HERE we go again (Part 233). Panorama films horrific abuse of inmates at the private Winterbourne View ‘care’ home near Bristol.

Viewers see footage of a woman apparently being trodden on, hosed with water and abused, and other patients generally treated like something out of a Hogarth etching.

It turns out the home owners did nothing about the allegations. And the inspectorate, the grandly-named Care Quality Commission, did beggar all either, despite three complaints being made by a courageous whistleblower.

Care Services Minister Paul Burstow said he has ordered ‘a thorough examination’ of the roles of the CQC and the local authorities in this case.

“There have been failures of inspection that have exposed people to appalling abuse,” he declared.

There have. And there always will be, all the time the heads of these puffed-up private outfits know that whatever happens, they will keep their job and the gargantuan salaries that go with them.

It’s the same with social services.

Do we really believe that quite so many youngsters would be failed by certain council’s children’s authorities in other parts of the country if they believed for one minute that the price of failure was the removal of their pension?

I don’t think they would, just as I don’t think Fred Goodwin of Royal Bank of Scotland infamy would have tanked so badly if he knew from the off that his home was at risk if he messed up.

Naturally we are assured that in the case of Winterbourne View, ‘lessons will be learned’.

What lessons would these be?

The lessons which teach us not to privatise care for the most vulnerable, to allow foreign outfits to make a profit out of the weakest people in society?

Or would they be the same sort of ‘lessons learned’ – i.e. nothing – after the death of Victoria Climbie, the little girl who was battered to death while under the care of Haringey?

Thinking about it, you wonder what lessons social services departments anywhere have learnt?

The deaths of Baby Peter, Tyra Henry, Jasmine Beckford, Kimberly Carlisle, Heidi Koseda, Leanne White, Ricky Neave, Lauren Wright and, of course, Maria Colwell, the little girl who would now be the same age as me – had she not been failed utterly by the social services department of Brighton in 1973 – suggest not.

Since Maria’s death there have been more than 70 reports into care failures, for both vulnerable children and people in residential facilities. Every year more than 50 children die while they are supposed to be being looked after.

Yet since Maria died we’ve had nearly four decades of pussyfooting, excuse-making, hand-wringing and lectures from social services types about how naming, blaming and hanging out to dry the guilty doesn’t achieve anything.

On that score they may be right but only because the guilty in these cases are without shame.

So let’s do it properly. Let’s ensure that everyone who runs a dodgy care home, or who fails abjectly in their duty of care to the vulnerable, whoever they may be, knows that the price of that failure will be no income, no pension and no house.