The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)

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My Lords, in Committee, quite rightly, we had a substantive debate about the importance of the mental health of looked-after children and care leavers. The Government share the views of noble Lords about the need to ensure that the mental health and emotional well-being of this vulnerable group of children and young people are given as much consideration as their physical health. As my honourable friend the Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families explained when he met Peers last week, we have reflected on the points raised in Committee. As a result, we have tabled an amendment to Clause 1 to put beyond doubt that promoting the health and well-being of looked-after children and care leavers will mean promoting their mental and physical health.

Lord Ramsbotham (CB)

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My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 4. I am very glad that the Government have tabled Amendment 1, which is the burden of much of the intention behind my Amendment 4, although my amendments spell out some of the mental health descriptions, which, under the heading of mental health needs, are not always apparent.

Perhaps I may start with a plea to the Minister that in future, Bills be handled differently from the way in which this one has been. We got extremely short notice of Second Reading immediately after the Queen’s Speech and then, immediately before Grand Committee, we were bombarded with documents, papers and briefings. Those of us who have no research or clerical support, for example, have to spend a considerable amount of time perusing those in order to understand what is being said so that we can play our part in the purpose of this House, which is to revise and scrutinise legislation.

We complained about that in Grand Committee but, lo and behold, during the short return between the two recesses we again received a number of briefings and letters, and this past week has been absolutely mad. Ministers gave three government briefings last Wednesday. I am not complaining about that, but I ask Ministers to remember that others have diaries and that it is not always possible to change with the rapidity that is expected. Also, there has again been a deluge of government amendments, government briefings and government papers, which suggests to me two things: first, that the Bill was not properly thought through before it was introduced; and, secondly, bearing in mind what was said in Grand Committee, that no impact assessment of any of the measures was carried out—a complaint we have made several times before. An impact assessment does not just say that you either do it or not. It should consist of an analysis of the outcomes of doing it or not, so that those of us not coming at it from a party-political angle can make judgments based on the facts as they are given.

What has also disturbed me during the passage of the Bill is the number of practitioners, including organisations such as the Association of Directors of Social Services, and others working in children’s services, who have tabled amendments and made appeals because they do not feel that they have been consulted, or, if they have, that any of their advice or experience has been listened to. That is really not a healthy basis for important legislation about vulnerable children.

The other thing that has come through strongly—I am very glad that the Government have tabled Amendment 1, because it reinforces the point—is that unfortunately, since the demise of the Social Services Inspectorate, responsibility for children’s social care has passed to the Department for Education. Yet when you talk to the people working in the delivery of children’s services, you find that most of the problems they face are more to do with health, emotion, behaviour and well-being than education. Indeed, preparing children so that they are in a fit state to be educated—mentally as well as in every other way—occupies a great deal of their attention. I am worried that more emphasis is placed on the educational direction of social work and that there is not a more apparent cross-government approach, working with the health industry in particular.

Amendment 4 is designed to spell out in more detail the conditions that children in care and other vulnerable children present. It is based on a paper published by the British Psychological Society in 1915 called, Children and Young People with Neuro-Disabilities in the Criminal Justice System. Unfortunately, we have become used to using the phrase “learning disability”, which carries an understanding of a more serious lack of ability to comprehend than some of the conditions in the amendment. The reasons for this go back to the marvellous paper prepared by Baroness Warnock way back in the 1970s in which she spelled out conditions warranting special educational needs status and therefore special treatment. That list was by no means exhaustive but since her paper there has been a great deal more research, and there is now a great deal more understanding of the various conditions grouped together under the phrase “neurodisability”, such as ADHD, dyslexia, and autism. I am strongly of the belief that all of these conditions—which have now been listed by the British Psychological Society—should be better understood. You need only go and talk to the director of a children’s home to find that it is those conditions that give them greatest trouble.

I am very glad that since Grand Committee, there has been a meeting between officials in the Department for Education and the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. In Grand Committee, I spelled out the need for the assessment of speech, language and communication difficulties on the grounds that inability to communicate is the scourge of the 21st century and means that too many of our children are unable to communicate with their teachers and therefore engage with education. There is now an assessment programme, carried out, I hope, for all children in this country before the age of two by health visitors who have been trained by speech and language therapists. The aim is to ensure that a plan can be made to introduce treatment that will enable that child to engage with education in five years’ time, when they start primary school.

Officials from the department have also spoken with the National Association of Virtual School Heads, which I must admit I had not heard of—I was slightly worried when I saw the word “virtual”, because I thought that either you are a school head or you are not. Apparently, however, the virtual school heads have a very valuable role in this area, as does the expert working group on mental health.

I am glad that the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists has been brought in. They are the best people to advise on looking after children and to advise the Government on how to ensure that children, and those working with them, have access to the communication services they so badly need, particularly children suffering from neurodisability orders. Therefore, I am seeking in this amendment the Minister’s undertaking that, in addition to the bald statement in Amendment 1 about improving access to mental and physical health treatment, he will agree to spell out the conditions that so dominate the lives of those responsible for delivering children’s services and ensure that local good practice—which I know his officials are aware of, because it has been listed to them by the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists—is turned into national good practice, so that all children can take advantage of what has been done in some parts of the country.

Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)

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My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 8 in my name and indicate my support for Amendments 4 and 5, also in this group. In addition, I warmly welcome Amendment 1, which the Government have tabled in response to discussions in Committee. The addition of mental health to the corporate parenting principles is an important step forward towards ensuring that mental and physical health are treated with equal importance by local authorities when they are making decisions about the services and support available to children in care. The Minister’s amendment, therefore, is an important signal of principle—but principles alone will not improve the outcomes for children in care.

My amendment is designed to ensure that we can achieve some practical improvements to the care that children receive. It introduces mechanisms that will ensure that the mental health needs of children entering care are properly assessed and that they have access to specialist support if this is needed. Basically, the amendment has two elements: first, a mental health assessment for children entering care, carried out by a qualified professional; and, secondly, a designated health professional in each local authority who has strategic oversight of the outcomes of the assessments and matches those with the services that are available for children in care to support their needs.

In short, this amendment seeks to establish a mechanism that will identify children’s needs early on, refer the children to the right services and ensure that services exist that children in care are able to access—and access easily. This joined-up approach is supported by the Alliance for Children in Care, a coalition of leading children’s charities, as well as the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

The Earl of Listowel (CB)

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My Lords, I follow my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham in being most grateful to the Government for bringing forward this Bill; there is much in it that is very welcome. I know that the complexities of parliamentary timetables can mean that Bills get introduced to us with fairly short notice, but there is one clause in the Bill that causes particular concern. Clause 29—formerly Clause 15—has the opportunity to roll back significant child protection legislation from the past. My personal concern is that something as important as that needs more time for consultation.

The document Putting Children First, which lays out the basis for this particular proposal, came out in July—so, just as we were looking at this proposed amendment, we were also given the theoretical background to it. We have not had enough information or a long enough time to process this important clause, so I ask the Minister to consider withdrawing the amendment, consulting on it properly and bringing it back at a later date. I know that we have not yet settled a second day on Report, which gives us more time to consider this important issue. I hope that that suggestion is helpful.

I support the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, on this matter, and declare my interest in mental health assessments for looked-after children and designated mental health professionals for them. I am a trustee of the Brent Centre for Young People, a centre of excellence in the treatment of adolescents with health disorders, including eating disorders and other issues, and of the charitable foundation the Child and Family Practice, which brings together paediatricians, head teachers and psychiatrists to produce assessments of children with complex needs such as autism. I strongly support her amendment and I have added my name to it.

The Minister may be concerned about whether we should assess all children. I have heard people say, “What about young children? They will not necessarily need a mental health assessment”. But research from the Tavistock a few years ago was quite clear that we were overlooking the need to assess the mental health of three and four year-olds; their needs were not being caught or addressed. I have been interested in the work of the Anna Freud Centre for many years. It does admirable work with infants, for example in Holloway Prison and in refuges, working with very young children and providing them with therapy and assistance—so that should not be an obstacle.

I look forward to the Minister’s response. There is such a call on mental health provision at the moment and I am afraid about what will happen if we do not legislate—and obviously we want to legislate sensitively. The mental health of these young people has been ignored for many years. We have prioritised their education but we have not given enough thought to the trauma that they experience before entering care and on entering care—and that trauma is often exacerbated by suffering many different placements in care. I strongly support the noble Baroness’s amendment.

Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)

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My Lords, I support the amendments in this group, particularly Amendment 4. I am pleased to support the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, who stressed the need for screening for the various neurodevelopmental disorders and neurodisability needs listed in the amendment. Many of those arguments were made in Committee with particular reference to communication disorders, and I hope the Minister will find them more persuasive on this occasion.

There are many problems related to getting children an assessment and/or a diagnosis. The social worker needs to be aware of neurodisabilities and the support and training to enable them to develop this understanding. The lack of time to build meaningful relationships with a child and really get to know them is also of concern. Again, I hope the Minister will have something to positive to say on that.

On Amendment 1, the Minister acknowledged the need for parity of esteem between physical and mental health, and of course that is welcome. That being the case, however, there is surely no reason why he should not accept that his amendment is logically extended by the wording of Amendment 8 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. Looked-after children are among the most vulnerable in our society, often entering care with a history of abuse and neglect. But it is the sad case that once they are in the care system—a system intended to protect them—many continue to be at risk of further abuse. The Children’s Commissioner estimated that between 20% and 35% of children who had been sexually exploited were in care at the time of that exploitation. I am afraid that, all too obviously, there have been several such cases in our newspapers recently.

Knowing and understanding what types of support would benefit children entering care should be a simple step. It should be a basic element of that support that they receive a mental health assessment alongside the physical health assessment that already happens. Not only would that identify children with diagnosable conditions that require clinical interventions, it would allow foster carers, social workers, teachers and other responsible professionals to develop an understanding of how they could foster therapeutic relationships with those children in their care. I echo the recent remarks by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel: in many cases children require mental health assessments prior to entering the formal education system because damage can often be done at that stage that it is very difficult to deal with later. Children cared for in institutional settings have often experienced a high number of foster placements which have subsequently broken down, which can often be a by-product of poor emotional well-being.

It is estimated that almost three-quarters of children in residential care have a clinically diagnosable mental health condition. If a concerted effort had been made to address the mental health needs of those children when they entered care, it is at least possible that they may never have needed to be placed in residential care, which is, after all, a much more expensive option than foster care. That is why a whole raft of professionals working with the mental health needs of looked-after children believe that this help should be offered as early as possible. There is no rational reason for delaying the introduction of these simple measures, which could prevent further trauma being inflicted on these children.

As many noble Lords present will know, we have raised this issue time and again. I was among several noble Lords making the case at each stage in the passage of the Children and Families Act 2014. It was repeated at Second Reading and in Committee on this Bill. I raised it again at the briefing session on the Bill for noble Lords which the Public Health Minister hosted in September. All this was to no avail. Nor has this House been the only source of such pleading. As the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, said, in April, the Commons Education Select Committee published its report entitled Mental Health and Well-being of Looked-after Children. One of its recommendations was that,

“all looked-after children should have a full mental health assessment by a qualified mental health professional. Where required this should be followed by regular assessment of mental health and well-being as part of existing looked-after children reviews”.

The Government considered the Committee’s report, rejected most of it, it must be said, and their response on that point was:

“We do not accept the recommendation as it stands”.

The response went on to refer to the expert working group for looked-after children that the Government established in May as a possible means of filling this long-established gap in provision for looked-after children. Perhaps there is reason to be optimistic as to that group’s recommendations, since it will have as its co-chairs Alison O’Sullivan, the former president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, and Professor Peter Fonagy, a psychologist and medical researcher. By what I am sure is complete coincidence, both gave evidence to the Education Select Committee’s inquiry and both, I understand, indicated their support for children having a full mental health assessment when they enter care. The expert working group also included four people who gave evidence to the Select Committee, plus the person who acted as its adviser, so the crossover is considerable, which I very much hope is all to the good.

It would lack consistency for the Minister today to submit Amendment 1 but then dig in his heels and steadfastly refuse to go further with regard to a full mental health assessment. Simply pointing to the expert group is not satisfactory, because it is not due to report for at least 18 months, which means that the Government will effectively stonewall again when the Bill reaches another place. Even if the expert group recommends a mental health assessment for each child entering care, the Government would then need to accept the recommendation—which, on past practice, requires a leap of faith—and then we would need to await the next suitable Bill as a vehicle to introduce it. So if anything does change, it will be quite some way down the line.

The Minister, his advisers and officials at the DfE should ask themselves how many more children will have their mental health issues undiagnosed because of government foot-dragging on an issue that the professionals are quite clear on. Over the years ahead it will be many thousands and that is not a thought of which anyone associated with the Bill on the government side should be proud.

Lord Warner (CB)

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My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group, particularly Amendment 8, spoken to so ably by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. I shall turn to Amendments 4 and 5, to which I have added my name, in a moment. It is a strange irony that she could find an assessment tool in the youth justice system for these conditions; looked-after children seem to have to work their way into the criminal justice system before they can avail themselves of this tool. If I may say so to the Minister, it might be worth considering getting in there a little earlier with looked-after children and accepting the noble Baroness’s amendment.

I strongly support Amendments 4 and 5 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. I declare my interest as the grandparent of a child on the autistic spectrum and a staunch supporter of the National Autistic Society. From all my involvement with looked-after children over the years, many of whom then appeared in the youth justice system, where I saw them again, far too many of these children end up in that system and far too many of them have neurodisabilities or neurodevelopmental disorders. Their problem has often been overlooked for a very long time. These disabilities can be at the heart of their problems in terms of social non-compliance in the school and in the wider community. This leads to their becoming children at risk and in need, as well as often ending up in the youth justice system. The way that they process information and instructions—or, more accurately, fail to do so—is at the heart of many of their problems. Knowing about this is a first step to helping them to manage their condition.

If the state is to take the drastic step of assuming responsibility for these children, the least it can do is to make very sure whether these children have disorders and disabilities about which, on their own, they can do very little and with whose management they need help. The Government should take this issue seriously and include in the Bill a provision of the kind set out in Amendments 4 and 5.

Baroness Benjamin (LD)

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My Lords, I support this group of amendments because we all know that while each year, here in England, thousands of children enter the care system, too many who enter it cannot rely on the loving support offered by family and support networks. Many have already experienced terrible traumas in their young lives and we know that without the right support, these traumas can have long-lasting consequences. The challenges that looked-after children face after they leave care are well known, so we have to cater for their needs and find ways to encourage them to aim high by fulfilling their ambitions, inspiring aspirations and laying foundations to help them find ways to achieve happiness and personal fulfilment. That is why I am delighted to support especially the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lady Tyler to ensure that mental health assessments will be provided for all children entering care.

It is essential to ensure that the assessment of need will be translated into practical support because we in the state—the corporate parents—have a moral duty to do so. Too many children are crying out for support, like the child who told the NSPCC:

“I live in a residential unit. Other people in the unit keep bullying me. One of them attacked and injured me. I feel really lonely because I have to stay in my room to avoid them”.

They said that it had already upset them so much,

“that the staff won’t arrange a transfer for me. I don’t know who to turn to for help”.

Another young person told ChildLine:

“I don’t understand why everyone hates me. I feel like nobody wants me anymore and I just want to go to a normal family that loves me”.

At the core of the amendment proposed today is the desire to ensure that the emotional and mental health needs of children in care are assessed at the point of entering care, so that their needs will be properly supported through their care placement while at school and through a clinical intervention, if that is what the child needs.

Without a better system of support in place to help the 31,710 children who entered care last year, we know that many of them will struggle to overcome the legacy of those early experiences. As recent statistics released by the Department for Education showed, 40% of children who left care last year were not in education, employment or training. We must therefore take this opportunity before us today to improve the assessment of the mental health needs of children in care. We will otherwise continue to see children in care struggling to stay afloat with the weight of their past experiences. The Prime Minister has highlighted the need to tackle mental health issues; the earlier that we do so, the better.

Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)

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My Lords, I too begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for his amendment on mental health and the corporate parenting principle. I tabled an amendment on this issue in Committee and I am pleased to see that our concerns are being addressed. Ensuring that the mental and physical health of children in care reaches a point of parity is a welcome amendment. It represents an important statement of principle and I am pleased to see steps being taken towards achieving the ambitions set out in the Government’s Future in Mind strategy.

Principles are important, but so too are actions. I should like to use the remainder of my time to speak in support of the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. There are currently more than 70,000 children in care in England—70,000 children who no longer live in their family home and who are reliant on the support of the state for all their needs. We have a duty to care for their physical safety, but we have a fundamental responsibility to care for their emotional well-being as well. It is not enough to remove a child from their family home and hope that this will be enough to change their lives. We must aim higher than this. We must aim to provide them with homes that are far better than the family homes they have just left.

It is vital that we find proactive ways of supporting children in care. The first step in this process is to identify the types of support from which a child in care would benefit most. To do this, we need to introduce mental health assessments for children entering care and throughout their time in the care system. The point at which they enter care is crucial, as other noble Lords have said. If a child’s first experiences of life in care are positive—if it becomes a space through which their mental health and emotional needs are attended to—then they will be so much more likely to thrive and have the confidence to take advantage of the opportunities afforded to them. If problems are left unidentified, this can have particularly grave consequences for looked-after children.

The research report, Achieving Emotional Wellbeing for Looked After Children, published by the NSPCC last year, highlighted how children are particularly vulnerable when they experience poor emotional well-being while in care. This report illustrated the way in which poor mental health can lead to placement instability which, in turn, leads to a further decline in emotional well-being.

A teenage girl called Emily told the NSPCC about the impact that placement instability was having on her emotional well-being. She said:

“I can’t cope any more. I have been in care my whole life and have been pushed around between foster families and adopted families. I feel so let down, broken hearted and like I don’t belong anywhere. No one wants me to be here so maybe I should do them a favour”.

What a horrible thought to come from anybody, let alone a child of that age.

Sadly, many children who enter care come from chaotic circumstances. Often they have never known what it was like to live in a safe, stable and secure family home. Entering care should be about giving them this stability but, sadly, this is not the experience of many looked-after children. Having the right support in place to help children make sense of their experiences from before they entered care is crucial. If we can find ways to help them manage their emotions in a safe way, many of the challenging behaviours that often lead to placement breakdown could be avoided. We can, and surely must, do better by these children. This strikes me as an eminently sensible place from which to start.

Lord Judd (Lab)

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My Lords, I too support very strongly this group of amendments. I am very glad that issues about emotional stability, and that dimension of life, have been stressed in this debate. They were stressed particularly powerfully by the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin.

I have always thought that structures and systems themselves never achieve anything. They can be very effective in supporting and providing the right context, but what matters are the values, principles and sensitivity of the people working within the system. This again emphasises the importance of the emotional dimension. I was very glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, had the strength to be prepared to use the word love again. It is a word we should discuss more often in our considerations of these matters, because the tragedy is that so many of these children have never encountered love. The other terribly important thing is that they should be able to form stable, lasting, enduring relationships. Ideally, such relationships are there in the family. But if you are dependent upon a system, they are not obviously there, and therefore continuity of relationships is terribly important.

I want to make one point which is not in any way to argue against what the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said so powerfully. We should be careful about exonerating the formal educational system from its responsibilities. It is often in the context of formal education that things begin to be noticed. There therefore needs to be an excellent working relationship between the formal educational system and social services. There should be a natural opportunity for people to share notes and responsibility for how the situation might be resolved. When our approach to education emphasises achievement all the time, I sometimes worry that the community dimension of education is being obscured. What matters is that there are space and resources within the education system to make allowances for children who have special needs. Again, that depends on a close working relationship between social services and the formal educational system. In a comprehensive school near where I live in Cumbria excellent work is done in this area. What I really admire about it is that this has become the concern of the whole staff. All the staff are involved. When children have special needs the staff ask what the school is doing to meet that situation, provide care, love and relationships within the school and enable other students to take their share of responsibility. We need a very close working relationship between the formal educational system and social services.

Lord Lester of Herne Hill (LD)

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My Lords, I did not take part in earlier stages of the Bill and it may be that the question I am going to ask was answered earlier, in which case I apologise. I would like the Minister to explain why the Bill contains no statement that, in his opinion, the Bill is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. My understanding is that that is what the Human Rights Act requires. It may be that there is a very good technical explanation.

Lord O'Shaughnessy (Con)

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My Lords, I rise to speak on this group of amendments not least because children’s mental health and well-being was the subject of one of my amendments in Committee. I am delighted that noble Lords have brought this issue back to the fore with their amendments, and I am even more pleased that, from Amendment 1, we can see that the Minister listened to those concerns, because the change it proposes makes explicit the importance of the mental health of the vulnerable young people who are the subject of the Bill. This is a significant concession. I congratulate the many noble Lords who have been working hard to achieve it. This is, surely, what those of us who put down amendments in Committee were seeking—for this to be taken seriously and put in the Bill. The Government should be congratulated on making this significant concession.

Baroness Murphy (CB)

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My Lords, I had not intended to intervene because I have not participated earlier, having been absent from the House for some months. I come in at the middle and it is always irritating when people do. However, I am astonished to discover that there is not a mandatory assessment, as proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, when children are going into care. We should not dream of admitting adults into care without a mental health assessment. As a psychiatrist, I am not experienced with children but, knowing the outcomes of looked-after children in the longer term and the likelihood of their developing problems of all kinds that we do not need to outline, I am astonished that we do not assess mental health as a matter of routine.

The government amendment uses fair words. I allow that it is a nice amendment, but it does not address the practicalities. As the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has said, these children will often have profound delays in all kinds of neurological developments that will have led them to have had many mental health problems leading up to their going into care. I am astonished that mandatory mental health assessment does not already exist, so I strongly support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. I hope that she takes it as far as she can.

Lord Faulks (Con)

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Briefly, in response to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lester, he and I were both members of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. He may have seen the third report of the session 2016-17. Paragraph 3, commenting on the Children and Social Work Bill, reads:

“Lord Nash, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Education, has certified that in his view the provisions of the Bill are compatible with the Convention rights”.

Lord Lester of Herne Hill

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I am very grateful. I gather that the reason for my mistake is that version that we now have does not have the compatibility statement, but I think that the original version did. I am grateful.

Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)

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My Lords, I wonder how the Government’s amendment can be carried out without giving effect to the other amendments in this group. Amendment 1 has the effect of requiring that in carrying out its functions, a local authority must,

“have regard to the need … to act in the best interests, and promote the physical and mental health and well-being, of those children and young people”.

How one could promote their health without knowing what they may need in the way of health I cannot understand. Therefore I assume that these amendments are all covered by the generality of the words in Clause 1(1)(a) as amended.

Lord Nash

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My Lords, I start by responding to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, about the preparation for the Bill and consultation. The Bill has been very widely consulted on, and impact assessments have been conducted, including a full assessment in respect of children’s rights. Ministers and officials meet regularly with representatives of local authorities and the voluntary sector to discuss all aspects of the Bill, and their views are always listened to very carefully. In relation to the provisions on looked-after children and care leavers, we have spoken to the ADCS, the LGA and approximately 20 local authorities on the corporate parenting principles and local offer. Our thinking was also informed by eight meetings of care leavers organised by voluntary sector organisations as we developed Keep on Caring. However, I take the noble Lord’s point about, at certain times, the rush of correspondence and the flurry of activity, for which I apologise. It has not been easy for any of us, and I will take his points back, again, and ensure that they are taken very seriously.

I now turn to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, which would place a duty on local authorities to promote the mental health of looked-after children and care leavers. I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, to my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy, to the noble Lords, Lord Warner, Lord Watson and Lord Judd, to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, and to the noble Baronesses, Lady Murphy and Lady Benjamin, for their contributions to today’s debate.

All mental health-related amendments have been discussed with the co-chairs of the expert group for mental health for looked-after children. One of the co-chairs, Alison O’Sullivan, attended a meeting with some noble Lords in September to present the work plan and ambition for its care pathway project. Assessment, and how children access the right support, will be at the very heart of its work. The next stage of the group’s work will see the development of options for a care pathway along with models of care and quality indicators for the mental health of looked-after children. A care pathway is an evidence-based journey that outlines possible treatment options, timescales and the professionals involved in a person’s care. It will consider, explicitly, the pros and cons of carrying out a full mental health assessment on entry to care.

The expert group plans to share the evidence base behind the chosen models and the pathway with interested parties, including noble Lords, in the spring. We are committed to acting on the findings of the expert group, and will fully consider all the recommendations it makes, including any recommendations to legislate. Every local authority is already under a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of the children it looks after. That means not just keeping them safe but considering their emotional well-being. Looked-after children already must regularly receive a comprehensive health assessment by a registered medical professional on entry into care.

Where there is concern about possible mental health or special educational needs issues which require further investigation, local authorities must ensure the appropriate professionals undertake necessary next steps. Access to NHS services is based on the clinical needs of each individual. The current approach of undertaking further specialist assessment where there is an established need allows resources to be targeted appropriately.

Transition between children’s and adult mental health services needs to be managed effectively. However, prescribing the age at which a young person leaves CAMHS fails to recognise looked-after children as individuals with varying needs. NHS guidance is clear that the transition must be carefully planned with the young person and should take place at the time which is right for them. Services should, wherever possible, accommodate this flexibility.

Co-operation between local authorities and clinical commissioning groups is vital. That is why CCGs are relevant partners under Section 10 of the Children Act 2004 and must co-operate with local authority arrangements to promote the welfare of children. That includes those looked after and care leavers in their area. Innovation projects such as No Wrong Door in North Yorkshire show what can be achieved through multiagency team approaches.

There are numerous examples of joint working across local authority and mental health teams: North Tyneside, Kensington and Chelsea, Croydon, Hartlepool, Sheffield and Trafford to name but a few. So what we want to see is already happening, but just not everywhere. Through initiatives like the Innovation Programme, the Government are supporting this work and will be helping the wider sector to learn about what really works in this area. Services are improved through better planning and commissioning. The needs of this vulnerable group should be addressed through local health and well-being boards and the local transformation plans that all CCGs have produced with local authorities, together with other local partners.

I completely agree with the importance to be placed on identifying and responding to the mental health needs of children in care. That is why, as I have said, every looked-after child is subject to regular physical and mental health screenings. Where any potential issues are identified, a more intensive specialist mental health assessment should be pursued. But we must remember that around 50% of looked-after children have a mental health problem; 50% do not require intensive specialist assessment—these assessments should be used where there is cause for further investigation, not indiscriminately. As I say, if the expert group on mental health recommends that we reconsider this position, we will do so, properly considering all its recommendations, including legislation.

The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, clarified some of her concerns and who she proposes would carry out these assessments, which I personally found extremely helpful. I will commit not only to meet her to discuss this matter, but also to try to ensure that the co-chairs of the expert group are also at that meeting to listen to and discuss her points.

I turn to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, which focuses on the needs of looked-after children and care leavers with neurodevelopmental disorders or neurodisability needs. The ability to communicate in order to access learning and improve life chances is something to which the noble Lord is deeply committed. The Government share that commitment, both to looked-after children and care leavers and those with special educational needs. However, we need to take a proportionate and targeted approach to assessing and meeting needs.

The amendment includes a long list of issues that a proposed mental health assessment should cover, all of which may require a specialist assessment. We do not think that screening all children for every condition on that list is appropriate, with children only being sent for specialist assessment where the earlier general assessment has indicated this is necessary. An assessment framework for looked-after children and young people is already in place to ensure their needs are addressed.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

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I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I am trying to work out whether he has agreed that the issue about mental health assessment can be brought back on Third Reading.

Lord Nash

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Well, I have committed to having a meeting with the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and the co-chairs of the expert group, to discuss this further. We believe it would be inappropriate to bring this forward now in advance of the expert group making its findings, but it would be helpful if the noble Baroness spoke to the group about her concerns and its direction of travel, and then we can discuss this issue in more detail.

I was dealing with the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. For looked-after children and young people there is already an assessment framework in place to ensure their needs are addressed. This focuses on the whole child’s needs: physical, mental, emotional and behavioural development as well as identity, relationships and social presentation and self-care skills. It draws on expertise from health and education partners and is sufficiently comprehensive to identify children with unmet needs who require further specialist assessment. Where children have or are suspected to have special educational needs or disabilities, social workers should be working with professionals who are experts in addressing those needs and identifying the support needed.

The central approach that underpins the Special Educational Needs and Disability Code of Practice is to use the term “children with learning difficulties”. It is a very broad term, to be applied to any child who has difficulty with learning for whatever reason, including neurodisabilities. It is also intended to identify social, emotional and behavioural issues that are hard to screen for because they are context-based and develop over time.

Under Section 20 of the Children and Families Act 2014, a child or young person has special educational needs if he or she has a learning difficulty or disability that calls for special educational provision to be made for him or her. That definition includes any condition that amounts to a neurodisability, such as autism or dyslexia. The statutory guidance for virtual school heads emphasises this and stresses the importance of the social care and SEND professions working together so that referrals can be made in a timely way and the right support put in place. To that end the department has, for example, been working with the Communication Trust, a consortium of over 40 voluntary and community sector organisations active in the field of speech, language and communication, to build on existing resources and programmes to ensure that practitioners are supported, and to suggest new opportunities to meet the needs of children and young people with speech and language difficulties.

