It ought to go without saying that parents are, in general, the best possible guardians of their children's welfare. Evolution has implanted in us an almost total identification with the interests of our progeny. If proof is needed, it can be found in the statistics: children who grow up in families are likelier to do well at school, remain healthy, stay out of prison and succeed professionally than those raised in care.
Yet ministers are proposing substantially to enlarge the state's role in the upbringing of children, monitoring everything from how they are doing in class to whether they are eating enough fruit and veg. Unbelievably, these changes are being sought in response to the failures that led to the death of Victoria Climbié in 2000.
We say "unbelievably" because that case illustrates, more graphically than any other, the utter incompetence of the government bureaucracies that now want additional powers.

It would not be going too far to say that Victoria was killed by the British state. At every level, she suffered because of the failure of government agencies to do their jobs properly. She came to the United Kingdom illicitly from the Ivory Coast, but no one stopped her. She did not attend school, but no one noticed.
Her injuries were drawn to the attention of the police and of the social services, but she was left with the couple who were abusing her. In the investigation that followed, it emerged that staff had been reluctant to raise the alarm for fear of being accused of racism if they criticised the black workers handling her case.
The inquiry heard that the manager of the team in charge of Victoria's file had spent much of her time talking to her juniors about "her experiences as a black woman", and having a row about the practice in her office of a form of West Indian witchcraft.
Yet it is now seriously being suggested that these same organisations be given more power to interfere with the upbringing of children. The true lesson of the Climbié case is not that our social services departments need more power; it is that they are inept. The thought that these same low-grade bureaucrats should busy themselves with monitoring what our children eat is terrifying.
There are cases where children must be placed under the protection of the state, whether through the incapacity or demise of their parents. Ministers should concentrate on improving the chances of these children, who currently get a very raw deal.
As for the rest of the population, parents are generally better providers of health, education, welfare and social security than any government department. They should be allowed to get on with it.