Tag Archives: citizens juries

Opinion: The Rawnsley Challenge

By David Allen | Tue 15th July 2014 - 9:57 am

Andrew Rawnsley, in the Observer, describes the rumoured Westminster paedophile scandal and asks the question: “Whom do you trust? Comes an answer that is as popular as it is succinct: trust no one.”

Rawnsley wearily summarises why we have lost trust in bankers, doctors, intelligence services, police, bishops, supermarkets, media and celebrities – and above all, politicians of all sides, from Blair onwards. Then he gets more original. He identifies judge-led enquiry as a means of establishing who we can trust – and then shows how that option was kyboshed. When Hutton exonerated Blair (and when Blair recommended the Hutton process to his friend Rebekah Brooks), judge-led enquiry was discredited. Government, as often, has been slow to recognise the problem – as evidenced by the recent proposal that the sister of a previous Attorney-General should lead a historic child abuse enquiry.