Lord Warner

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I am sorry to interrupt the Minister’s flow, but I am puzzling over what he has just said about the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and whether the thrust of those is going to be included in statutory guidance, particularly covering all the conditions set out in Amendment 5. He seemed to be quite encouraging about this, but perhaps he could clarify whether that will be covered in statutory guidance.

Lord Nash

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We will certainly draw attention in the statutory guidance to all these conditions and their importance. We are reluctant to encourage people to assess everyone for all these conditions, if the noble Lord sees what I mean.

Lord Ramsbotham

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I thank the Minister for what he has said, but it is not assumed that everyone should be assessed for all these conditions. Rather, they were not recognised in Warnock and have therefore not been recognised as specific conditions in the criteria for special educational needs. It is merely listing them as those that should be included in the SEN description in future.

Lord Nash

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I think we can do that. I am happy to discuss this further with the noble Lord but, as I understand it, we are proposing to list them as conditions and draw practitioners’ attention to them. As I was saying, I am reluctant to do anything further on this in relation to mental health until the expert group has met, but I invite the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, to meet that group.

Baroness Walmsley

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I am sorry to interrupt the Minister again, but I would like him to clarify what he was saying to my noble friend Lady Tyler. He mentioned that if the expert group says that the gist of what she is recommending should be in place, the Government will be prepared to legislate. Legislative opportunities being so few and far between, can he assure the House that a suitable vehicle, in the form of a Bill, will be available in this Parliament to achieve that, should the expert group make that recommendation?

Lord Nash

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I am not authorised to make that assurance or to predict future legislation standing here. However, we have appointed these experts, we know what their direction of travel is and we will listen very carefully to all their recommendations, including on future legislation. Obviously, when I say “future”, I mean that if they make recommendations, we would like to get on and legislate, where appropriate, as soon as possible. However, it would be helpful if the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, had further conversation with the co-chairs.

Lastly, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for his comments about Clause 29. Of course, we are not due to consider amendments to that clause today. The Government have tabled several amendments to address points made in Committee, and I encourage noble Lords to give them proper consideration before we have a full discussion of that clause in some weeks’ time. I am happy to have further discussions on this with noble Lords in the interim; it would be very helpful to discuss this clause in more detail. I also thank my noble friend Lord Faulks for clarifying the point raised earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Lester. I hope and trust that what I have said—particularly on the amendment on the corporate parenting principle—will reassure the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and persuade them not to move their amendments.

The Earl of Listowel

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My Lords, Amendment 2 is in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Warner. I should apologise briefly for not recognising the importance of government Amendment 1 in the last grouping. I welcome that important amendment to make clear to local authorities their duty to consider both the physical and the mental health of looked-after children. I was grateful for the opportunity to meet with the Minister this morning to discuss my amendments in this part of the Bill.

I welcome the inclusion of the corporate parenting principles in Clause 1. However, I believe that these could be further strengthened by adding a new principle, as my amendment does, to support relationships between children and young people and their families and carers. The Care Inquiry report, Making not Breaking, concluded that,

“the relationships with people who care for and about children are the golden thread in children’s lives, and that the quality of a child’s relationships is the lens through which we should view what we do and plan to do”.

By allowing the child to stay in touch with people whom they feel are important to them, this new principle would support principles (b) and (c) in Clause 1(1), on listening to the views of the child, and principle (f), on the stability of relationships.

Research shows that one-third of children and young people in foster care and care-leavers have been prevented from having contact with a former foster carer. More than half have said that their social worker does not support them in keeping in contact at all. Good- quality relationships impact on social and emotional development, educational achievement and mental health. Children who have secure attachments have better outcomes in all of these areas than those who do not have secure attachments. We need to keep in mind the history of broken relationships that many of these young people have had: broken relationships with their birth parents and siblings as they enter care; with their schoolmates and teachers as they move placements; and with their social workers, as those change.

The practice of cutting off the relationship between the child and their former foster carer is very damaging, and social work practice needs to recognise this. Amending the corporate parenting principles in this way would provide a strong foundation from which to build this change. I hope that I may pay tribute to the Government for their “staying put” legislation and the forthcoming proposal on “staying close”, with regard to children’s homes. I think that the Government have really recognised the importance of the principles that I have just been describing.

I would like to end with the comments of a few young people. One young man said:

“Because... I don’t even know! I’d like to, I keep in touch with one of my foster families. But the ones I really want to keep in touch with are not allowed, and I think it is wrong that we can’t do so as maintaining a secure relationship with foster families makes the child feel valued and still loved and cared for. I hope in the future that this changes”.

Another young person said:

“I have asked but it wasn’t allowed and they want to see me too we had a good bond. It should have happened”.

Finally, another said:

“Foster parents are, or can be, like parents: they are the ones who care for you on a day-to-day basis. The idea that you can live in a home for years and then be expected to move to a new home and never look back is abhorrent”.

I look forward to the Minister’s response, and I beg to move.

Lord Mackay of Clashfern

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My Lords, I am responsible for Amendment 9 in this group. I had the honour of introducing the Bill that ultimately became the Children Act 1989, and I am glad that it has survived since then. Although it has been subject to improvements as time has gone on, the main structure of that Bill has lasted well. Ever since, I have been concerned about the progress of the care system. I have felt sad when it has been shown to have failed in various ways.

One of the important points made by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, earlier was that a good family promotes very close relationships between the parents and the children. Sadly, those who come into care are normally without that provision, and it is the task of the care system to provide for it, as far as possible. One aspect that has troubled me—and those with more hands-on experience of the system than I—is that when a child is in residential care, the people looking after the child change often, and often suddenly. The result is that it is very difficult for the child to build up a relationship with any particular person who has responsibility for their immediate care. As we heard from the noble Earl, in a foster care relationship a very good relationship is often built up, which should be protected thereafter, as far as possible. That is the purpose of Amendment 2. My amendment is related to that, and it is therefore appropriate that they be dealt with together.

I moved a similar amendment in Committee, but I found the Minister’s response somewhat disappointing. I thought he had not quite understood what I was trying to get at—no doubt that was entirely my fault—so I arranged for a meeting with the Bill team to discuss my amendment, and a very full meeting we had. Incidentally, in relation to what is now Clause 29, I proposed a redrafting which I thought would deal with a good many of the objections raised to it in Committee. I am not sure whether that was brought to the Minister’s attention, but in raising it with the Bill team I obviously intended that it should—but that is not for today.

Lord Warner

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My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 2 and 9, both of which I have added my name to. Based on my own experience, I believe that the amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, is extremely important. Too often, in the understandable wish to make children safe, we overlook the importance of previous and sometimes current links to children’s family and a wider group of people who are important adults in their life. That is even where parts of that family have been highly dysfunctional and may not have always treated them well. There is often still a link with that family which is very important to the child.

These children often wish that their immediate family had treated them better, but they do not necessarily wish to sever all their links to family and the wider world outside of what they experience in care. Very often, there are people in their family and among a wider carer group with whom they have made quite a strong bond and relationship and have a desire to maintain that contact. I suggest to your Lordships that it is critical to a child’s own sense of self-worth that they are not given the impression that they do not matter to this wider family and group of people who have been important in their life. I think it is critical that the Government take seriously the spirit of the amendment proposed by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and are willing to incorporate that spirit in some form in appropriate words on the face of the Bill.

I have added my name to Amendment 9, proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, because I strongly support it. I think he has worked extremely hard trying to persuade the department that there is merit in his approach. I think there is very strong merit. Children in residential care are often the most needy and vulnerable. All too often they have a history of failed placements and a strong sense of being let down by the adult world. They are often used to adults walking away from them or dipping in and out of their lives, rather than building strong relationships with them that last over time.

When they come into residential care and find a key worker or a personal adviser to whom they can relate, it is often very important for their sense of self-worth that the system tries to foster that relationship and assists its continuance, not only while they are in care but when the child leaves residential care and moves to independent living, which is a very difficult thing to carry out. Many of us find it difficult to encourage our own children to move to independent living well into their 20s, so imagine what it is like for a young person leaving care. Maintaining that relationship with a key worker, personal adviser or adult who is connected to the child when they are in care may, in some cases, be the ingredient that determines success or failure as they move into independent living.

This is a massive issue for many of these young people, and I think that the Government would do well to listen to both the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and to take seriously their amendments.

Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)

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My Lords, I want to make one simple point in support of Amendment 2, although it probably relates to Amendment 9 as well. In discussing the previous group of amendments, we talked about the mental and emotional health of children, and the Government’s amendment was about the promotion of mental as well as physical health. I cannot think of anything that could do more to undermine the mental health of children than to be torn away from relationships that are really important to them. Therefore, in the interests of making a reality of government Amendment 1, I hope that the Minister will feel able to accept Amendment 2 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel.

Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)

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My Lords, I support Amendment 9. Subsection (1) of the new clause proposed in it refers to subsection (2). Clause 1(2)(c) of the Bill refers to,

“persons aged under 25 who are former relevant children within the meaning of”,

the Children Act, and it is that part of the Bill that I wish briefly to address.

I agree completely with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, about the importance of relationships to children and young people. On Thursday last week, I attended a briefing organised by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the Children’s Society at which I heard from two care leavers, both of whom spoke very passionately about their experiences. One young lady, who was 18, has now left care. However, she was removed from her foster placement one day after her 18th birthday, which seems unnecessarily hasty and somewhat insensitive. To date, no personal adviser has been appointed for her and she has no one to officially advise her. She made the very valid point that she and others in care really need advice, particularly on their likely financial responsibilities, before they reach 18 and not afterwards, as all money stops at 18. I will return to this aspect of financial advice in later amendments.

It is important that children in local authority care have someone they can turn to at all times. Children not in care have parents and relatives whom they can turn to and confide in. Looked-after children deserve parity with their peers, and I fully support the amendment tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and the noble Lord, Lord Warner.

Lord Nash

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I am grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lord, Lord Warner, for their amendments on promoting stable relationships between looked-after children and care leavers and their families and those who care for them.

I am pleased to reassure the House that local authorities already have robust duties to promote and maintain contact between looked-after children, their families and people significant to the child. There are also staff in local authorities and children’s homes with a clear responsibility to promote individual children’s well-being and to build strong relationships with them.

Helping young people maintain positive relationships is a vital part of corporate parenting. Doing so will enable local authorities to comply with several principles; for example, those relating to acting in the child’s best interests and promoting their health, encouraging children to express their wishes and feelings, and to be safe and have stability in their relationships. Maintaining positive relationships is part of promoting children’s best interests and arrangements need to be based on children’s needs and wishes. Existing legislation and statutory guidance strongly support this.

The presumption that contact between children and their family should be maintained while a child is being looked after is already set down in paragraph 15 of Schedule 2 to the Children Act 1989. The Act requires local authorities to promote contact with parents, relatives and those connected with the child, provided it is consistent with the child’s welfare.

Statutory guidance on care planning, placement and case review is also clear. Children’s welfare is the paramount consideration in determining contact and the care plan for a looked-after child must set out the arrangements made for contact with parents, anyone with parental responsibility or any other connected person. The guidance also makes clear that children’s wishes and feelings regarding contact should be taken into consideration. As part of children’s case reviews, independent reviewing officers must speak to children before the review meeting to ascertain their views, wishes and feelings. This gives children a chance to express any concerns, including with their contact arrangements, so the review can take these into account.

I agree with noble Lords that looked-after children, including those in residential care, should be supported by professionals who promote their well-being and have clear accountability for this. At local authority level, all looked-after children have an allocated social worker and an IRO who are responsible for their well-being and development.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, rightly highlights the need for children in residential care to have a strong relationship with at least one member of the home’s staff. I entirely agree with him that an ongoing, trusted and stable relationship is really important for these young people. Although it is not mandatory, it is common practice for homes to appoint a key worker for each child. This is a member of staff who has special responsibility for an individual child. The key worker role complements requirements on all staff to protect and build positive relationships with children. While there is no doubt that staff in this role can be a huge source of support for children, we do not believe that making it compulsory would be the right thing to do. Children’s homes have evolved greatly in recent years, both in their size and the approach they take to supporting children, and we strongly believe that they should have flexibility to shape the role and the support they provide to meet children’s individual needs and circumstances.

There are many examples of excellent practice, such as North Yorkshire’s No Wrong Door project. Here children’s wishes and feelings are taken into account by letting them choose their key worker after they get to know their staff. The key worker builds a strong relationship with them and, like a parent, advocates for them where necessary. At No Wrong Door, key workers support young people up to the age of 25, remaining a consistent point of contact as they move to independence.

We recognise that maintaining relationships can be a particular challenge for care leavers. That is why our care leaver strategy, published in July, set out our desire to test new models of support for those leaving care. The Family Finding model, for example, identifies a range of adults, including family members, ex-carers and professionals who have known the young person during their childhood and are prepared to make a lifelong commitment to the young person.

In addition, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, mentioned, in response to a recommendation in Sir Martin Narey’s review of residential care, we will introduce “staying close”, which will provide the benefits of “staying put” for those leaving residential care. “Staying close” will support continuation of the trusted relationship that the young person has developed with staff at their former residential home through to age 21. We are planning to invite local authorities to pilot “staying close” in the first instance, to enable us to better understand the costs and practicalities of providing this support.

While I support the very positive intentions behind the amendments, I believe that the way to address them is by continuing to develop effective practice rather than imposing new requirements on practitioners who need the space and flexibility to work out what is best for the children in their care. Though I have much sympathy for the emphasis noble Lords have given to the importance of stable relationships, I believe that this is something local authorities should be promoting through the local offer.

The Earl of Listowel

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I thank the Minister for his response. Indeed, I thank noble Lords for their support for my amendment. I should have said that I very much support the noble and learned Lord in his amendment.

I recall a discussion at the All-Party Group for Looked After Children and Care Leavers at which I met a man in his 50s. He told me that his mother was celebrating her 80th birthday and that, as she had run a children’s home for many years, generations of children and families who had gone through that home would be celebrating her birthday with her. That does happen: there are really good social workers who keep in touch with their care leavers; there is a broadcaster—a care leaver—who still keeps in touch with his social worker from the past.

It can be difficult, however, to manage that relationship when a young person leaves care. Some professionals and foster carers perhaps do not quite have the confidence and professional ability to manage that as the young person moves on. I hope that the Government’s vision to develop the status of social work and make it an attractive and well-supported profession will help to improve those relationships in the longer term. I am grateful to the Minister for his response and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Lord Ramsbotham

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My Lords, this amendment seeks to include a duty to promote access to legal advice and representation for children in care in order to safeguard and promote their welfare and future life chances. It seeks to do that on the face of the Bill.

Local authorities, in their role as corporate parents, have a particular obligation to promote meaningful access to legal services for the children in their care. Recent evidence presented to the Refugee Children’s Consortium suggests that it is not enough for access to legal advice to be included in a child’s care plan. There should instead be an active duty to promote access whenever needed. For example, children may need access to legal advice in regard to accessing appropriate education in their area if they have special educational needs; to have a voice in family law proceedings that concern arrangements for their care; to regularise their immigration status; or to claim compensation where they are a victim of crime, including human trafficking.

In the concluding observations of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child’s recent periodic report, it was noted that some children in care do not feel listened to, and that unaccompanied, migrant and asylum-seeking children may not receive independent legal advice. I am particularly concerned that children are missing out on opportunities to resolve their immigration status before they turn 18 because of the limited provision of legal advice and the difficulty of finding independent and reliable advice providers. A child without a way to regularise their immigration status in local authority care becomes a young person without support at 18, and now will be able to appeal against deportation only once they have been returned to their country of origin under the terms of the Immigration Act 2016.

My reason for proposing this subsection is that it is yet another example of where the solution does not seem to lie in the hands of the Department for Education alone, but requires co-operation and co-ordination with the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. I therefore hope very much that the Minister will feel able to accept the amendment and turn it into a government amendment in due course. I beg to move.

Baroness Lister of Burtersett

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My Lords, I rise to speak in support of this amendment, especially in relation to unaccompanied migrant children. I will not repeat what I said in Committee, especially around the regularisation of immigration and citizenship status, but will simply emphasise—here echoing the noble Lord—its importance from the perspective of meeting our obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

In an earlier report, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I was then a member, underlined the importance of access to qualified legal advice and representation to compliance with Article 12 of the convention, which stresses that children must be,

“provided with the opportunity to be heard in any judicial and administrative proceedings”,

affecting them. The Equality and Human Rights Commission highlighted this as a priority issue for implementing the concluding observations of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which the noble Lord referred. It calls on the Government to expedite the promised review of the LASPO Act to assess its impact on children. Here it is echoing the committee itself.

In yesterday’s Written Statement on the UNCRC the Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families encouraged colleagues to reflect,

“the voice of the child fully in the design and implementation of policy”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/10/16; col 23WS.]

In the light of that, I hope the Minister will be able to respond positively to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham.

Lord Nash

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My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for this amendment and for his contribution and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister.

In local authorities where the ethos of corporate parenting is strongest—for example, in North Somerset and Trafford—the views of looked-after children and care leavers are at the heart of how local services are created and delivered. Along with the Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families, I applaud the way in which many local authorities, through their children in care councils and care leaver forums, listen and respond to the views and needs of this vulnerable group.

The corporate parenting principles are designed to ensure that the local authority as a whole has regard to the need to act in the best interests of the child whenever it carries out functions in relation to looked-after children or care leavers. Considering this together with the existing functions to ensure that the rights of children and young people are promoted, I do not believe that amending the principles in the way suggested is necessary. However, I am aware of the report on advocacy services for looked-after children by the Children’s Commissioner, which highlighted that 55% of looked-after children were unaware of their right to independent advocacy support. Local authorities have a duty to provide assistance for advocacy services for all looked-after children, children in need and children in care, and this includes making them aware of this provision. I do not believe that further legislation would help here.

We need to work directly with local authorities to improve good practice and raise awareness. I will commit to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, that we will do so. Some local authorities are already very good, but others are not; as the Children’s Commissioner made clear in her report. It is about raising the game of the poorer authorities to meet their existing responsibilities. Indeed, while I sympathise with the underlying intention behind the noble Lord’s amendment, I believe that it may risk introducing an unhelpful adversarial dimension to the relationship between children and young people and their local authority as corporate parent, which I am sure the noble Lord would not wish to see.

The framework for care planning and the transition from care to adulthood that exists already gives children and young people routes for voicing their views. These include court-appointed guardians, their social worker and a named IRO who follows their case, meets the child privately before the formal meeting to review his or her care plan, and also advises the court.

A key role of IROs is to resolve problems arising out of the care planning process. Every local authority should have a formal process for IROs to raise concerns and to ensure that those concerns are respected by managers. This is referred to in our guidance as the local dispute resolution process. An IRO has the statutory power to refer the case to Cafcass at any stage if he or she considers it appropriate to do so. He or she may consider it necessary to make a concurrent referral to Cafcass at the same time that he or she instigates the dispute resolution process. There is clear guidance on this point in the Children Act 1989 statutory guidance on care planning and in the IRO handbook. That handbook, which is statutory guidance that local authorities must comply with, also makes it clear that each local authority should have a system in place that provides IROs with access to independent legal advice. Skilled independent advocates who speak on behalf of looked-after children also work with the legal service. They provide the independent advice and assistance sought by this amendment.

Local authorities are required under Section 26A of the Children Act 1989, which deals with advocacy services, to make arrangements for the provision of assistance to looked-after children and care leavers for advocacy and representation support, and local authorities must make these arrangements known publicly, as they see fit. I am not therefore convinced that adding a further principle on a specific area as regards services or support, which is already the subject of a statutory duty, is necessary.

The corporate parenting principles and the needs articulated in Clause 1 are about improving the culture and ethos of local authorities so that, as far as possible, children are treated with care and as a good parent would, so that the children do not feel that they are being looked after by an impersonal corporate body. The way to do that is not to create expectations of legal representation for all looked-after children and care leavers when disputes can be resolved without escalating it to lawyers. That means using IROs and advocates effectively and making better use of children in care councils, which all local authorities will have. I hope that the noble Lord will feel sufficiently reassured to withdraw his amendment.

Lord Ramsbotham

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My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply and to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for her comments and remarks. I am concerned by the content of the UNCRC’s fifth report because it repeats so many criticisms that were contained in the fourth report that do not appear to have been actioned. I am also particularly concerned about the change in status of immigrant children in care, which was included in the Immigration Act 2016. The comment that they lacked legal advice before they were deported is not something of which we should be very proud.

I hope, therefore, that in considering all the things that he has said to me, the Minister will go back and assess the local area legal provision, particularly relating to immigration, because I give notice that I shall raise this question again at Third Reading. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Lord Warner

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My Lords, in moving this amendment I shall also speak supportively of Amendment 7, to which I added my name after I had tabled Amendment 6. Both amendments seek to achieve similar ends but in slightly different ways. That end is to include in Clause 1 of the Bill on corporate parenting principles the importance of strong co-operation between the responsible local authority and all the other partner agencies that are critical to successful corporate parenting of looked-after children.

On Amendment 6, as I have said in previous discussions with Ministers, we cannot state too often that the Bill should remind partner agencies of their duty to co-operate with the responsible local authority in delivering the best outcomes for looked-after children. The fact that such a duty was set out in the Children Act 2004 does not, in my view, mean that we should not refresh that duty in this new, reforming Bill. It helps, if I may suggest it, to give local authorities leverage with partner agencies when those agencies face difficult priority decisions on how to use scarce resources. That situation, if I may say so, is a lot worse than when that previous piece of legislation was passed. Local authorities need all the help they can get to leverage support for the children they are responsible for from these partner agencies at a time of very difficult public expenditure situations.

These same arguments, I suggest, apply to Amendment 7, which the noble Lord, Lord Watson, will be elaborating on. I would be willing to forgo Amendment 6 if the Minister finds Amendment 7 more to his liking. I beg to move.

Lord Watson of Invergowrie

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My Lords, I and other noble Lords attempted in Committee to persuade the Minister that the list of corporate partners in the Bill should be widened. We were unsuccessful then, so today we have tried a slightly different approach with an amendment that speaks only of,

“such other persons or bodies as may be defined in regulations”,

with the proviso that such regulations must be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.

Corporate parenting is one of the most important roles of a local authority, and elected councillors take that responsibility extremely seriously. Corporate parenting means the full and active involvement of the formal and local partnerships needed between local authority departments and services and associated agencies which are responsible for working together to meet the needs of looked-after children and young people as well as care leavers. Recognising that the different component parts each have a contribution to make is critical to the success of corporate parenting. A major challenge in operating effective corporate parenting is to manage its contradictory nature, balancing the need for continuity with the changes necessarily involved, whether through political control, staff changes within the local authority or other partners, or the emergence of new policies, perhaps even new legislation. The aim must remain static: to help provide each individual child or young person with a sense of stability in their life.

Any duties to co-operate must, of course, be reciprocal, with local government, health partners and the police all working together to protect and support looked-after children in their area. All corporate partners need to fully understand and accept their responsibilities as corporate parents, and governance arrangements will be in place to make sure that work within councils and their partner organisations is child-centred and focused on achieving the overarching outcome. The overarching outcome of corporate parenting should be for young people who have experienced the care system to go on to be successful learners in whatever career path they choose, to become confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors whose life outcomes mirror those of their peers as far as possible. The ultimate aim must be that there is no discernible difference between the outcomes of children and young people who have been looked after and those who have not. That, I accept, is a lofty aim, but it is surely one that no one who has the interests of our most vulnerable children at heart can turn away from. I hope that, in that sense, the Minister will look upon Amendments 6 and 7 and give a positive response.

Baroness Pinnock (LD)

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My Lords, I draw the House’s attention to my interests as a councillor in the Borough of Kirklees and therefore a corporate parent, with whom the buck finally lands. We had a considerable debate in Committee, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, because there was a lot of concern about having clarity of definition about corporate parenting principles. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, talked about the report of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, In Care, Out of Trouble, drawing attention to, “Less clarity leading to more inconsistencies”. That is precisely why, at this stage, there is an endeavour to find greater clarity in the corporate parenting principles laid out in the Bill as it stands.

I also suggest that we ought to support greater clarity because of the changing role of local authorities, given the financial pressures on them. It is also the right thing to do because it makes corporate parenting more effective. There has to be work across other public sector partners; those referred to in the amendment laid before us are the police and the health service. The reason for doing that is to ensure that those two bodies in particular have it as a priority in their planning and actions that they take note of the importance of corporate parenting when they meet young people who are in need of care, and who are sometimes—more often than we would like—brought to the attention of the law.

The third reason why we support the amendment proposed is because, in the principles as laid out, and as described by the Minister in Committee, everyone who is employed by a local authority is responsible as a corporate parent. My fear is that, if everybody is responsible, no one is. That is why I have argued consistently that we need to be clear about where the final responsibility lies.

We need to expand the definition of corporate parenting responsibilities to include other key public sector organisations, but also to have clarity within local authorities on where the final responsibility lies. In the words of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, it is always helpful to refresh requirements in earlier legislation because it brings it to the attention of professionals that this is a matter on which legislators place great importance. With those words, I support wholeheartedly Amendments 6 and 7.

Lord Nash

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My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Warner, for the opportunity to discuss the most effective way of ensuring that partner agencies support local authorities in fulfilling their role as corporate parents, and grateful to them and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for their contributions to today’s debate.

Legal responsibility and accountability for looked-after children and care leavers rests with local authorities. We believe that maintaining this clear accountability is right to protect vulnerable young people. As such, it is important that the law is clear that local authorities are the corporate parents for looked-after children and care leavers. Section 10 of the Children Act 2004 already places a robust and clear statutory duty on local authorities to,

“make arrangements to promote co-operation”,

to improve the well-being of local children and care leavers in relation to,

“physical and mental health and emotional well-being … protection from harm and neglect … education, training and recreation”,

the contribution made by children to society, and “social and economic well-being”. The partners listed in Section 10 include the agencies necessary to support vulnerable children properly. This includes those listed in this amendment, such as health bodies and the police, but also organisations such as schools and further education institutions that local authorities consider appropriate.

I absolutely agree that partner agencies must be aware of their duties to co-operate with authorities to improve and have regard to children’s welfare under Sections 10 and 11 of the Children Act 2004. However, in practice, to fulfil these duties effectively local authorities would have to make relevant partner agencies aware of their obligations under Sections 10 and 11, so these amendments simply duplicate what is already legally required or necessary in practice to meet existing requirements regarding looked-after children and care leavers. I should add that, crucially, Section 10 goes wider than the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, as it also places a reciprocal and direct duty on partner agencies to co-operate with local authorities in this regard. Moreover, Section 11 of the Children Act 2004 places a direct duty on the bodies it lists to make arrangements to ensure that they have regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children when discharging their functions. Therefore, all the bodies within the scope of this provision will be required as of necessity to know about it.

When defining well-being, Section 10 actively addresses key areas where noble Lords rightly want assurance that all vulnerable children will receive high-quality support, such as mental health and emotional, social and economic well-being. This clear and holistic definition provides local authorities with a robust mandate for interagency co-operation to improve the wider well-being of children. Section 10 gives local authorities a strong lever to get the local co-operation needed properly to support vulnerable children and young adults in key aspects of life. The corporate parenting principles provide a further lever for local authorities to engage with key partners and utilise Section 10 arrangements to co-operate to improve the well-being of looked-after children and care leavers.

The fourth principle, in particular, provides for local authorities to have regard to the need to help looked-after children and care leavers access and make the best use of services provided by the local authority and relevant partners. Strong interagency working, underpinned by Section 10, will be crucial to achieving this. The statutory guidance on the corporate parenting principles will emphasise it. It is also important to recognise that there are numerous examples of local authorities and other agencies already working effectively together in the interests of looked-after children and care leavers.

In his report Residential Care in England, Sir Martin Narey refers to the protocol between 10 local authorities and four police services. The protocol aims to reduce the prosecution of children wherever possible by encouraging the use of restorative justice approaches. Trafford provides another good example of strong interagency working. Here, collocation of social workers with health staff and child and adolescent mental health services supports good access to services.

What Peers are seeking to achieve across the country—indeed, what we want—is already happening. It just needs replicating and this is about disseminating good practice and influencing hearts and minds. The corporate parenting principles aid that process because they apply to the whole authority and are intended to create a culture change. We recognise, of course, that, despite the existing legislation to promote interagency co-operation, practice is not always as consistent as it should be. We therefore plan to engage further with directors of children’s services on this issue with the aim of identifying other positive practice and disseminating it more widely.

Given the strength of the existing duties to co-operate under Section 10, our intention to reinforce this in the statutory guidance on the corporate parenting principles and to continue the drive to improve and embed effective practice, I hope the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Warner, will feel reassured enough to withdraw their amendments.

Lord Warner

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My Lords, I think it is a missed opportunity, but I am glad that the Minister is going to put some of this into statutory guidance. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Baroness Tyler of Enfield

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Will the Minister clarify that he will meet me before Third Reading to consider the issues I have raised?

Lord Nash

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I should be delighted to clarify that and I will do so.

Lord Mackay of Clashfern

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My Lords, I do not propose to elaborate because we have already discussed this, but I want to take the opportunity to answer the point made by the Minister. It is in relation to the Barnardo’s release from the National Independent Visitor Development Project, dated 8 August 2016, that the figure of 97% is mentioned. I am a member of Barnardo’s but had nothing whatever to do with the preparation or publication of this report. It came as a rather sad message to me.

I am sorry that, due to the same sort of considerations that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, mentioned, I have not been able to attend the briefings that have been held because I have not been here, but I would be very happy to meet the Minister. I sincerely hope that, at least, the Government will be able to incorporate this amendment by way of guidance in the standard that they have set out. I beg to move.

