The 10th anniversary of the Brexit vote is days away, but political attention has already shifted to the Makerfield byelection and the future of the government. Yet the legacy of 23 June 2016 – a national conversation darkened by lies and disinformation, according to Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland – continues to shape a Britain where, as fellow columnist George Monbiot reports, children in care have become England's most lucrative commodity.
Freedland, reflecting on the upcoming two-part BBC series *Brexit: A Very British Civil War* by Norma Percy, recalls how David Cameron and George Osborne promised an in/out referendum in 2013 as a tactical ploy to placate Eurosceptics, assuming they would lose their majority and trade the promise away. Instead, Boris Johnson seized the opportunity. Osborne told the series: 'It was nothing to do with the EU, Britain’s place in the world. It was Game of Thrones. That’s what Boris Johnson was playing. And he could see the Iron Throne right there about to be vacated.' Johnson insisted he didn't 'give a fuck about being prime minister.' The remain campaign's warning of a 6% GDP drop, mocked as 'project fear,' now appears insufficient: Freedland writes that remain 'was not pessimistic enough.'
“A decade after Brexit, England's children in care system is exposed as a lucrative, largely unregulated market.”
While the nation's economy remains battered, a separate crisis unfolds in the children's care system. A Financial Times investigation, cited by Monbiot, reveals that the average charge to the state by a private provider for a child in care is now £384,020 a year – six times what Eton charges. Some providers levy more than £1m per child per year, rising to over £3m for children with complex needs. Children in care are being exchanged between private equity companies for £100,000 apiece, a figure Monbiot says is now outdated as 'today they are worth far more.'
The trade has attracted a motley crew of operators. The FT reporters found that 'plumbers, hairdressers and Airbnb landlords with no experience in care' are opening homes. Police are concerned that gangs running children's homes can harvest state money on a spectacular scale while also recruiting vulnerable young people – a form of vertical integration, Monbiot notes.
Geography plays a key role. While there is a shortage of provision in the south of England, Lancashire has 17 places for every local child needing care. Why? Property is cheaper there, in areas where economic and community life has collapsed. As a result, young people in Devon are being swept up to 300 miles across the country. Academic research in the journal *Child Abuse & Neglect* finds a consistent association between profit-making and the placing of children outside their local authority area.
Monbiot, who stumbled into the issue two years ago after children helped by a local charity were suddenly whisked away, writes: 'When I began exploring why this was happening, I could scarcely believe what I was seeing: a highly lucrative trade in highly vulnerable young people.'