Getting hold of the policies and analysing them

At the time I started my survey, about 40% of Coventry's schools had their safeguarding policy available online on the school's website. For the remainder, I had to write to the school and ask for a copy of the policy. Some promptly sent the policy on request, but the request appeared to cause considerable consternation at some of the schools. One headteacher responded to the request as follows.

Dear Mr West

Following advice from the Local Authority could you please let me know in what capacity you are making this request.

I replied. "I am a member of the public compiling a survey of child protection policies. It shouldn't really matter who I am, you are a public body with a statutory obligation under the Freedom of Information Act to make this information available on request, as the advice from the LEA should have made clear."

Another headteacher asked

Hello
Please confirm your child's name & class.

to which I replied "I do not have a child at the school. This is not relevant. I am a member of the public and you are a public body with a statutory obligation under the Freedom of Information Act to make this information available on request. Please note that many schools publish their safeguarding policies on their school website."

In both these cases, the response caused the school to produce the requested policy quite promptly.

Quite a number of schools did not respond to my initial request, and so I repeated the request stating that this should be treated as a formal request under the Freedom of Information Act. I received a number of interesting variations on "The dog ate my homework" as a result. Here is a typical example

Dear sir
Apologies for the delayed response to your email.

We are in the process of setting up a new website, which encountered some technical problems through no fault of our own.  As a result information has been lost, and we have had to start inputting data from scratch.

I will forward the safeguarding policy on my return to work next Monday.

This for a policy whose original was almost certainly on the headteacher's computer. In other cases I received a reply to the effect that the policy was on the school website. It had obviously just been put there, since I know it wasn't there before. I know very well how to do extremely thorough site-specific Google searches.

Somebody else decided that they weren't going to make life easy.

Dear Mr West

I am more than happy to provide you with a copy of our Safeguarding Policy. Please could you me the details of where you would like this posted to and I will ensure it is sent out tomorrow. Please can I also ask what link you have with the school.

I pointed out that since the policy was written on a computer, email was the simplest and cheapest way of sending it to me, and that the DfE itself routinely responds to FOI requests by email. The policy arrived two days later by email, with an accompanying excuse that "The reason for suggesting sending you a copy by post is that this is the usual way in which we respond to requests for policies."

One school actually attempted a flat refusal.

Good Morning Mr West
Thank you for you for your email.

Could you please let us know who you are and why you require the safeguarding/child protection policy?  Have you got children attending our school or is there a child or children you are concerned about? 

To which I replied.

I'm a member of the public compiling a survey of safeguarding policies. It shouldn't really matter who I am or why I want the information, as you are a public body with a statutory obligation under the Freedom of Information Act to make this information available on request.

They replied saying

Dear Mr West
We are presently upgrading our Website, hence the unavailablilty of this policy on line.
We are sorry we are unable to accomodate your request at present.

Time to push it a bit. I replied

Please treat this request as a formal request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I wish to receive the following information.

The Safeguarding/Child Protection Policy operated by the [name of school] as of today's date (23rd September 2013).
I have made similar requests of other schools in the past. I am fully aware that I have a statutory right to the information I have requested and that it does not fall under any of the exemptions described in the Act. I suggest that you contact the LEA for confirmation of this.

 No reply. I left it 2 weeks and then wrote again

For the attention of [name deleted], Headteacher.

On September 21 I requested by email a copy of your school's safeguarding/child protection policy. I received a reply from [name deleted] asking for the reason for my request, and then a subsequent reply refusing it. I have not thus far received the document I requested.

Please note that this request is being made under the Freedom of Information Act (2000). Schools are among the public bodies to which the Act applies. You have 20 working days from the date of the request to provide the information. 14 working days have now passed.

I look forward to your early reply.

The policy was coughed up 4 days later.

Once I had all the policies, it was time to analyse them. With 114 policies to look over, this took a number of evenings. The results were quite shocking. Remember that all the criteria are taking from one or other of the government's statutory guidance documents. These criteria form the bare minimum for a working policy which will reliably ensure that serious child protection concerns are reported to the authorities. There is no excuse for any school not to score 10 out of 10.

Of the 114 schools, only 2 scored a full 10. Let me give credit where it is due and congratulate St Thomas More Catholic Primary School and Stivichall Primary School.

