Children may be living in unsafe households elsewhere in Britain, said Ed Balls, the Families Secretary.

“I do not want to tilt the balance in terms of taking more or less children into care but where a child is unsafe in the home, I want action taken. Today I can’t say with confidence we are in that place in every part of the country,” he said He has promised to do more to ensure that the oversight of child protection is more effective in the future. The decision to subject social workers to unannounced visits from Ofsted inspectors each year is a tacit admission by ministers that outside scrutiny of their work has been lacking to date.

Mr Balls said that he believed the failings in Haringey were exceptional and defended the current inspection regime, headed by Ofsted, the schools inspector. It took over responsibility for children’s services last April from the Commission for Social Care Inspection.

However, Mr Balls admitted that Ofsted had learnt lessons from the Baby P case, too. In its first report into social workers in Haringey in the autumn last year, which was based on the local authority’s own performance criteria, it awarded the department the top grade and said it provided “good services” to children in the borough.

The new regime will mean that every local authority will have Ofsted inspectors turning up once a year, on top of the three-year planned in-depth inspections. There will also be renewed focus on serious case reviews (SCRs), which follow every case where a child known to social services has been killed or injured.

SCRs are designed to make sure that lessons are learnt. But after the review into the Baby P case, which was deemed to lack independence and rigour, Ofsted will now take a much tougher line. Any review that Ofsted deems to be inadequate will be reopened and considered by an independent person. The Government has also accepted a recommendation by Lord Laming, who conducted the review in the death of Victoria Climbié, who says that they must be independently chaired.

The Government is eager that Haringey is seen as a one-off and the entire national system for child protection is not brought into question.

Mr Balls was challenged about the pressure on social workers to keep children with their natural families wherever possible, a result of the Every Child Matters policy document of 2005.

To address concerns that new legal arrangements, known as the public law outline, are making it more difficult and more expensive to take children into care, he said that Lord Laming would examine the new court processes.

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