Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (Lab)]

My Lords, we are about half way through this Second Reading and it has already been demonstrated why the Government were right to start the Bill in this House. If we get it right, the practical knowledge, experience and expertise around the House will help make this a Bill that will help many thousands of children. I exclude myself from that as my expertise is not in this area. Too many children in the category we are talking about never recover from their early years. In many respects, what happens to them then marks them for the rest of their lives. It is therefore a very important Bill and we have to get it right. To get it right, it needs some changes, and this is the place to do that.

The noble Lord, Lord Lang—the respected chair of the Constitution Committee, of which I am a member—made some of the points that I was going to make as a result of our work. I will raise a number of issues in the hope that the Minister is listening and some changes can be made. As the Bill leaves open some profound areas of legislation, it cannot be good enough to meet what is required.

Clause 11 provides for a Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. Will the Minister clarify whether the panel will be able to compel the submission of material that is normally legally or medically privileged and which lawyers usually cover? Will the panel have the power to obtain that information? I gather that such information is usually obtained through a court order. The Bill does not provide for such orders, so I am concerned that the matter has been left open. I would welcome some clarification from the Minister and an indication of whether the Bill can be changed.

Clause 20 gives the Secretary of State quite enormous powers to make regulations to appoint a regulator of social workers. In fact, under the Bill as currently worded, the Secretary of State could appoint himself or herself as the regulator. I cannot believe that the Government intended that. A regulator would usually be set up not by regulation but by primary legislation. Are the Government willing to look at that and amend the Bill? Clause 36 obliges the Secretary of State to carry out public consultation on these matters but the Bill does not go on to say that the regulator will be set up by primary legislation. I would welcome the Minister’s comments on that too.

Clause 34 provides that social worker regulations may create offences but does not say what the offences or penalties will be. During the passage of the then Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies and Credit Unions Bill in 2009, the Constitution Committee said it was preferable for government,

“first to decide which offences and penalties it wished to provide for”,

and then to make that part of the legislation and ask Parliament to give the power to create those new offences. That is not provided for here. Clauses 22 and 23 do not provide enough detail about how a new offence will be defined, investigated and enforced. Will the Minister give us some indication of the Government’s thinking on this and how the Bill can perhaps be amended during its passage?

There are obviously concerns about the powers being given to the Secretary of State. I have covered some of those, and I hope they can all be resolved. The House will have done a good service if we resolve these concerns and pass a Bill that is of the quality that we all want to help young children who, too often, have had an awful start to life. We will have proved that it was right to start the Bill here, where so many Members have the expertise to deal with it. I hope the Minister will listen to that expertise.