The mean score across all 114 schools was just 5. That quite frankly is dreadful. Let me offer a comparison here. I also recently checked the child protection policy that was in force at Bishop Bell School when Jeremy Forrest abducted a pupil to France. The Serious Case Review into Forrest found that the school had made no contemporaneous formal records of the child protection concerns which existed about Forrest and the girl prior to the abduction, and that the school had subsequently created and backdated paperwork. Bishop Bell also scored 5.

Little Heath Primary School is the school that Daniel Pelka attended in the last six months of his life. At the trial of his mother and her partner, various teachers gave evidence not only concerning his low weight and constant hunger, but also of evidence of bruising and other injuries, including what appeared to be strangulation marks on his neck. None of these was reported as a child protection concern, and again no records were kept. Little Heath scored 2.

The headteacher of Little Heath at the time of Daniel's death is now head of Grangehurst Primary School. Grangehurst also scores 2. In fact 16 schools in Coventry score 2 or less. One school scored zero.


Here is the complete list of schools each with their score.

School	Score
Aldermans Green Community Primary School	7
Aldermoor Farm Primary School	8
Alice Stevens School	Did not respond
All Saints Church of England Primary School	5
All Souls Catholic Primary School	6
Allesley Hall Primary School	5
Allesley Primary School	4
Bablake Junior School	6
Bablake School	6
Baginton Fields School	4
Barr's Hill School and Community College	5
Bishop Ullathorne Catholic School	Did not respond
Blue Coat Church of England School and Music College	4
Broad Heath Community Primary School	7
Caludon Castle School	3
Cannon Park Primary School	5
Cardinal Newman Catholic School A Specialist Arts and Community College	4
Cardinal Wiseman Catholic School and Language College	8
Castle Wood Special School	Did not respond
Charter Primary School	4
Christ The King Catholic Primary School	2
Clifford Bridge Primary School	3
Corley Centre	5
Corpus Christi Catholic School	9
Coundon Court	7
Coundon Primary School	2
Courthouse Green Primary School	5
Coventry Muslim School	6
Davenport Lodge School	5
Earlsdon Primary School	1
Eastern Green Junior School	5
Edgewick Community Primary School	2
Ernesford Grange Community School	4
Ernesford Grange Primary School	0
Finham Park School	8
Finham Primary School	8
Focus School - Coventry Campus	6
Foxford School and Community Arts College	7
Frederick Bird Primary School	Did not respond
Good Shepherd Catholic School	2
Gosford Park Primary School	5
Grace Academy Coventry	5
Grange Farm Primary School	2
Grangehurst Primary School	2
Hearsall Community Primary School	3
Henley College Coventry	5
Henley Green Primary	6
Hereward College of Further Education	6
Hill Farm Primary School	7
Holbrook Primary School	9
Hollyfast Primary School	3
Holy Family Catholic Primary School	6
Howes Community Primary School	8
John Gulson Primary School	6
John Shelton Community Primary School	7
Joseph Cash Primary School	9
Keresley Grange Primary School	4
King Henry VIII School	7
Leigh Church of England Primary School	5
Limbrick Wood Primary School	3
Little Heath Primary School	2
Longford Park Primary School	3
Lyng Hall School	9
Manor Park Primary School	8
Moat House Primary School	7
Moseley Primary School	2
Mount Nod Primary School	6
Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Primary School	6
Park Hill Primary School	6
Parkgate Primary School	8
Pattison College	9
Pearl Hyde Community Primary School	6
Potters Green Primary School	5
President Kennedy School and Community College	5
Radford Primary School	5
Ravensdale Primary School	3
Richard Lee Primary School	2
Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School	5
Sherbourne Fields School	4
Sidney Stringer Academy	6
Sir Frank Whittle Primary School	6
Southfields Primary School	3
Sowe Valley Primary School	2
Spon Gate Primary School	9
St Andrew's Church of England Infant School	5
St Anne's Catholic Primary School	4
St Augustine's Catholic Primary School	4
St Bartholomew's Church of England Primary School	5
St Christopher Primary School	5
St Elizabeth's Catholic Primary School, Foleshill	9
St GReqory's Catholic Primary School	2
St John Fisher Catholic Primary School	4
St John Vianney Catholic Primary School	5
St John's Church of England Primary School	2
St Laurences CofE Primary School	4
St Mary and St Benedict Catholic Primary School	6
St Osburg's Catholic Primary School	3
St Patrick's Catholic Primary School	3
St Peter and Paul Catholic Primary School	6
St Thomas More Catholic Primary School	10
Stanton Bridge Primary School	4
Stivichall Primary School	10
Stoke Heath Primary School	3
Stoke Park School and Community Technology College	5
Stoke Primary School	3
Stretton Church of England Academy	6
Templars Primary School	3
The Westwood Academy	4
Three Spires School	5
Tile Hill Wood School and Language College	4
Tiverton School	5
Walsgrave Church of England Primary School	5
Whitley Abbey Primary School	7
Whitley Academy	3
Whitmore Park Primary School	8
Whoberley Hall Primary School	2
Willenhall Community Primary School	4
Woodlands Academy	3
Wyken Croft Primary School	2

