Education: Academy Chains

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, it is absolutely clear that both trustees and directors of these companies must declare their interests in the accounts.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the most important form of accountability is the accountability of the school to its pupils, and their parents, to raise the standards of achievement? The huge success that my noble friend has already described is surely evidence of the success of the accountability that has left academies accountable to their pupils to raise standards.

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with my noble friend. The sixth largest economy in the world cannot tolerate a system whereby our schools are rated in the 20s for developed countries. That is what our reform programme is all about improving.

Ofsted: Annual Report 2012-13

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the remarks about “lucky children” made by the Chief Executive of Ofsted during the launch of that organisation’s Annual Report 2012–13.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted that the chief inspector has focused attention on “lucky children”. Although 78% of schools are now good or outstanding—compared to 68% when we came into office—there are still too many unlucky children. Many of them attend schools up and down the country that have been failing for years and which we are now turning into sponsored academies. The performance of sponsored academies far outstrips that of other state schools. For instance, sponsored academies open for three years improved their GCSE results by 12% versus 5% for local authority schools. The Government’s extensive programme of reform is aimed at ensuring that all children are lucky enough to go to a good school.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that heartening reply. Would he also join me in welcoming the chief inspector’s finding that children’s success in education is determined not by their background but by the quality of the school they attend and that lucky children are simply those who attend good schools? Does this not offer an end to the climate of low expectations for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, which for too long has bedevilled their opportunities?

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend is quite right. When the new chief inspector came into office, one thing that I thought he did very well was to abolish the appalling low-expectation term “satisfactory” and set much higher expectations for schools. It has clearly been proved through the academies programme and other schools that setting higher expectations for our children does work.

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)]

My Lords, I can imagine myself as a parent of a child with special educational needs; I have listened to the debate trying to put myself into that person’s shoes. I can imagine taking my child along to discuss with the local education authority what provision could be made and being told, “I am sorry that you may want this, that and the other, and your child may have that particular set of needs, but we’re meeting the minimum standards set down. They do not happen to suit your child, but I’m afraid they are all that we can afford”.

My noble friends Lady Eaton and Lord Storey passionately described the dangers of minimum standards and the stifling of any innovation or adaptability to the local needs of parents and their children. They also described the danger of saying, when money is tight, “We are sorry we can’t help those other parents and children, but we are meeting the minimum standards. That is the regulation, so that is all there is”. You do not encourage response to people’s needs or collaboration between a local authority and the parents and children in its region by regulation and by national minimum standards. You encourage it by leaving local authorities and parents free to talk together.

I note that the Bill carefully states that the comments received from parents and from the local community must be published every year. That is a strong system of accountability, and is much better than trotting out a bit of inspection from time to time and issuing that report. To coin a phrase, it seems a triple lock if parents’ comments about the provision that they receive from the local education authority, with their own deep and often tragic experience of children with special educational needs, must be published in a form that all can see. Local authorities will be required to respond to local needs, and it gets us away from this dreadful idea: “A minimum standard is all that we can afford and therefore, even if it does not suit your child, that is all that you will get”.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford (LD)]

My Lords, I return to the introduction that the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, gave to Amendment 25E and the issue of accountability. Government Amendment 33C is good so far as it goes, but it puts the onus on parents and young people using the service to police the sufficiency of the local offer. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister could correct me if I were wrong, but so far as I know there is no obligation on local authorities to publish the findings of their own reviews, which, as was emphasised by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, they are obliged to make under Clause 27. Therefore, there is not the obligation to proactively improve their services that might arise from looking at whether their own reviews were sufficient, and acting on that. That picks up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that there are ways and means whereby innovation comes organically and internally. Equally, she made the point that for most parents there is not the opportunity to move authorities: whether they like it or no, this is the authority that they have to work with.

Again, I pick up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, that, when we are talking about special educational needs, we do not mean only the few who have statements and will have the EHC plans now—about 3% of pupils. Something like 15% of pupils are regarded as having special educational needs and are treated under school action and school action plus.