Lord Nash

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I would be delighted to meet my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay to discuss this further. It is important that we do so.

Lord Mackay of Clashfern

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I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Lord Watson of Invergowrie

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My Lords, Amendment 10 would place a new duty on local authorities to take reasonable steps to provide care leavers up to the age of 21 with suitable accommodation. It would also end the inequality between young people in stable foster care placements, who are entitled to stay with their foster family until the age of 21 under the “staying put” arrangements, and other groups of young people leaving care.

The Bill rightly aims to improve outcomes for care leavers, a group of young people who, as many noble Lords have said, face significant challenges. However, as currently drafted, we do not believe that it goes far enough to make a real difference to young people’s lives. Organisations supporting these young people have consistently said that safe and stable accommodation must be the starting point for improving outcomes in other areas. Education, training, employment and health would be the main examples. A 2015 report by the National Audit Office found that young people with a background in care were more likely to become homeless or to end up in custody. Indeed, the most recent figures from the Department for Education show that, in 2015-16, 7% of care leavers aged 19 to 21 were in accommodation considered unsuitable and the suitability of the accommodation of a further 11% could not be established. Equally, 4% of care leavers aged 19 to 21 were in custody, and 40% of care leavers in that age group were not in education, employment or training. All these figures combined show the scale of the task that faces us when we seek to look after young people leaving care.

When most young people leave home, they are usually able to continue to rely on their parents, as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said, for many things, not least advice as well as practical and financial support. Young people who have been in care do not have that support system open to them. Many have significant emotional and mental health needs which are often due to a history of abuse or neglect. The transition to adulthood can be daunting at the best of times for all young people. By definition, looked-after children rarely experience the best of times and have to cope with multiple changes: finishing school or college; moving from child and adolescent mental health services to adult services; and often the need to find alternative living arrangements. Even among children in different forms of care, there is real inequality between care leavers who can stay with their foster family under “staying put” and all other young people leaving care.

The Government have promised to pilot “staying close”, which would offer accommodation to young people leaving residential care, but we understand there is to be no duty on local authorities to do so, and there is certainly no clarity on funding. As it stands, if you are not in a stable foster placement at 18, you may well end up in an unsafe or unstable accommodation placement or be homeless or sofa-surfing. Outcomes for care leavers in general will not improve until this issue is addressed.

In 2014, the Government recognised the importance of safe, stable and appropriate accommodation for care leavers. “Staying put” arrangements mean some young people can remain with their foster family until they reach 21. In 2015-16, of those who ceased to be looked after on their 18th birthday and who were in foster care, 54% of 18 year-olds, 30% of 19 year-olds and 16% of 20 year-olds were able to remain with their foster family. However, for other young people, including those in residential accommodation, who may be the most vulnerable of all and have significant needs, no equivalent support is available. This Bill offers an opportunity to ensure that all young people leaving care have an appropriate place to live until they reach 21 to help them start their adult lives.

In July, the Government committed to piloting “staying close” in Keep on Caring: Supporting Young People from Care to Independence. The aim is to explore models of accommodation for young people leaving residential care. That is to be welcomed, but Amendment 10 enables us to go a step further. I hope that the Government will look upon it favourably.

Amendment 12 in my name amends Clause 2. It concerns the local offer for care leavers and seeks to set up a national minimum standard that would set out the quality and extent of services to be offered by local authorities to care leavers. In a later group, we will discuss the national offer. I am aware that the Government, at this stage at least, are not minded to embrace such a concept. Setting out a national minimum standard is a similar approach in the sense of avoiding the postcode lottery that we all understand and that applies in different ways in different settings. That lottery could allow local authorities in some areas to provide a much less satisfactory service to care leavers than is provided in others. That is why it makes sense to set a national minimum standard. It would be no more than a minimum to be built on but it is necessary so as to have something on which to fall back.

Regarding the other part of the amendment, it makes sense to consult appropriately to ensure that the basis on which the national minimum standard would be set was one that carried the benefit of the experience of the various corporate parenting partners. It is important to say that the setting of a minimum standard is something that we need to do because the patchwork effect of the accommodation issues to which I referred in commenting on the earlier amendment show that there is no common policy across the country. That, surely, is not acceptable. For that reason, I beg to move.

Lord Warner

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My Lords, I shall speak in support Amendment 12, to which I have added my name, but I should like first to add my support to Amendment 10. Affordable single-person accommodation is one of the areas in shortest supply in many of our cities. This is the pool in which we are often trying to find accommodation for these young people. They do need a lot of support. We are asking them to live independently and to battle their way through what is often a confusing and difficult accommodation market. Even older, more mature adults find it difficult to survive in that market.

We are setting these young people up to fail if we do not do more to help them to get into safe and suitable accommodation. It is no wonder, sadly, that we find so many of these young people having been in care sleeping rough in many of our inner cities, including not far from this place. Anyone who late at night wanders around the South Bank will find some of these characters who have been in care having a difficult time. When you talk to some of them, you hear that they have never had good accommodation.

The Minister should take this seriously. When I was chairman of the Youth Justice Board this area was one of the major contributory factors to many of these young people moving down a path of crime and into the youth justice system. Tackling it is therefore in everyone’s interests, not just those of the young people. I strongly support Amendment 10.

I also support Amendment 12. Too often we pass reforming legislation without saying what would be an acceptable level of response by those responsible for implementing that legislation. There is a long history of the lifetime outcomes for looked-after children being inadequate. We shall come to the issue of outcomes in a later amendment. To address this long-standing problem, the Government would do well to set out some national minimum standards for the services that must be offered under their local offer for care leavers. Far too many young care leavers do not know what they can expect from the authority that has been looking after them when they move into the wider world.

From my experience as the commissioner for children’s services in Birmingham—appointed by the current Secretary of State’s predecessor but one, who has since gone on to further fame—one also finds huge variations in the performance of some of the leaving-care teams within the same authority. This is not an area that has been well served by consistency even within the same authority. Setting some national standards would not just be helpful for consistency between authorities but would help some of the bigger authorities to have consistency within themselves. So I strongly support Amendment 12.

Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville

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My Lords, I speak briefly to Amendment 10 and to agree with the comments of the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Warner. In the market town in my own area, the number of beds available for young people in the excellent Foyer has been reduced over recent years, and it is now in danger of actually closing. As well as providing excellent accommodation to allow young people, especially care leavers, to move on and gain independence, it has provided training, other support and a coffee bar. It is a great shame, to put it mildly, that such a facility should be closed because of the lack of funding for the number of beds there.

As the noble Lord, Lord Warner, who is much more experienced in this area than me, has said, young people, especially care leavers, are very vulnerable and they require adequate quality accommodation to meet their needs.

Lord Nash

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My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for these amendments, which relate to the local offer for care leavers. Together, they seek to introduce a national minimum standard for the local offer and to place a duty on local authorities to provide suitable accommodation for all care leavers until the age of 21.

It is worth reminding ourselves what the local offer is intended to achieve. It is an opportunity for local authorities to set out in one place the services they provide to assist care leavers as they move into adulthood and independent living. In particular, it should include services relating to health and well-being, education and training, employment, accommodation and participation in society. The local offer must include both care leavers’ statutory entitlements, as well as the additional services and support that local authorities provide to meet the needs of care leavers in preparing for adulthood and independent living. The national minimum offer that the noble Lord seeks is, in effect, the statutory rights that all care leavers are entitled to, but we expect local areas to go beyond the statutory minimum and set this out in their local offer.

Under Clause 2, before publishing their local offer or any revised version of it, local authorities must consult care leavers, as well as any other persons or bodies who are representative of care leavers. I do not believe that prescribing a national minimum standard setting out the services that must be included under the local offer is the right way forward. It would mean central government deciding what is best for care leavers in their local area, rather than the local authorities and care leavers themselves. A set of minimum standards could serve to limit innovation and creativity, rather than to drive the improvements that we all want to see. We have already seen innovation and creativity in the best local authorities with a strong corporate parenting ethos and a care leaver local offer in place, such as North Somerset, Southwark and Trafford.

Turning to the specific duty proposed in Amendment 10, I reassure noble Lords that local authorities are already responsible for providing suitable accommodation to all care leavers aged 16 to 17. “Suitable” is defined in statutory guidance, which makes it clear that bed-and-breakfast accommodation is not a suitable option and must be used only in exceptional circumstances and for no more than two working days.

When care leavers reach the age of 18, local authority care teams are responsible for helping them to access suitable accommodation. The latest data for the year ending March 2016 show that only 7% of care leavers aged between 19 and 21 were in accommodation deemed unsuitable.

There are a range of accommodation options for care leavers aged 18 or above. As we have already discussed, we introduced “staying put”. As I am sure the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, who is not in his place, would be pleased to hear, the latest data show that 54% of 18 year-olds who were eligible to stay put chose to do so. Data also show that 30% of 19 year-olds and 16% of 20 year-olds were still living with their former foster carers.

Lord Watson of Invergowrie

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My Lords, first, I hope and suspect that my eyebrows were not the only ones to raise when the Minister said that it was not for the Government to set in statute what local authorities should be doing. It has been the pattern in recent years for Government to say what local authorities should not be doing. Housing and education were increasingly taken away from them; then planning was taken away; and social work services will to some extent be taken away if Clause 29 of the Bill becomes law. I suspect some in local authorities would be quite pleased to have the Minister standing up for them, but I am not being entirely serious, because I am suggesting that the Government should go beyond the minimum. The Minister says that there is a minimum, but the Bill does not say what that should be. Without that being set out, what is a minimum? We could be here until a week on Tuesday discussing what that is, so that is not a suitable answer. I am not asking the Government to tell all local authorities what they should do but I am asking them to set the minimum, because some local authorities clearly do not meet that minimum. We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Warner, a man whose experience is vast, of the inconsistences that already exist. I cannot believe that the Minister would regard that as acceptable—indeed, I know he would not. If it is not acceptable, we need to do something about it. That is why this amendment has been framed.

The Minister said a few moments ago that the local offer must aim to support independent living. Well, the most basic part of independent living is accommodation. While I accept what the Minister says about various agencies supporting accommodation, the most basic right anyone needs to build a sustainable life is accommodation of their own, rented or owned. Without that, I do not see how anybody can be expected to make their way in life successfully for very long. So the Government’s response is disappointing and—dare I say—a bit complacent. The situation that the Minister outlines is not that found on the ground by local authorities or by many of the organisations working in the field. I regret that the Minister has not been willing to go further, but I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Lord Farmer (Con)

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My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 11, tabled in my name and those of my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. To begin with, I must confess that I was not giving the Minister my full attention when he referred to this amendment earlier in speaking to Amendments 2 and 9. However, I think I heard encouraging words, so I will be speaking with an optimistic heart.

As I said in Committee about an identical amendment, including the word “relationships” would remedy an omission in the list of the areas of support that councils are required to include in their local offer. It stipulates that information and services to help young people develop and maintain healthy and supportive relationships should be available alongside the other five areas of health and wellbeing, education and training, employment, accommodation, and participation in society. I explained then how, when children and young people are taken into the care of the local authority, first and foremost these circumstances typically create a relationship problem. There are profound long-term effects of losing parental attachments and bonds with siblings and others in the extended family. Ministerial architects of the Bill had the best of intentions in this area but the wording acknowledges relationships only scantily and, as a consequence, ineffectively—as I hope to show here today. If the goal is to change the culture in local authorities so that relationships become of central importance, as the Government intend, legislation has to provide a stronger lead.

Clause 1 provides seven corporate parenting principles, including that children should have stability in their home lives and relationships. The local offer provided for in Clause 2 will, according to the note for Peers we received at the recent meeting with the Minister, be one of the main ways in which the corporate parenting principles are brought to life in relation to care leavers.

However, the draft local offer that was recently circulated to Peers was devoid of any reference to relationships, so how can this document claim to bring to life the corporate parenting principle about relationship stability? Yet this omission could have been anticipated, given that Clause 2, which guided the guidance, as it were, did not specify that information on relationships would form part of the service offering, hence this amendment.

The draft statutory guidance for applying corporate parenting principles for care and pathway planning does mention, on page 19, the need for looked-after children and care leavers to build resilience by forging strong relationships if they are to thrive. It goes on to say that this will mean local authorities having regard to the need to maintain, as far as possible, consistency in the home environment, relationships with carers and professionals and school placement. It then goes on to make important points about stability of housing tenure and provide good practice examples of financial and practical help.

However, there is nothing in either the guidance or the local offer about how to maintain stable relationships, and nothing about helping young people to form networks of supportive relationships beyond those with paid professionals and those formally designated as carers.

We withdrew this amendment earlier after reassurances from the Government that,

“the whole thrust of what we seek to achieve through the Bill is the reinforcement of the importance of relationships and helping children and young people to recover from their pre-care experiences to make a successful transition to independence. The importance of relationships is central to the corporate parenting principles … We will publish guidance for local authorities and I would fully expect it to say that they should include in their offers information about relationship education among the services available for care leavers. Our forthcoming care leavers strategy will set out our plans to ensure that care leavers are better supported to develop and sustain the social networks that support them in their transition to adulthood and beyond”.—[Official Report, 4/7/16; cols.114-115.]

So the Government understand that care leavers need not just continuity of care, but support networks and relationship education.

Support networks do not just spring up but typically need the encouragement and facilitation of adults. In Committee I mentioned family finding projects, such as those taking place in Orange County in California. Family finding is an intensive search method to find family members and other adults who would like to step in and care for children and young people in, or about to leave, foster care who lack permanent relationships. The goal is to locate long-term, caring, permanent connections and relationships for them and to establish a long-term emotional support network with family members and other adults. They may not be able to take the child into their home but still want to stay connected with them and to journey with them through life. In Orange County, 97% of the young people who took part increased family contact, and 89% have lifelong connections. Edinburgh City Council has already adopted this approach. Encouragingly, in Grand Committee the Government stated their interest in this approach for their care leavers strategy, which the Family Rights Group is now testing in a number of local authorities.

Yet however many family members and caring adults we try to cluster around young people, these connections will be insufficiently sticky if young people are pre-programmed to reject the relationships that are on offer because of past experiences, or have no understanding of what a good relationship looks like. This is where relationship education comes in. It can be delivered informally when a young person finds it very hard to maintain a relationship with a key figure in their life. They mention it, say, to their personal adviser, and that person purposefully helps them to navigate through difficulties or misunderstandings in exactly the same way that a loving parent would. I am sure this already happens but it needs to be an important part of every personal adviser’s job description and skill set. Alternatively, it can be more formally delivered through the work of services like Love for Life, which is part of TwentyTwenty, the award-winning mentoring organisation with which the Government have contracted to work in the recently announced Derby social mobility hub. The ethos running through this and many other third sector organisations is that the skills to build good relationships can be taught and caught.

I have met the Minister, Edward Timpson, and am in no doubt that he is alive to the importance of relationships, but the Bill simply does not yet reflect how quintessential they are, as stated by the Government. Instead of trying to get this in the Bill, I could be arguing for better recognition in the draft guidance, the draft local offer and the forthcoming care leavers strategy. However, it is not a question of either/or; it is both/and. It could sensibly be surmised that the Government overlooked the need to make explicit reference to relationships in their draft local offer, despite what they say about its importance to the corporate parenting principles, because it was not included in the legally binding list provided in Clause 2. This suggests that it would be to all too easy for local authorities to do the same, thereby undermining the opportunity presented by the local offer to drive much-needed cultural change in this area. I beg to move.

Baroness Tyler of Enfield

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My Lords, I support Amendment 11, to which my name is attached, as it was in Committee. To reiterate what I said then, and despite the very good debate we have already had today on Amendment 2, the Bill itself is currently almost devoid of references to relationships; indeed, you might almost say it is a bit of a relationship-free zone. That is ironic when what we are all trying to do here is improve the lot of the very vulnerable children and young people who most need love, warmth, emotional security and human empathy to help them on their journey through life, given their very troubled start. It is a statement of the blindingly obvious that good relationships are utterly indispensable to that end.

The noble Lord, Lord Farmer, who is such a passionate advocate in this field, has already referred to the need for a change in the culture of many local authorities so that they also make promoting relationships central to their work. I know that there are some very good examples of good practice here, but I want to talk very briefly about what cultural change requires and why it is important. It could be assumed that good-quality relationships, particularly the support of peers and adults who are not paid to take an interest, are somehow nice to have but out of the reach of many young people in, or coming into, the care system. If so, that assumption will shape a local authority’s response. It will focus almost exclusively on ensuring that a young person has the material, financial and practical support that they need in the absence of the family ties through which these things typically come. It will also put a greater load on the social worker and personal adviser role.

Lord Mackay of Clashfern

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My Lords, I am happy to support the amendment. Everything that I said earlier was about relationships and how vital they are, so it gives me great pleasure to support my noble friend’s amendment.

The Earl of Listowel

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My Lords, perhaps I may speak briefly in support of the amendment. Earlier we debated my Amendment 2, and I indicated this morning to the Minister that I would not be seeking to move it. I must say that, listening to the debate in the Chamber, I was almost tempted to change my mind. The amendment was brought to my attention fairly late, which is why I was reluctant to push it as hard as I might. This is an excellent amendment, if I may say so. I understand that the Minister is going to give a very sympathetic response. I hope he can go as far as possible towards enshrining this in statute. I look forward to his response.

Lord Nash

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My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Farmer and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, for the amendment. It seeks to add services relating to relationships to the services that local authorities may offer as part of their local offer. I understand the intention behind the amendment, and I agree that high-quality and consistently supportive relationships are critical to supporting care leavers into successful independent lives. I believe that the key to getting these relationships right is down to how the services are delivered, with individual professionals, volunteers and personal advisers building a strong and positive rapport with young people. I was very interested to hear what my noble friend Lord Farmer had to say about Orange County. It is an area I know well because in a past life I used to travel there regularly on business. I know that it is a very forward-thinking part of the world.

This is an important issue and I am certainly very sympathetic to the points that have been made. I am therefore very happy to take them away and consider further in detail whether an amendment to the Bill along these lines is the best way of securing further progress in this area. I hope that, in view of this, the noble Lord and the noble Baroness will feel reassured enough to withdraw the amendment.

Lord Farmer

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I thank the Minister for that encouraging response. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for their support. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

The Earl of Listowel

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My Lords, Amendment 13 relates to the national offer for care leavers. I am grateful for the support of the Labour and Liberal Democrat Front Benches for this amendment. Recently I heard from Ashley, an 18 year-old in a Staying Put placement who has experienced at least six different foster placements during her time in care.

As I speak, I am thinking about a colleague from a charity board who recently described to me her early experience. Her mother was a crack addict who told her children both that she valued drugs more than them and that if they did not visit her regularly, she would take her own life. My colleague is extremely bright and hard-working and made it to university—one of the 6% of care leavers who do so. There, she had many black days, but she was supported by her flatmates, she completed her degree and, in August of this year, was married to a kind man—an accountant. So many care leavers do not experience that success. Without a family to call on, they might quickly find themselves alone and in debt, perhaps destitute. Our ambition must be to furnish care leavers with the necessary skills and training to allow them to excel and achieve their full potential, as we would wish for our own children.

However, financial security—the bedrock of being able to do these things—is so often difficult for them. Jack, a care leaver who attended a meeting organised by the Children’s Society last week, subsequently told me that, “The national offer would provide stability to care leavers, with protection from the darker side of financial troubles. It means we could focus on our education, employment or training and not on the stress of how we are going to pay for this or that, or whether to buy a bus pass or food shopping that week”.

I welcome the steps that the Government have taken to better support care leavers: allowing them to stay put with their foster carers until the age of 21; the Ofsted inspection of care leavers services; the Government’s care leavers strategy; and the new rights under the Bill. However, we all know that we need to do more. The Bill makes a local offer, which is very welcome, but in their role as corporate parent, the national Government need also to provide a robust offer for care leavers, with a particular focus on financial support. If the Government are serious about building a country that works for all and improves the lives of those who are just managing to keep their heads above water, they must ensure that a package of improved support for care leavers is central to that commitment. It is certainly not for this House to decide on financial matters. However, as this Bill begins with your Lordships, we can give the other place an opportunity to discuss matters that are vital to the welfare of care leavers.

This amendment has four parts. The first provides for a reduction in the penalties attached to sanctions targeted at care leavers under the age of 25. The second would provide working tax credit for care leavers under 25, and the third would extend the current exemption from the shared accommodation rate for housing benefit for care leavers from 22 to 24. Finally, the amendment would provide an exemption from council tax for care leavers under 25.

Research from the Children’s Society shows that currently, care leavers are three times more likely to receive a sanction than other young claimants, yet are much less likely to challenge these sanctions, perhaps due to the lack of a pushy parent. When they do appeal, however, two-thirds of these sanctions are overturned. This amendment would soften the sanctions on care leavers under the new universal credit system, in recognition of the additional complexities in their lives—meaning that the maximum sanction would apply for four weeks, as opposed to the existing four to 13 weeks for a first-time infraction. The cost of this measure is effectively nil, as sanctioning is a form of punishment, not a revenue generator for the Treasury.

The noble Lord, Lord Freud, has made an eloquent case for the mental health benefits of employment—but, to be a viable option for care leavers, work must pay. For this reason, our amendment would allow for care leavers under the age of 25 to claim working tax credit—a crucial form of support already paid to those over the age of 25 and to those under that age if they have children or disability. I recognise that working tax credit is soon to be phased out, but, under the new universal credit arrangements, under-25s will still be penalised, so it would be a very important flag to ensure that universal credit will also recognise the needs of this particular group.

For care leavers, a job can mean the end of isolation, as well as the beginning of independence; yet care leavers are heavily overrepresented among young people who are not in employment, education or training. Perhaps the existing assumption behind the working tax credit age limit is that low-income young people will be living at home with their family. This assumption clearly does not apply to care leavers, and they should therefore be able to benefit from this extra help if on a low income.

Thirdly, our amendment would ensure that no care leaver would pay council tax up to the age of 25. Already, six local authorities have suspended this charge for care leavers. Where they are liable for council tax, most care leavers already receive heavy discounts—but still, many struggle to cover this. Despite these changes, we still have the nonsense of corporate parents sending around the bailiffs or taking their own children—or children for whom they have a corporate responsibility—to court to pursue small amounts of money, which might cost more than the money recovered. I am encouraged that, in their latest strategy, the Government have asked local authorities to consider a council tax exemption for care leavers. However, I am sure that noble Lords would agree that the sensible thing to do is to mandate that all local authorities do this, as they do already for those in higher education.

Finally, our amendment would disapply the shared accommodation rate for care leavers until the age of 25. Currently, when a care leaver turns 22, if they are living in privately rented accommodation, their housing benefit is often reduced to that sufficient to rent for a room in shared accommodation, rather than a self-contained property. For many care leavers, their first home might be the first stable home they have ever had. Faced with reduced housing benefit, they might experience dislocation and, possibly, homelessness. We know that approximately 25% of the homeless population have been in the care of a local authority and are therefore care leavers. It cannot be right that, when almost half of all 20 to 24 year-olds still live at home with their parents, we put care leavers in a position where they could see a typical £31 a week cut to their housing benefit at the age of 22.

The cost of our amendment is estimated at around £50 million a year. The aim of the Bill is to extend provision of some key forms of support for care leavers until the age of 25. The logic behind the national offer is to extend the financial support that a care leaver can expect to receive up to that age. The cost of not introducing this amendment is far higher than the cost of its introduction. I beg your Lordships to allow the other place the opportunity to consider this national offer for care leavers. I beg to move.

Lord Watson of Invergowrie

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My Lords, I have added my name in support of this amendment. I pay tribute to the work done by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and by the Children’s Society, to which he referred. Many noble Lords have benefited from the briefing provided by that organisation and it is a matter that it cares very deeply about. We in your Lordships’ House should also care deeply about it.

In July, the Government launched Keep on Caring, a strategy for cross-government provision. That was certainly welcome, not least because it contained the proposal to introduce a care-leaver covenant. The Government have characterised this as complementing the local offer that local authorities will be required to provide. However, it did not meet what we, and several organisations involved day-to-day in the delivery of social services to children, see as the need for a national offer delivered locally. I referred to this on the previous group of amendments. We believe that the national offer is necessary because of the patchwork provision that will be made by local authorities, so I would like to reinforce the arguments that I made on the earlier group.

I will not repeat the details of the national offer that the noble Earl outlined, but I want to refer to one or two aspects of it. There are four points, and the Minister, perhaps slightly unusually, replied to all four in a letter to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, before the debate. The noble Earl has kindly circulated that letter, and it is helpful for us to know what the Government’s position is. It is not exactly positive. None the less, it is helpful to have it outlined.

Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville

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My Lords, I support the amendment, to which I have added my name, and am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for moving it. It covers a great deal of important ground. As I said earlier, I attended the briefing by the Children’s Society last week, where some of the statistics provided were compelling. I agree with much of what has already been said and will have to amend my speech as I go along.

Often, care leavers moving into independent accommodation are managing their money for the first time. They find this very challenging due to the lack of financial education prior to reaching the age of 18. They have very low levels of income and often fall into debt.

As we have heard, working tax credits are not available to care leavers at a time when they have full responsibility for running a household for the first time. Some will have apprenticeships, but the apprenticeship rate is £3.40 an hour—no doubt based on the assumption that young people in apprenticeships live with their parents. This is hardly likely to keep care leavers out of debt.

A study undertaken by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, 57% of care leavers have difficulty managing their money, and almost half of local authorities in England fail to offer adequate financial education for care leavers. We have already heard about the exceptionally high number of care leavers being sanctioned under universal credit.

The amendment proposes a national offer of a range of support for care leavers to help them towards the age of 25. Some will not necessarily need that support for that long, but others will take time to get to grips with their responsibilities and budgetary control of limited resources. Council tax exemption until age 25 appears an easy way to assist. As we have heard, very few local authorities exempt care leavers from council tax. However, 1,800 young people are currently exempt from council tax where local authorities have recognised that additional help is needed for this vulnerable section of our community. The costs are not great to individual authorities. Cheshire East Council estimates that it costs it £17,000 per annum in total—a small cost compared to the relief it brings to young people struggling to get to grips with living independently.

The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said that he had heard from Jack, and so did I. Jack is now a care leaver in his early 20s who was in care from four to 18. Jack felt that lots of money was thrown at looked-after children on activities—in his case, frequent trips to Alton Towers, clothing allowance and pocket money. He felt that that was far more money than a normal family could afford for their children. As a mother, I echo that. I could not afford to take my children on frequent trips to Alton Towers, although they would very much have liked that. He said that it cost more to keep him in care than to send him to Eton. When he left care, however, he did not even have enough money for the bus or heating. Jack’s view, which I thought was very practical, was that his activity money would have been better used after he was 17 to fund driving lessons.

I share Jack’s view that some of the money currently spent on looked-after children could be used to much better effect. I am conscious that we in this House may not impose additional financial burdens on the Government, but the Bill is starting here. We must find ways to support these young people who, as care leavers, are disproportionately represented in our prison and probation services. Reprofiling the money currently spent might be one way to achieve the aims of the amendment.

I support the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, in his amendment, and we on this side of the House are prepared to support him in a Division on this critical issue if necessary.

The Lord Bishop of Chester

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My Lords, I add my strong support for the amendment, which was moved by the noble Earl with a mastery of succinctness and clarity across the issues he covered, backed up by the other noble Lords who spoke. There are powerful arguments for the amendment.

We have just been talking about the importance of relationship education and support. That is exactly what care leavers typically do not have—by definition, if you like. Think of the degree of support that your Lordships have had to give to your children at the age of 19 to 24 and beyond. I see some smiles on your Lordships’ faces, and I could smile myself and put a price tag on it. It does not exactly run into millions of pounds, but it feels like it.

Giving a bit of extra help to those at that stage in their lives has a great deal to be said for it. Even if it cannot be given in all four areas set out by the Children’s Society in its briefing, some, at least, should be considered very carefully—I add that it is a Church of England society. I think the work it has done here is a model of professionalism. My right reverend friend the Bishop of Durham spoke to this on Second Reading, but he cannot be here today and I am happy to pick up the baton from him.

We are dealing with a group of people who typically have very little support—support we almost assume that our own children need at that age—so we must help with anything we can do. Earlier, I heard the Minister say that the danger with having a minimum or national standard is that it would interfere with what is provided locally. It is not either/or; it is both/and, surely. I did hear somebody on the television just a few days ago saying there is an important role for the state. I agree with the Prime Minister on this, and I think that there is a role here for national standards and encouragement.

Wonder of wonders, Cheshire East has been mentioned. It is a Conservative-run authority, blazing a trail, but should we leave it to a postcode lottery so that some authorities do this and some do not? That is very discouraging if you see it in those terms. While this is led by local authorities and a local offer, it does seem to me there is a strong reason for having a certain degree of national offer and national minimum standards. I think that is the spirit behind this amendment, and I strongly support it.

Lord Warner

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My Lords, I support the amendment. However, I would like to put a very specific question to the Minister to which I would welcome a reply. The Minister will recall that, when you stand at the Dispatch Box, you speak for the Government, not just your department. When this Bill began, there was another Government he was speaking for, but he is now speaking for a new Government. That new Government have expressed great concern about helping those who are just getting by. This group of people are barely getting by and in some cases are not getting by. What this amendment does is provide a proposition which this Government—not the previous Government —need to consider. Can the Minister say whether this issue has been put to the new Ministers in the Department for Work and Pensions and DCLG? It would be very helpful to know whether this Government have considered this issue at a ministerial level and what their view is.