 


I decided also to take a look at the two most recent OFSTED reports for Little Heath, the inspection that occurred a year before Daniel died, and the one which occurred nine months afterwards. The March 2011 inspection said this about safeguarding at the school.

Procedures for safeguarding pupils are robust; staff and the designated governor are well informed about child protection. Good practice in multi-agency work to support individual pupils is an example of the school's effective partnership work.

Less than a year after that inspection, Daniel was dead.

In January 2013, 9 months after Daniel died, OFSTED inspected the school again. This was their opinion of safeguarding.

The arrangements for the safeguarding of pupils meet requirements. The school carries out the necessary checks on adults to ensure that they are suitable to work with children.

The truly shocking thing is that the school's child protection policy for the first inspection hadn't been reviewed since 2009. Moreover it was not reviewed and updated in light of Daniel's death, at the time of the second inspection and during the SCR, the same policy was still in place. And OFSTED didn't notice. Since I picked up the policies for the survey, Little Heath has updated its policy. It now scores 3.

I have looked at the most recent OFSTED report for every school in Coventry. On safeguarding, OFSTED doesn't have a bad word to say about any of them.Either I'm terribly wrong, or OFSTED are. I wouldn't normally cleaim greater expertise on a subject than the professional inspecting body for that subject, but I do have to wonder what on earth is going on here. These policies are with few exceptions pretty dire. But OFSTED grades just about all the schools grade 2 "Good" on safeguarding. Mind you, they graded Bishop Bell School grade 1 "Outstanding" in their last inspection before Jeremy Forrest did his moonlight flit, and this a school that kept no contemporaneous formal records and backdated documents in its evidence to the subsequent Serious Case Review.

I've come across a number of other cases where there have been serious safeguarding failures at schools and OFSTED had seen nothing. Strange though it may seem, as far as safeguarding is concerned, OFSTED shows every sign of not knowing its arse from its elbow.

And that is a serious worry, because if schools that have been graded Outstanding by OFSTED can be as bad as Bishop Bell, and almost all the schools in Coventry can have substandard policies without OFSTED noticing, then the current situation is that we cannot rely on good safeguarding practice existing in any school in the country. I have no reason to think that Coventry's schools are exceptionally bad, so the chances are that the same situation exists across the whole country.


Any of the schools above who read this article, you are welcome to contact me in order to receive an explanation of how I arrived at your score. My interest is in improving safeguarding and protecting children, and I am happy to co-operate with anybody to achieve that end. There is a link with my email address on the right-hand side of this page. But don't complain to me that you have had a good OFSTED, if you have read the entire article you will see why that cuts no ice with me.

In my next article I will describe the process of bring this information to Coventry Education Department and Coventry LSCB prior to an article being published in the Sunday Times.

Does discretionary reporting work?

We now know that several schools which have had abuse scandals or tragedies where pupils have died have not been effectively implementing statutory guidelines on reporting child protection concerns.

I've blogged recently about Bishop Bell School and their complete lack of record-keeping concerning the activities of Jeremy Forrest until he abducted a pupil to France. I've blogged extensively about the efforts it took to get St Benedict's School to publish a good safeguarding policy. I've blogged about what the Serious Case Review into Daniel Pelka's death found about safeguarding at Little Heath School, which he attended during the last six months of his life.

So we definitely have a situation where scandals and tragedies have happened at schools which implement bad safeguarding, but this doesn't tell us how widespread bad practice is.