It is now the schools’ responsibility to meet the needs of these pupils. We shall be talking later about the training that is necessary for SENCOs, and so forth. Most schools rely very much indeed on local educational specialists being available. One of the problems with the situation at the moment is that if there is no follow-up on whether or not there is a sufficiency of provision, there is a great danger that local authorities, whose finances, as we know, are being squeezed at present, will not find it necessary to provide outside the needs of those who actually have EHC plans, and that specialists in language, communication and behaviour will not be available to schools for them to be able to recruit to help them with the problems that they meet.

So I am somewhat concerned. As I say, the government amendment is good so far as it goes, but it is unfortunate that it does not follow through to requiring action on the reviews that the local authorities themselves have to make of their own provision.

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I have the other amendment in this group. Like the other members of the Select Committee, I agreed that certain characteristics of a child for whom adoption was sought should not be highlighted as if they overrode everything else. Like the other members, as the noble and learned Baroness has said, I was concerned that the wrong message might be taken from new legislation. In taking out a provision for due consideration—because that is all it is, not an overriding consideration—to be given to the child’s,

“religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background”,

Parliament would be saying that no consideration should be given. Like the noble and learned Baroness, I fear that guidance would not be enough in that situation.

I do not think we said this in Select Committee, but I am fearful about this. England would not be in the same situation as Wales. Wales will be keeping this wording. The fact that adoption is a devolved matter does not answer the concerns that I have. It would be seen as a very significant distinction. This swinging political pendulum has got to end up in the middle. As the noble and learned Baroness has said, it is not an overriding issue, nor something to be entirely discounted. In Committee I said there had been oversensitivity to what some parts of the media regard as political correctness. I know that the Minister’s concern is that minority-ethnic children are being short-changed. Sadly, the cohort that is being short-changed is the many children from all sorts of backgrounds who are waiting for adoption. The problem is the imbalance between their numbers and the numbers of prospective adopters. To adopt, one needs to be sensitive—to be understanding of the importance of religion, of racial origin, of cultural and linguistic background. It is not a matter of “being the same as”. People who are the same may not understand, and may not be sensitive enough. But that sensitivity, that openness, addressing issues which may arise—that is the matching which is important, not the direct same characteristics.

As the Government were not been persuaded in Committee, a different approach might appeal. My amendments would take out the references to age and sex so that the court and the agency should have regard to the child’s background and characteristics, because those cover everything. The Minister has said that background and characteristics must include ethnicity. He said that is a matter of plain English. Age and sex are also characteristics, so I hope that my plain English amendment might be helpful.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)]

My Lords, pendulums do swing; it is very difficult to find a middle way. We are all agreed that it was wrong that for a period of time there was too much emphasis given to a child’s racial and religious background, as the noble and learned Baroness has said. That has resulted in appalling waiting times for children of some ethnic-minority backgrounds, who wait to be adopted for three or four times longer than white children—their contemporaries—do. That is not acceptable in our society. But we are in danger of swinging the pendulum a little bit back in the wrong direction by trying to put in the words of,

“religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background”.

I am of the view, which I understand is also the Minister’s view, that any sensible person trying to interpret the “background” would include racial, religious, cultural and linguistic origins. There is no way that you can look at someone’s background without taking those into account, otherwise the word “background” is meaningless. What else could it possibly mean?

I turn to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. I have a lot of sympathy with her wishing to take out the racial, cultural and linguistic elements as put forward by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, but I wonder whether we have not taken too much out there. It is a question of the pendulum swinging in all directions. Given all the various views that there are here, it seems to me that we all want the same thing: we want children of ethnic-minority backgrounds to be able to be adopted as quickly as their contemporaries; and we also want all their background to be taken fully into account. Given the efforts we are making to get the pendulum to hang in the middle, I think the Government have got it just about right.

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I go back a long way on the whole business of citizenship, which is what I shall call it. When I came into this House, a new Government arrived shortly afterwards and my noble friend Lord Northbourne was keen on promoting something called citizenship. Suddenly there was an idea that citizenship was actually going to be taught. I think we assumed that citizenship would encompass some of the less explicit things we have been talking about in the debate, and an awful lot of them were going to be taught within this subject. However, it did not happen. The subject was spread around a lot of other different subjects being taught, and nothing was made of it.