Baroness Lister of Burtersett

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My Lords, what I would like to say follows on very well from the noble Lord’s very pertinent question. I am happy to support this amendment, which was moved so ably by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel.

A recent Joseph Rowntree Foundation document called We Can Solve Poverty in the UK, which was the product of a long and wide consultation, states:

“The prospects for young people leaving local authority care should be an overarching priority for government. Despite positive policy and legal developments, they continue to face unacceptably high risks of destitution and poverty”.

Destitution in 21st-century Britain for an extremely vulnerable group of young people really is unacceptable. As the noble Lord said, they are not getting by. In many circumstances, it is simply not possible for them to get by.

This amendment addresses some of the key policy drivers behind these very serious risks. The Government are rightly requiring local authorities to promote the best interests of care leavers up to the age of 25, yet their own policies fail to do so. I can see no justification for what surely must constitute double standards. There is a degree of acknowledgement of the arguments put earlier during the process of the Bill and of this case in Keep on Caring, which is very welcome, but I urge the Minister to go further today.

As already noted, no doubt cost will be cited. However, the costs are not prohibitive. Also, this needs to be considered in the context of another Joseph Rowntree Foundation report regarding the costs of poverty. It calculated that around two-thirds of total local authority expenditure on children’s services is attributable to poverty-related problems.

At earlier stages of this Bill, I quoted yet another Joseph Rowntree Foundation report, which looked at the links between poverty and the abuse and neglect of children. I quoted that report, which said:

“Poverty often slides out of focus in policy and practice”.

This amendment puts poverty back into focus and it addresses the severe poverty experienced by many extremely vulnerable care leaders.

Lord Nash

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My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for this amendment and their contributions to this debate. The amendment would introduce a new clause setting out a national offer for care leavers. The national offer would first comprise an exemption from council tax until care leavers reach the age of 25. Secondly, it would extend care leavers’ exemption from the shared accommodation rate in housing benefit to the age of 25. Thirdly, it would amend the eligibility rules so that care leavers aged under 25 are able to claim working tax credits. Fourthly, it would limit the application of benefit sanctions to care leavers under universal credit. I understand the intention behind this amendment and I agree that it is important that care leavers have the financial support they need to lead independent, successful lives. However, I am not convinced that this amendment is the best way to provide that financial support. I will deal with these issues in turn.

We believe that local authorities are best placed to make decisions about council tax support schemes. Instead of mandating exemptions from the centre, we have provided local authorities with the flexibility to design their own support schemes to meet local need. This is about giving local freedom so that resources can be spent in the best way. We do not want to give blanket exemptions or discounts because of the impact this will have on local authority revenues and other council tax payers who may equally struggle to pay the tax. The latest briefing from the Children’s Society shows that more local authorities are deciding to exempt care leavers from paying council tax. North Somerset, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Cheshire East and Milton Keynes have all introduced council tax exemptions in the last few months. We expect that the local offer will drive more local authorities to follow suit.

Equally, however, local authorities may decide that it is more appropriate to provide care leavers with other forms of financial support. Some local authorities, for example, provide care leavers with free travel passes or with help to buy clothes for interviews. These are all clear examples of local authorities taking their role as corporate parents seriously.

I recognise the intention behind extending care leavers’ exemption from the shared accommodation rate until the age of 25. As the noble Earl will be aware, discretionary housing payments continue to be available by local authorities which provide support for those individuals who need additional financial help with housing costs. The Government have already committed £870 million in discretionary housing payment funding over the next five years. Your Lordships will appreciate that that is a significant amount of money to help those who are vulnerable and who require additional help with housing costs. However, we have made a commitment in the care leaver strategy to work with the Department for Work and Pensions to explore the costs and benefits of an extension to age 25, as proposed in the amendment. We do not currently have data that tell us how many care leavers would be affected by this change and therefore I do not believe that it would be appropriate to make a change to the law until this issue has been reviewed further. As part of that, we have asked the Children’s Society to provide some real-life case studies to illustrate the impact of moving to the shared accommodation rate.

With regard to amending eligibility rules so that care leavers aged under 25 are able to claim working tax credit, noble Lords may be aware that universal credit will replace the current system of means-tested working-age benefits with a new, simple, streamlined payment. Under the new arrangements, the requirement for workers to be aged 25 or over to be entitled to claim the working tax credit element of universal credit will not apply.

The noble Earl said that care leavers under 25 will still be disadvantaged when universal credit is introduced. That is not consistent with the information provided by the DWP, which has been clear that age-related conditions will not be applied to universal credit. I would be happy to meet the noble Earl to discuss this point further.

Additionally, as part of the national rollout for universal credit, the Department for Work and Pensions will ensure that care leavers are able to make a claim to universal credit in advance of leaving care. They will also have access to universal credit advances where they need help to manage until they receive their first payment.

We recognise the impact that benefit sanctions can have on care leavers’ lives and we share noble Lords’ wish for sanctions on care leavers to be reduced. Jobcentre Plus has introduced a marker that allows care leavers to be identified on the system and receive additional help. We want to ensure that as many care leavers as possible benefit from the support that is available. We do not think it is in care leavers’ interests to remove them entirely from the requirements expected of other jobseekers. However, we already have the flexibility to tailor requirements based on the circumstances of each individual.

The purpose of sanctions is to encourage claimants to comply with reasonable requirements, developed in agreement with their job coach, so as to help them move into and prepare for work. Reducing sanctions on care leavers is therefore best achieved through closer working between local authority leaving care teams and work coaches at Jobcentre Plus. There are many examples of effective local protocols that can help care leavers to understand the conditions around the receipt of benefits. These include the Barnet hub model, which we promoted in our care leaver strategy published in July. I believe, however, that such protocols are best designed locally.

I understand what noble Lords are trying to achieve through Amendment 13. I agree that it is vital that care leavers have the financial resources and support that they need. However, I think that we need to balance this with making sure that we do not unintentionally lower our aspirations for care leavers. Although noble Lords are right to say that care leavers are vulnerable groups, I believe that we would do them a disservice if we did not encourage them into work, as we do with other young people. The real key to helping care leavers is to promote their life chances by supporting them in accessing and staying in education, employment or training in the way that Jobcentre Plus already does, or through the 2nd Chance learning scheme or priority access to the Work Programme. More help and support will be available to care leavers through the new youth obligation scheme and expanded universal support.

I met the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, earlier today, which helped greatly in clarifying and understanding his issues of concern regarding benefit sanctions. I would like to meet him again to discuss his concerns about this further but, before doing so, I will speak to Ministers to see whether there is scope to apply a less stringent sanctions regime for care leavers.

I would also like to draw attention to the care leaver covenant, which will provide a way for government at the national level to make a commitment to support care leavers. Central government departments will be able to set out and update their distinct offer to care leavers. I believe that this will be the most appropriate way to clarify the role of central government departments in supporting care leavers, rather than setting out a “national offer” in legislation. We will announce more details about how departments can sign up to the covenant in the new year.

The noble Lord, Lord Warner, asked about the new Government’s intentions. Noble Lords will be aware that, as part of the Keep on Caring strategy, we are considering our care leavers strategy and how to ensure that care leavers have the financial support they need. I remind noble Lords that this is a programme for the whole Parliament and we will continue to consider these issues. In addition, as the noble Lord will be aware, our new Secretary of State is prioritising social mobility, and she has recognised that improving the outcomes of care leavers is an important part of that agenda.

Finally, many noble Lords have talked about Jack’s experiences while in care. My officials have also heard from Jack and have organised some work experience for him in the department. We continue to talk to him and to listen to his experiences.

In the light of the points I have made, I hope that the noble Earl will feel reassured enough to withdraw his amendment.

The Earl of Listowel

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My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply and I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate: the noble Lord, Lord Watson, the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester and other noble Lords. I appreciate their contributions.

I am grateful to the Minister for his interest, his sympathy and his offer of a meeting, particularly to discuss sanctions. However, I am most concerned that this amendment may be lost if not agreed today.

Listening to the debate, I particularly thought of the recent report from CoramBAAF which looked at the rates of teenage pregnancy among young women in care and leaving care. It pointed out that they are three times more likely to become pregnant and that, when they do, they are more likely to keep the child because they are looking for someone to love them. They want to give birth to and hold on to the child and have the love of the child. In this case we may often be talking about young families coming out of care as well.

We have to do more to break the cycle of young people leaving care and so often falling into debt and financial hardship, not being able to make the most of the opportunities that the worlds of training and work have to offer. This is fundamentally about fairness and pulling out all the stops to help care leavers achieve their full potential.

Before I conclude, I want to say how glad I am to hear that the Minister has found a work placement for Jack. I look forward to hearing how that develops. However, I am afraid that I must beg leave to ask the opinion of the House.

Lord Nash

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My Lords, I will speak first to Amendments 14, 15, 16 and 18.

In Committee, I was pleased at the support Clause 3 received and to see that the importance of making available the support of a personal adviser to all care leavers was widely recognised. In most family situations support tapers away as children and young people get older and gain more independence. The support we provide for 16 and 17 year-old care leavers clearly needs to be greater than it would be for the majority of 21 to 25 year-olds, and the legislation should follow that approach.

At the same time, we know there are some care leavers whose lives remain chaotic during their early 20s and who need quite intense support to bring stability to their lives, and others who will need support on specific things at specific times—for example, on release from prison, if they have a child, or if they lose a tenancy. In Committee, we spent some time considering whether making a personal adviser available on request was adequate to meet the needs of these young people, and whether if support were once declined there would be subsequent access to it. We recognise that no care leaver should feel that they cannot receive support between the ages of 21 and 25 because they had perhaps indicated at an earlier stage that it was not needed. In light of that, I am proposing amendments to Clause 3(7) to expressly clarify that local authorities must proactively offer support to every care leaver at least every 12 months. I trust noble Lords will welcome these amendments.

The Deputy Speaker (Lord Brougham and Vaux) (Con)

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I should advise the House that if Amendment 18, is agreed to I cannot call Amendment 19 due to pre-emption.

Lord Ramsbotham

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My Lords, I rise to move Amendments 17 and 19. The purpose of Amendment 17 is both to ask to ask the Minister to clarify the intention behind subsection 3(b) of new Section 23CZB and to highlight a potential loophole which could risk local authorities opting out of their duties to former relevant children. It would appear that the intention behind that subsection is to enable a local authority to cancel the appointment of a personal adviser if at any time a former relevant child says that they no longer want one. However, the wording of the subsection is ambiguous. The phrase “if earlier” leaves open the possibility that a local authority might interpret it in a way that would enable it to refuse advice and support to a former relevant child who had previously said that they did not want a personal adviser but at a later stage requested advice and support. This opens another possible loophole of local authorities requesting that former relevant children sign a form on leaving care at 18 to say that they no longer need support. Would the Minister therefore be kind enough to clarify the Government’s intention and resolve any possible ambiguity in the wording of the legislation?

My Amendment 19 is made completely unnecessary by government Amendment 18, and so I propose not to press it.

Lord Nash

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As I understand it, the noble Lord is asking us to clarify that when we say that care leavers will have the right to this every year, they will have the right to it every year and there is no way that local authorities can get out of it. That is our intention, and if it is not clear in the legislation then we will change it. I think I can give the noble Lord the assurance he needs: we do not think there should be any way that local authorities should invite an 18 year-old to contract out of this right.

Lord Ramsbotham

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I do not wish to prolong this, but it is practitioners who have raised this question with me because they are unclear. Although young people have the right every year, it is an opportunity basis that they are considering.

The Lord Bishop of Chester

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My Lords, I thank the Government very much for the change they are bringing in—

The Deputy Speaker

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The Minister has responded.

The Lord Bishop of Chester

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I thought the Minister was just making a clarification.

Lord Nash

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I am sure that we can clarify this. I myself felt that the idea someone would have a one-off chance was not a good one. Therefore, as I said, the intention is that they will get a regular chance—at least every year—to change their mind if they have previously said no. I do not think we should allow any way for anybody to get out of that. I am happy to talk to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, outside the Chamber to clarify that. I am sure that we can resolve this.

Lord Ramsbotham

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I am grateful to the Minister. I am sure that this is capable of resolution. It just seemed an irritant rather than a major issue, but one which it would be unwise to let go. Therefore, I will not press my amendment.

Lord Nash

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My Lords, in Committee we promised the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that we would consider his amendment in Grand Committee to ensure that the current drafting of Clause 4 fully captures those with parental responsibility where the child has left care under special guardianship or child arrangements orders. Following further consideration, the Government have decided an amendment is necessary to Clause 4, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, for bringing this to our attention—I am rather disappointed that he is not here to hear me say that, but I hope the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, will pass on my thanks.

The amendment will make it clear to local authorities in England that they must make advice and information available to any person who has parental responsibility for a previously looked-after child for the purpose of discharging their duty to promote their educational achievement. Unlike adoption, where only the adoptive parents have parental responsibility, parental responsibility in respect of children named in special guardianship and child arrangements orders may be shared with the child’s birth parent or parents. This amendment is therefore important to ensure that all those with parental responsibility are not excluded.

I would like also to speak to government Amendments 21, 24 and 27, which are technical amendments to Clauses 4 to 6 that will ensure that children who were previously looked after and adopted under the Adoption Act 1976 are also within the scope of the new duty on local authorities and schools to promote their educational achievement. These “older” children will be in secondary education, and they too should have access to the virtual school head and the designated teacher. I hope that noble Lords will accept these government amendments.

Before hearing what noble Lords have to say on other amendments, perhaps it would be helpful to noble Lords, and particularly to the noble Baroness, Lady King, if I say that the Government will table an amendment to the Bill in the other place to bring children adopted from care outside England within the scope of Clauses 4 to 6.

Baroness Walmsley (LD)

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My Lords, it was my intention to speak to Amendments 22, 23, 25, 26 and 28 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady King of Bow, and other noble Lords. However, I am delighted to hear what the Minister has just said. To explain to other noble Lords who may not be familiar with the effect of these amendments, I should say that they refer to the educational entitlements of children adopted from overseas to make them equal to those of children adopted from this country. I must declare an interest in this subject because I have a much-loved adopted Chinese granddaughter, although she would not benefit from these amendments since she and her family live abroad.

From a peak of 25,000 adoptions a year in the mid-1970s, the number of adoptions fell in England to only 3,000 in 2011. But the new focus on adoption of the previous Government and of the current Government has made a very big difference. The number of adoptions is going up again, and they are extremely resilient, as shown by a certain amount of research. Only 3% of them break down, which is less than those where children are put under special guardianship. In acknowledging the need for the numbers of adoptions to grow, the application has been made easier and shorter. However, before those reforms took place, many would-be adopters turned away by local authorities had to adopt internationally if they were to have a family, particularly if they wished to adopt an infant. A number of international adopters, including my son, would willingly have adopted in the UK but were turned away, sometimes because of their ethnicity.

There used to be a view that children adopted from abroad did not come from the care system in their country. That may have been the case some time ago but that has changed. Indeed, Martin Narey, who had previously claimed that that was so, has changed his mind in view of changes in all those countries. Most of the children come from care in the countries from which they are adopted. That means that they have exactly the same traumatic experiences that children adopted from care in this country have, and therefore they have exactly the same needs. Those children have already benefited from several elements of the adoption support fund, but until today they had not benefited from the educational advantages that were given to children adopted from this country. So I am delighted that the Minister has indicated in what he has just said that he has accepted that those children need the same advantages in education. We are talking about children who are all British nationals, all with a similar experience of neglect and abuse and all adopted from care. The only difference is that in some cases internationally adopted children might also have experienced deeply inadequate medical care and malnutrition in their country of birth, so actually they may be worse off than children adopted from care in this country.

The Minister suggested that amendments would be tabled when this Bill goes to another place, so I look forward to seeing that. That will remedy the fact that we have up to now condemned a very small number of British children who have suffered neglect and abuse to lives much less successful than they might have been. I hope that will now change. I thank the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady King of Bow, for suggesting these amendments.

Baroness King of Bow (Lab)

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My Lords, I do not wish to detain the House on this amendment—I will detain the House on a later amendment instead—but I want to sincerely thank the Minister for the excellent news that he has brought. As the noble Baroness said, it is only a small number of British children, but they are British children. As an adoptive parent, however you adopt your child and wherever your child comes from, you expect them to have the same life chances in Britain, because that is, I hope, what Britain is about.

Lord Ramsbotham

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My Lords, my Amendment 29 seeks to use Clause 8 to mitigate the possible impact of provisions elsewhere in the Bill on a group of children described by the phrase,

“there being no person who has parental responsibility for the child”—

in other words, looked-after children. I refer in particular to looked-after children in custody, of whom the noble Lord, Lord Laming, in his report, estimated that there were approximately 400 at any one time, 100 of whom were on remand. Although this is not in itself a large number, it adds up to slightly less than half the numbers of children currently in custody. This ratio accentuates the need to consider their position.

Currently, all children remanded into custody are automatically granted looked-after status for the duration of their time on remand. Children in care retain this status throughout their custody. However, in Grand Committee the Minister suggested that this could be removed by other clauses in the Bill. Looked-after children in custody show greater levels of mental health needs than other incarcerated children, need greater levels of emotional and practical support, and respond less well to behavioural incentive schemes and resettlement planning. As a group, they already face problems in engaging local authority support, and it would appear to be at best counterproductive to enable local authorities to opt out of their duty to support those looked-after children who happen to be in custody. This is yet another cross-government matter, and I wonder whether the Department for Education has discussed the possible effect of this with the Ministry of Justice, which aims to reduce reoffending.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)

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My Lords, I, like my noble friend, am very grateful for government Amendment 20, which we fully support. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and my noble friend Lady King spoke eloquently about children adopted from care outside England who are now resident in England, and on the need for educational equality. We, too, very much welcome the Minister’s intention to bring forward amendments in the other place. Obviously, they will come back to your Lordships’ House in the new year.

The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, made a very telling point about the particular challenges of looked-after children in custody. At heart, it is a question of whether the Minister’s department’s intention is consistent with that of the Ministry of Justice. It would be very helpful if, between now and Report, the Minister would enable some discussions to take place with the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, just to make sure that there is absolute consistency, because I very much take the point that he raised.

The Earl of Listowel

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My Lords, I join in welcoming government Amendment 20, which seems to fill an important loophole. In passing, as I did not have an opportunity in the previous grouping, I also thank the Minister for his previous amendments, which are important and which we raised in Committee. As is so often the case, the Minister listens and takes action, and I am grateful to him when he does so, as he did earlier and in this case.

Lord Nash

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My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their interventions on Amendments 22, 23, 25 and 26, which concern Clauses 4 to 6 about promoting the educational achievement of previously looked-after children. I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady King and Lady Walmsley, and the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for these amendments, which would require local authorities and schools to also promote the educational achievement of children adopted from care outside England.

Government policy has been clearly focused on continuing to support very vulnerable children who were looked after by our care system before starting new lives through, for example, adoption. Making a commitment to continue to help them, and the wonderful parents and guardians who give them a secure and loving home, remains a top priority. Support to succeed in education is an important element of this because we know that there is an attainment gap to address.

I understand that some children adopted from outside England will have been in an equivalent form of care prior to adoption and that they, too, are vulnerable. This is in addition to moving to a new country and a new culture. The Government have acknowledged this by extending access to the adoption support fund to these children and their families so that they, too, can get access to much-needed therapeutic services. The Government would like to do more for these children and agree with noble Lords that extending the remit of Clauses 4 to 6 to require local authorities and schools to also promote their educational achievement would be a positive step.

There are, however, a number of important practicalities to consider: for example, how we define eligibility and how a parent proves eligibility. This is because there is much variation between the care systems of other countries. I hope that noble Lords will agree that it is important that we ensure that the eligibility criteria closely match the criteria for children in this country in order to come within the scope of Clauses 4 to 6. As I said, the Government will table a government amendment to this Bill in the other place to bring children adopted from care outside England within the scope of Clauses 4 to 6.

I am also grateful to noble Lords for their Amendment 28, which proposes a new clause to extend existing educational entitlements given to previously looked-after children in England to children adopted from care outside England. These entitlements include priority school admission in the early years and the pupil premium plus. None of these entitlements is provided for in primary legislation so it would not be appropriate to consider this amendment for inclusion in the Bill. The Government will, however, give full consideration to the position of these children when reviewing these policies.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

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My Lords, I will speak to my own amendment and perhaps come back when we have had a debate on the other amendments in the group. This takes us back to an interesting discussion that we had in Committee about fostering and the risk that fostering will be placed in a lower hierarchical category in relation to the provisions of the Bill. Let me say at once—if the Minister is paying attention—that I welcome the issue of the clause, looking at the long-term needs of the child, and developing a plan that will assess their current and future needs and a permanent plan to meet those needs. We all agree that this clause places these issues at the forefront of decision-makers’ minds when assessing the care plan. Clearly, it is important to ensure that all permanent options benefit from this clause. That is why all options should be written explicitly into the Bill.

What is concerning, particularly to those involved in fostering and the fostering network, is whether we can get clarity in the law to avoid some options, particularly adoption, being seen as more important than others in a hierarchy of care. I do not at all underestimate the importance of the need to encourage more adoptions. I have no doubt that this is the right way to go. But it should not be at the expense of prioritising adoptions over fostering.

A legal framework is in place. A legal definition for long-term foster care was introduced subsequent to the passing of the Children and Families Act 2014. The Care Planning and Fostering (Miscellaneous Amendments) (England) Regulations 2015 amended the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010 by providing for the first time a legal definition of long-term foster care and setting out the conditions that must be met. This step rightly strengthened the importance of foster care as a permanent option for children and young people in care.

As the Government have placed long-term foster care on a legal footing, the opportunity should be taken in this legislation to include it as a permanent option. The Children Act 1989 Guidance and Regulations Volume 2: Care Planning, Placement and Case Review June 2015 includes reference to the range of options for permanence and this could be used as a basis from which to amend new subsection (3B) to reflect the range of options for permanence that already exist in law—all of which can deliver good outcomes for individual children.

In Committee in the House of Lords, the Government said that the amendment would duplicate wording in Section 22C of the Children Act 1989 that sets out how looked-after children are to be accommodated by local authorities. That is something that I would like to clarify with the Minister. The fostering network disagrees with this because it believes that Section 22C(6) of the Children Act 1989 does not mention long-term fostering and the term has no legal meaning prior to the Care Planning and Fostering (Miscellaneous Amendments) (England) Regulations 2015 that I referred to. Section 22C(6) specifies only the range of ways in which a looked-after child may be cared for, including foster placements. It does not focus on permanence. As the Bill stands, Clause 8 is inconsistent with the statutory guidance on permanence planning. My amendment would ensure that all permanence options were recognised with equal status across all relevant primary and secondary legislation. We should bear in mind that currently three-quarters of looked-after children are fostered, so this is an important question.

I understand that I have raised some technical issues, but the core importance of this is the need to avoid a hierarchy of care. In addition to responding to the technical questions that I have raised, if the Minister can say that there is no intention of having such a hierarchy, it would indeed be very helpful. I beg to move.

Baroness Walmsley

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My Lords, my Amendment 31 in this group would add the child’s wishes and feelings to the list of matters that must be included in the local authority’s Section 31A plan under the Children Act 1989. Permanence has just been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. The permanence provisions of a care plan must be considered by a court before a care order is made—or in some cases not made. The court must additionally consider contact arrangements and the views of parties to the proceedings about contact. The child is a party in care proceedings, so his or her views would be elicited about contact. To ensure that their wishes and feelings are elicited and reported on all aspects of permanence, it is necessary to specifically include this in Clause 8.

The Department for Education has defined permanence as follows:

“Achieving permanence is multifaceted. It requires children to experience not only physical permanence in the form of a family they are a part of and a home they live in but also a sense of emotional permanence, of belonging and the opportunity to successfully build a strong identity. Legal status may also impact on children’s sense of permanence”.

Without an explicit and specific requirement, it would be quite possible for the part of a care plan dealing with permanence to omit the child’s wishes and feelings about the relationships they value, their sense of belonging and stability and their hopes and dreams for the future. This is not to give undue weight to the child’s wishes and feelings or to place unrealistic expectations or pressures on them; it is just to ensure the child’s rightful place at the centre of proceedings as a human being whose lived experience, wishes, feelings and perspectives should be at the heart of the court’s consideration.

In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, said that,

“this principle is already captured in existing legislation”.—[Official Report, 6/7/16; col. GC 214.]

However, he referred to provisions in Part 3 relating to local authority consultation duties in respect of the children they look after. This issue is separate from the court’s consideration of the permanence provisions of the child’s care plan. It could be argued that the court’s duty in respect of the permanence provision coalesces with its general duty under the welfare checklist to have regard to the ascertainable wishes and feelings of the child concerned—considered, of course, in the light of his or her age and understanding. However, this is one of many aspects of the checklist; there is a whole long list of things. My amendment seeks to ensure that the local authority seeks and reports on the child’s wishes and feelings specifically on the permanence arrangements, in addition to their wishes and feelings on any other matter affecting them.

Statutory guidance on care planning already refers to the child’s wishes and feelings, so placing the child’s wishes and feelings into this part of the legislation accords with national policy, professional standards and children’s rights under the UNCRC. So I hope that the Minister will be minded to accept the amendment.

Baroness King of Bow

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My Lords, my motivation in trying to change the law as outlined in Amendment 34 was driven by painful insight. After meeting hundreds of foster families, I realised a strange fact: I had never met a single middle class foster family. Of course they exist, but they are not the norm. The norm is that low-income families foster Britain’s most vulnerable children, and that when children with more complex needs are not attractive to prospective adoptive parents, it is the same low-income foster families that often step in to adopt. So it really would be unforgivable for us to further reduce the income of those families who, after all, are looking after our most vulnerable children on behalf of the whole country, by restricting the child benefit payable to adopted children, for whatever reason.

I am delighted that the Government listened to the extremely powerful contributions made on all sides of the Committee and accepted our argument. I am genuinely grateful, in particular, for the personal intervention of the Minister—who, as far as I am aware, made this decision purely on the basis of the arguments placed before him. God knows how rare it is for Ministers to make decisions purely on the basis of the arguments. That is obviously not a party-political point but a realpolitik point. Having been a parliamentarian and immersed in realpolitik for two decades, it gives me real pleasure that my last speech in this House for very many years, since I am shortly taking a leave of absence, will be a speech accepting this concession. In fact, some noble Lords will know that I should have left already, but I have never been great at making an exit, especially if I have concessions coming—and it turned out to be more than one.

It is not an exaggeration to say that I received the overwhelming support of all sides of the House when I tabled this amendment, as well as the Minister’s constructive response, along with that of his colleague Edward Timpson MP. Those factors combined have made this particular change in the law one of the highlights of my two decades in Parliament. Some may say I should have had a few more highlights, if I am so excited, but it is absolutely good enough for me because, after all, what this change means is that we will not increase financial disincentives for families that want to adopt children currently in care. Of all the subjects I have pursued in Parliament, this is one of those closest to my heart, because I look at my three adopted children every day and marvel at what happens when you give children a chance. That is what this concession does today. So I shall bow out from Parliament by saying thank you, sincerely—it has been a privilege to influence debate.

The Earl of Listowel

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My Lords, I want to flag up an issue around the wishes and feelings of children, as raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. At a recent conference I was listening to a researcher who was herself a birth family sibling—so she had many foster carers move through her family. One of the fostered children in the family just disappeared one day without any notice to her. She emphasised the importance of listening not only to the voices, wishes and feelings of the child in care, but also to those of the children in the adoptive family or in the foster family. We must make efforts to understand the wishes and feelings of those children, partly out of respect for them but also, very often, because a foster placement or an adoptive placement might break down if the wishes and feelings of those siblings are not respected. If they do not welcome the child, if they feel that the stranger is an intruder into their home, coming between them and their parents, they can very easily undermine the ability of that placement to work. I just wanted to flag up that point.

I welcome the fostering care stocktake that is going on in the Department for Education, which I hope will answer some of the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about parity of esteem for adoption, fostering and residential care. All these are important options. We want to find continuity of care for young people, wherever they are in the care system. I just wanted to flag up that point and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Lord Warner

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My Lords, my name is attached to Amendments 30, 31 and 34. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady King of Bow, that there have been Ministers in this House who have made concessions on the basis of the evidence before them; the noble Lord, Lord Nash, is not unique in this, although I am very grateful for the concessions he has made.

Let me start with Amendment 30. Going back in time to when I first became a director of social services in the mid-1980s, and having never, I have to confess, even been in a social services department in my life before, the very first briefing I was given by these luckless social workers who suddenly found that this strange man had been placed in charge of their department was on the importance of permanence and that if I did nothing else in my time as a director, I must promote planning for permanence. That has stuck with me as a big issue. The second briefing said: “You cannot rely on adoption to deliver permanence. Everybody likes to adopt babies and young children but you will find, oh dear director, that there are going to be a lot of children, from the age of 10 and moving into the teenage years, for whom you will have to plan for permanence, and adoption is not the issue”.

