EDITORIAL: Stop the in-fighting and get on with it

The logical part of the Government to carry out consultation and drafting of the paper might have been the Children and Young People's Unit in the Home Office, which has already worked on developing a strategy for children and young people's services. Instead, a separate, largely parallel unit was set up in the Cabinet Office, its work overseen by a Cabinet sub-committee chaired by Paul Boateng, who happens to be in the Treasury. Day-to-day responsibility for the work, however, had been part of the remit of the minister for children and young people: John Denham, until he resigned, then Hilary Benn until he got moved, and now nobody. Following reports that Paul Goggins had been given the job, then that it was immigration minister Beverley Hughes, the Home Office is now refusing to name anyone.