So I decided to do a bit of research. Following the Pelka Serious Case Review, I decided to check out the safeguarding policies of all the schools in Coventry, which is the local authority covering Little Heath School.

I decided to obtain the safeguarding policies for as many schools as I could, by downloading the policy from the school website where it was available, or by requesting a copy of the policy from the school, formally under the Freedom of information Act if the school didn't respond to a simple request. I obtained the policies for 114 schools, which is most of Coventry's primary and secondary schools.

I then checked each policy and assessed it against the following 10 criteria

1. The policy names and briefly describes the kinds of abuse that is covered: physical, sexual, emotional and neglect.
2. The policy describes the signs of abuse that staff should look out for.
3. The school has a named designated teacher for child protection.
4. The school also has a named designated governor for child protection
5. The policy instructs all staff to promptly inform the designated teacher of allegations or incidents of abuse, and sets out the procedure for doing this.
6. It requires that designated teacher to inform the local authority designated officer promptly of all allegations or incidents of abuse.
7. All conversations informing the local authority designated officer are backed with written confirmation.
8. The school commits to periodic safeguarding training for all staff, with advanced training for the designated teachers and head teacher.
9. The policy does not depend on external documents for a description of any reporting procedures to be carried out by the school.
10. The school policy has a revision and publication date, and has been updated within the last 12 months.

This is not all one would expect to see in a good safeguarding policy. this is the bare minimum necessary to have a reasonable assurance that effective reporting arrangements are in place so that child protection concerns are brought to the attention of social services, so that the necessary support can be provided to the child, whatever that might turn out to be.

The reasoning behind these criteria is as follows

1. The policy names and briefly describes the kinds of abuse that is covered: physical, sexual, emotional and neglect
Unless the kinds of abuse that should be reported are described, staff won't know what they should be looking out for. It is quite clear that at Little Heath there was confusion as to what counted as a child protection concern.

2. The policy describes the signs of abuse that staff should look out for
Again, unless staff are told of the kinds of signs that might indicate abuse, they won't know what to report. Staff aren't required to make a diagnosis, but just to be aware of signs which might indicate abuse, so that they can refer their concerns to people properly trained in this area.

3. The school has a named designated teacher for child protection
Good practice requires that there is a designated teacher to whom staff in the first instance report their concerns. The designated teacher keeps the school's safeguarding records and co-ordinates the communication with social services and other outside agencies. Unless staff know who the designated teacher is, they don't know who to report to.

4. The school has a named designated governor for child protection
Every school has to have a governor with specific responsibility for safeguarding, and unless somebody else is specifically given the role, the responsibility rests with the chair of governors. The safeguarding governor should be reviewing the policy to ensure it is consistent with current guidance (which does change from time to time), and oversees the operation of the procedures. if staff are concerned about how safeguarding is operating within a school, they need to know who to contact.

5. The policy instructs all staff to promptly inform the designated teacher of allegations or incidents of abuse, and sets out the procedure for doing this
This is vitally important. Staff have to know what to do if they have a concern. They have to know what to report, who to report to, what information they need to include, they need to know how quickly the report must be made, they need to know about proper record keeping, and they need to know how to deal with a child who discloses abuse, for instance by not asking leading questions. This reporting procedure needs to be prescriptive.

6. It requires the designated teacher to inform the local authority designated officer promptly of all allegations or incidents of abuse
This is the second key link in the chain. It is one thing for teachers to tell the designated teacher of concerns, but no support or intervention will happen unless it is clear what the designated teacher will do with the reports. What should happen is that the designated teacher immediately informs the LADO (Local Authority Designated Officer for Child Protection). There will always be marginal cases where it isn't clear whether the concern is serious enough to justify a referral, but the rule in such circumstances should be that the Designated Teacher phones the LADO, discusses the case informally, and then acts according to the LADO's advice to formally report the case or not.

7. All conversations informing the local authority designated officer are backed with written confirmation
If you don't write it down, it never happened. You must keep records, and if you communicate with the LADO, follow it up in writing. A written follow up serves two purposes. First, there is a record, a paper trail. Second, a written followup serves to greatly reduce any scope for misunderstanding that might have occurred during any phone conversation with the LADO.

