arthur. The crowd released balloons and put flowers in his memory. Others put posters and drawings on the covered building where the family lived.

Speaking on Arthur’s case, England’s Children’s Commissioner, Lady Rachel de Sousa, urged the Prime Minister not to close schools again after the emergence of the Omicron variant as the shutdown weakened the child support system.

“I think there is no doubt that the shutdown has been such a shock to the entire nation that it has weakened the support system,” she said in an interview on BBC One’s Andrew Marr programme. “But actually in Arthur’s case, he’s had a number of professionals around him, and he’s made home visits, and we’ll have to wait to hear what exactly happened there.”

She said more needs to be done to help social workers find cases like Arthur’s. The system should support the professional curiosity of social workers, not a distraction from other things. This is not a quick fix, an easy recommendation. The best places in the country to do this took three, four, five years to do it. It’s a big job but we have to do it for Arthur and we have to do it.”

Over the next few days, the Department of Education (DfE) will work with the National Commission and the Solihull Partnership to agree on a timeline for publishing the review.

“The national review takes into account the significance and scale of the circumstances of Arthur’s murder, allowing results to be disseminated across the country to improve practice and identify lessons to be learned,” the Department of Education said in a statement.

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