“No conspiracy to sack Syvret” – Frank Walker tells abuse inquiry

Friday 15 January 2016

There was no conspiracy to sack Stuart Syvret as Health Minister in 2007 but ministers had no choice other than to dismiss him, former Chief Minister Frank Walker has told the abuse inquiry.

Mr Walker has also denied covering-up abuse or failures by departments or States lawyers, but says that with hindsight, the issue of child protection should have been higher up the ministerial agenda before the historic child abuse inquiry went public in 2007.

And he said that while he tried to negotiate a way for Mr Syvret to stay on the Council of Ministers, it became impossible after he started publicly condemning his own staff at the Health department and making accusations about ministers while failing to come up with evidence to back up his claims.

The States dismissed the then-Senator Syvret as Health Minister in September 2007 in a 35-15 vote led by Mr Walker and his Council of Ministers. Mr Syvret, who had topped the Senatorial polls in 1999 and 2005, has since been a vociferous critic of politicians, civil servants, States lawyers and judges for failures to protect children in care, and for what he says has been a conspiracy to cover-up those failures.

In his evidence to the inquiry, Mr Walker said that Mr Syvret had been in charge of children's services for eight years as Health Committee President and Minister before raising concerns about child protection in the States in 2007 – according to the former Chief Minister, that was the first time that the concerns had been aired.

He said: “Until things started to go wrong we had a very close team ethic. Had there been any alert or questions even asked about the standards of care that would have put us on full alert status and would have caused other investigations, questions, meetings, etcetera, but it never happened.

“I was absolutely shocked. It was the first indication from a minister who remember had been in charge of the department concerned for eight years. It was the first indication that we had that there was any possibility of anything seriously wrong with that department.

“The allegations that there was a conspiracy to get rid of him because we wanted to cover up child abuse are absolutely, grossly false. The only reason he was dismissed was because he had breached the ministerial code of conduct.

“He had completely undermined his own department and in doing so had raised the possibility of a heightened risk to children, certainly.

“He blamed the Council of Ministers for blocking a thorough investigation of child abuse. He said that in such circumstances we should hold ourselves responsible for any children found dead. That really upset me. What an appalling allegation.”