Officials who made errors before Southport murders ‘may still be making same mistakes’

Vera Baird said public inquiries were ‘pointless if we don’t make people accountable for the errors they made’. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

Families in Southport cannot be sure that officials who made “catastrophic” errors before the murder of three girls are not still making the same mistakes, a former victims’ commissioner has said.

Vera Baird KC said all those who failed to properly monitor the killer, Axel Rudakubana, should be held “personally accountable” and that authorities must not “shrug it off” with an apology.