We have seen a huge change in the influences bearing on young people and on families more generally. I listened with great interest to my noble friend Lady Kidron, who is writing a book or making a programme—I do not know which it is—about this whole area. My goodness, what she has uncovered and described to us is something that I am afraid we are becoming more aware of every day.

What I would like to see, along with the superb amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, which we all support, is real attention being paid to how we can address this issue. I am afraid that we have moved much further up the sexual agenda. I am grateful for the comments that have been made about my Private Member’s Bill, but having listened to what has been said in this debate, I almost feel that it is out of date. However, there is a lot of emphasis on this in the redraft and it is still awaiting its Second Reading; I hope that that will come soon. There is a lot more about education and support of that kind in the Bill. Judging by the number of noble Lords who have talked about this subject today, I hope that we shall see lots of them in the Chamber when the Bill is debated.

I will not go into the specific details of what I would like to see being covered, but I hope that the Minister has, above all, listened to what has been said. My noble friend Lord Cormack—I call him that we because we have known one another in different capacities for many years, although we do not necessarily always agree on every subject—made an extremely telling contribution. Again, I hope that the Minister will pay a huge amount of attention to what is set out in this amendment and to what has been debated. It is absolutely the gist of what we have to deal with in the future if we are to bring up the next generation, particularly young women, with sufficient self-esteem, knowledge of and confidence in themselves to play their full role. I fear that all too many young women are regarded as objects in today’s world, which is a terrifying comment on what we have failed to achieve so far. This is a major challenge, but I will not go on because we have had a very good discussion. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us that this issue is going to be taken seriously.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)]

I am sure that we are all very happy to bring this fascinating discussion to a close, but I want to make one point. I was seized by what the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said in discussion on the previous amendment. We can sit in this building and make laws, decide what should happen and sometimes even get it into legislation, but what matters is how it is delivered in reality. My only point is that all these splendid things—citizenship, relationship education, spiritual and moral development and so on—have to be delivered by teachers. Unless we have the right teachers who are properly trained, it simply will not happen. We can write it into the books, but we ought to spend far more time addressing what actually happens in the selection and training of teachers than simply on what we ask them to deliver.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

Since the noble Baroness has just mentioned my name, I will say one sentence. I absolutely agree with her; all I will ever talk about is implementation and application. However, in this context the revision of the guidance on sex education would be such a support to teachers that it would make a difference.

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

I listened very carefully to the Minister. I think we will all want to read his comments in Hansard because it was quite a technical response, although I appreciate that that was absolutely necessary. I have a query about the phrase “single point of access”, which I would not mind him expanding on.

A lot was said about the difficulties of parents in accessing more than one tribunal. That is right. Has the Minister reflected on the message it gives to those people we are asking to integrate a service? A lot of people doubt that that can happen and will not take the Government seriously on this. If you really want to change the culture of three separate public services, you must not give them an excuse not to make the change. Throughout the discussion of this Bill, we have said that it is not about passing a law but about changing the culture. Having such a pivotal part of the whole procedure still split into three separate parts is actually saying, “At the end of day, we could not do it. We wanted to integrate, but when it got to the tough bit, the bit about the appeal, we, the Government, could not do it”. The naysayers will say, “There you are. We told you it couldn’t be done”. I know it is not the Minister’s intention, but what will happen is that that will ripple down the system, and people will say there that there is another inconsistency in what the Government say and that they say one thing and then do a different thing. The bit of the process that is the Government’s responsibility is the appeal. If we cannot change government culture and get it integrated, we are undermining genuine attempts by the Government to change the culture further along the channel.

I was not clear about what the Minister said. He gave two responses. One was, “I really think this amendment is right, but I do not think it can be done”, and the other was, “I do not think this amendment is necessary”. I was not sure which side he came down on. It is important that we know that between now and Report because that will give those people who feel strongly about this an indication of where the campaigning needs to be done.

