Baby P was put on the at-risk register in December 2006, shortly after his mother's new boyfriend moved in, and remained on the register until his death.

The boyfriend's presence in the house went totally unnoticed by police and social workers. He made sure to be off the premises when visits were scheduled.

Social workers, including Baby P's case worker Maria Ward, appeared to believe the mother’s version of events about unexplained injuries to the boy, and were taken in by her apparent co-operation with staff who visited.

Social workers have been warned time and time again to be sceptical when parents seem eager to comply with them - it is a common ruse and can delay the detection of abuse.

As the violence against Baby P escalated in the weeks before his death, doctors and social workers examined him, yet failed to spot the injuries.

Two days before his death, the boy was examined by Sabah Alzayyat, a consultant paediatrician at St Ann’s Hospital in Tottenham, who failed to spot he had a broken back and eight broken ribs.

On the same day, and in an act of breathtaking naivety, social workers agreed to a request from the mother to halt visits to the family for a month so they could go “on holiday” two days before the boy died.

The boy’s mother had been arrested twice in the nine months before his death after a series of injuries were reported to police.

They had been unable to find enough evidence that the injuries, to his head, face, back and fingers had been deliberately inflicted.

However, a senior police officer had urged social workers not to return the child to the family home for his own safety at a subsequent case conference.

Social workers overruled the police and instead produced a “care plan” consisting of regular visits from social workers and help with child care from a family friend.

Although police signed up to the plan, they sought legal advice on whether the evidence they had accumulated about the mother had reached the threshold necessary to pursue care proceedings without the co-operation of social services. However, they were told they had not got enough.

“The systematic failure by social services, police and health workers in this case is worse than in the Victoria Climbie tragedy,” said Mor Dioum, director of the Victoria Climbie Foundation, who sat through the entire trial.

“Haringey cannot be allowed to get away with it. There needs to be a public inquiry into the failings which let this boy down. We have all failed him.”

He said Victoria’s parents had been kept informed of the case, and found it “distressing” to hear that another child had suffered their daughter’s fate.

Lynne Featherstone, MP for Hornsey and Wood Green and a councillor at Haringey during the Climbie affair, said the case “beggared belief”.

"This is a shocking tragedy where a small child suffered terrible abuse after falling through safety net after safety net.

"The Children's Act was borne out of tragedy in Haringey after the death of Victoria Climbié. Yet eight years after her death the law created to stop this happening again has failed to prevent a similar tragedy in the same borough.

"Baby P should have been at the centre of all decision-making.

"We must therefore have a fully independent investigation by the Children's Commissioner into what went so terribly wrong."

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