No Government reforms can "make good the evil" that happened to Baby P, a senior Cabinet minister said today.

Ed Balls, the Children's Secretary, spoke as the Government prepared to put forward legislation to protect vulnerable children after the case of the Haringey child who died after horrific horrific injuries, including a broken back.

Baby P's mother and two men have been convicted of "causing or allowing" his death.

Mr Balls told GMTV: "Well, none of the reforms I can introduce now can make good the evil that happened to that little boy. We all look at our own children and think how could a mother, how could adults do this and it is hard to get beyond the revulsion."

Under the plans to be announced today, every local authority will have to have in place a multiagency Children’s Trust Board. The boards — made up of the local authority, health, police, schools and other services — will be required legally to agree and to deliver a Children and Young People’s Plan.

Speaking at a child protection conference in Westminster this morning, Mr Balls said: "In some places, there is still too little emphasis on early intervention and prevention. Organisational barriers and competing priorities appear to be getting in the way.

"Professionals working with children in this country do a tough job, often in very difficult circumstances. But we must do whatever it takes to strengthen local arrangements to enable children to live and grow up safely.

"Our responsibility — working together — is to ensure that children are safe and protected from abuse, and I will not rest until we have the very best possible child protection arrangements to safeguard our most vulnerable children in every part of the country."

The complexity of the issue was highlighted by a dossier that emerged yesterday detailing the no fewer than 78 contacts Baby P had with social workers, health vistors and doctors in Haringey, North London, in his 17 months of life.

The dossier, reportedly compiled by prosecution lawyers for the Old Bailey trial of Baby P's abusers, covers all contacts between his birth on March 1, 2006 and death at 12.10pm on August 3, 2007. It ends with the arrest of his mother at 1.45pm that day.

Mr Balls told GMTV that schools must play a key-part in ensuring that at-risk youngsters get the protection they need. He said: "Across the country we’ve got to do better to make sure we get the police, the GPs, the schools, with social workers to really focus on making sure every child is safe and if those early signs of problems are starting to arise that we act and we see things from the child’s point of view.

"I think too often in this case, and in other cases, what is happening is people are thinking is the mother OK and keep the family together. The first priority has got to be the child and that they’re safe and I think we all feel in the case of Haringey that wasn’t what happened and that is what’s wrong."

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