The strange silence of our elected representatives

'Most politicians have not distinguished themselves in response to the "naming and shaming" campaign'

Rebekah Wade's long-awaited defence of her conduct of the News of the World's campaign against paedophiles is, to put it mildly, a curious text. In particular, it is curious to argue that her critics are confined to "an unknown Labour MP" - by which I presume she means the fairly well- known Chairman of the Commons Select Committee on Home Affairs, Robin Corbett - a judge, and the editors of two newspapers - including this one.

Rebekah Wade's long-awaited defence of her conduct of the News of the World's campaign against paedophiles is, to put it mildly, a curious text. In particular, it is curious to argue that her critics are confined to "an unknown Labour MP" - by which I presume she means the fairly well- known Chairman of the Commons Select Committee on Home Affairs, Robin Corbett - a judge, and the editors of two newspapers - including this one.

Never mind that 68 per cent of over 2,000 contributors to a Teletext poll have called for the paper to be prosecuted for its actions - which have led directly to the release of two paedophiles, the flight of four innocent families from the Paulsgrove estate in Portsmouth, and scenes of lawless civil disorder. When she says that her critics normally inhabit "cosseted, cloistered and comfortable worlds", does she have in mind Tony Butler, the Chief Constable of Gloucestershire, the man who led the Fred West investigation, and who, by his own account, pleaded with her not to name paedophiles, and roundly criticised her when she did? Or the NSPCC, who, whatever their guarded support for her campaign for changes to the law, were wholly opposed to the naming and shaming?

No, the only justification, remote as it is, for the way she has dismissed her opponents is the notable reticence of one particular section of society - the country's leading front-bench politicians. And unfortunately it is true that most politicians - particularly Labour ones - have not distinguished themselves in this affair. It is hard to figure out, in New Labour's case, whether this is because Ms Wade is personally a friend of some powerful people in Downing Street, or because she edits the biggest-selling newspaper in the world and therefore influences several million voters. The answer is that it is probably a bit of both.

Very few, if any, politicians in either party have, for example, dared to make the unassailable point made by my colleague Deborah Orr last week that most of the legal changes which the paper is seeking in memory of Sarah Payne could prove to be utterly irrelevant to her murder if her killer, as is perfectly possible, turns out not to have any previous convictions for paedophilia. Not to mention the fact that, having been murdered in a different county from her own home, she would hardly have been saved by a regime which told parents of paedophiles living in their communities.

To do so, of course, would have been to risk the righteous wrath of those caught up in a campaign which has curious echoes of another, at once very different and rather similar, over a decade ago. For a woman who was a national demon-figure a dozen or so years ago, Marietta Higgs is spoken about very little these days. And yet it was Dr Higgs who was the chosen villain of the last virulent press campaign about child abuse before the current one led by the News of the World. The difference, of course, was that this was not a campaign against sexual abuse of children, but quite the opposite. For it was Dr Higgs whose controversial diagnoses as a Cleveland paediatrician led to the removal of 100 children from their families because of suspected abuse and provoked what seemed at times to have been almost literally a witch hunt in the process.

The question here isn't whether Marietta Higgs was over-zealous. It is rather that the tone of the campaign was spookily similar. Dr Higgs was subjected - largely by the Daily Mail, which the News of the World wrongly claims as an ally in its present campaign - to some of the same medieval demonising that the News of the World adopted in its naming and shaming campaign. Which is odd, given that whatever else can be said about Dr Higgs, she was at least as passionate an enemy of child abuse as Rebekah Wade, the NOTW's editor. All the odder, given that all the available evidence suggests that some eight out of 10 cases of sexual abuse are inflicted by relatives or others known to the child. So that Dr Higgs, whether successfully or not, was actually addressing an even more widespread and serious problem than Ms Wade.

On the face of it, a contradiction. But perhaps less so than you might think. For a determination to demonise - rather than justifiably fear, punish, treat and above all control - paedophiles who are strangers to the children they attack may at least in part be the flip side of denying, or at least struggling to come to terms with, the dark truths about the sexual abuse within the family. Some of those who have reported from the Paulsgrove estate have even detected such a link in the confused rage of the residents who have been doing some naming and shaming of their own.

This isn't for a second - though the demonisers will claim otherwise - intended to imply that the News of the World or the residents of Paulsgrove have no ground whatever to stand on. There are real loopholes in the law. It was monstrous that Sidney Cooke was released into circumstances in which he could reoffend. The guidance to police officers on managing paedophiles is now badly out of date, not least because it was drawn up before the Sexual Offenders Register was established. Reconciling the requirement of parents to be informed about the most direct dangers to their children with the need to avoid mob rule is a problem which needs addressing - though with great care. And finally, if you are a single parent on an estate with more than your fair share of problems, the realisation that a predatory paedophile has been planted in your midst may be the last straw.

But it does mean that the worst possible way to make policy is in direct response to the dark forces generated by "naming and shaming" campaigns like that of the News of the World. In this context it comes as something of a relief that William Hague and John Prescott managed to achieve a modicum of common ground - and common sense - at the weekend. Prescott was statesmanlike in not trying to claw back political capital by overplaying the undoubted fact that several of Hague's suggestions - by his recent standards, moderately expressed - are already under active consideration by the Government.

Including dangerous paedophiles within the terms of the planned Personality Disorder legislation, for example, would allow the power to detain them for life, as Hague wants. It was a good deal more important, as Prescott appears to have seen, to take a little of the heat out of the issue by stressing the extent of bipartisanship on a series of problems which are going to be more complicated to resolve than the News of the World appears to realise.

Having achieved an element of unity, the two parties would do well to call publicly on the News of the World to drop its probably empty but still blackmailing threat to return to naming and shaming paedophiles. It would, at least, be a stand by the elected against the unelected. And for Ms Wade to accede would at least be an admission - wholly absent from her editorial on Sunday - that naming and shaming was counter-productive even by her own lights.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk