Local Conservatives were horrified today to learn reports of how a foster child was placed with the ringleader of an airline bomb plot, and have called for the government to step in and take over the running of the borough's Social Services Department.

 Alan Dobbie, Conservative councillor for Noel Park on the London Borough of Haringey, commented: "Haringey councillors and residents were repeatedly assured that lessons in child protection would be learnt after the publication of the Lamming Report. Then those same assurances were given after the tragic death of Baby P. And now this. Can our Social Services Department get any worse? No, I doubt it can, so we would support the government stepping in and taking charge. We don't pretend that there are 'quick fixes' but Labour-run Haringey have proved themselves to be utterly incapable of looking after and protecting vulnerable children.''

Background:

Abdulla Ahmed Ali lived in the same house as relatives who were approved as official foster carers by the council and given a child by Haringey social workers even as Ali plotted mass murder.

The child was with Ali's family in Walthamstow at the time of his arrest in August 2006 and was only removed afterwards. Police found extremist literature, including a book by Abdullah Azzam, a key mentor of Osama bin Laden, hidden in a baby's cot at the house.

Ali, 28, and two of his henchmen were this week convicted of planning to blow up as many as seven civilian aircraft in a crime which police said would have caused carnage on an "unprecedented scale".

Haringey may have even unwittingly supplied Ali with an element of camouflage for the plot - and risked the child being murdered with his other would-be victims.

According to evidence at the trial, Ali and his co-conspirators discussed taking children on board the flights to allay the suspicions of security staff.

It is not clear whether the Haringey foster child was among the children he proposed to use.

Ali's wife has also been charged under anti-terror laws for allegedly failing to inform authorities of the plot. However, she strongly asserts her innocence.

ENDS.