Any social worker starting out in their career over the last two or three years could be forgiven for thinking that the real answer to permanence is adoption. The points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, are critical: if we believe in permanence as the aim of what we are trying to do—as we all do—we must not give any signals that longer-term fostering is not a perfectly valid option in planning for permanence. We must not delude ourselves, or allow ourselves to look as though we are deluding ourselves to the social work profession, that adoption is the only answer and that, somehow, longer-term fostering is an inferior option for permanence planning. So I hope that the Minister will think about that and what the impact of all this is on the profession, working day in, day out, on the front line trying to deal with and provide a more permanent solution for many of these children. We need an amendment of the kind that has been framed in Amendment 30 to restore the balance.

We discussed the issue in Amendment 31 pretty extensively in Committee. In those discussions I recall that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, with all her experience in the family courts, said that all too often the voice of the child was absent from our legislation and court processes. She made much of that then, and there is an opportunity now, with Amendment 31—which, if I may say so to the Minister, is just five little words—to put clearly, fairly and squarely in the legislation an amendment that gives the voice of the child some recognition in the legislation. It will not cost the Government anything, so the easiest thing for the Minister to do shortly would be to stand up and say, “I accept Amendment 31”. He will then go out of this Chamber at the dinner break even more flushed with success and encouragement from the Members of your Lordships’ House. As the noble Baroness said on Amendment 34, this is a straightforward way of removing a disincentive to taking siblings into adoption. I am glad that the Minister is going to make a concession on that, but if he is in for one, why not go for a couple of others as well?

Lord Nash

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My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 30, 31 and 34, which concern the decision-making process about how a child becomes looked after and where they should be placed, and the state benefits which families of adopted children should be entitled to. There is also the matter of wishes and feelings. I am very sorry to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Warner, but I understand that after very helpful discussions between the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and my officials, she—or somebody on her behalf—plans not to move her Amendment 31. I believe she now recognises that it is not necessary, although my officials found the meeting with her extremely helpful. The child’s wishes and feelings are taken into account by local authorities when a child is looked after. This is a legal requirement under Section 22(4) of the Children Act 1989. When any decision is taken with respect to a child who is looked after, the local authority must ascertain their wishes and feelings.

Amendment 30, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Watson, Lord Hunt and Lord Warner, proposes new wording for the permanence provisions of care plans in the context of care proceedings. As I stated in Committee in response to such an amendment, I recognise the concern that adoption should not be seen as more important than other long-term placement options. In answer to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I can state clearly that there is no intention to create a hierarchy here between placement options. We want all children in care, or entering care, to find placements that provide stability and suit them. This is what we mean by permanence; there are different ways to achieve it for different children.

Clause 8 seeks to improve the decision-making process about where a child should be placed, whether that be adoption, with a special guardian, with foster parents or in a children’s home, by having particular regard to the child’s needs and how any placement options would meet those needs. The amendment seeks to explicitly set out in Section 31 of the 1989 Act a list of placement options, such as foster care. However, all placement options, including foster care, are already included within the current legal definition for permanence provisions. Section 22C of the Children Act 1989 and the accompanying statutory guidance set out clearly how all looked-after children, including children subject to care orders, are to be accommodated and maintained by local authorities. This includes a hierarchy of placements with parents, relatives, friends or other persons connected with the child, kinship foster placements with local authority foster carers and placements in children’s homes.

Local authorities and courts are very clear about what placement options they need to consider during care proceedings. Amendment 30 is therefore not necessary and would not add to the existing legislative framework. It would simply duplicate what is already set out elsewhere in the Children Act 1989, which is something that Governments always try to avoid. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, Section 22C clearly says that foster care is an option set out for local authorities and courts to consider, and this includes long-term foster care. Local authorities and courts understand this, and I am advised that no one is confused in practice on the issue. On that basis, I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

Amendment 34, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady King, and the noble Lord, Lord Warner, proposes a new clause so that child-related benefits would be payable to adopted children regardless of any limit on the number of children to whom those benefits are usually payable. As noble Lords will know, the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016 legislated for the child element in child tax credit and universal credit to be limited to two children from April 2017. I was delighted to announce in my letter to noble Lords on 11 October that where a family adopts a child from local authority care and this increases the number of children in the family to three or more, all third or subsequent adopted children will attract the child element of either tax or universal credit. This will be provided for, along with the other exemptions, in regulations and is good news for families who come forward and give a loving home to some of our most vulnerable children. It represents another example of the Government’s ongoing commitment to support these children and their families.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady King, for her kind words. As the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said, I may not be unique in listening to rational arguments but I may be unique in being incapable of resisting the noble Baroness’s charms and the powers of her arguments. I am sure that we will all miss her and I wish her and her family all the best in California. I hope that it will not be long before we see her back on those Benches.

Amendment 32 would simply ensure that Clause 9 will now apply to adoption agencies in Wales, whereas the previous draft of this provision applied to courts in England and Wales and adoption agencies in England. It will also mean that the provision of the new duty will come into force at the same time in England and Wales. The department has agreement from the Welsh Government to lay this amendment, in anticipation of the Assembly scrutinising the required memorandum before agreeing a legislative consent Motion.

In conclusion on all the amendments that have been discussed, I hope the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham, Lord Watson, Lord Hunt and Lord Warner, will feel reassured enough to withdraw or not press their amendments, and that the House will support the Government’s amendment.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

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My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister and join him in congratulating my noble friend Lady King on her new adventure, if I may put it that way. I also congratulate her on her success in persuading the noble Lord to change policy, which is very welcome indeed.

On Amendment 30, I hear what the Minister says about the technical arguments, which I hope are reassuring. He clearly said that there is no intention to create a hierarchy of care, which is very welcome. He also said that he thought that no one in practice at field level is confused. I do not disagree at all with the emphasis that the Government have given to improving adoption procedures, but there is a possibility that practitioners may feel that fostering is no longer seen as an equal option. The guidance that will be issued by his department when the Bill is enacted will no doubt give an opportunity to make that point. I am very grateful for the response and beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Baroness Wheeler (Lab)

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My Lords, I will speak also to the rest of the amendments in this group on behalf of my noble friend Lord Wills, who is unfortunately unwell and not able to be here.

These amendments all aim to increase the protection for whistleblowers. These issues were discussed extensively at both Second Reading and in Committee, so I hope that we will not need to rehearse the arguments again today at length. On my noble friend’s behalf I thank the Minister and his ministerial colleague in the House of Commons, Margot James MP, and their officials for the way in which they have engaged with the issues. They devoted a great deal of time and attention to the dialogue with my noble friend, and he has underlined that they have been fair and open-minded throughout. As a result, he commented that this has been a model of how public policy should be developed in legislation and that it does the Government credit.

The importance of whistleblowing in exposing malpractice and wrongdoing and improving the delivery of public services is widely accepted. Whistleblowers have some protections but they need more. These amendments seek to provide extra protection for those working in organisations covered by the Bill.

Amendments 52 and 72 require the Secretary of State to issue in relation to the organisations covered by the Bill a code of practice on whistleblowing arrangements which can be taken into account by courts and tribunals when the issue of whistleblowing arises. Such a statutory code of conduct sends out to all organisations a powerful signal about the importance that Parliament attaches to providing adequate protection for whistleblowers to help drive necessary cultural change within organisations to encourage whistleblowing. As such, it is a more powerful protection for whistleblowers and acts more effectively in promoting a culture of transparency than the voluntary code of conduct promoted by the Government.

Amendments 53 and 73 provide improved protections for whistleblowers who are job applicants in the organisations covered by the Bill. As we discussed in Committee, this is a critical gap in protections for whistleblowers as job applicants are not considered workers and so do not receive the protections afforded under the Public Interest Disclosure Act. If an individual is labelled a whistleblower, it can be difficult for them to get work because they can find themselves blacklisted— not through a formal, centralised database but informally. The excellent Public Concern at Work campaign has cited a number of such cases where an informal and insidious blacklisting of former whistleblowers has taken place in the recruitment and selection process.

The Government have recognised this anomaly and, following the Francis report into the Mid Staffordshire NHS trust, introduced new protections for whistleblowing job applicants, but only for those working in the NHS. There is no logical reason why such protections should be so restricted, and Amendment 53 addresses this anomaly for those working in organisations covered by the Bill.

As noble Lords will know, my noble friend Lord Wills has moved a similar amendment on several occasions in the past and it has been resisted by Ministers on the grounds that they require more evidence that it is needed—so this time, the amendment recognises those concerns by seeking to give the Secretary of State a power to introduce such protections. This is on the assumption that, if and when such evidence is produced, the Secretary of State will issue the appropriate regulations. There is no provision for what sort of evidence will be required to persuade the Secretary of State to act in this way, but all recent experience in the organisations covered by the Bill suggests that it will be forthcoming.

The amendment seeks to take advantage of a relatively rare legislative opportunity to ensure that, as soon as it becomes even clearer that these protections are needed, the Government can act rapidly to implement them. Amendment 53B seeks to achieve the same effect as Amendment 53, but restricts its scope to children’s social care in an effort to meet any concerns about the scope of the Bill. I beg to move.

Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)

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My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Wills and Lord Low, and the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, for these amendments. I well remember debating this matter during the passage of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill. I wish the noble Lord, Lord Wills, a speedy recovery and I am sorry that he is not with us today. He has worked assiduously to make positive changes which put more emphasis on employers to follow best practice and provide greater protection for employees.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wills, and the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, that those working with the most vulnerable children in society need to be able to report concerns about what is happening in their organisation. Importantly, when they make a protected disclosure they should have no fear of being effectively blacklisted and unable to find a new role. Employment legislation is designed to protect workers from being unfairly dismissed by their employer, or from suffering other detriment such as missing out on promotion, if they report concerns that are in the public interest. That is why we have statutory employment protections for workers who report information which they reasonably believe reveals illegal activity or malpractice in an organisation. This may include someone at work neglecting their duties—for example, in a case where health and safety is put at risk.

I am aware that since we discussed these amendments in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Wills, has had a productive discussion with the Minister for Small Business, Consumers and Corporate Responsibility. The noble Lord’s Amendments 52, 53, 72 and 73, which he brought forward in Committee, make similar proposals for two groups of whistleblowers. Firstly, the noble Lord mentions those employed by, or seeking employment with, public bodies providing social services or children’s services. Secondly, the noble Lord identifies those employed by, or seeking employment with, public bodies employing registered social workers. For each group, he proposes a statutory code of practice and the extension of whistleblower protections to job applicants.

We do think that it may be premature to consider a statutory code. In March last year, the coalition Government published guidance and a code of practice for employers which set out their responsibilities in regard to whistleblowing. I strongly believe that we should allow sufficient time to allow that code to have effect. This is because it has only been in place since last year and it will inevitably take time for employers and prescribed bodies to act on and investigate the disclosures made to them. It is, therefore, premature to make changes without properly assessing the evidence available. I am pleased, though, that the Minister for Small Business, Consumers and Corporate Responsibility discussed with the noble Lord that the Government intend to review the code in 2017 and will work with him to take this forward.

On the proposed protection for job applicants, I am grateful to the noble Lord, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, for bringing forward these amendments. We strongly support the principle behind them, particularly as it applies to those who, in blowing the whistle, have sought to act with integrity in relation to the protection of vulnerable children. There are, however, technical issues around the scope of some of the proposed measures, and their coverage of specific groups of workers or job applicants. Firstly, a Bill focusing on children’s well-being does not seem to be an appropriate vehicle in which to capture the breadth of a local authority’s recruitment arrangements. Secondly, there are practical difficulties in framing legislation like this by reference to qualifications or registrations that an applicant—in this case a social worker—may hold. To do that would mean that in some instances applicants for the same job might be afforded different protections. Additionally, it might be conceivable that an employer themselves would not be aware of all the applicant’s professional qualifications or registrations if the applicant had not disclosed them because they were not relevant to the job being advertised.

Baroness Wheeler

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My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend—and on my behalf—I am very grateful for the support we have received on all sides of the House from your Lordships on this issue and for the Minister’s response. Obviously, we are disappointed that he did not feel able to accept Amendments 52, 53, 72 and 73. On the issue of the need for a statutory code of practice, my noble friend made a strong case for this; indeed, the Public Concern at Work commission underlined that the code should be “rooted in statute”, thereby underlining that protection for whistleblowers is a statutory requirement with parliamentary enforcement. We agree with that. However, we welcome the Government’s commitment for a review of the working of the current non-statutory guidance next year and I hope the Minister will be able to provide the House with more information on this in due course, including reassurance that any review will be independent and will fully utilise the expertise available from leading organisations in this field.

However, I am delighted that the Minister has felt able to accept Amendment 53B. It is a real step forward —perhaps not as far as we would have wished, but it is progress nevertheless. Again, I thank the Minister and his colleagues in the other place on my noble friend’s behalf. There is still much more work to be done and there is a need for a continuing dialogue about when this power will now be added to the Bill and when it will be exercised. The Minister will be in no doubt that my noble friend means business in pursuing this important issue. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)

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My Lords, I know the Minister will think that I go on about the issue I am about to raise, and in a sense I am not apologising. I remind the House of my interests as chair of Changing Lives, a charity based in the north-east of England.

Children who are removed and placed in care are overwhelmingly from economically and socially deprived backgrounds. There has been a lot of evidence on this, recently and over many years. The experiences of those who try to parent in a profoundly unequal society are simply not considered sufficiently. That sounds a bit academic—let me explain what I mean. Mental health difficulties, substance misuse and domestic abuse are seen and accepted as central risk indicators for child abuse. However, these are intrinsically linked with living in poverty and disadvantage in a very unequal society. Psychosocial reactions to deprivation and shame, which are the experience I am talking about, are important in understanding self-harm and harm to others.

Currently, our policy has moved—on some occasions I have been part of that movement, and have resisted it on others—to being absolutely focused on the individual child, with very little space to consider the family context. As I have consistently argued in this House, the role of wider family members—of grandparents, siblings and friendship networks in supporting children—is too often neither recognised nor supported effectively.

Perhaps it would help if I reminded the House of an actual case which came from a Family Rights Group assessment—a study that was done on some of its advocacy work. The study says: “Julia cried as she explained that social workers had told her she was unable to have healthy adult relationships as a result of a brief period in care as a young child. Her child had been removed from her because it transpired that her partner had a history of abuse that she had been unaware of. She immediately separated from him and paid privately for counselling as it was not available from the social worker, who was concerned with the child’s welfare only. Despite her actions, the child was placed in care while a risk assessment was carried out. No one seemed to have considered the ironies here. Would such a separation, for example, result in this child being seen, too, as unable to have healthy adult relationships?”. In other words, the whole system was reinforcing the problems, rather than tackling them.

The importance of attachment is recognised in study after study of child-rearing. Not to understand and consider that in our child protection policies is, at best, unwise. This amendment seeks to ensure that appropriate counselling and therapeutic support is offered to any parent whose child is permanently removed. The context of the amendment is that child protection inquiries are continuing to increase; the number of new care proceedings is at record levels. As of 31 March 2016, there were over 70,000 looked-after children in England, which is the highest figure since 1985. If this does not tell us that we have to think again about what we are doing, I do not know what will.

The new clause would enable any parent whose child has been permanently removed to get the therapeutic support and counselling to help them deal with their grief, emotional hurt and other difficulties, so they can avoid the appalling cycle of repeat pregnancies that lead to repeat removals of children. Analysis of court data found that one in four mothers subject to care proceedings was subject to repeat care proceedings. That figure rose to one in three for those who became mothers in their teenage years. Provisional results from further analysis show that more than six out of 10 mothers who had children sequentially removed were teenagers when they had their first child. Of these, 40% were in care, or had been looked after in the care system, during their own childhood.

The figures go on. Some 354 mothers were looked at in this study of recurrent care proceedings. It found that approximately 65% had had their mental health issues mentioned in their first set of proceedings; 75% had domestic abuse mentioned in their first set of proceedings; and 90% had experienced some form of neglect or abuse—emotional, physical or sexual—in their childhood.

The President of the Family Division has recognised the importance of the work that programmes such as Pause are doing in trying to make sure that there is not this cycle of repeat pregnancies and repeat admissions to care. But the programmes that are available, including the one we run in Newcastle, are not nationwide or underpinned by any statutory duty. Most vulnerable parents who have lost a child are therefore left unsupported emotionally and not assisted to parent in future. The new duties set out in the amendment would ensure that all parents who have lost a child receive the therapeutic care and counselling that would help them to avoid that cycle.

I move this amendment in the hope that, in thinking about the future of social work and children in care—and I know that the Government are doing that—they look carefully at the evidence on the importance of working effectively with women in vulnerable situations, so that they are better able to handle the trauma in their lives that inevitably adversely affects their relationships and those they can develop, particularly with their children.

The charity that I chair works with many women who are in this position. Among other work, we have a project in Newcastle that works with women recovering from addictions, and with their children, in a residential setting. Many of them have already lost children into care, and we work with them intensively for about six months. The programme has been successful in breaking that cycle, which has meant that the local authorities involved will happily talk to the Government and others about saving money through children not having come into care who otherwise would have. This is a really challenging time for the Government regarding the future of social work and children in care, and this is one way we can help to break a cycle that is not only depressing but destructive to the children and mothers involved. I beg to move.

The Earl of Listowel (CB)

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My Lords, I support the noble Baroness’s amendment and what she has said. After witnessing this weekend, at a gathering of child and adolescent psychotherapists, the superb work that a therapist can do in supporting mothers and their infants to make good, strong relationships, I know that what she asks for is absolutely crucial. It was wonderful to see, for instance, the case of a mother who had grown up with a violent father, been taken into care and then gone on from care to become a teenage mother and have several of her children removed. Then she found the help of a child psychotherapist who helped her to understand her relationship with her child and to build a strong attachment with that child, so that eventually she was able to get back her other children. So I agree absolutely with what the noble Baroness is calling for. It is particularly important in the light of the recent view expressed by the President of the Family Division, highlighting the year-on-year increase in the number of children being taken into care, expressing the concern that that may well accelerate. It is much more difficult to give a high quality of care in the care system if the numbers of children arriving increase year on year.

I was grateful to the Minister for offering to meet me yesterday to discuss whether more can be done by central government to minimise the flow of children coming into care. I look forward to that meeting. I am particularly concerned about the new lower benefit cap and how it might impact on families. The noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, highlighted the background of poverty for most families whose children are taken into care. I am concerned that this may increase that poverty and force more of these families into homelessness. It raises the risk of more children being taken into care—but we will debate that this evening in the dinner break.

Lord Warner (CB)

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My Lords, I support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong. I remind the Minister that there have been many initiatives by far-sighted people, including judges such as Nicholas Crichton, who have looked at the issue of repeat pregnancies when a child is taken away from a birth mother.

There is a growing body of evidence, but what have the Government done to look at it in terms of cost-effectiveness? One’s instincts are that this is a good investment. Certainly, sober judges have thought that this was a good investment and have raised the money to put some of these projects in place. Is it not about time the Government looked at the evidence on whether it is cost-effective to go to a scale on this kind of initiative?

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)

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My Lords, I agree with my noble friend. As a family lay magistrate who sits in central London, I hear many of the kind of cases about which we have heard today. It is worth repeating the point made by my noble friend: when we sit as a family bench we think primarily about what is in the best interests of the child. We are well aware that while it may be in the best interests of the child to be taken into care, it is not in the best interests of the mother. Many such mothers are themselves children. It is an obvious dilemma when we sit.

My noble friend was right that young women who lose their children, or have them taken away into care, need as much support as possible so that the tragic situation is not repeated again and again, as we see so often in our family courts.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)

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My Lords, my noble friend has made a convincing case for action in this area. We discussed this in Committee and the Minister was sympathetic to the principal points made by my noble friend. However, he put his eggs in the basket of encouraging innovative good practice and referred to his department’s innovation programme and the funding that has been put into the Pause project to support women who have experience or are at risk of repeat removals of children from their care. He argued that it was better to support good practice than to mandate local authorities. I get that up to a point.

However, to pick up on the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, the problem is that we have been talking about innovative good practice in this area for a considerable number of years. As the Family Rights Group chief executive, on behalf of the Your Family, Your Voice alliance and the Kinship Care Alliance, has pointed out, looking at the country as a whole, we are not covering sufficient vulnerable people in the way we know can be successful, as these examples of good practice have shown.

This leaves us with a dilemma. I take the noble Lord’s point about the risks of mandation, but if we cannot see from the Government a determined programme that will ensure that good practice is spread throughout every local authority area, we are forced back into the area of mandation. I hope the Minister will come forward with distinct proposals for how his department will make sure that, in every part of the country, the vulnerable people we are talking about will get the kind of support my noble friend has proposed.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)

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I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, for her amendment, under which local authorities would be required to provide counselling and therapeutic support to parents who have had children taken into care to prevent any further children being taken into care. This is an important issue and, contrary to the noble Baroness’s introductory remarks, I am pleased that she has raised it and I am grateful to her, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lords, Lord Warner, Lord Hunt and Lord Ponsonby, for their contributions to today’s debate.

As their Lordships will know, the Government believe that children are best looked after within their families, with their parents playing a full part in their lives, unless intervention in that family’s life is necessary. One of the fundamental principles of the Children Act 1989 is that children should be brought up and cared for within their families. Indeed, Section 17 of that Act embodies that principle, with local authorities under a statutory duty to provide services for children in need and their families to safeguard and promote the welfare of such children and promote their upbringing by their families. Local authorities also have a duty to return a looked-after child to their family unless this is against their best interests.

The noble Baroness is right to emphasise how important it is to support parents who have had children taken into care. They need the right type of intervention to allow them to be effective parents for that child if they are returned to them, any other children in their care and any children they may have in the future. We share this commitment, and the legislation and our statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children, reflect this. Working Together is clear that any assessment of a child’s needs should draw together relevant information from the child, their parents and any other professionals in contact with them. Every assessment of need must be child-centred and must acknowledge that many of the services provided as part of a child in need or a child protection plan will be to support the parents to make sustained change so they can look after their children well.

Alongside the child’s needs and wider family and environmental factors, parenting capacity is a crucial element of a good assessment, as Working Together makes clear. If support is needed to improve parenting capacity, a good assessment will identify this and enable the specific support needs identified—which will vary depending on the circumstances of each case—to be provided. If a child is removed, their parents should continue to receive help and support. If they go on to have further children, Working Together is clear that the level and nature of any risk to the child needs to be identified at a pre-birth assessment and the appropriate help and support given to these parents to support them with making a sustained change.

The noble Baroness might be interested to read, if she has not already done so, the research Assessing Parental Capacity to Change when Children are on the Edge of Care: An Overview of Current Research Evidence, published by the Department for Education in 2014. Among other things, the research sets out the parental factors that are known to be associated with a risk of significant harm to a child, the factors that can reduce the risk of harm and the likely nature of that harm. The report highlights the extensive body of research that shows that a range of problems can impair parents’ ability to meet the needs of their children. These include, but are not restricted to, poor mental health, problem drug and alcohol use, learning disability and domestic abuse. This underscores the need to make sure that parents receive the right type of support to meet their particular needs and circumstances.

Of course, there may be circumstances where counselling will always be appropriate. Because adoption, unlike any other permanent option, involves the ending of a child’s legal relationship with their parents and family, and the creation of a lifelong relationship with new parents, adoption agencies have a legal duty to provide a counselling service for the parent or guardian of the child. Local authorities and voluntary sector agencies that provide these services often, where appropriate, also use the service to support birth parents whose children have been taken into care. In the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, for example, Ofsted inspectors found:

“In all cases seen by inspectors where placement orders had been granted, there was evidence of birth parents being offered referral to support services and mothers were offered referrals to commissioned services to avoid repeat pregnancies where proceedings were likely to result”.

We know that the cycle of care too often continues and that parents who have a child taken into care may well be more likely to have another taken into care later. The noble Baroness referred to some depressing statistics in this regard. The Department for Education’s innovation programme has supported the Pause project, to which the noble Baroness referred, to the tune of £3 million to support women who have experienced, or are at risk of, repeat removals of children from their care. The project aims to break this cycle and give women the opportunity to develop new skills and responses that can help them create a more positive future. Early indications are showing positive results for all 150 women Pause is currently working with, and in some instances the project is enabling them to engage in positive and consistent contact with their children.

Noble Lords will be pleased to hear that, given its success since Committee, the Secretary of State announced last week that further support is to be offered for programmes such as Pause to build on early successes of the programme, and that the programmes’ reach would be extended from six to 47 areas, with up to a further £7 million. This will provide much-needed further evidence on which we can assess our proposals. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is pleased to hear that.

Through the innovation programme, we are also continuing to fund the family drug and alcohol court service, which provides therapeutic support to parents whose children are at risk of being taken away from them. Again, often these are parents who have had other children taken into care in the past.

Changing practice like this provides a more effective means of ensuring that we break the cycle. Mandating that local authorities provide counselling or therapy may help some, but it will not be the answer to all the complex problems in this context and will not provide the right support to all parents.

Given that the existing statutory framework is clear that local authorities must provide services to support children in need and their families to stay together, and the innovative ways that we aim to change practice, including further support for Pause and other projects, so that we can build up further evidence, I hope the noble Baroness will feel reassured enough to withdraw her amendment.

The Earl of Listowel

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That is such good news regarding the funding of Pause and the family drug and alcohol court. There has been concern about the continuing funding of both those. Will the Minister clarify that the future funding of the family drug and alcohol court is secure? Perhaps he would like to write to me on that point.

Lord Nash

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I will do that.

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top

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My Lords, I thank everyone who has taken part in this short debate. I think it is clear to the Minister that concerns about this matter are felt around the House. I am pleased that he is committed to thinking more about those concerns and to action. I mentioned Pause. That is not the programme we use, partly because women are not entitled to become part of the programme until they have already had two children taken into care. We wanted to be able to intervene if necessary and if possible before then. I would be interested in talking further to the Minister about this, working with him and inviting him to look at some of the work going on that would support what is proposed in the amendment. We tabled the amendment on the basis of wanting the House to think about the matter and to push the Government further. On the basis that I believe that the Government are taking this issue on board—although I am not yet satisfied—I shall withdraw the amendment at this stage in the hope that the Government will demonstrate to me that they are prepared to continue to work on it.

Baroness Thornton (Lab)

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My Lords, Amendment 53C seeks to insert a new clause into the Bill. I have not participated in the passage of the Bill to date, but I have followed its progress with great interest and am pleased to bring this important matter for the consideration of the House today. The aim of the amendment is to put an end to the practice of GPs charging domestic violence victims a fee for producing the letter they need to access legal aid.

As noble Lords will remember—some of us remember it very distinctly—legal aid is now available for private family law matters only where an individual can prove that they are a victim of domestic violence. A person must produce specific evidence to qualify, and one way to do it is through the provision of medical evidence.

Doctors are free to levy an unspecified fee for providing this medical evidence, as it sits outside the NHS contract—and it seems that some are doing so. This seems inappropriate at every level. For a woman on a low income, who may be on benefits or financially controlled and coerced by an abusive partner, paying a fee could seem almost impossible. I think that this is most unfeeling. Sometimes these women are struggling financially and may have to make a choice between a fee to the doctor or paying the bills.

Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)

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My Lords, briefly, I support the noble Baroness. I know that the Government are committed to both safeguarding and equality, and this is a safeguarding and equality issue. It has always amazed me, after my years in Cafcass—I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, would agree with this—that women who suffer domestic violence, whose children are often likely to face that violence, must prove that they are in that situation before they can get legal aid to go to court. That is an injustice and I hope that the Government will look at this carefully. It is one example of the very broad issue of legal aid, but a very pertinent one in relation to children.

Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)

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My Lords, my noble friend Lady Thornton clearly outlined the issues involved in this amendment. Domestic violence victims suffer enough. GPs should not be able to charge them to access justice because in many cases that will, in effect, deny them justice. The fee that can be charged for a letter is, as my noble friend said, discretionary—but where GPs charge it can range anywhere from £20 to £180. All too often, that would be impossible for the victim to pay. We have no knowledge of how many GPs charge because the Government do not hold that information. There is a clear need to collect it because this is a loophole in the legal aid regulations that needs to be closed.

Calls for change are not restricted to domestic violence support groups. Many MPs and Peers also support the need for change, as do both the medical and legal professions. The British Medical Association was dismayed not to be consulted prior to the regulations being introduced and made it clear that it would have opposed the inclusion of medical evidence, if only on the basis that such requests can compromise the doctor’s relationship with their patient.

As my noble friend Lady Thornton said, the Law Society agrees that these changes should be scrapped. Indeed, its former president said:

“Without legal aid, women are unable to access family law remedies, which are vital in order to help them escape from violent relationships and protect their children. They are being forced to face their perpetrators in court without legal representation”.

The Government should listen to the medical and legal experts. Above all, they should listen to women who suffer at the hands of the men who perpetrate this appalling abuse.

In a debate in another place on 15 September the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice, Dr Phillip Lee, said:

“Where arrangements have been found wanting, we have taken action. For example, when the Court of Appeal ruled earlier this year that elements of the evidence requirements for making legal aid available to victims of domestic abuse in private family cases were invalid, we changed the regulations as an interim measure ”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/9/16; col. 1117.]

I ask the Minister now: if an interim change can be made in one instance, why not in this one?

The Government acknowledge that there are issues with the current system because they consulted specifically on evidence requirements for accessing legal aid in private family cases; that consultation closed in July. If this is an unintended consequence of poorly drafted legislation, it needs to be changed. I look to the Minister to show what I hope will be leadership on this issue and say that he will take this forward and discuss with ministerial colleagues how to bring about the required change, rather than say simply that the Government will report in due course with potential changes. Victims of domestic violence are losing out now, so change is urgent. It is a question first and foremost of supporting women who suffer domestic violence; it is also a question of natural justice.

