When you are in a hole...

The Rotherham problem should have been nipped in the bud by a rapid apology and moving on. As it is, the by-election is grabbing the headlines, both main parties have become involved at a senior level, and the story will run and run.

The underlying issue is that members of political parties cannot generally be assumed to support every aspect of policy. Many Labour Party members did not support the Iraq war; many Conservative Party members do not support the current draconian welfare cuts; and Liberal Democrat members don't know what to think.

UKIP is, of course, a mainstream party, and its policies are legal. There may well be racists in UKIP, but racism is not the stated UKIP position – and of course there are Labour and Tory racists, hopefully few in number, but you can't just link membership to personal views.

I exempt from this argument the National Front and the British National Party, both of which seem to me avowedly racist – you really can't be a member of the NF or the BNP without holding some pretty racist views that put teaching and fostering out of bounds. But UKIP is different.

What should have happened is easy to describe in hindsight. When concerns were raised, the foster carers should have been interviewed and encouraged to explain their views; a rational decision could then have been taken on the evidence, and carefully explained in writing the light of the political sensitivity – not left to an off-hand remark by a social worker.

 So what to do now? If it were me, I'd conclude the internal investigation as soon as possible, decide that the council had acted more forcefully than the circumstances warranted, and apologise fulsomely to all concerned, while saying that the children were at the heart of the council's concern, and that the foster parents would continue to be used in future cases without distinction of the children's origins – unless of course the investigation reveals that there is a racism problem, which I strongly doubt.

Of course, if it turns out that there were other reasons for removing the children, and that the UKIP membership was just an excuse or a smokescreen, then that leads to other problems. Whatever is going on, foster parents (indeed everyone, with only the most minor exceptions) is entitled to be told the truth by public institutions – however uncomfortable that is.