8. The school commits to periodic safeguarding training for all staff, with advanced training for the designated teachers and head teacher
Simply having a policy isn't enough. Child protection concerns don't arise every day, and so there needs to be periodic training of all staff in how to recognise sings of abuse and how to report them. In addition, the Designated Teacher and other senior staff need advanced training in the kinds of inter-agency work their role will involve them in - such things as case conferences, record keeping, ongoing monitoring of children at risk and so on.

9. The policy does not depend on external documents for a description of any reporting procedures to be carried out by the school
If the school's own safeguarding policy doesn't contain the school's arrangements for reporting concerns to the LADO, then we have what is known as a "self-assembly" policy, where you have to build the policy out of component parts in other documents. This is a recipe for confusion and for nothing actually getting done right. So the reporting arrangements relevant to points 5, 6 and 7 need to be wholly within the school's own safeguarding policy.

10. The school policy has a revision and publication date, and has been updated within the last 12 months
There are two reason why the policy needs to be reviewed on a regular basis. First, circumstances may change. The designated teacher might have moved to another job, statutory guidance might have changed, the Local Safeguarding Children Board's recommendations may have changed. These changed need to be brought into the school's policy where relevant. Also, a regular review ensues that governors and senior staff keep safeguarding in mind.

It is possible to argue that good safeguarding practice can exist without a good written policy. It's theoretically possible, but really unlikely, because a clear written set of procedures is needed to ensure that staff know what to do. A good written policy doesn't guarantee good practice, the policy might be being ignored. But I would argue that good practice is extremely unlikely unless there is a good policy. So checking written policies should be a good indicator of whether good practice is widespread.

So these are the criteria I checked all 114 policies against. I'll describe the results in my next blog.

Jeremy Forrest Serious Case Review

You may remember that Jeremy Forrest, a teacher at Bishop Bell C of E School in Eastbourne, last year had a sexual relationship with one of his pupils, a 14 year old girl (who cannot be named for legal reasons) and when the relationship was about to be found out, abducted her to France.

The Serious Case Review was published earlier this week by East Sussex Safeguarding Children Board.

The review contains the usual depressing story of concerns being ignored, of the child being treated as a problem rather than as a possible victim of abuse, of other children raising concerns and these not being passed on, of poor safeguarding practice, inadequate communication and non-existent record keeping.

But then something jumped right off the page as I was reading the report.

3.2 It is now clear that School D did not keep any formal contemporaneous records of the events under review. Information was initially submitted to this review on a tabular timeline document, which was drawn up soon after the abduction of Child G. This was accompanied by three documents, pro formas headed “Child Protection Incident / Welfare Concern Form”. This review was at an advanced stage when it became clear that these pro formas were not contemporaneous – although they were dated variously in March, May and July 2012. The Panel noticed that they were inaccurate, in particular referring to the outcome of an event in April on a pro forma dated in March.

What!! A form of that type is normally filled out in order to communicate a concern by a teacher to the Designated teacher for child protection. If such a form is handed to the serious case review team, they would have every reason to think that the date written on the form is the date it was actually completed. But it seems this was not so, staff at Bishop Bell School filled out these forms later and backdated them.

3.3 This was raised by the SCR Chair with the school and further investigations were carried out. It was confirmed by the school that all the documentation had been completed after Child G was abducted. One of the school’s two teachers with particular responsibility for safeguarding (ST1) told the SCR that the decision to backdate the forms was made jointly by herself and her colleague (ST2), the Deputy Head Teacher (DHT), the Head Teacher and the Executive Head Teacher. The Executive Head Teacher described this, in a letter to the Chair of the SCR, as a misunderstanding arising from the fact that they had not been asked to provide contemporaneous records.

Forrest abducted the girl in September 2012. So in preparing the school's evidence for the SCR,  a group of senior staff at the school consisting of the Executive Headteacher, the Headteacher, the Deputy Headteacher and both of the school's child protection officers, made a joint decision to backdate three forms, which were in fact not prepared until after Forrest had fled to France, there was an international manhunt for him and it was blindingly obvious to everybody that the girl was at risk of harm, and by the way that it was pretty inevitable that there would later be a serious case review.

They weren't even competent at it, including in one form events which didn't occur until a month after the form was supposedly completed.

And the Executive Headteacher's excuse is exceedingly lame. The tabular timeline document provided by the school was non-contemporaneous, obviously so. But there really can't be any excuse for creating child protection forms and backdating them.

