A social care watchdog said today that it had investigated a whistleblower's warning that children were at risk and cleared the council at the heart of the Baby P scandal of any wrongdoing.

The Commission for Social Care Inspection said that, following a letter from the social worker Nevres Kemal, it met with Haringey Council’s children’s services on March 12 last year and was satisfied that the "individual case" she raised had been properly dealt with.

Details of the case had also been scrutinised through the Joint Area Review involving other agencies and through court proceedings, the CSCI said.

But it added that its inspectors ended their inquiries at that point, and did not explore Ms Kemal’s wider concern, expressed in a letter from her lawyer, that child protection procedures were being flouted. That admission will raise concerns about the broader oversight system.

The CSCI statement came after Opposition accusations of "bureaucratic buck-passing" in Whitehall departments.

"The public are tired of hearing that correct procedures have been followed when a child died in agony. Ministers were told six months before Baby P’s death that there were profound problems in Haringey’s Children’s Services Department," said Michael Gove, the Shadow Children’s Secretary.

"Yet all that appears to have happened is the sacking and gagging of the whistleblower and bureaucratic buck-passing in Whitehall. We need a proper explanation of what steps were taken at the highest level to investigate the concerns raised."

Ms Kemal's warning came just six months before the death of Baby P, who died in August 2007 from multiple injuries including a broken back.

Ms Kemal told Haringey Council in 2004 that a case involving alleged sex abuse bore similarities to the circumstances surrounding the death four years earlier of Victoria Climbié, the eight-year-old murdered by her guardians.

Ms Kemal was suspended soon afterwards on what she alleged were false charges of misconduct, and went on to sue the council for race discrimination and harm she suffered under the Public Interest Disclosure Act. The claim is understood to have been settled.

In February 2007, Ms Kemal’s solicitor, Lawrence Davies, wrote to the Health Secretary of the time, Patricia Hewitt, and to MPs, alerting her to the problems and calling for a public inquiry. "Statutory child protection procedures are not being followed. Child sex abusers are not being tackled," he wrote.

The Department for Health said that it passed the letter on to the Department for Education and Skills - now the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) - because it had no jurisdiction after responsibilities in the department were changed.

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