SUMMARY: This letter was written primarily for the view of the Prime Minister and his advisors and aimed to present a detailed case directly to them for his resignation, based on the documented evidence from recent court proceedings. The overall case for resignation is based on the following point.
The High Court and Court of Appeal refused a Judicial review, on the basis of a specific decision of the Prime Minister being found not to be unlawful. This does not excuse his conduct surrounding that decision, which is the basis for the resignation call. The call is irrespective of any current court applications and the potential challenge in the ECHR.
The key point is, that the Prime Minister being made aware consistently since 2019, that children’s lives were being lost due to alleged Government failings, has never done anything to prevent further harm, other than to eventually pass the concerns onto the Department for Education (DfE). Then having evidence that the DfE had completely failed to address them, through his lawyers, he refused to do anything more.
The Rt Hon Rishi Sunak MP
Prime Minister,
10 Downing Street,
London,
SW1A 2AA
04/04/2024
Dear Prime Minister,
The first and most important duty of the Prime Minister, is to keep citizens safe and to take reasonable steps to do so. By any measure, on evidence that has come to light, as a consequence of recent judicial review proceedings against you in the High Court and Court of Appeal and the findings of 2 of the most senior judges in the country, you have wilfully failed in that duty.
Being made aware on a number of occasions since 2019, first as an MP and then as Prime Minister, of alleged failings within the Department for Education (DfE), that on the evidence, had led to the harm, deaths and suicides of children, due to bullying and violence in UK schools, you failed to act to ensure any investigation of the issues. Even after being informed that a separate High Court hearing had found, that previous alleged failures to act on the part of ministers, demonstrated “tremendous incompetence” and left unanswered questions regarding a deliberate cover up of the issues by the DfE, including the alleged murder of a child, you failed to take any steps to ensure any investigation took place. Your failure to act, occurred after being informed that up to 4 children were potentially losing their lives to suicide weekly and others likely to suffer the same fate and many more likely to be harmed, as a result of any further failure.
As Prime Minister, you were made aware in 2023 by way of letter, that your failure to respond on numerous occasions to the information sent to you, in relation to these issues since 2019, had in and of itself potentially resulted in more loss of life. The High Court found in this, that it appeared that you had wilfully made the decision on those occasions not to respond. This should have led at the very least to an apology. You should have then taken steps to ensure there was an appropriate investigation, to ensure no further failures and unnecessary deaths would occur.
You should have also taken immediate steps to ensure children could be better protected by way of any possible immediate interventions that might be needed, while the process of investigation was set in motion. Instead you chose to pass the letter onto the DfE, which allowed those same ministers alleged to be at fault, to determine whether there should be any investigation and a public inquiry into amongst other matters, their own alleged failings and potential criminal misconduct, even after you were explicitly asked on the basis of previous allegations, to take steps to ensure that the issues could not be covered up.
This ultimately led to a legal challenge to your decision on the grounds of irrationality. The challenge was accompanied by a simple request, in order that all parties could avoid any unnecessary litigation if possible. You were simply asked to accept that the decision to pass the letter on to DfE ministers and allow them to take charge of matters, including their own alleged crimes was unreasonable and agree to remake the decision and reconsider the question of a potential public inquiry, this time independent of the DfE, which you refused to do.
As Prime Minister, this meant you had refused to ensure that anyone would even consider the concerns of more than 150 families from across the UK, many of whom had suffered the tragedy of having lost a child. Instead you chose to resist the request through litigation, while threatening costs, rather than simply agree to do what you could to help save lives. Unforgivably, you chose to refuse to even attempt to resolve matters outside of Court as proposed, despite knowing the delays that would be involved in going through the process of litigation, would mean that even if you were successful, more lives would potentially be lost as a consequence.
Importantly, having received those allegations of serious criminal misconduct related to the deaths of children and having passed them on, once you became aware that the DfE had then failed to provide any denial or response to them or to the question of a public inquiry, you did nothing whatsoever to investigate matters further. Ultimately, since 2019 and throughout the course of the litigation, no adequate steps have been taken to investigate whatsoever, while currently all parties still await a judge’s decision, on whether you did or did not mislead the Court, in misrepresenting the case and important facts during proceedings. All these points leave the question of a deliberate cover up, of potentially an extremely serious crime by a sitting Prime Minister, unanswered.
In all of this, not once have you expressed any message of condolence, sadness or compassion for the children and their families, or expressed any concern whatsoever in relation to the tragic cases that have been brought to your attention. In contrast, the case has now been raised with leaders of more than 100 countries across the world, a number of whom have sent messages of support for the campaign and the children.
Significantly, the issues and alleged failures to take action have been identified by Ingrid Bellander Todino, the European Commission’s Head of Human rights, as potential human rights violations by the UK Government. Ms Todino herself has taken the time to offer her condolences and support, as well as to express her sadness at what she describes in her own words as “the terrible circumstances of this case”.
All this has been allowed to happen, against the backdrop of your Government having recently published its response to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA). The IICSA response is an absolutely damning indictment and could not be any more critical and condemning of individuals and organisations, that failed to act on information to prevent abuse in numerous instances. At the same time, your own conduct in this case, is arguably much more culpable than anything uncovered by the 7 year IICSA Inquiry. Moreover, as Prime Minister, you have overseen legislation including the ‘Online Safety bill’ and the proposal of ‘Mandatory reporting duties’, both which propose to punish those who fail to act to prevent child abuse, with criminal prosecution.
Given that this is your position and the position of your Government in regard to the failures of others, and given that seemingly, the poor handling of misconduct allegations by Boris Johnson when he was Prime Minister, played a significant role in his resignation, it is clear that your position as the current Prime Minister is untenable. This is especially so in light of your own failures to act on arguably much more serious concerns involving children and the fact that as international awareness of this story increases, so inevitably will the harm to the UK Government’s reputation, when it comes to the importance of child protection and children’s rights issues.
In light of the above and your conduct throughout in relation to this matter since 2019, I am writing to ask for your resignation as Prime Minister with immediate effect. I will seek to make this letter public within days of you having had receipt of it and will seek to take further steps to ensure your tenure as Prime Minister is ended as quickly as possible, should a decision to resign not be forthcoming soon after.
Yours sincerely
Jason Barnett
Safer Schools Campaign Lead