Lord Nash

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My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for her amendment and for the points that she, the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and the noble Lord, Lord Watson, have made. I understand that the concerns around GPs charging for evidence are shared by others, including the Law Society and Rights of Women. I also note that Tom Watson MP, deputy leader of the Labour Party, launched a campaign related to this issue in September. Before addressing their points, it may be helpful if I briefly explain the purpose of the regulations to which the tabled amendment refers.

The reforms introduced by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 removed most private family matters from the scope of legal aid. These were mainly matters concerning child contact arrangements following separation. A clear exception to the scope of these reductions was for family cases involving the appalling crime of domestic violence, for which legal aid is available provided that applicants can produce a piece of objective evidence from those listed at Regulation 33 of the Civil Legal Aid (Procedure) Regulations 2012. A letter from a health professional, including a GP, is one of the specific pieces of evidence listed. Such letters are one of the most common ways that victims evidence their abuse: around 25% of applicants rely on it currently. In the letter, the GP must confirm that the victim has been examined and has injuries or a condition consistent with being a victim of domestic violence. The examination must have taken place within five years of an application for civil legal services. GPs are not required to provide a full report of the violence, just a brief letter for which a template is provided by the Legal Aid Agency. The template was designed in conjunction with the Royal College of GPs.

The Ministry of Justice does not believe that there is a need for GPs or health professionals to charge for writing a letter, although we recognise that this may happen on occasion. I am sure we can all agree that none of us wishes to see unnecessary barriers placed between victims of domestic violence and the help that they need, and I understand the concerns raised by noble Lords. However, I worry that in the absence of alternative funding arrangements or legislation compelling GPs to provide this service to victims, GPs may choose not to provide the evidence following this amendment. That could be counterproductive and prevent victims accessing legal aid. In any event, the House should be aware of an extensive programme of work currently being undertaken by the MoJ, looking not just at this specific issue but at the domestic violence evidence requirements for legal aid more generally. It is worth me elaborating on this a little further.

The Government have broadened the domestic violence evidence criteria three times since implementation; they were most recently amended in April this year. Upon announcing the latest amendment, the Minister then responsible for legal aid announced to the House of Commons that the Ministry of Justice had begun work with domestic violence support groups, legal representative bodies and colleagues across government to gather data and develop their understanding of the issues encountered by victims in obtaining evidence, with the aim of drawing up replacement regulations. The Law Society and Rights of Women are among those with whom the Government have been working collaboratively over the summer. Among other things, the work has involved a large survey of legal aid providers and domestic violence support organisations, as well as a series of focus groups facilitated by Women’s Aid with victims who have had experience of providing evidence. The work is looking at all types of evidence set out in regulations, not just letters from GPs and health professionals, as well as issues around accessibility more generally. The Ministry of Justice is considering the findings and will announce any change to regulations in due course.

I reassure the House that the Government strongly believe that victims of domestic violence must have access to the help they need, including access to legal services funded through legal aid. The extensive research work undertaken by the Ministry of Justice is a reflection of that. I am sure that my colleagues will be happy to meet the noble Baroness to discuss the matter in more detail, and I will certainly take back the particular point made by the noble Lord, Lord Watson. However, in view of what I have said, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel reassured enough to withdraw the amendment.

Baroness Thornton

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I thank the Minister for that detailed and comprehensive answer. My only complaint is that he did not accept my amendment, because he has covered all the bases. Clearly there is more to discuss. I thank him for his answer and will certainly accept the invitation to discuss this further. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Lord Nash

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My Lords, I want to start by setting out the Government’s case for why the power is needed before I come to speak about the amendments that I have tabled in this group. The Government believe that the legislative framework is the bedrock of children’s social care services. It provides the critical architecture that protects the rights of children and young people. We believe this framework is essentially correct. However, at times we have legislated in response to failure with laws that are focused on achieving the right outcome but have unintended consequences on the ground.

The Munro review in 2011 showed us that overregulation can get in the way of good social work practice and prevent social workers putting children’s needs and wishes first. Too often legislation not only sets out what local authorities need to do to protect children but gives a significant level of detail about how they should do it.

We believe that changes to legislation should be built on evidence of what works in practice, but at present we do not have the ability to trial some of the new ideas local authorities tell us about; we can change the law for all or for none. The power would allow us to test new grass-roots approaches with careful controls, monitoring and evaluation. This might mean, for example, testing more flexible approaches for assessing kinship carers or trialling a new approach to the reviewing process.

The power to test different ways of working is about putting those on the front line in the driving seat and empowering them to find better ways of working to protect the children in their care. This is not about local authorities opting out of their legal duties towards children or being allowed to remove services. It is about empowering them to try something different. By passing this power, we would be creating the opportunity for local authorities to consider how they can give children the best possible service, starting from the needs of the children and their own professional expertise, rather than from a set of regulatory requirements. These provisions will empower professionals to look at international examples and their own experience to design the best possible service for the children in their care.

Not every idea will be a good one, and not every application will be granted. This is why it is so important that there is a robust scrutiny process about how the power is used to ensure that no trial is granted that questions the fundamentals of children’s rights or would not be in their best interests. I know that some concerns have been raised about the scrutiny of proposals and the safeguards surrounding how this power is used. It is absolutely right that noble Lords should want reassurance on this point.

I have considered carefully the views raised in Committee and the extensive discussions we have had around this since. I would like to take this opportunity to outline the amendments the Government have made to improve these clauses and provide more robust and transparent safeguards.

I shall speak first to Amendment 54. As I said on the first day on Report, when we discussed the amendment on profit tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, I recognise that this is a sensitive area. I also know that there have been concerns from those in this Chamber that the power to innovate could be used to revisit restrictions on profit-making. I have said before, and I will say again, that the Government have no intention for these clauses to be used to amend restrictions on profit-making. However, to put this point absolutely beyond doubt. I have tabled a government amendment to rule out use of the power to amend restrictions on profit-making in children’s social care. I hope this amendment makes it clear to the House that these clauses have nothing to do with profit-making in children’s social care.

The Deputy Speaker (Lord Dear) (CB)

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My Lords, I draw noble Lords’ attention to four of the amendments in this grouping. If Amendment 57 is agreed, I cannot call Amendment 59 by reason of pre-emption. Similarly, if Amendment 61 is agreed, I cannot call Amendment 62 for reasons of pre-emption.

Lord Ramsbotham (CB)

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My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendments 57, 58, 64 and 68. I begin, however, by welcoming government Amendment 54, following an amendment that I tabled earlier in the proceedings of the Bill, and hope that it will remain the Government’s position even if, as I hope, Clause 29 is left out of the resulting Act.

I acknowledge the case that the Minister has made for retaining the section headed “Children’s social care: different ways of working”, but each of my amendments seeks to leave out a separate clause, thus removing the whole section. Since we discussed these clauses in Grand Committee, no one could accuse Ministers or their officials of being idle, including as they have—among a deluge of letters, amendments, explanatory documents and offers of meetings—a policy statement on the power to test different ways of working and government Amendments 55, 56 and 59, which spell out the parliamentary procedures applicable to any use of Clause 29 to exempt from or modify existing legislation, and Amendment 61, which introduces the proposal of the appointment of an expert advisory panel.

However, I submit that Clauses 29 to 33 amount to nothing less than the subversion of Parliament’s constitutional position. It is not only wrong but totally unnecessary, in view of existing arrangements, to process proposed innovation because new ways of working can already be tested within the existing legal and regulatory frameworks, as my noble friend Lord Warner will explain. Therefore I contend that, however outwardly reasonable the processes proposed by the Government may seem, they do not alter the need to leave out Clauses 29 to 33 of the Bill for reasons of constitutional and legal principle, as I will attempt to explain.

I emphasise that I am in no way opposed to innovation or a bottom-up approach to it, a lifetime in the Army having taught me that the best way to make improvements is to identify good practice somewhere and turn it into common practice everywhere. I agree that good local authorities often feel frustrated and restricted by legislation, regulation and excessive bureaucracy, but it is of interest that when the Department for Education brought in similar powers for schools they were virtually never sought. That the Government have produced so many amendments to a Bill that was sprung on us at such short notice reinforces the suspicion that, rather than the result of careful consideration, it was in fact a panicked reaction to this year’s report by the Ofsted single inspection framework that the social care work of three-quarters of local authorities inspected either was inadequate or required improvement, which, had they been parents, might have resulted in their children being placed in care.

At Second Reading I quoted the regret of the Constitution Committee of this House that,

“despite the concerns expressed in the past by this and other committees, the Government continues to introduce legislation that depends so heavily on an array of broad delegated powers”.

I also quoted the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, who, referring to this Bill in particular in a debate about the balance of power between the Government and Parliament, said that,

“there are more provisions for the Secretary of State to use regulations than there are clauses in the Bill, including on issues that should be considered matters of significant policy”.—[Official Report, 9/6/16; col. 860.]

I suggest that the mechanism for innovation set out in the clauses amounts to nothing less than the usurpation of the proper parliamentary process and subversion of the rule of law. I am not alone in believing that it is entirely inappropriate for primary legislation to be amended by regulations made by a Secretary of State at the request of, and applicable to, a single local authority.

In addition, all legal duties and obligations placed on local authorities by children’s social care law are ultimately enforceable by the courts, meaning that if a local authority fails to meet its statutory obligations, the young person or family concerned can take legal action to ensure that the protections laid down by Parliament are put in place, but the courts will be unable to enforce the rights of the young person or family concerned if a local authority has received an exemption from acting in accordance with the law. I therefore ask the Minister how the courts are expected to respond where a young person or child in a particular local authority area is clearly disadvantaged by the arbitrary disapplication or modification of the law as it is applied in all other parts of the country.

Clause 29 has been mentioned many times in connection with previous amendments which were tabled because of fears that the Secretary of State might use it to set aside legislation and regulations in a number of specific areas, such as the care of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, whose care status has been adversely affected by the provisions of the Immigration Act 2016.

As I have said many times in this House in connection with prisons, not all local authorities are good, and the Government must always strive to ensure that standards of care for vulnerable children are not a postcode lottery by imposing and overseeing consistency. I suspect that the acknowledged importance of consistency is behind many of the other proposals in the Bill, such as corporate parenting principles, safeguarding arrangements and social worker regulations.

I have been struck by the united opposition to the clauses of so many practitioners, some of whom I shall cite. The Professional Standards Authority states that it has some concerns about the current drafting of the clauses relating to its power to scrutinise and refer fitness-to-practise decisions to the High Court. Together for Children has more than 104,000 signatures to a campaign for their removal. Article 39, representing 43 involved voluntary organisations, sees them as a smokescreen for deregulation which poses profound risks for children. No deregulation is allowed in adult social care, but the clauses could be used to remove transition-to-adulthood entitlements from disabled children until the age of 18, and from care leavers until the ages of 21 or 25.

The Local Government Association has found that councils are struggling to cope with reduced government funding, and that the specialised care that some children need for conditions that we were assured were covered by the very welcome government Amendment 1 is at risk, because the need to maintain a core statutory service leaves little room for discretionary cost savings and efficiencies. In welcoming the powers in Clause 29, subject to the additional safeguards set out in the policy statement, the Local Government Association is, however, concerned that Clause 32 gives the Secretary of State power to remove legislative provisions from a local authority in intervention without any local democratic scrutiny or consultation with local partners. The Royal College of Nursing is concerned that local authorities may use the clauses to water down nationally agreed standards set out in the Children Act 1989, leading to unacceptable local variations in outcomes for children. The British Association of Social Workers points out that there is no detail in the Bill about monitoring or quality assurance of any authorised different way of working, or who is responsible for it. UNISON reported last week that 69% of social workers oppose any exemptions on the ground that they would lead to more children being put at risk, and so on. Such a wide spectrum of opposition inevitably raises the question of whether the Government actually consulted these practitioners before making their proposals.

Lord Watson of Invergowrie

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My Lords, since the Bill had its Second Reading, there has been a wide and varied selection of briefing meetings provided by Ministers and civil servants. In some cases, outside experts were also present, and I commend the Minister for facilitating these sessions, which in many ways have proved helpful in enabling noble Lords to better understand the Bill and to articulate our concerns in greater detail than is possible in this Chamber, or indeed in Committee.

Much progress has been made, and this has resulted in a number of concessions by the Government, particularly in respect of Part 2, on social workers. However, I am confused, having heard the Minister’s opening remarks. He said, and I am pretty sure I am quoting quite accurately, that Clause 29 was not about local authorities opting out or removing services from them. However, Clause 29(2) says:

“The Secretary of State may by regulations … exempt a local authority … from a requirement imposed by children’s social care legislation”.

Surely the Minister’s remarks and the Bill are at odds. Perhaps he can explain that when he replies.

That said, and for all the discussions we have had, we still do not believe, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said very powerfully, that it has been possible for a convincing case to be made by Ministers as to why the exemptions outlined in Clause 29 are necessary. For the avoidance of doubt, it should be made clear that innovation in the delivery of local authority children’s services is to be welcomed. Indeed, throughout this process, I cannot recall anybody—whether noble Lords or people from the various organisations who have assiduously and very helpfully provided us with briefings—argue against innovation per se, or as the Bill describes it, the power to test new ways of working.

The terminology is not that important. What matters is that the children’s services are delivered comprehensively, effectively and safely, and that these services are available across the country. The standard may vary, though that can and must be addressed when it arises. The nature of the services provided should be, as near as possible, uniform across the country. This is about defending children’s social care rights. The alternative is a postcode lottery, as was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham.

I am sure the Minister would not want that, yet I cannot see how such an outcome is anything other than inevitable if a local authority is allowed to withdraw from providing a service while the neighbouring authority continues to provide it. Exemptions from service provision raise the prospect of looked-after siblings living in different areas having different legal safeguards, and children from different local authorities living in the same children’s home having different forms of legal protection. How can that be regarded as a step forward?

The Government set out their stall in their strategy Putting Children First, which was published in July. It referred to,

“a controlled environment in which we could enable local authorities to test deregulatory approaches that are not currently possible, before taking a decision to make substantial changes to existing legislation that would apply across the board”.

However, the document itself did not identify the “deregulatory approaches” that cannot be tested presently. In the document, the Chief Social Worker for Children and Families asserts:

“We must be enabled to use our professional judgment in flexible and creative ways, rather than having to follow a procedural path or series of legal rules”.

For the chief social worker to seek to avoid having to follow “legal rules” is worrying at the very least and invites the question as to whose side she is on; some have recently questioned whether the answer is vulnerable children. If local authorities are unable to provide a full and effective service in social care, then the main reason is usually a lack of resources, especially in terms of staffing. I think it is pertinent to ask: why is the chief social worker not using her position of influence to campaign for more resources to enable her fellow social workers to do their job to the best of their ability, rather than undermining and demoralising the profession as many social workers feel that she is doing?

The bottom line is that Clause 29 is not necessary. We have been unable to find any evidence that local authorities have their hands tied by existing legislation to the extent that they cannot test “new ways of working”. I am not going to repeat the list of a dozen councils that I gave to the Minister in Committee, and there are more. The message is clear: there are no impediments to such change; at least, it appears from the evidence that none cannot be overcome. Clauses 29 to 33 would undermine a rights-based approach to children’s social care. In doing so they risk removing vital protections from vulnerable young people who rely on the law to keep them safe and guarantee the provision of essential services. I accept that is not what the Minister intends. Of course it is not. However, many people involved in the sector are absolutely clear that that would be the result.

The Government have come forward with a number of what they regard as safeguards. The powers cannot be used to make a profit. I certainly echo the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, in welcoming government Amendment 54. The affirmative resolution procedure will be required to make exemptions from or modifications to legislation. The Secretary of State must consult an expert panel to advise her before she makes any recommendations. However, I contend that these are all open to question. We believe that the Government’s ultimate intention is to open up the field of social work services completely, either to the private sector or to the third sector, with local authorities having their role reduced to a bare minimum. Initially, the most attractive services would be outsourced, but in time the only services not outsourced will be the less attractive and the more problematic ones. At that point, the only means of taking them out of local authority control will be by allowing them to be run for profit and, at that stage if not before, this section of the Bill would be amended, just as so many pieces of children’s protection legislation are amended in this Bill.

As for affirmative resolutions, it is extremely rare for statutory instruments presented to Parliament to be rejected, whether they follow the negative or the affirmative resolution procedure. Indeed, the Hansard Society recently reported that over the past 50 years, a mere 0.01% of such instruments have not been passed. That is one in 10,000. Given the “take it or leave it” proposition inherent in them, that is perhaps not too surprising, but it does take most of the wind out of the Minister’s sails as regards his Amendments 55 and 56.

It is perhaps instructive that the panel is described as an expert panel, rather than an independent panel as we seek in Amendment 60. The reason is clear, though, because in no way could the people mentioned in Amendment 61 be regarded as independent. Two of them are there ex officio, having been appointed to those offices by the Secretary of State. The two “other persons” to join the panel would be chosen by—that is right—the Secretary of State. Given that the Government have made their long-term plan clear in Putting Children First, it would be a brave panel member who argued against a local authority request being approved. The suspicion is that those panel members would become the equivalent of regional schools commissioners, charged with the de facto responsibility of removing services from local authorities as widely as possible.

There are rigorous safeguards that the Minister could consider, such as limiting the powers to local authorities rated good or outstanding; requiring local authorities seeking exemption to hold full and open local consultations, based on a properly considered assessment of the impact of the exemption on the children and families concerned; or perhaps most importantly, requiring that exemptions are not used to reduce overall investment in children’s social care.

Clause 32 also remains a worry, because local authorities in intervention is the most likely situation in which those powers will be used and because the Bill gives responsibility for that to the Secretary of State, without the consultation of local partners that exists for Clause 29. That is why we have submitted Amendment 65, suggesting that the Secretary of State must consider the advice of the Children’s Improvement Board.

The Minister must be aware of the opposition to Clause 29. A petition calling for the exemption powers to be scrapped has received over 100,000 signatures. More than 40 expert organisations have come together to oppose the inclusion of these clauses in the Bill. Last week UNISON published a report which showed that, in a survey of almost 3,000 of its social workers, just one in 10 supported the Government’s proposals.

This clause, and the ones which relate to it, have long been the main concern of noble Lords and a wide range of opinion beyond. I accept that the Minister has tried to mitigate its effects and the fears that it has engendered, but I am afraid he has not succeeded. For that reason, should the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, decide to press Amendment 57, he will have the support of these Benches.

Lord Warner

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My Lords, as someone who strongly supports reform and innovation across the public services, I rise, perhaps a little surprisingly, to support Amendments 57, 58, 64, 66 and 68, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and to which I have added my name. I will not rehearse again the arguments that he and the noble Lord, Lord Watson, have made, and with which I totally agree. I welcome, and accept, that the Government have crafted some safeguards to meet the extensive concerns expressed across the Benches of this House in Committee and by many concerned interests outside Parliament, most notably the social work profession itself and the major children’s charities.

The Government’s amendments include one of my proposals, for which I am grateful—namely the establishment of an independent panel to consider particular proposals. Ultimately, however, after reflecting further on this issue following a pretty lengthy meeting with Edward Timpson, many of his officials and people from local government, I think that these clauses remain fundamentally flawed, even with the proposed safeguards, for three main reasons.

First, the examples that the Government have cited in support of the clauses do not justify the kind of draconian powers that the Secretary of State has sought. All the examples I have heard about are relatively minor changes which may or may not improve effectiveness and efficiency. The Government have simply not shown why such wide powers are needed, or the scale of innovation that cannot be attempted because of primary legislation. We simply do not have the evidence base to show that there are a lot of hungry people out there wanting to innovate who are frustrated by primary legislation. In any case, if the Government thought that the changes they have cited were necessary and needed primary legislation, they could, and should, have used this Bill to make them, and subjected their ideas to parliamentary scrutiny. There was nothing to stop them including those proposals in the Bill and explaining why they needed to introduce changes and why children’s services would be improved. However, the Government have chosen not to do so. Instead, they have chosen an extremely large sledgehammer to crack quite small nuts, which has only caused many people to wonder what the Government are really up to. The Government’s failure to consult properly on this Bill in advance has only fuelled that suspicion.

Secondly, the Government have singularly failed to convince all the major children’s charities, Liberty and the majority of social workers that what they are proposing in Clauses 29 to 33, even with the proposed safeguards, will benefit outcomes for vulnerable children. The charities, along with the professional interests, simply do not consider that the Government have made the case for Parliament to open the door to remove long-standing protective rights granted by Parliament to safeguard highly vulnerable children. They are right to warn us to draw back from granting these wide powers to the Government, even with the proposed safeguards, without much more convincing evidence. As the charities said in the briefing to us, the Government should go back to the drawing board on innovation and conduct a proper review of what is needed in consultation with the various interests. It is striking that all the briefing we have received shows that these bodies have an appetite for innovation. They are not being Luddites about innovation and reform. They are saying that the process which the Government have adopted is totally inappropriate if we want to safeguard rights-based children’s protection services.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, referred to an argument which is currently being given a good airing over the triggering of Article 50. The argument is that when Parliament puts legislation in place, Parliament should amend it and not allow a Secretary of State to take wide powers to amend what he thinks fit. That is a particularly important consideration when the rights of vulnerable children are involved. For those reasons, if the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, chooses to test the opinion of the House, I will vote with him.

Lord Low of Dalston (CB)

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My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, who has covered the ground with his usual thoroughness and eloquence. These clauses, which we do not think should stand part of the Bill, stem from the Government’s mission to shrink—or in this case substantially dismantle —the institutions of the state on a grand scale. The two areas which led the way in the state’s assumption of the role of social protection in the 20th century were pensions, followed closely by social services for children provided by local authorities.

It was the brutal murder, in 1944, of 13 year-old Dennis O’Neill by his foster parents, and the consequent outcry, which persuaded society that it needed to be more proactive in protecting the welfare of children and led to a duty being placed on local authorities in the Children Act 1948 to protect children and, in appropriate circumstances, take them into their care. The public inquiry into his death found that the foster family had been selected without adequate inquiry being made as to their suitability and that there had been a serious lack of supervision by the local authority. It found that the local authority had failed to act on warnings it had received and that there had been poor record-keeping, a failure to work with other agencies, a lack of adequate resources and so on. These same failings have characterised subsequent inquiries, such as those concerning Maria Colwell, Jasmine Beckford, Peter Connelly—baby P—Victoria Climbié and a host more. The failures to which these inquiries have drawn attention are routine things, but they are vital. It is important to note that they are just the sorts of things that councils could be exempted from having to do by Clause 29 of the Bill.

All the reports into the scandals attending the cases I have mentioned, down to the latest one by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, point to poor communication between agencies as a significant contributory factor, but that is just what the local authority duty exists to promote. In all the cases I have been referring to the default is that of the local authority, but surely that is a reason for more prescription and regulation, not less. Clause 29 does not just permit the Secretary of State to exempt councils from overprescriptive and bureaucratic regulation. For example, it would permit her to exempt a council from having a duty to safeguard and protect children in need, under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989; to undertake an investigation where the authority suspects a child in its area is suffering significant harm, under Section 47 of the 1989 Act; to accommodate a child in its area who is lost or abandoned, under Section 20 of the 1989 Act; and to provide essential welfare support for a disabled child, under Section 2 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970.

What is the need for these provisions if the object is to enable local authorities to test different ways of working with a view to achieving better outcomes under children’s social care legislation or achieving the same outcomes more efficiently? It is perfectly possible to test different ways of working, as earlier speakers have noted, within the existing legislative framework. If it is sought to test out different ways of fulfilling a duty, it makes no sense to get rid of the duty. The only circumstances in which it would make sense would be if it were intended to give the duty to someone else—in other words, privatisation, or dismantling of the state, as I said. That is what this is all about.

In the last six years, the Government have substantially emasculated local authorities by cutting at least 40% of their funding, so that they are increasingly able to do little more than what they are statutorily obliged to do. Now, it is evidently proposed to complete the process by getting rid of the statutory obligations themselves. I do not think that we should go any further down this track.

Baroness Pinnock (LD)

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I, too, rise to speak to this group of amendments, and in particular to Amendment 57, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and those who have just spoken.

We on this side totally support the principle of innovation, and I think all other speakers have agreed that that is a positive thing to do. However, there is a need to retain the hard-won safeguards for very vulnerable children that are currently enshrined in primary legislation. In Grand Committee I said that this led to a dilemma: innovation, which may well improve the lot of these vulnerable children, or retaining the safeguards. I asked the Minister for assurances on that process, and about what was off-limits. His response was that there were “no limits” to what could be required from this innovation procedure. That is the very heart of my concern. Despite the additional safeguards which the Minister has attached to the Bill, there is at its heart an opportunity to throw away hard-won safeguards for the sake of the so-called principle of innovation, which may or may not help these vulnerable children.

I am pleased to see that through Amendment 54, the Minister inserts a new paragraph to prevent profit-making from children’s services. That is welcome and I support it, but other explicit safeguards he has added go no way towards giving us the assurances we have all sought throughout the Bill’s passage. Nor has it reassured the children’s charities which have written to many noble Lords with their concerns. I will quote from part of their briefing, because it sums up the nature of the concerns we are all expressing:

“Clause 29 seeks to introduce a wide ranging power. It leaves all children’s social care legislation, regulation and guidance open to exemption or modification. This will include safeguarding legislation, support for vulnerable children, and oversight and monitoring of children at risk and in care. Children’s entitlement to support or protection should not be removed without rigorous evidence and oversight … We welcome the Government’s decision to bring forward amendments to improve safeguards to the ‘power to test new ways of working’. Despite this progress, oversight and review mechanisms are not yet sufficiently robust”.

That perfectly sums up what many of us have been saying. We are not convinced that what the Government have brought forward will provide reassurance that children, including the most vulnerable children in our society, will not be put at risk by Clause 29.

For those reasons, I, too, and other Members on this Bench, will support the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, if he seeks the opinion of the House.

Baroness Eaton (Con)

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My Lords, in response to Amendments 57, 58 and 64, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham, Lord Watson and Lord Warner, I wish to speak in support of Clauses 29 to 31. These clauses introduce a new power allowing local authorities to apply for exemptions or modifications to children’s social care legislation, to enable them to test new ways of working. They also limit the duration of the period over which an exemption or modification will allow an innovation to be tested, and specify the consultation requirements that must be met.

I draw noble Lords’ attention to my entry in the register of interests, which shows that I am currently serving as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I would also ask you to note the LGA’s support for these powers, particularly in light of the additional safeguards introduced by the Government through their Amendments 59 and 61. The LGA has concerns about Clause 32, however.

I do not believe Clauses 29 to 31 are signs of a Government recklessly putting our most vulnerable children out on a limb. Rather, they reveal a reforming courage, a willingness to address long-standing inflexibilities that substitute true safeguarding with bureaucratic formality. These clauses and the Government’s amendments—which further tighten them in response to noble Lords’ concerns—are very welcome.

Indeed, SOLACE, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives, has argued for some time that the inflexible regulation and inspection regimes applied to children’s social care provide little opportunity for innovation. My own 30 years of experience in local government—many of which were spent at the coalface of the issues at the heart of the Bill—have convinced me, too, that this power is needed.

I was chairman of the Local Government Association at the time of the tragic death of baby Peter. Most of our practices surrounding child protection have been based on times when things have gone wrong. The clauses before us today enable us to build on when things are done right. Every day, children’s services departments across the country face a barrage of complex challenges: rising demand, reduced funding, greater awareness of child sexual exploitation, gang activity and radicalisation, as well as a significant increase in the number of unaccompanied child refugees.

Freedom to test new ways of working in such a context is not only welcome but desperately needed. The paramountcy principle enshrined in the Children Act 1989 still stands. Indeed, the best interests of the child are far more likely to be served if overregulation is not allowed to get in the way of good social work practice. Professor Eileen Munro says that the power to innovate is a critical part of the journey set out in her independent review of child protection, towards a welfare system that reflects the complexity and diversity of children’s needs. The culture change she called for in her groundbreaking report, commissioned by the coalition Government, will simply never come to pass without testing innovation in a controlled way to establish the consequences of change before any national rollout. She describes it as,

“a sensible and proportionate way forward”.

Anthony Douglas CBE, who is the chief executive of Cafcass, agrees that the proposed new power will help,

“strip back bureaucracy to a safe minimum level”,

preserving the professional time of social workers and social care staff for the delivery of,

“services and programmes that make a positive difference to children and families”.

Steve Crocker, Director of Children’s Services for Hampshire County Council, one of the Department for Education’s partner in practice authorities, is keen to apply the power by deploying the independent reviewing officer’s role in a much more targeted way. Currently, IROs’ highly skilled professionals are legally obliged to attend some reviews where, frankly, they are neither wanted nor needed by the young people they are there to serve. Children and young people who are in happy and stable arrangements would rather their review was attended wholly by people they are familiar with. At the same time, there are cases when IROs’ time would be far better spent providing more scrutiny and oversight.

The Earl of Listowel

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The noble Baroness makes an eloquent and persuasive case for what the Government are proposing. I only wish that voices like hers were made available to those who will be affected by this legislation at an early stage so that they can digest and reflect and think that possibly the Government might have some reason for this proposal. Very sadly, the paper that introduced this notion came out when this Bill was in Committee in July, so there has been no consultation among the middle workforce. We hear that only one-tenth of social workers supports this clause. Barnardo’s, Action for Children, the NSPCC, the National Children’s Bureau and Mencap are all strongly concerned and are against Clause 29.

