Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Baroness Berridge and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to build on the point just made by my noble friend Lady Barran and add my support for Amendments 39 and 40. I wonder whether, in her response, the Minister could explain how this approach in the current Bill aligns with the move to combine mayoral authorities. It seems as if the devolution agenda is actually encouraging regions and areas to work more closely together, which seems to slightly jar with the approach currently set out in the Bill. I would appreciate the Minister putting it in that broader context when she responds.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 40 and flag—similarly to my noble friend Lady Evans—a pragmatic timing issue, which I have previously mentioned in your Lordships’ House.

Clause 3 is not a political matter. It is a well-intentioned response, as the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, outlined, to the tragic cases of Arthur and Star that led to the MacAlister review. I would be grateful, as would the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, to know whether these changes will in fact solve the problem highlighted in those two cases that led to the review.

Of course, any new Government will bring in operational and structural changes, and I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, that local authorities are dealing with the integrated care board situations at the moment and of course are preparing for perhaps the biggest local government reorganisation since that of Ted Heath.

In terms of timing, I ask the Minister why it is necessary at the moment to do the structural changes to child protection arrangements when the local authorities are dealing with other changes at the time. Many local authorities, even in times of very restricted finance, have shown that they have prioritised children’s social care, and overall, England’s local authorities are on an improvement journey, in that the “good” and “outstanding” Ofsted inspections are increasing.

Why not wait to do any further structural changes until the new devolution arrangements and local authority boundaries are in place and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, stated, when there is more evidence that such organisational changes in Clause 3 will improve matters, rather than inadvertently potentially making matters worse?

I also agree with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, in relation to the culture that might be changed here. If the family help teams do not see that child protection is part of their role, it risks the cultural embedding that has been happening over decades that is similar to a school, where what you need to embed is that safeguarding is everybody’s responsibility. You might then end up with them thinking, “It’s not my responsibility”: it is kind of like the blue light service over there, which is the child protection team. We could lose inadvertently. No one is deliberately trying to make our child protection arrangements less effective, but I do worry about the cultural loss of everybody seeing it as their responsibility, in the family help team and through into the social workers. So I ask the Minister: why not wait until you have done your local government reorganisation and do this afterwards, or maybe do it at the same time, because for the staff this is an awful lot of change in various departments of our local authorities?