Death Penalty Is A Symbol Of A Just And Civilised Society

The depravity was almost unimaginable, the cruelty beyond comprehension. In one of modern Britain’s most shocking cases of abuse, the father and stepmother of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo Hughes were convicted last week of killing him after months of physical and psychological torture.

- Leo McKinstry

For their pitiless crime, Thomas Hughes was sentenced to 21 years and his partner Emma Tustin to a minimum jail term of 29 years.

The details of the case, revealed during the trial, could hardly be more harrowing. At the time of his death from a brain injury, Arthur had 130 bruises on his broken body. He had been poisoned with salt, made to stand for up to 14 hours a day and become so emaciated that he could not even hold a glass of water.

Hughes and Tustin are solely responsible for this act of inhumanity. But Arthur was also failed by the child protection system. Social services in Solihull missed several chances to intervene, claiming there were “no safeguarding concerns”, even though neighbours, teachers and relatives had expressed anxieties about his welfare.

Lockdown has been blamed, but undoubtedly another key problem is the progressive culture of the social work industry. As Ian Acheson, the former director of community safety at the Home Office, wrote yesterday, “new social workers are marinated in training and theory that obsesses over diversity and inclusion, while hard-nosed colleagues that could challenge child abuse are edged out”.