Listening to this debate, I thought about the experience of children taken into care—children whose voices were very often not heard by their families. Their interests and concerns were not listened to by their families, and I feel that the process followed in this arrangement leaves social workers and those working with these children very much in the same position: we risk leaving them feeling that their voices and concerns have not been heard because of the very unsatisfactory way in which this provision has been introduced. I have some sympathy for what is being presented and some understanding of the risk of too much regulation, following one crisis after another. But I am afraid that the way in which this has been introduced simply risks demoralising all those who work on the front line.

I support my noble friend’s Amendment 57, but I am grateful to the Minister for the helpful briefings arranged on this clause and encouraged to learn from his recent letter that he has established a consultative group of practitioners and this new panel, and that in the implementation the Children in Care Council will be consulted. As I say, the first rationale that I am aware was publicly provided for this controversial measure was in the document published during Committee in the summer. The Government have been very slow in bringing forward credible examples of how the clause will be used and how it is necessary. The noble Baroness was very helpful in what she said, in being specific about the changes, but this is very late in the day. Much as I respect the clause’s advocates, I have not found one social worker or child psychotherapist or one provider of children’s services in the several organisations that I am associated with who supports this. It would be helpful if there could be a proper consultation. To achieve the Government’s vision of social care reform, surely they must bring at least a critical mass of social workers and social care professionals with them. I implore the Minister to take this clause back to the sector, to consult and collaborate with it, and to produce something that we can all get behind.

Recently we have been concerned about Brexit and whether the Government—the Executive—would consult the legislature—Parliament—about its implementation. I ask Members of your Lordships’ House and the other place how they would feel if the senior authority sought to push through something which would affect them so much without consulting them first. I am afraid that this is exactly how many of those working practically in the field feel. That is why there is this depth of concern about these proposals.

Lord True (Con)

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My Lords, I regret that I was unable to attend Grand Committee because of certain personal problems and trying to do my day job, in which I declare an interest, of running a local social services authority. It is an innovative authority, achieving for children, which was established by the London Borough of Richmond, in common with the then Liberal Democrat Royal Borough of Kingston, as a community interest company to enable high-quality social work to be done locally and to help others. I recall that when it was proposed everyone said it was a dangerous experiment and should not be tried and that it would lead to all kinds of dangers. However, we have found that care in Kingston has been transformed and our senior social workers have been able successfully to give advice to other authorities such as Sunderland, Wandsworth and others. We should not fear innovation.

As many have recognised, the background to this proposal is, as the Munro report said, that there is a risk of too much rigidity, overregulation and stifling the good for the always important sake of protecting the vulnerable. However, having listened to the debate, I find that some remarks were astonishingly apocalyptic. It is nonsense for the noble Lord on the Front Bench opposite—or indeed, with all due respect, for the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston—to talk about privatisation in the context of a debate in which the Government have tabled amendments to say that profit will be ruled out. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, may know of private sector operators who are keen to operate on a loss-making basis, but I have yet to meet one. The talk of privatisation is reckless. It spreads disturbance where it need not be spread and is not germane to the point before us.

Everyone, from every Bench, including the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has said that they like innovation. The noble Lord likes to see change and things being done differently in the Army. The tenor of the debate has been, “We would like innovation but we cannot allow it because it is too risky”. If the Army had operated on those principles it would still be advancing in close order, line abreast, in red coats.

What is before us is not wholescale radical change but a limited power for social workers to innovate, to try to do a better job for the people they want to serve. It is disappointing. I have spoken often in this House, with Members on other Benches, and I feel that professionals in local authorities are not trusted enough. It is a constant theme of the speeches I make in your Lordships’ House. Sometimes I feel like a lone voice on the Benches behind the Government, I have to say. But here is a small, limited proposal that asks us in Parliament to trust local authorities and the advice of professionals who wish to innovate.

Many of the speeches have been made as if the amendments put forward by my noble friend on the Front Bench had never been tabled. Here is a man who I have heard rightly praised, on every piece of legislation we have had concerning children, for his capacity to listen and make changes with deep sensitivity to the concerns and interests of children. He has come forward with proposals answering your Lordships’ concerns, many of which have been expressed legitimately, and it is proposed that they be rejected out of hand. I see the noble Lord, Lord Low, rising. I will of course hear what he says.

Lord Low of Dalston

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What is there to prevent local authorities and social workers innovating under the present legislative framework?

Lord True

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My Lords, certain things can be done differently, but this proposition will allow a range of proposals to be put forward, some of which have been mentioned already by my noble friend Lady Eaton. No doubt others will be suggested. The point is that we must allow professional social workers to make propositions.

On what is here before us the cry is, “No consultation”. This process requires local consultation and evidence on how better outcomes will come about from the experiment that might be allowed. It requires proof of local capability and quality, assessment of the potential risks to children, monitoring, evaluation and an evidence base before it even gets to the panel that is proposed to consider whether we might have an experiment. Then the panel will consider the experiment, then your Lordships will have the right to vote on whether that experiment should take place. The idea that Parliament would be taken out of the matter is nonsense. Parliament is at the heart of the matter in the legislation put forward.

This is one of those days where, carried by the deep love and affection this House has for the vulnerable and disadvantaged, which I share—it is why it is my passion to be in local government—your Lordships risk throwing a very small baby out with some bathwater that does not exist. We have a Catch-22 situation before us: the legislation potentially enables high-performing local authorities, taking ideas put forward by professional social workers, to try limited experiments in a safe, controlled environment. If your Lordships say that prior experiment is too dangerous and throw it out, the only alternative, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, has said, is to have wholesale legislation without any prior experiment: let us test it and see when it has got through Parliament. That might be rather more dangerous.

I hope that on reflection the House, while in no way resiling from the deep concerns expressed, will listen to my noble friend on the Front Bench. I hope that they will read what is in the amendments and not reject them, as doing so would excise the capacity for limited innovation by good social workers from the practice of care in this land.

Baroness Howarth of Breckland

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My Lords, I do not have a prepared speech. I came today to listen to the arguments, because this issue is difficult and finely balanced. I think that the Government have come a long way and listened extraordinarily carefully over the summer. I was able to come in during my holiday, to be seen and listened to by officials and to have my hopes and fears for social work heard. I think that a lot of that was taken on board.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord True. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Low, that this is a way to dismantle the whole legal system for children. Having been a director of social services who was involved in not one or two but three child abuse inquiries and who has experienced some of the most difficult areas of social work down the years, I am concerned—I have talked to colleagues about this—that we have such a mass of guidance and procedures to follow through the present legislation that, without some intervention, social workers and their managers will be overwhelmed. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, would agree with that. I say to the noble Lord, Lord True, that it is likely to be social work managers and not social workers who are looking for innovation, but let us hope that they will be informed by the social workers, who in turn will be informed by those whom they listen to and try to help—in this case, children.

I say to the Minister, for whom I have huge respect, that he has simply not won the hearts and minds of the vast number of people out there in the community. We have letters from mothers who are totally confused and seem to think that this has something to do with being able to cut across the whole of law so that their children may be taken away—I have sent the letters to the Minister so that he might see them. I do not think that it has anything to do with that, but it shows the breadth of confusion.

I have talked to people who want to innovate. I co-chair the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children and have listened to directors of children’s services—good directors—who are in difficulty and who would like to make changes. There are difficulties. For example, if you are caught in the common assessment framework, you can spend your life assessing situations and never getting into the position of providing a service—and there are legal requirements about assessment. I give just that one example; as a practitioner, I could give a number of examples of cases where easing the regulation would make it much better in terms of providing and delivering services.

The question that I am still stuck with today in not knowing which way I would want to vote is whether the Government have done enough to reassure us that the structures are strong enough to ensure the safeguarding of children’s services, the development of social services and the long-term protection of children. The Government have not convinced most stakeholders in the community. Whether there is more that the Government could do to reach those hearts and minds, whether the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, will press his amendment at this point and we will therefore find ourselves unable to move forward on innovation—which would be a pity, because there are things that need to be done and changes to be made—and whether this was the best way to do it or whether an inquiry into and review of guidance and the law would have been better I do not know. We are where we are. Many of us do not want to see the stifling of innovation; we just want to make sure that it is safe.

Lord Farmer (Con)

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My Lords, I follow my noble friends Lady Eaton and Lord True in supporting Clauses 29 to 31. My noble friends made many of the points that I thought were important to this debate, so I shall limit myself to the single issue of testing and reiterate the commendation of the Government for their reforming courage, not just in what they are seeking to achieve but in how they are seeking to achieve it.

Few can doubt that reform is needed in national social work practice. The number of children coming into care is soaring. My noble friend Lady Eaton has already mentioned how the complexity of their lives, especially when they are late entrants into the care system, cannot be adequately catered for in the current legislative framework.

Every sheet of Pugin wallpaper on the walls of this Palace could be replaced by policy reports brimming with ideas and care studies about social work and children’s services reform. Many of these ideas have been learned from good practice here and in other countries; they emerged not from a clear blue sky but from grass-roots practice. However, if they are ever to be implemented, they need the leeway referred to by my noble friend. On the subject of learning, modern government increasingly has to draw inspiration from the way corporations innovate but avoid going bust in a highly complex world—without, of course, handing over the core business of protecting the vulnerable to profit-making companies. I welcome the Government’s amendments to Clause 29 that bar local authorities from doing precisely that.

To explain what I mean with a recent example, the Institute for Government published Nicholas Timmins’s highly instructive report on the rollout of universal credit, at the heart of which was a change in approach from the traditional way of managing big projects. Previously, managers operated a “waterfall” approach, where government would legislate on a programme and set the rules, suppliers would then design in detail how these would operate, do some testing and then cascade a finished system out to the regions, either in phases or even on one day. One of the major drawbacks was that any errors, misjudgments or even rigidities factored in early or midway through the design process tended to be, as Timmins said, “baked in”, and end users could find that the project did not meet their needs because requirements were wrongly specified or simply not anticipated early on.

The opposite—which the private sector has increasingly adopted over the last 15 years or so—was known as the “agile” approach. Again to quote Timmins, this is,

“a mindset of humility around how little you should expect to understand about how real people use your service. So you optimise your whole approach by working with them and learning to iterate quickly based on learning in the real world”.

The mantra of test and learn that emerged from the adoption of an agile approach became a welcome hallmark of wider welfare reform, as well as of universal credit. It is a far more realistic and sensitive way to carry out reforms in areas such as welfare benefits and social care, which have such profound implications for people’s quality of life, well-being and even survival.

Obviously, there are many differences between the rollout of an IT-controlled benefits system and an iterative improvement in the responsiveness of children’s services, but the key similarities lie in the words “iterative” and “responsive”. We heard from my noble friend Lord True about the Royal Borough of Kingston and the London Borough of Richmond—Partners in Practice local authorities. They have said that the clauses will enable them to safely test new approaches that their front-line workers come up with and remove barriers to effective work. Leeds City Council is seeking to become an exemplar of a new and more sustainable safeguarding system where children do better, families are supported to do better and the state has to intervene less. One local authority after another is aspiring to become a learning organisation that can be instructed by and instruct others—all within an enabling framework of intense scrutiny from government and those charged to put children at the forefront of all they do.

We are all here with the aim of ensuring that children thrive. But, as anyone who has lived in a family with several children knows, parenting must be nimble if each unique child is to flourish. I suggest that we also need to be agile in how we approach these clauses. We should no longer fetter well-trained professionals but enable them to develop strategies for their patch within the protective envelope of the Bill.

Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)

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My Lords, I will briefly take up a couple of points made by the noble Lord, Lord True. He said—I may be slightly misquoting him—that we should allow professional social workers to take proper decisions. But is it not telling that, as we heard, only one in 10 social workers in a survey supports the Government’s proposals, and more than two-thirds of them believe that letting local authorities exempt themselves from children’s social care legislation will lead to more children being placed at risk?

The other point made by the noble Lord was that Parliament will be at the heart of the process, but that will only be in so far as we are allowed to debate the regulations. We all know that we have no power when it comes to regulations, and that if we try to use what powers we have we get lambasted for overstepping them. It is not fair to say that Parliament will be at the heart of this process, whereas it would be if there were proper, primary legislation.

Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)

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I listened to this debate in Grand Committee in considerable detail and I certainly have a vested interest in securing our social work and the Children’s Act statutory provisions. I think that the provision made in the Bill is misunderstood in some quarters. As I listened to the debate today and on the last occasion, I formed a view that some of those contributing may not have fully understood the purpose of this provision. It is not about allowing local authorities to innovate at their whim; what it does is to ask local authorities that if they have an innovation that they think will improve the lot of children, and they find that that innovation is inhibited or prohibited by some statutory regulation or provision, they should be able to ask the Secretary of State to use the powers—which are strictly limited by the amendments that have been put in—to authorise that amendment for a limited time.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, quoted what my noble friend the Minister said in Grand Committee about there being no limit to this. Of course, it depends what you are looking for. There is a terrific limit to it but it has to be for the benefit of the children. It is not limited in the sense that it may be about a statute or a statutory regulation, or indeed some form of guidance issued by the department, but it is very limited by the necessity to demonstrate that you want to improve. The noble Lord, Lord Low, for whom I have the greatest possible respect, asked what prevents innovation as it is. There is nothing to prevent innovation except that some innovations which you may want to make run counter to a statute or statutory provision. If you are faced with that, you cannot make that innovation unless there is some way of dealing with the statutory prohibition. That is what the Bill intends to do. Having listened to the debate in the summer, I suggested to the Bill team that there might be a slightly better way of framing this to make it a little plainer that that is exactly what it does, but that has not happened—as yet, anyway.

Much of the difficulty for social workers is that there are sometimes a lot of misunderstandings and misrepresentations over what this is about. It is not about destroying the system. I would certainly not support it for a minute if it was. It is to improve the way that the system works and, where you find something in it that constrains you not to do it in the best possible way, you would have a way of dealing with that.

Lord O'Shaughnessy (Con)

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My Lords, I rise to speak in favour of the power to test new ways of working and am therefore against those amendments which seek to remove the relevant clauses from the Bill. In doing so, I strongly associate myself with the comments of my noble friends. I have reflected carefully on the arguments made by the proposers of these amendments and I know that they are motivated by the best wishes for very vulnerable children. I take their warnings seriously. Noble Lords may know of my own involvement in running schools, so I am deeply aware that the duty of safeguarding young people and children lies heavily on the shoulders of those who look after them. Our first responsibility is to keep children safe; even more so when the home life of a child does not offer sanctuary. It is right to move cautiously before we put any of this at risk.

Lord Nash

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My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. I found it very depressing. Frankly, many noble Lords seemed to be depressingly suspicious of our motives. This is all about improving care for children at the front line. Nobody who has worked closely with my ministerial colleague Mr Timpson could possibly doubt that. He literally has care for children in his DNA, his late mother having fostered more than 80 children and adopted several, and his having worked as a professional in this field for many years. I am extremely grateful to my noble friends Lady Eatwell and Lord True, who are hugely knowledgeable on the inner workings of local authorities in this area, and to my noble friends Lord Farmer and Lord O’Shaughnessy and my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay, for their support.

The noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Low, asked for examples of why this power is necessary. The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, mentioned three examples. We have discussed this at length before. Local authorities, including the very best, tell us that this power will provide them with opportunities to innovate which are simply not available under current legislation. Of course, some local authorities provide very good services under the current legislative framework, but children deserve the very best services, not the best within the current constraints of the good but not perfect legislative framework.

During the course of this debate, I have reflected on a number of points that have been made. The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, talked about a lot of misinformation in the system and a lot of suspicion, which may affect some noble Lords’ suspicion. It is our job as lawmakers to see through suspicion and see the arguments for what they truly are, and it is the Government’s job to clarify the position with stakeholders. I commit to doing everything we can to explain more fully what this is about, because it is clear that we need to do more in that regard.

I have also reflected on something that my noble friend Lady Eaton and the noble Lord, Lord Low, said. I have huge respect for the noble Lord and I was struck by how suspicious he was of our motives in this regard. I have thought about this in relation to Clause 32. Without Clause 32, it would be impossible to say that this is about dismantling local authorities because these provisions can be initiated only by local authorities. Clause 32 was intended to be a technical clause to clarify that whoever is discharging the local authority’s functions, whether it is a trust or the Secretary of State, has the ability to use the power to test different ways of working. As I have said previously, we anticipate working with our strongest local authorities in the first instance, rather than intervention authorities, and there was never any immediate policy intent for the power to be used in this way; nor was the intention to cut local partners out of decision-making. However, I understand that this point may have caused unnecessary concern to noble Lords. It is critical that local government should feel it owns these clauses. If the provisions in Clause 32 are a block to that, I am very happy to reconsider the point completely. I think that would remove the fear expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Low: there could be no question of a dark agenda on the part of the Government to dismantle local authorities, because only they would have the power to initiate these clauses. I hope this will go some considerable way towards reassuring noble Lords who have concerns on this point.

I will address some other points, particularly the amendments on the process of scrutinising applications. I start with the amendment in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Warner and Lord Watson. As I have said, we have listened to noble Lords on this point and tabled a government amendment to introduce an expert advisory panel to scrutinise applications to use the power, and publish its advice. I believe we have gone a long way towards satisfying noble Lords’ concerns in this area.

Amendments 62 and 65, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, are on the Children’s Improvement Board. I entirely understand the intent behind these amendments, and the noble Lords are right that local government has a very important part to play in scrutinising applications. We propose that this be done through the Children’s Improvement Board feeding in views to a local government representative on the expert advisory panel, which I have already referred to. My officials will work with the LGA and others to work out the details of this process, but I think that would be preferable to naming an informal grouping in the Bill. The grouping could change its constitution or its name at any stage and therefore render itself unable to be consulted. I do not think that would be the right way forward.

Turning to the amendments that address the principle of these clauses, the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, referred to organisations which object to the power. However, it is overwhelmingly the organisations on the front line, and those that represent them, which support these clauses and agree with the Government that overregulation can get in the way of innovation. The LGA has said that it strongly supports the principle of allowing councils to shape provision around the needs of children and young people, rather than the constraints of inflexible regulation. Similarly, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives has said that the tight regulation and inspection regimes applied to children’s social care provide little opportunity for innovation, and that the proposed power to innovate will enable local councils to try different approaches with appropriate safeguards.

Our partners in practice, 11 of the best and most innovative local authorities from across the country, support this. For instance, Leeds City Council has said that it wants to work in partnership with government to remove barriers that get in the way of best practice, and become an exemplar of a new and more sustainable safeguarding system in which children do better because families are supported to do more and the state has to intervene less. Professor Eileen Munro, whose ground-breaking review into child protection is at heart of our case for the power, supports these clauses. She has said of the power that it is,

“a critical part of the journey”,

set out in her independent review and that,

“testing innovation in a controlled way to establish the consequences of the change, before any national roll out, is a sensible and proportionate way forward”.

Anthony Douglas, chief executive of Cafcass, has described the power to innovate as a,

“crucial requirement if the mainstream social work and social care services of the future are to successfully manage demand, improve quality and provide value for money”’.

The National IRO Managers Partnership sees the opportunity given by the clauses to test new approaches, and has said that the clauses are,

“an opportunity to review practice and develop more innovative approaches and models of support across the whole system of children’s services”.

Finally, Chris Wright, chief executive of Catch22, a charity that is at the forefront of delivering innovative services, makes the case for the power well. He says:

“It will give power back to practitioners and professionals at the local level, supporting them to design programmes that work for the specific children in their care”.

This illustrates that a very significant amount of support exists for the Government’s case that regulation can get in the way of innovation, and that the approach we are taking of introducing a grass-roots power that allows local authorities to come forward with ideas, with careful safeguards, is the right one.

I understand the concerns expressed by noble Lords about delegated powers of this type and about whether the power is proportionate. I stress that this is absolutely not about Government bypassing Parliament on matters of legislation. It is about local authorities, Parliament and Ministers working in partnership to test new approaches and build the evidence for a better legislative framework for all children. Every use of the power will be rigorously scrutinised ahead of being debated, to ensure that it is truly in the best interests of children. Parliament will have the ultimate say on every use of the power.

The noble Lord, Lord Warner, made the point about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I suggest that in voting out this clause, noble Lords would be using a sledgehammer to deny the system the opportunity to test a very limited way of working with the aim of improving the lives of young people. The noble Lord asked for evidence, but it is not until we test ideas in practice—in a very limited way—that we can get that evidence, rather than just talking about a lot of theoretical ideas.

Lord Warner

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I was making a slightly different point. Where is this groundswell of concern which accumulated in the DfE before it produced the legislation to suggest that this is necessary?

Lord Nash

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I have already quoted a number of practitioners who have stated the need for it. As I have said, if we remove Clause 32—which I am quite prepared to look at doing—we will deal with many of the shadows that some noble Lords have raised.

The Government have listened and made substantial steps to put safeguards in place around the use of the power. The Children’s Minister and I remain ready at any time to discuss these clauses further. Professor Eileen Munro talked about doing the right thing, rather than doing things right, and that is what this power is all about. If these clauses are removed, noble Lords would be denying local authorities that can see a better way of working for the benefit of the children in their care the opportunity to test the whole system and learn how we can do things better, giving those children the opportunity of a better life.

Lord True

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Before my noble friend sits down, there is an important point. Is he saying that once the House has considered what he said and reflected on it, he would not oppose Amendment 66, which would leave out Clause 32, while on the other hand he would wish to keep the innovation clauses? That would, as he has said, leave all the innovation coming up from the professions and from local authorities, and remove the suspicion that the state might impose something.

Lord Nash

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Yes.

Lord Ramsbotham

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My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for the careful and considered summing up. I am particularly struck by the remark about Clause 32, which is all about the introduction of the Secretary of State. Before I go on, is the Minister seriously proposing that the Secretary of State should be removed from the process?

Lord Nash

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No, I am not proposing that. I am proposing that where a local authority is no longer in charge of its own destiny, as it were, the Secretary of State cannot use the power herself.

Lord Ramsbotham

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My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for the care with which he summed up and to all those who have taken part in what has been a very thoughtful debate. I am particularly grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, and the noble Lords, Lord True and Lord Farmer, for giving us the benefit of their experience and taking a slightly different line.

The Minister said at the beginning that he was depressed about the attitude he had heard to making improvements. I have to say that I came into the Bill depressed, because there was clearly a great fixed gulf between the Government and the practitioners on the ground. That worried me, particularly as the Bill went on and more and more practitioners wrote to us about their concerns, in particular about these clauses. As I said at the start, I am totally in favour of innovation. I outlined the way in which the Army—I know the other services do the same—processed innovation by identifying it and turning good practice somewhere into common practice everywhere.

I am sorry to go back to my time as Chief Inspector of Prisons, but what worried me about good practice in prisons was that the prisons lacked a structure and a wherewithal for turning good practice into common practice. During my five and a half years as chief inspector, I identified 2,800 examples of good practice, only 40 of which were turned into common practice, because there was no machinery for doing the others. As I said, I am all in favour of innovation and of a bottom-up approach, but I am concerned that there appears to be no system in the Department for Education looking for innovation or improvements and then processing them. If necessary, and if legislation is the reason why they cannot be processed, then surely the initiation of a machinery which can get round that should be investigated.

As I said at the beginning, what concerned me about this was that the Secretary of State was being empowered to take action which might undo the law laid down for social work and therefore affect the rule of law. I do not believe that that machinery has been properly worked out in the ministry, and if it has, it certainly has not got through to the workers on the ground whose understanding and support for legislation is absolutely crucial. I asked at the end of my speech whether the Minister would consider withdrawing these clauses and holding a proper consultation with the people working on the ground—who clearly have no confidence in the clauses in the Bill—out of which could come a machinery for innovation and for identifying initiatives and processing them, which would satisfy everyone and give confidence in the system. If people have confidence in the system, the outcomes will be better for children.

I have listened very carefully to all the arguments and, as I say, am extremely grateful to those who have taken part, particularly because both sides of the argument have been put very clearly. Now the time has come for a decision, and I wish to test the opinion of the House.

Baroness Walmsley (LD)

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My Lords, I move Amendment 69 and speak to Amendment 71 in this group. Amendment 71 arises from the third report of the JCHR for the current Session, and I am delighted that we are of one mind on the matter. Although there are some differences between them, both amendments are intended to do the same thing: to enshrine a duty on public bodies to have regard to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which the Government became a signatory 25 years ago.

Some might say that the obligation under the convention means that public bodies already have such a duty, but most people would also consider that the processes in place to ensure that the duty is carried out require improvement. One has to look only at successive reports from the Committee on the Rights of the Child when it scrutinises the Government’s performance under the convention, including that of April this year, to see that there is still a lot to be desired. It concluded that the UK Government have failed so far to put effective law, policy and resources in place to protect and promote children’s human rights.

Both amendments would require public authorities to determine the impact of decision-making on the rights of children and provide a framework for public service delivery in relation to children compatible with their convention rights. That is what “due regard” means. There are a couple of differences between the amendments, and I have added my name to Amendment 71 to indicate that, should the Government choose to accept it, I will gladly withdraw Amendment 69. Although Amendment 71 uses the wording of existing statute, which I have to say is probably better than mine, my amendment has the advantage of including a reporting duty to children on steps that a public authority has taken to implement the requirement every five years. This is similar to the Scottish Act. There is nothing like a reporting duty to put pressure on people to do something. Nobody wants to have to report that they have not done anything.

I thank Edward Timpson MP, the responsible Minister in another place, for meeting me and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, on several occasions to inform us what the Government are already doing to make children’s lives better and to inform himself of our concerns. Those meetings are much appreciated, and we were pleased to hear about the improvements in the process, at least in the Department for Education, to promote awareness of children’s rights and ensure that they are built into the policy-making process. However, we were disappointed to learn that the Government are reluctant to accept either of these amendments because they might increase bureaucracy, have unintended consequences and result in a tick-box mentality rather than a genuine way forward—that sounds familiar. If civil servants are inclined to use such an important duty simply as a tick-box exercise, I would encourage the Government to look very carefully at how they are trained and how their performance is monitored. Such a mentality should be stamped out, and quickly. On the contrary, I believe that such a duty will put the convention at the heart of policy-making—a first consideration, not a last-minute add-on—before a policy is finalised, which would be completely the wrong way to go about it.

We are also very disappointed that the further information which we were promised yesterday would be provided before this debate has not arrived. In the absence of that, we will therefore almost certainly have to return to this at Third Reading.

The Minister has asked us whether such a duty would really make a difference to children’s lives. I would therefore pray in aid the public sector equality duty from the Equality Act 2010, which has had a real effect and, indeed, changed mindsets. As the JCHR records, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has provided evidence that a similar duty to the one we are suggesting now has already had positive results in Wales and Scotland, though the duties have not been in place for very long. Secondly, there is significant evidence from the experience of the public sector equality duty that an approach to promoting equality rights through the use of public duties to have “due regard” has led to substantive change. The response to the government review of the PSED in 2014 included a fairly comprehensive catalogue of positive outcomes which show us how effective it has been.

Public authorities have introduced systems to identify disadvantaged groups, enabling them to ensure better equality outcomes. Some tangible examples of these outcomes are: a better understanding of school exclusions; an increase in the provision of support for homeless women; and better fire-prevention processes for older people. These are just a few very practical results from the PSED. In addition, a culture of concern for equality issues has infiltrated public organisations. I would like to see a similar culture of concern infiltrate public organisations in relation to children’s rights.

In December 2010 the Liberal Democrat Minister, Sarah Teather, on behalf of the Government, made a welcome commitment to give the UNCRC due consideration in the development of new policy and legislation. It seems to have taken six years to put in place some sort of system to ensure that, and the Minister in another place has now told us that he is keen to promote awareness of children’s rights across government and has a framework to help him achieve it. However welcome that is, it falls short of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Scottish Ministers must consider what steps they could take to secure the effect of UNCRC in Scotland, and if they identify such steps, they must take them. In other words, they must actually do something, not just promote awareness. That is what we are looking for in moving our amendment today. Awareness raising alone falls far short of the responsibility which we as signatories to the UNCRC have promised to shoulder. It is time that the Government accepted this and showed us some real action. I beg to move.

Lord Lester of Herne Hill (LD)

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My Lords, I shall speak briefly in support of Amendment 71, which is also in the name of my noble friend, as well as Amendment 69. I prefer Amendment 71 because it is much better drafted, it is brief and it says the same thing in a way that even I can understand.

I shall be interested to know what the Minister says by way of reply, because she surely cannot say that she disagrees with the sentiment in Amendment 71. She surely cannot say that public authorities must in the exercise of their functions put the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in the wastepaper basket. I do not think she can say that, not least because we are internationally bound as signatories to the convention that we ratified. She is not really in a position to say that we can forget about the convention altogether.

What can be said against the amendment? It might be said that, in some way, it is not necessary. However, I think that it is necessary because without the amendment, as a matter of law, a public authority does not have any obligation to have any regard to the convention. That is why I think it important that that power is now improved.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights, on which I no longer serve, has a mandate wide enough to look at compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, even though it has not been made domestically effective. That parliamentary committee can report to both Houses on its views about the matter. It seems to me that if that is true of a parliamentary Joint Select Committee, how much more important is it that public authorities are asked to have regard to the international obligations to which we are party, and by which we are bound? That is why I will support Amendment 71, when we come to it. I see, for example, that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, is a party to it as well.

