Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Massey of Darwen and Baroness Pinnock

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, these are extremely important amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and, by default, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. I too want to talk about child migrants and children who are trafficked. I am not a lawyer but I know that there are lawyers in the Room, so I hope that they will be able to reinforce these issues if I am right about them. It seems to me that child victims of trafficking from abroad are often left entirely on their own to navigate the immigration system, the criminal and family justice systems and the national referral mechanism mentioned by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, without the support of anyone with parental responsibility for them. There seems to be no further announcement on the second pilot for independent child trafficking advocates, so I would like to know what is happening there.

UNICEF has pointed out that for children who have been trafficked there are apparently no monitoring systems to track outcomes for them once they leave care. Therefore, it is difficult to review cases and analyse long-term outcomes. Recent evidence presented to the Refugee Children’s Consortium suggests that there is not enough access to legal advice in a child’s care plan. There should be an active duty to promote this access for these children, who are extremely vulnerable.

Currently, the guidance on unaccompanied asylum-seeking children sets out that social workers should understand how to access specialist immigration legal advice. However, this advice is often sought too late for children. Further, it is important that children in local authority care are able to access legal advice on other areas of law. Children can require a broad spectrum of legal intervention to ensure that their best interests are represented: for example, to stay in education, to access support for their special educational needs or to gain compensation from a perpetrator.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s concluding observations on the UK Government’s fifth report 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. Figures gathered by the Children’s Society show that almost all unaccompanied children’s immigration cases would be out of the scope for legal aid. This is not a satisfactory picture, and I would like reassurance from the Minister that it will be looked at. We may well need to bring it back at a later stage of the Bill.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for raising concerns about the legal aspects of children and care leavers, and in particular for extending that to children who have come here as refugees, and perhaps as unaccompanied minors. There has been a commitment from the Government that 20,000 such children will be accepted into this country by 2020. I know that my local authority in West Yorkshire has already been asked to accept 70 such children.

The difficulty that has been raised is one that we all ought to be aware of: we are in danger of creating two tiers of care leavers. On the one hand, there are those who are rightly included in this Bill, and we all praise the direction of travel. We are rightly saying that local authorities and corporate parents generally ought to take greater responsibility for those care leavers up to the age of 25. Therefore, in this Bill we are saying that young people aged 18 are not yet fully prepared and need help in the transition to adulthood. On the other hand, however, in the Immigration Act, which was debated in the last Session, the decision was made that, unless their asylum application is successful, young people aged 18, who have had some of the most harrowing experiences that any of us can imagine, not only will not receive any further care and support but will be sent back to their country of origin.