The BBC’s ‘long read’ (by their Social Media Investigations correspondent, one Marianna Spring) on Paloma Shemirani’s death, ‘Why we struggle to protect the young from conspiracy theorist parents’, takes a harrowing story and turns it into a case for expanding state access to families when officials dislike parental views.
It involves the tragic case of a young Cambridge graduate who died seven months after she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Shemirani rejected chemotherapy in favour of alternative methods and at an inquest into her death the coroner was critical of the influence of her parents.
True to form, the BBC’s Conspiracy Queen decides what must be done. The piece floats the idea of giving social workers in England easier routes to interview people alone at home, pointing to powers that already exist in Scotland and Wales. That is a very big policy jump from one inquest and it blurs lines the law keeps deliberately sharp.
In Scotland, council officers can interview an adult in private during a safeguarding visit under the Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act 2007 code of practice. In Wales, Adult Protection and Support Orders allow entry, with a warrant, to speak to an adult at risk in private, but only on strict criteria set out in section 127 of the Social Services and Well‑being (Wales) Act 2014 and the official guidance here. These are tools for suspected abuse or coercion, not a roving commission to police opinions. Before we talk about copying them or lowering thresholds in England, remember how quickly vague missions around ‘wellbeing’ can slide into surveillance.
Courts have warned about this before. The UK Supreme Court struck down key information sharing provisions of Scotland’s ‘Named Person’ scheme for breaching Article 8 privacy rights, a unanimous reminder that the state cannot treat every family as a case file waiting to be opened. If the BBC’s answer to disagreements with a parent’s views is ‘send in more social workers’, it has drawn the wrong lesson from that judgment.
There is also a basic point of adult autonomy that the BBC piece sidesteps. Paloma was 23. In UK practice, capacitated adults have the right to accept or refuse treatment even when clinicians think the decision is unwise. That is standard consent law and guidance, not a loophole. See the NHS overview on capacity and consent and the GMC’s decision-making and consent guidance. The proper remedy for bad decisions is better information, second opinions and, where necessary, safeguarding targeted at proven coercion, not a presumption that families are the problem.
When officials and broadcasters reach for new coercive powers, we should become very concerned. Yesterday’s ‘conspiracy theory’ has often turned out to be today’s scandal. The infected blood inquiry has laid out, in painful detail, how institutional defensiveness and delay cost thousands of lives. Sir Brian Langstaff called it not an accident but a calamity, and the record is set out in the report volumes and the detailed PDFs such as Volume 7. The Post Office Horizon prosecutions were upheld for years by official reassurances that the IT system was sound until the Court of Appeal quashed dozens of convictions in Hamilton and others v Post Office Ltd [2021] EWCA Crim 577, with the approved judgment here.
After decades of smears, the Hillsborough inquests recorded unlawful killing and made clear fans were not to blame. Rotherham should be front and centre too. The Alexis Jay inquiry found a conservative estimate of about 1,400 children abused between 1997 and 2013, with statutory agencies repeatedly downplaying or ignoring evidence and some staff admitting they feared being thought racist if they identified perpetrators’ ethnicity; see the report and executive summary.
For a wider lens beyond one town, Telford’s independent inquiry produced four volumes in 2022 that catalogued years of institutional failure, starting with Volume One and Volume Two. The Undercover Policing Inquiry and the Metropolitan Police have acknowledged grave wrongs in long-running covert practices, including officers adopting the identities of deceased children. The European Court of Human Rights held that parts of the UK’s bulk surveillance regime violated privacy and free expression rights, even while stopping short of banning bulk powers outright.
The Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust report was not a Twitter myth but an official public inquiry into lethal care failures, with the Francis Report detailing a culture of secrecy, bullying and missed warnings, and the executive summary PDF here.
For balance, note the opposite risk when institutions believe an implausible narrative and overreach. Operation Midland and the Henriques review set out grave mistakes in the Met’s handling of historic abuse allegations against public figures, with the report overview here and HMICFRS’s progress inspection here. These are not internet rumours. They are court-tested and inquiry-tested reversals of the old consensus.
Humility would suit the BBC too. Lord Dyson found that Martin Bashir used deception to secure the Princess Diana interview and that the corporation’s own processes fell short of its standards, as set out in the report. The High Court held that the BBC breached Sir Cliff Richard’s privacy by broadcasting a search of his home. The corporation apologised in open court and paid damages to Lord McAlpine over a false Newsnight report, recorded at the time by reputable outlets such as the Guardian here and here.
The Dame Janet Smith Review chronicled shocking institutional failings over Sir Jimmy Savile and others, with the BBC’s own summary here and its formal corporate response here. That history should chasten anyone tempted to play chief auntie to the nation.
On covid, the slogan ‘safe and effective’ collapsed nuance that parents were entitled to ask about. The UKHSA’s surveillance reports recorded that protection against infection with Omicron was low and waned quickly.
Regulators also acknowledged real adverse events, including myocarditis after mRNA vaccination in young males and thrombosis with thrombocytopenia after adenoviral vaccines. The MHRA’s guidance and Yellow Card summaries are here and here, with UKHSA’s blood clotting information here. Recognising benefits and limits is not conspiracy. It is what informed consent demands.
Nor should online safety be stretched into a truth ministry. Parliament chose not to ban lawful adult content and insisted on a risk-based approach aimed at illegal harms and child protection. The Government’s own explainer sets it out plainly and the later guidance reiterates the point. Ofcom’s regime is already heavy. Adding a free floating category of ‘parental misinformation’ would be a gift to censors.
None of this denies the reality of harmful ideas or the need to protect children. It argues for proportionate standards that respect families and restores trust in public institutions. Where a child is genuinely at risk, intervene. Where an adult with capacity makes a choice, respect consent and focus on communication. And when broadcasters are tempted to turn a human tragedy into a general warrant for more state access to our homes, be worried, and remember how easily help becomes intrusion.
If Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘Named Person’ model could not clear the Supreme Court’s bar, we do not need a chief nanny in Whitehall or a chief auntie at Broadcasting House.
We need institutions that tell the truth early, publish their working and trust parents with the full picture so they can decide for their own families without fear of being demonised, or worse.