3.4 It is a matter of concern that the school should have provided its evidence to this review in the way that has come to light. It is a fundamental and obvious premise that the accuracy and propriety of records will be a cornerstone of an exercise such as this.

That is about the most restrained way of saying this that it is possible to achieve. The report contains more on the subject in the "Key Issues" section later on.

7.2 The information provided to this review by School D
7.2.1 This review has identified serious concerns about the ways in which information was recorded, stored, retrieved and provided to us by School D. Those concerns are detailed in the previous sections of this report. They emerged gradually during this review and were substantiated when it was well advanced. There may have been no intention to mislead but the Child Protection Forms were submitted to this review without any indication that they were not contemporaneous records. It was through the SCR’s investigations that it became clear that these were not contemporaneous records, that they were the only documentation of the events and that they had not been compiled until after the abduction. There has been no adequate explanation of why that was not made clear at the outset other than, effectively, to say that “we were not asked”.

7.2.2 It was at best naïve not to realise that the review needed to see original documentation. Significant time was wasted before realising that there were no contemporaneous school records. It then became difficult to trust the records which were provided when they were found to contain errors and omissions. This became a particular concern when hand written notes taken at the time of events were eventually seen and it was established that critical information – for example, that Mr K was picking Child G up from work experience - had not been included in the Child Protection Forms.

To say that "there may have been no intention to mislead" seems excessively generous, when coupled with the remainder of the sentence "but the Child Protection Forms were submitted to this review without any indication that they were not contemporaneous records."

Morever, the report says that "It was at best naïve not to realise that the review needed to see original documentation". I notice that they carefully do not say what the worst case would be, or what they actually think happened.

So let's summarise what the report has found. Several of school's senior staff including its child protection officers got together and decided to backdate these child protection forms. If they didn't realise that the review team would think the forms were contemporaneous records then I'm a teapot.

If they didn't realise it, then they are so completely out of touch with normal human reasoning that thy aren't competent to be looking after children, and should resign immediately.

If they did realise it, then they deliberately tried to mislead a Serious Case Review in their their own failings to protect one of their pupils. There's only one reason I can think of why records should be falsified in this way, and that is because the truth is even worse than what has been admitted.

7.2.3 The Chair of Governors of the school has commissioned an independent enquiry to inform a decision as to whether any action should be taken under the school’s disciplinary procedures. That enquiry has confirmed many of the matters set out in this report.

I should jolly well hope so! While they are about it they might look into why Canon Gordon Rideout was allowed to remain as chair of Governors for more than a year after an adverse CRB report on him came to light. They could ask why the school's child protection policy in force at the time Forrest did his moonlight flit had not been reviewed for five years, and they might ask themselves why the school's child protection procedures had a special arrangement for the handling of alleged abuse by staff, where the headteacher would conduct an investigation himself rather than pass the concern to the authorities.

7.2.4 In summary it is the clear view of the SCR Panel that the school’s recording has been inadequate and fed in to this process in a way that was unhelpful. Nonetheless the SCR Panel has agreed that it has been possible to draw together a sufficiently accurate account of events to inform this report and the judgments it contains.

I think that the SCR might be being a trifle optimistic in that respect. One can speculate whether contemporaneous records might once have existed but exist no longer. One can speculate whether the the contents of the memories of the staff concerned have been accurately disclosed. Such speculations are well within the range between the "at best" interpretation by the SCR and the "at worst" which they have been a bit too coy to state. The review team themselves stated that it "became difficult to trust the records which were provided when they were found to contain errors and omissions".

Of course, there's no evidence that any laws have been broken by the staff concerned. There is no statutory obligation to report abuse, even when it occurs on school premises. There is no statutory obligation to maintain child protection records. Evidence provided to a Serious Case Review is not provide under oath, it is not a criminal investigation, so there is not even any statutory obligation to tell the truth to an SCR.

On all of this there is only guidance, even if it is called "statutory guidance". The only statutory thing about this guidance is that professionals have to "have regard" to it. But they are legally entitled to regard it as long as they like and then decide to do something completely different. This is what it appears that the management of Bishop Bell School has done.

Whether they realised or not that they were misleading the SCR panel, in backdating those records they acted wholly unprofessionally. In such circumstances anybody with an ounce of honour would resign immediately.