This is Peter Traves, Head of Social Services in Staffordshire. He doesn’t return calls. And as he thinks everything is just fine in his organisation, he obviously doesn’t get out enough.

The secret world of Staffordshire Social Services: How they illegally withheld documents for 2 years.

Stafford’s MP David Kidney has slammed the attitude of Staffordshire social services for failing to provide a local mother with files about her children that she claims contain inaccurate information which led to the limited access she has to her sons.

The deeply upset and anxious woman, who…here we go again, ‘cannot be named for legal reasons’, waited two years to see the reports.

Anonymous or not, she told The Slog last week that “they invented one pathetic excuse after another. Eventually I put in an FOI order, and that has now done the trick”.

Labour MP Kidney originally called for an investigation to establish whether Staffordshire County Council had breached the Data Protection Act. The Council was eventually found guilty. This is hardly surprising given that the mother first requested to see all the information held on her children in January 2008.

“The files contain both false testimony, inaccuracies and incidents of abuse about which I wasn’t told” the victim claimed.

In April last year this quite astonishingly arrogant and secretive Council promised Kidney he would receive the files within 40 days. Staffs Council then blithely ignored further requests, and didn’t comply until February 2010.

“She came to me because she had already been waiting far too long,” said the local MP. “I am spitting mad because the council wrote to me and said they were going to give her the information. Some light certainly needs shining on this situation.”

Correct, David Kidney. But the first task is to abolish the corrupt veil of secrecy drawn across all Family Court proceedings. The extent of gagging orders allowed and made is ridiculous, given only the victims’ names deserve to be protected.

ELC aide Dr Karta Badshar told The Slog:”The powers given to these judges are arbitrary – and abused on a regular basis”.

Where are the media while all this stuff is going on? Where is the Opposition?