Late last week I secured a debate in Parliament on the recent findings of the inquest in to the tragic murder of my constituent, Rachael Slack, her 23-month-old son Auden, and her baby with whom she was pregnant. Ms Slack was murdered by her ex-partner, Andrew Cairns, on 2nd June 2010 at her home in Holbrook.
The jury in the inquest found that the police had failed to impress on Ms Slack the danger that she and her family were in, and that this had “more than minimally” contributed to their tragic deaths.
As a result of the case, the Coroner will be making recommendations to the Government about how it can go about trying to ensure an incident like this doesn’t happen again. He will be writing to the Home Secretary to say that police powers should be raised when someone breaches bail in cases of violent and/or sexual nature, to raise concerns over police national training standards in domestic violence, and to say that electronic document and mutual disclosure of information should be bolstered. I agree with the Coroner’s findings.
I called the debate because I wanted to press the Government on what more we can do to make sure that a repeat of this tragic event never happens again.
You may read an account of the debate here here.