TWICKENHAM MP Dr Vincent Cable is supporting a Twickenham man in pressing the government for a Royal Commission into the deaths and disappearances of young people in care.

Mahk Belsham and Nic Mockler's report Couldn't Care Less!' is a disturbing tale of the abuse they both suffered and witnessed whilst growing up in care.

Mahk launched the campaign in 2000 in response to the Waterhouse Tribunal report into the abuse of children in care in North Wales between 1974 and 1996.

The results were published in a report entitled Lost in Care'.

On learning that the government was planning to publish a response to Lost in Care' he wrote to the Prime Minister mentioning his own experiences.

He received a reply from the then Health Minister John Hutton telling him that the response to Waterhouse would indeed acknowledge that "the children in North Wales and the many others who were abused in care, were failed by the entire system."

The government say money would be better spent improving current care provision.

John Hutton told Belsham: "Valuable resources must be spent improving existing service provision for the most vulnerable children in our society.

"Establishing a Royal Commission would be very expensive."

Mahk has written to Tony Blair asking for a Royal Commission to be established and handed in his just completed report to Downing Street recently.

Couldn't Care Less' chronicles evidence suggesting that deaths of particular children could have been avoided and argues that children in care who go missing are not pursued with the vigour that a child in a loving family would be.

Mahk chronicles cases of children who have simply vanished from care and never been seen again.

He believes that unless the mistakes of the past are examined, children in care will remain in danger and institutional problems will be unresolved.

He said: "Children in care will go on experiencing abuse as long as the Government continues to tinker with the leaves instead of excavating the roots."

Dr Cable has been raising the matter in Parliament and has introduced Mahk to Dr Roger Morgan

He said recently: "I have read this report through and it is a compelling, well-documented and well arranged paper, which deserves serious attention."