The amendment says what it does in a very easy and economical way. It uses the definition of public authority in the Human Rights Act—that is fine. It defines the convention briefly—that is fine. It simply says:

“A public authority must, in the exercise of its functions relating to safeguarding and the welfare of children, have due regard to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child”.

I cannot see any argument against our approving it now as an amendment to the Bill.

Lord Woolf (CB)

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My Lords, I want to address Amendment 71, which has my name to it. Noble Lords may be surprised at my intervention in this debate on the Bill at such a late stage when I have perhaps been conspicuous in my absence from earlier stages. I should explain that it is because I am a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights whose recommendation is that the Bill should contain such an amendment as Amendment 71 that I am making this submission.

The chairman of the Joint Committee, as your Lordships will know, is a Member of the other place and, of course, she cannot therefore speak in favour of the amendment. Noble Lords will have heard what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and the noble Lord, Lord Lester, in the last few minutes. Quite frankly they have said everything that can be said in support of the amendment.

I also share the regret expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, about not getting the response we expected as a result of the meeting that took place yesterday when we were promised such a response. As noble Lords will appreciate, there are only limited circumstances in which we will be able to come back to this at a later stage. Like the noble Baroness, I regard this as not a mere technicality but a matter of great substance which would substantially improve the Bill if it were included. I suggest that it would be a very positive action if the Government were seen to embrace it. I had the advantage of hearing the debate which took place regarding the amendment in respect of Clause 29. The message which is received by those who peruse what happens is obviously extremely important. When we know that both Scotland and Wales have a provision of this sort, and that those parts of the United Kingdom have found it a benefit, it is very hard to understand why the Government should not welcome this amendment.

Noble Lords have heard about experiences with regard to some legislation. I know of experiences, for example, where a duty to improve the position of women offenders in prison has been taken with marked effect upon the approach which is now adopted. It is recognised that as a group of offenders, women need special consideration. The children we are concerned with in this debate need special consideration. When there is a UN convention which the Government have adhered to and see as a matter of international law which they should take into account, I would like to know why a different view is taken with regard to our domestic law.

To oppose the amendment gives quite the wrong message—not the message which the Government would like to give. When we had our meetings, we were looking for ways in which we could square the circle. My understanding was that the Government were looking at this matter and they were conscious that there could be virtues in the Scottish model. If they were to adopt the Scottish model, then I, for one, would regard that very sympathetically. But as matters stand, I seem to have no alternative but to say that it may be necessary to test the opinion of the House. I hope I can get the reassurance I need to make that unnecessary.

Baroness Lister of Burtersett

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My Lords, I strongly support these amendments. The political commitment to give the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child due consideration in policy-making was very important and is welcome, but it is not enough, as the JCHR’s report on the UK’s compliance with the convention in the last Parliament clearly demonstrated.

I declare an interest as a former member of the JCHR, along with the noble Lord, Lord Lester. The duty does not apply, for example, to local authorities or other public authorities. The Government have said that they remain to be convinced that such a duty would make a real practical difference to children’s lives and outcomes, rather than—as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, noted—produce a so-called tick-box mentality and create bureaucracy, rather than change mindsets and culture. Yet Parliament’s own committee, charged with safeguarding human rights, supports these amendments.

As we have the heard, the evidence from Scotland and Wales suggests that such a duty makes a real, practical difference. The criticisms made of this country by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child suggests that what we have at present simply is not sufficient to safeguard children’s rights. Can the Minister spell out what further evidence the Government need to convince them of the practical value of such a duty? What evidence do they have that it would produce box ticking, rather than cultural change? I fear that the current political commitment has not produced the cultural change that I agree we need. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, has said, by opposing this very basic amendment, which is doing no more than putting a convention that we have signed up to into our legislation, the Government are sending out the totally wrong message in suggesting that they do not care about the rights of children sufficiently to ensure that they are safeguarded in law.

The Earl of Listowel

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My Lords, I support this amendment. The Minister will be aware of the fantastic work done at Leeds, one of the leading children’s services departments. It recently presented its work in Parliament and used the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as the foundation of this achievement. It committed itself to all the children in the city in respecting and thinking about the UNCRC. It managed to reduce the numbers of children coming into care and give really good service for those children in care. I know of schools that use the UNCRC in a similar way—as a fundamental approach to what they do—and they have great successes, so I support this amendment.

I have a personal reflection, which may resonate with your Lordships. If we respect the rights of children and give them a secure upbringing, then when they are adults they are far less likely to be swayed by demagogues —I am thinking of today’s election in the United States —and manipulated by people who dwell on their worst fears.

Finally, this would help to answer our problems about productivity in the workforce. If we respect children’s need for family life, education and recovery from trauma, we will have adults who are not missing work because they are mentally ill or depressed; we will have a more productive workforce. There are many good reasons to support this amendment.

Lord Ramsbotham

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My Lords, I remind the Minister that he used the word “depressed” in connection with our previous group on improvements. I have to admit that looking at the last committee report of the UN convention and comparing it with the previous committee report, I was depressed at how many in the previous one were still there in this present one. If you are looking for improvements, I suggest that you could start well with the two committee reports because they set out a very clear agenda for improvement.

Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)

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My Lords, I add a word on how this matter might be viewed in the courts. As many of your Lordships will know, I was a member of the UK Supreme Court; from time to time the UNCR convention was cited and we always paid close attention to what it said. It is plain from a number of our judgments that it did influence the way we approached cases involving children but, more importantly, there was a case called P-S Children in 2013 in the Court of Appeal in England, where it was said:

“The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child has not been made a part of English law but the duty of the court is nonetheless to have regard to it when considering matters relating to it”.

In that case, the question was whether a child had a right to be heard in proceedings relating to him. There was no statutory right, but there was nothing to prevent it. However, the court—having regard to what the convention said—went on to say:

“It should now be declared that the child does have the … important but limited right, that is to say, a right to be heard in the proceedings”.

That is just one example of the way in which the courts today are drawing upon the convention in developing their jurisprudence. It is also well established as a matter of fundamental law that when the United Kingdom has signed up to an international convention, it is to be presumed that this Parliament, when legislating, will legislate in accordance with what the convention provides. Therefore, if you find a provision relating to children, or the duties of authorities relating to children, the courts, if asked to do so, would interpret the legislation in the light of the convention.

We are in an imperfect world so far as England and Wales are concerned, but the courts are doing the best they can to follow the guidance of the convention and it would seem far better that England and Wales should follow the example of Scotland and legislate to put the matter beyond any doubt.

Baroness Wheeler

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My Lords, I again offer the support of these Benches for Amendments 69 and 71, the case for which has been comprehensively set out and argued today by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and other noble Lords, and in the debate in Committee. Like other noble Lords, I am grateful for the excellent briefings and guidance from the Children’s Rights Alliance for England, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Joint Committee on Human Rights. All three bodies underlined the key opportunity presented by the Bill to promote the rights and well-being of children in care and care leavers by placing a statutory duty on public authorities to have due regard to the UN convention.

Like other noble Lords, I hope that the Minister has reflected on his assertion in Committee that a statutory UNCRC duty would not have any real impact on children’s lives. He knows that the 2010 ministerial commitment to give due consideration to the CRC in all new legislation and policy has not led to the widespread change in mindset and culture across government departments that he acknowledges is vitally needed. Implementation of the Written Ministerial Statement has been both piecemeal and ad hoc, as we have heard.

The CRAE freedom of information discovery, and the single Department for Education example across government of any detailed analysis of the CRC and children’s rights being undertaken—and then only on one Bill—show just how far away we are from children’s rights routinely informing the development of law, policy and everyday practice nationally and locally. Indeed, the EHRC has pointed out that the DfE did not go into the level of detail that would have been expected had the statutory obligation been in force. For example, it did not look at the numbers of children affected or of those disproportionately affected, or provide a sufficient level of evidence to explain how conclusions on projected impacts had been reached. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s view of the experience of embedding children’s rights in law in Scotland and Wales, because there is strong evidence, as noble Lords have underlined, that the measures taken in both countries are starting to have the meaningful and practical effect he seeks.

Under Amendment 71, a children’s rights framework would embed the CRC within children’s services and public authorities working with children and families in England. Although many local authorities make reference to the CRC, few have an explicit child rights plan or strategy in place, and there is limited knowledge and understanding of the value of the child rights impact assessment as a key tool. A consistent approach to policy and practice is needed, using the CRC as a framework with nationally available guidance and support.

In a period of unprecedented cuts to public and local authority services, using the CRC to help safeguard children’s rights and ensure a rights-based approach to services is more important than ever. The CRAE has emphasised that too many children continue to experience daily systematic violations of their rights. Just last week we saw Shelter’s shocking report estimating that at least 121,000 homeless children in England, Scotland and Wales face Christmas in stopgap lodgings—the highest figure since 2007.

As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, underlined, this year’s report from the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed serious concern at the impact of the Government’s recent fiscal policies and allocation of resources, and the disproportionate effect on disadvantaged children. I hope the Government will seize the opportunity presented by these amendments to address these very worrying concerns.

Lord Nash

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My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for their amendments and for raising the important matter of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This Government recognise the importance of the UNCRC and are fully committed to giving due consideration to the articles when making new policies and legislation. I also reassure noble Lords that one of the top priorities for this Government is the safety and well-being of children. In July, the Department for Education set out its vision of how reform of the children’s social care system will bring about improved outcomes for all children, particularly the most vulnerable.

At a local and national level, listening to the voices of children when determining what policies to develop, how those polices should be implemented and what services should be developed, should be second nature to us. Indeed, the Children Act 1989 requires that the local authority shall give due consideration to the child or young person’s wishes and feelings, having regard to their age and understanding, when taking decisions about them. We believe that the way to promote children’s rights is for strong practitioners locally to listen to children and to act in ways which best meet their needs. A duty alone will not do that, and risks practitioners focusing on the wording of the legislation rather than on practice. The Government will consider how best to strengthen compliance with the convention in a way which promotes better practice and a culture of focusing on children’s rights. In doing so, we will pay close attention to what is happening in Scotland and Wales.

Noble Lords will know that earlier this year in Geneva, the UK was commended for great strides made in legislation and in guidance to ensure that all children are protected from harm. Since the summer, the Government have reaffirmed their commitment to the UNCRC through a Written Ministerial Statement from the Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families. This reinforced our view that to achieve implementation of the UNCRC, every department across Westminster must be proactive in considering children’s rights in policy-making. This was followed up with a letter from the DfE Permanent Secretary, Jonathan Slater, to his counterparts across government, challenging them and all their officials to keep the principles and conventions of the UNCRC at the centre of their policy-making and implementation, and to engage children and young people in the process. We are talking to the Children’s Commissioner about how she might hold the Government to account in this respect. It is important that officials are equipped with the right knowledge and skills to make sure they can reflect children’s rights within a policy framework, and we are looking at how to introduce a cross-Whitehall learning and development programme to help officials develop the best policies that take account of children’s rights and work effectively for children.

Noble Lords who have tabled these amendments clearly have considerable expertise and experience in this area, and they raise a very important point about whether more can be done in England to ensure that children’s rights are reflected adequately in our policy-making and implementation. I am grateful to noble Lords for tabling these amendments. I emphasise, however, that introducing new duties is not a step to be taken lightly. There are a number of additional steps we could consider, and we are keen to explore the benefits of the different potential approaches before deciding what further action might be taken. We therefore intend to revisit the significant action already taken to embed the UNCRC across Whitehall and beyond, and consider where there are opportunities to go further to better achieve the outcome we all want: for the rights of children to inform our policy thinking and service delivery.

Lord Lester of Herne Hill

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Having heard the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, does the Minister appreciate that there is a constitutional problem? The noble and learned Lord explained that even though the Convention on the Rights of the Child has not been made part of our law, the courts are still having regard to it and doing their best to comply with it. Would it not be much better if Parliament now turned that practice into something constitutionally even more respectable by making the convention part of our law, in the way that the Human Rights Act makes the European Convention on Human Rights part of our law?

Lord Nash

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I heard what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, said, and I will take that back and discuss it further, along with the point he made about the case to which he referred. I am happy to continue discussions with noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. I know that they have already had productive conversations in the past week with the Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families, although not as productive as they would have liked. I would expect those to continue. The DfE will look at all options open to us, but I regret that I cannot commit to a timetable, nor can I commit to returning to the issue before Third Reading. However, noble Lords should be reassured of our very firm intention to take further action. In view of this, I hope they will feel reassured enough to withdraw their amendments.

Baroness Walmsley

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My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response. I thank my noble friend Lord Lester, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, who, I am delighted to say, mentioned UNICEF’s very effective Rights Respecting Schools programme. I wonder whether the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, agrees with me that if we had had the duty we are proposing in these amendments, perhaps fewer cases would have come to the Supreme Court for him to make a decision on.

We do not have full incorporation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into UK law. This amendment falls far short of full incorporation. It is limited to functions relating to safeguarding and the welfare of children, and they would be enormously helpful as a first—not a last—consideration when setting policy in the specific areas that are in the scope of the Bill.

Nobody is suggesting that the duty to have due regard is a silver bullet. As the Minister said, we of course have to improve what practitioners do on the ground and the culture within which they work. I called in aid what has happened about the PSED: it has certainly had that effect in the area of equalities. The Government seem to be determined to consider everything else first, rather than put into UK law the rights that children have as a result of the fact that we are signatories to the convention. I do not quite understand it.

We have heard from the Minister this evening and the Minister in another place yesterday that consultations will take place across Whitehall. I asked Mr Timpson how long that would take and whether it could take place in the two weeks between now and Third Reading. He said that would be rather ambitious because of the time it normally takes to have those consultations. I would like to be sure that those consultations will start straight away, following this evening’s debate so that, by the time we get to Third Reading, we could be convinced that the Government are determined to ensure that children’s rights are at the heart of policy-making. I am afraid we have not had that assurance this evening, so we are going to have to come back to this. The Minister has told us that talks can continue, and I am sure that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and I will be very happy to continue them.

In the meantime, as has been said, the Government are missing an opportunity to send out the right message to the rest of the world, and particularly the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, by accepting one or other of these amendments. I have not convinced the Minister so far, but I can assure him this is not the end of it.

Lord Nash

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It might help the noble Baroness to know that I have been informed that we are starting talks with the devolved Administrations this week, so that part of the consultation has started.

Baroness Walmsley

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I thank the Minister. I am aware that that is happening and it is very good. However, that is not the same thing as consulting all departments across Whitehall on how they could implement the “have regard” duty. That is what we would like to see starting.

Lord Nash

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I will take that back and see if we can do it.

Baroness Walmsley

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I thank the Minister and look forward to hearing what ball has started rolling between now and Third Reading. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Lord Watson of Invergowrie

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My Lords, my noble friend Lord Dubs is abroad at the moment. He has asked me to move Amendment 70, to which I am also a signatory, on his behalf. The amendment, which seeks to amend the Immigration Act 2016, is comprehensive and self-explanatory. Noble Lords will be well aware that my noble friend recently convinced the former Prime Minister, David Cameron, that vulnerable young people, many from war-torn Syria, should be admitted to the UK. My noble friend recently met with the Children’s Minister, Edward Timpson, the Immigration Minister, Robert Goodwill and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams—whom I am pleased to see on the Front Bench for the first time—to discuss the amendment to the Bill which he moved in Committee.

My noble friend Lord Dubs’s suggestions, based on his unrivalled experience in this field, were listened to by Ministers and some were incorporated in the Written Ministerial Statement on safeguarding issued on 1 November. It contained details of a new strategy which was much needed and most welcome. In many ways, the Statement met the proposals contained in Amendment 70; in others it exceeded them. For instance, there is to be an increase in the number of foster carers, as well as fresh proposals to fund supported lodgings for young people.

One critical issue that my noble friend Lord Dubs had raised with Ministers was additional financial support for local authorities that receive the vulnerable young people. Although the Statement stops short of promising a specific figure, the implication is clear in the Government’s commitment to,

“regularly review funding to support and care for unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee children, working closely with the LGA and local authorities”.—[Official Report, Commons, 1/11/16; col. 29WS.]

Like my noble friend, I am prepared to accept the spirit in which that has been offered and we look forward to hearing details in the near future.

Baroness Sheehan (LD)

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My Lords, I am a signatory to this amendment because for months after Section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016 came into force there were no processes or resources put in place to indicate any sense of urgency on the part of the Government to use it to bring unaccompanied minors from camps in Greece, Italy or—closer to home—the Jungle camp in Calais to the UK. This was foot dragging on the part of the Government; in spite of the fact that approximately 10,000 unaccompanied children across Europe had disappeared, no sense of urgency seemed to prevail.

This was in sharp contrast to my personal experience of the Jungle camp in Calais, which was that associations on the ground were putting in a monumental effort to meet the standards set and overcome bureaucratic barriers to identify a process whereby unaccompanied minors could be identified as being eligible to come to Britain under Section 67. The Government will recognise the work put in by Safe Passage, a branch of Citizens UK, in this regard.

When this amendment was put down I gladly added my name to it, as its first ask was for the Government to,

“publish a strategy for the safeguarding of unaccompanied refugee children living in the United Kingdom and children who have been identified for resettlement in the United Kingdom under section 67 of this Act”.

When I read in detail the joint ministerial Statement by Edward Timpson, Minister of State for Vulnerable Children, and Robert Goodwill, Home Office Minister of State for Immigration, I was disappointed to find that, in committing to publish a strategy by May 2017, there was no mention of children who have been identified for resettlement in the UK under Section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016.

Secondly, the amendment specifically asks that, in proposed new Section 67A(2)(b) of that Act, the Secretary of State, in formulating the strategy, must,

“evaluate the procedures for, and speed of, resettling those unaccompanied refugee children who have been identified for resettlement in the United Kingdom under section 67 of this Act”.

Let us compare that to the Government’s response:

“In developing our strategy we will evaluate the procedures for, and speed of, transferring unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee children who have been identified for transfer from Europe”.

That sounds okay—but, crucially, there is again no mention of children who qualify under Section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016.

Furthermore, in paragraph 10 of the joint ministerial Statement, the Government again fail to include children who qualify under Section 67. The Statement says:

“In taking forward this work my department will also revise the statutory guidance published in 2014 on the ‘Care of unaccompanied and trafficked children’ so it covers the safeguarding of children transferred under Dublin provisions and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who arrive spontaneously who then explain that they have family in the United Kingdom with whom they wish to live”.—[Official Report, Commons, 1/11/16; col. 28WS.]

So a third opportunity was missed to include children who qualify under Section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016. I suppose that by “children who arrive spontaneously” the Ministers were referring to minors who resort to taking their chances on the backs of lorries, in effect giving succour to the smugglers who profit by such activity.

The joint Statement fails at every opportunity to fulfil materially and in spirit what the amendment seeks. Indeed, it seems to sanction the spontaneous arrival of unaccompanied minors over the legal route of Section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016 by its omission to mention it even once. Do the Government not recognise that spontaneous arrival means more risk-taking by youngsters who have lost all hope that they will be able to come to the UK by legal means, and that it will add to the total of 14 deaths this year alone of people, including four minors, who lost their lives taking this desperate course of action?

The Ministers’ Statement has the effect of taking all sense of urgency out of the need to move children to the UK from France using safe and legal routes. Indeed, since the closure of the camp in Calais, the Home Office officials seem not to have processed many cases at all—if any. Can the Minister tell me how many children have been processed and brought to the UK since the evacuation of the unaccompanied minors from the shipping containers on 2 November? My information is that not a single one has come over since then.

Sadly, the flurry of activity we saw in the wake of media interest during the demolition of the Jungle camp in Calais seems to have died. I am currently receiving reports that no Home Office officials have visited the specialised CAOs—reception centres for children. Nor, for that matter, have any officials, be they French or British. One report from a specialised children’s reception centre near the Spanish border states that nobody has been near the children at all; all they do is eat and sleep, and there is no official to ask any questions of, either.

I will leave it there. This is quite an unsatisfactory state of affairs and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

The Lord Bishop of Leeds

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My Lords, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham is unable to be here and sends his apologies, but he wishes to add his voice to those that warmly welcome the Government’s commitment to publish the strategy to ensure the safety and welfare of unaccompanied children coming from Europe and beyond.

The UK has been generous in pledging over £2.3 billion to aid those affected by the crisis in Syria and that region. It is evident that in our local communities people are showing great generosity and hospitality in welcoming those, especially families with children, who are brought here for resettlement. We recognise that while local authorities are understandably nervous of the nature of the commitments involved, they are rising to the challenge well. It is very encouraging that the Local Government Association fully supports this amendment.

Clearly, resourcing will be needed as this strategy is brought into play, and the Government have committed to “review funding regularly”. The words of the amendment clearly have more to do with the provision of adequate funding than with the reviewing of it, but no doubt the Government will not allow their strategy to go unimplemented in any respect simply for lack of funds.

The provision of proper care of children through fostering, and of some through supported accommodation, is a key area in the promised strategy. We register that there is a wealth of experience and commitment in community and faith groups, as well as established charities, in this area; it is to be hoped that the Government will draw on that experience as we go forward.

The inclusion of an element of independent oversight through the Children’s Commissioners is another welcome element in the strategy. Whether or not the useful suggestion of an independent guardian for each child is taken up, it is important that, as in other areas where vulnerable people are dependent on statutory bodies for their well-being, there is a significant element of independent scrutiny and advocacy.

We on this Bench are pleased to learn of the Government’s intentions and wish them well in doing justice to the full content of the present amendment.

Baroness Lister of Burtersett

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My Lords, I very much welcome the Government’s Statement on the safeguarding of unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee children, which seems to offer a positive way forward.

I will raise just a couple of issues. The first is one I raised back in July: what will happen to these children when they reach the age of 18 and technically become adults? Ministers had been giving mixed messages on this. In response to an Oral Question where I tried to clarify the situation, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, wrote to me:

“We are considering all options and still need to consult with local authorities and other partners such as the UNHCR, which could influence the final outcome. However, where we accept that cases are in need of international protection we would normally grant 5 years’ leave with full access to benefits and services, including education. Unaccompanied children granted a protection status would be entitled to the full level of support afforded to all ‘looked after children’ in the UK, including leaving care benefits when they turn 18”.

That was encouraging, but can the Minister say whether the Government have come to a conclusion, having considered all the options and consulted local authorities? This is such an important issue to the safeguarding of children in the full sense of the term. As the Refugee Children’s Consortium argues, a safeguarding strategy,

“should also be a plan for future permanence and stability. The UK is accepting responsibility for young people under the Dubs amendment on the basis that their future is here. A national plan must be clear about this, and the government should be clear about setting out their views on the status of these children”.

Clarity about their future in the UK is crucial to the psychological well-being of a group of highly vulnerable children and young people, who have undergone the most terrible ordeals. According to a piece in Sunday’s Observer, psychological assessments carried out for Citizens UK have found that nearly all the children who have been in the Calais camp are suffering serious mental health conditions such as post-traumatic stress or depression. I therefore also ask what steps the Government will be taking to ensure that the children who come to the UK receive proper support and care through the mental health services.

I am a member of the inquiry of the APPG on Refugees, which is entitled “Refugees Welcome?”. Yesterday we heard evidence of the impact on the mental health of young asylum-seekers, whose lives were on hold for often well over a year until a final decision was reached on their status. We heard about one young man who could think about nothing else, he was so absolutely obsessed with what was going to happen to him—and can you blame him? They do not know what their futures are going to be. As well as impacting adversely on their mental health, it undermines their integration into British society.

The Earl of Listowel (CB)

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My Lords, I welcome the Government’s Statement. I am remembering an experience I had about 15 years ago, getting acquainted with a young Afghan woman in a hostel over several months. Each week when I saw her, she would be either in tears or very sad. She spoke a certain dialect of Pashto, and a translator was needed to be brought across London to help her communicate with others. She was a very lonely, isolated young woman. I remember arriving one day and hearing that she was in tears again. Her family’s city was being shelled, but she could not communicate with them to know what was happening. We cannot underestimate the trauma that many of these young people have experienced.

I would like to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, in asking about their experience after they leave care. The strategy of distributing young people across England, which began in July, is very welcome, but there is concern that there may be lack of expertise within the new receiving local authorities. I would appreciate reassurance about how that expertise is being developed. In particular, there is always the concern that professionals are not giving young people—that is, unaccompanied asylum-seeking children—information early enough to clarify their immigration status. I thank the Minister for that nod.

It would be very helpful to get more information about what happens to these young people when they leave care—for example, data on whether they return home voluntarily or disappear from sight altogether. All that kind of information would be helpful in terms of understanding their welfare needs into the future. I will not speak further now. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)

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My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, for this amendment on the vital issue of the safeguarding of unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee children. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, really wanted to be here tonight but is attending the small matter of a presidential election. He toyed with the question of which one to attend but, as I understand it, could not get a flight home—and that is genuinely why he is not here tonight. I echo the right reverend Prelate’s words about the work that the Churches do—they do sterling work—especially, as I mentioned earlier today, the role they have played in the community sponsorship scheme, a scheme in which the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury also is engaged. Schemes such as that are very beneficial indeed to some of the people coming to this country.

The Government are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and providing help for those in genuine need of international protection. In the light of the events of the past few weeks around the closure of the camp in Calais, we agreed that further action needs to be taken to supplement existing safeguarding guidance and practices and to ensure that we continue to act in the best interests of those children arriving in the UK.

Our priority throughout has been to ensure the safety and welfare of the children, whether they are transferred here or arrive of their own accord. We have already taken significant action. In July, for example, we implemented the national transfer scheme to promote a fairer distribution of care responsibility among local authorities across the country. That was accompanied by very substantial increases in Home Office funding to local authorities. We have also worked closely with France and other EU countries, with local authorities here, and with other partners to transfer eligible children to the UK as quickly as proper safeguarding procedures and other necessary checks will allow.

Since 10 October more than 60 girls—many of whom have been identified as at high risk of sexual exploitation —have arrived in the UK and are now receiving the care and support that noble Lords talked about. In total, we have transferred more than 300 children. More are expected to follow in the coming days and weeks.

We are in full agreement that there is absolute value in a strategy setting out how we will safeguard these unaccompanied children. However, we believe that this intention would be better served through the commitments given on 1 November in the Written Ministerial Statement by the Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families and the Minister for Immigration. The strategy that the Government have committed to publish by 1 May 2017 will reinforce the comprehensive protection that we already provide for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in this country and for those who have been transferred here from Europe, whether they are reunited with family members or looked after by a local authority. To reiterate, the care they receive is exactly what we would expect to provide for UK children. These children are no different.

We will also set out plans to increase foster care capacity for those children who are looked after and will consider what further action can be taken to prevent them from going missing. This will ensure they receive the best support possible while seeking refuge in our country. Additionally, we will review what information is communicated to these children about their rights and their entitlements, revise statutory guidance provided to local authorities on how to support and care for them, and regularly review the level of funding that is granted to assist them in doing so. To ensure that we are held to account on our progress, we will provide annual updates to Parliament and more regular quarterly updates to the Children’s Commissioners across the UK.

We believe that the commitments we have given are the best approach to safeguarding the welfare of these children. I fully agree with the spirit of this amendment, as I said to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, but primary legislation on this matter would limit our ability to respond to what is a complex and developing situation across Europe and beyond. That is why we set out our commitments through the WMS. This approach also enables us to take proper account of the devolved responsibility for safeguarding matters, which the amendment would not. We welcome the support of local authorities across the UK in dealing with the needs of unaccompanied children and will continue to work closely with them and with the devolved Administrations on these issues.

The Government are determined to do everything we can to protect these unaccompanied children. Their welfare in the UK is our first priority. That is why the comprehensive strategy we have committed to publish will build on the actions that we have already taken and go further to ensure that these children are, and remain, safeguarded.

The Government are also clear that we must do everything possible to prevent children from undertaking these perilous journeys to Europe. That is why we have pledged over £2.3 billion in response to the crisis in Syria and resettled nearly 3,000 people, half of whom are children, under the Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement scheme. We remain committed to resettling 20,000 of the most vulnerable Syrian refugees direct from the region and, in addition, we have established a new resettlement scheme focused on vulnerable children in the Middle East and north Africa.

I had some answers to the questions asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan. She said that there was no mention of Section 67. The WMS goes wider than the proposed amendment, and those transferred from Europe includes those under Section 67, as Section 67 is not actually a resettlement route. The other question is about how many Home Office officials were in the camp and supported the clearance. There were several hundred supporting the camp clearance. I have said this many times at this Dispatch Box, but we can operate in France only in ways agreed with the French Government. We cannot just go in and do what we would. I hope that the noble Baroness will be content not to press her amendment.

Baroness Lister of Burtersett

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I did ask two very specific questions, or raised two issues. Maybe the Minister cannot answer them now, but will she undertake to write to me about them, please? They were about what happens to the children when they reach the age of 18 and guardianship.

Baroness Williams of Trafford

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On a child reaching 18, obviously the needs of every child who comes here are different, depending on the circumstances. If a child is in local authority care and is in that transition period into adulthood, it would be exactly the same process as a child from this country—and it may be that the child is returning to their country. I can lay it out in more detail for the noble Baroness, but each situation is different. Was there a second question?

Baroness Lister of Burtersett

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On guardianship.