Children and Families Bill

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Lord Bishop of Truro

Monday 9th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord McColl, referred to the Joint Committee on Human Rights. In Grand Committee I picked up that reference and spoke briefly about what the Joint Committee had said about the Scottish experience of guardianship, which went broader but included trafficked children. In response, the Minister expressed a degree of scepticism, perhaps, about that experience. Once again, the chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights has followed up our debates with a letter to the noble Baroness. I shall read part of that letter. It stated:

“I would like to draw your attention to the recommendation made by my Committee in its First Report of this Session, on the Human Rights of unaccompanied migrant children and young people in the UK, (HL: Paper 9 and HC 196), which dealt with guardianship and on which the Committee had taken evidence. This states (at paragraph 175):

‘We welcome the findings from the Scottish Guardianship Service, which demonstrate the value that a guardian can add for unaccompanied asylum seeking and trafficked children. We recommend that the Government commission pilots in England and Wales that builds upon and adapts the model of guardianship trialled in Scotland. The guardian should provide support in relation to the asylum and immigration process, support services and future planning, help children develop wider social networks, and ensure that children's views are heard in all proceedings that affect them. The Government should evaluate the case for establishing a wider guardianship scheme throughout England and Wales once those pilot schemes are complete’”.

The letter from the chair to the Minister continues:

“In your contribution to the debate in the Lords you suggested that the Scottish scheme had had mixed results, that it had not 'cracked' the problems that it was intended to address, and that it would add another layer of complexity”—

other noble Lords have talked about this—

“ to how these things are currently handled.

The results of the guardianship scheme, however, were largely positive, as was evidenced fully by the independent report undertaken by Professors Heaven Crawley and Ravi Kohli (who both advised my Committee during its inquiry into unaccompanied migrant children). These positive results led the Scottish Government to endorse the Guardianship Service, and support it with funding for a further three years at £200,000 per year”.

I would add here that Aileen Campbell, the Minister for Children and Young People in the Scottish Government, has said:

“The Scottish Guardianship Service gives asylum seeking children a voice and makes sure every young person involved understands and participates in decisions that affect them”.

The letter goes on:

“There is of course no question that the issues surrounding guardianship are complex and that it took time for the Service in Scotland to bed down and achieve some enduring coherence for vulnerable children in difficult circumstances. However, the independent report, in large part, is very clear that Guardianship was a safeguard for unaccompanied migrant children, and its design and implementation were exemplary”.

The report throws some light on this question of an additional layer of complexity. It found:

“The young people saw Guardians as helping them to understand what others did, especially when there were ‘too many people’ in their lives. This is an important perception by the young people of a key element of the Service—namely that the Service played a key role not because there were too few professionals in their lives, but because sometimes there were too many. The noise generated by these constant engagements and expectations, where young people were required to repeat some form of their story to an endless queue of professionals”—

a point that the noble Lord, Lord McColl, made—

“needed to be reduced to a sound that young people could hear, sometimes in sequence, and sometimes in a harmonised way. The Guardians did this”

in a number of ways. The letter concludes:

“My Committee believes that the Government should look at this again”.

I really hope that the Government will look at this again. There have been some very powerful speeches in support of the amendment and I very much hope that noble Lords will not be fobbed off again.

[The Lord Bishop of Truro]

My Lords, I support the amendment and declare an interest as chairman of the Children’s Society. The noble Lord, Lord McColl, has already mentioned the report, Still at Risk, published jointly by the Children’s Society and the Refugee Council.

The amendment raises an important matter. Doubts over a child’s age, their lack of documentation or uncertainty about their immigration status impede a child’s ability to access effective support to meet their welfare needs. For example, 10 of the 17 young people mentioned in the study had their ages disputed. Some had undergone multiple age assessments before it was agreed by the authorities that they were, in fact, children. Disputing a child’s age has serious safeguarding implications for them and can put them at serious risk. In the Still at Risk report, it was found that failure to recognise that they were children or victims of trafficking resulted in three of the young people who were interviewed being sent to adult prison, and two to an immigration removal centre. Several of the young people in the study did no know which country they were in because of the tight control exerted over them by their exploiters. The guidance on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states:

“Agencies or individuals whose interests could potentially be in conflict with those of the child’s should not be eligible for guardianship”.

The Children’s Society and others believe that local authority children’s services are indeed such agencies. A common problem for separated migrant children, including child victims of human trafficking, who may have entered the country without documents or on false papers is that their age is disputed by the Home Office and by local authorities, and that these agencies are unwilling to support them. Until the age of a person is verified, they should be treated as children, not adults, for the purposes of accessing support.

The case for guardians, as set out in the amendment, is supported by many international and domestic bodies, including the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Council of Europe expert group on trafficking and, most recently, the Joint Committee on Human Rights in its inquiry into unaccompanied migrant children and young people. That is supported in the long-standing position of the Refugee Children’s Consortium, a coalition of more than 40 non-governmental organisations working with children caught up in the immigration system. I urge the Minister to think carefully in the response to the amendment, which is an important initiative that is much needed by the research called for earlier.