Well, the long-suffering Mrs Columbo will never hear the end of it.
Her relaxing game of quoits on deck with the captain - endlessly disturbed by her husband's ponderings as to where on Earth the 2007 guidelines for local authorities regarding elective home education could possibly have got to?
They were there on the DCSF website a week or two ago. And now... vanished!
Question - why would anybody remove guidelines during the time-limited consultation period following on from the review? Especially when people responding to the consultation are likely to want to make explicit reference to the document in their responses?
Question - why would anybody remove guidelines this close to the Select Committee inquiry? Especially when people making their electronic submissions to the committee are likely to have linked to the document in support of their evidence?
Who knows?
Of course, the review has been conducted with such careful conduct and rigorous attention to proper procedure throughout that it's likely a genuine error and the document will reappear, just in time for consultation respondents to make reference to it and for members of the Select Committee to peruse it in detail. At least, that's what the not-so-bumbling lieutenant will make you believe he is thinking...
But just in case, here's a copy for your information. I have emailed one direct to Kathryn Smith, Committee Assistant. I've also posted a hard copy to her here: Children, Schools and Families Select Committee, House of Commons, 7 Millbank, London, SW1P 3JA - just in case she doesn't have time to check her emails. I'm going to tweet this to @edballsmp as I am sure he will be concerned about this DCSF data loss development.
And you can be sure that Lieutenant Columbo has plenty of assistants doing similar elsewhere.