I end on this single point of access. I wonder whether the Minister was actually saying that he has a compromise that he might suggest on Report around something called a single point of access. I am sorry for the long intervention, but what we can expect on Report in terms of a direction of travel is important so that people who have put a lot of work into preparing these amendments will be able to marshal their arguments.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)]

I have a great deal of sympathy with what the noble Baroness said. It is true that the excitement of the Bill is in the bringing together of these three services, but the noble Baroness’s argument has not answered the Minister’s point about giving priority to SEN children over children who are very sick with cancer or other diseases. It is inherent in the system that that problem will remain. We cannot, just by will, say that bringing them all together will somehow stop there being a different route for SEN children from that for other children, and that point has to be answered.

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, makes her point powerfully and well. I entirely agree with her about the necessity of changing the culture and that in some cases we may be dancing on the head of a pin and what matters is the practicality at the coal face. We need to make sure that we attempt to do this practically and fairly so that we do not unreasonably advantage one group of children over another, as my noble friend Lady Perry said. We will try to ensure that, with further dialogue between now and Report, we all understand where we are on this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, has had a pretty good run for his money and has got not only unanimous but very voluble support from the other Members of the Committee. I would not detract from that one whit. I support every word he said and what others have added, but I wonder whether I may crave the Committee’s indulgence to make a slight change of subject.

I shall speak to Amendment 192 in this group, which is tabled in my name and the names of the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, and the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. It is a probing amendment which would require schools to retain the current system of school action and school action plus. We may not have formulated the amendment perfectly, and I am sure there is room for plenty of discussion about how it might be focused or targeted more precisely. I am anxious to learn more about the Government’s thinking in seeking to abolish the current stages of school action and school action plus. As we know, the Government are replacing that graduated approach with a single SEN category. The amendment refers to schools, but my concerns also relate to how early years settings and post-16 institutions will meet the needs of children and young people with SEN.

My reason for tabling this amendment is that, like the Government, I believe that policy should be developed on the basis of robust evidence. Changing the way the SEN system operates in every English school and early years setting could be very disruptive. We need to be sure that any change will genuinely improve outcomes for children and young people before we embark on what is quite a major change. From what we have heard so far, it seems that the Government’s intention here is to improve the identification of special educational needs. The Ofsted report, A Statement is not Enough, published in 2010, suggested that some children and young people were being wrongly identified as having special educational needs.

Improving the identification of special educational needs is a goal everyone would support. However, my understanding is that the Ofsted report did not in any way indicate that the problem resided in the graduated approach of school action and school action plus. The same is true of the Lamb inquiry, which also picked up on the issue of identification, but did not indicate in any of its 51 recommendations that the problem arose from school action and school action plus. Neither of these important investigations proposed the removal of the current system, so I wonder on what evidence the Government are basing their decision to move to a single category of SEN. Everyone has been encouraged by the reference in the recently published draft code of practice to “a graduated response”. Since the Government remain committed to a graduated response, which is provided by school action and school action plus, one wonders why they are so insistent on the need for this change.

I should also like to pick up on the fact that the draft code of practice removes guidance on the use of individual education plans. IEPs were a key feature of the school action and school action plus system. They set out educational targets, the agreed SEN support and how progress would be measured. They require schools to involve children, young people and their parents in the process and are vital for parents when holding schools to account. When used properly, IEPs are a simple and effective way of recording targets, putting support in place and tracking the child’s progress. While they might not always be used as effectively as they might be, would it not be better to seek to improve the way IEPs are used than to scrap them altogether?

The Government are not opposed to schools retaining these types of records. The draft code says that schools should keep records and that these can be shared with parents. Again, therefore, one is prompted to ask why the Government are getting rid of something so valued by parents when they continue to support the principles behind it. I would be extremely grateful if, when he responds to the debate, the Minister could set out the Government’s thinking and give us the rationale for these changes and, in particular, the evidence on which they are based. It seems that the Government still support the principles of a graduated approach and keeping good records, so it is important that we understand why we need what is really quite a major change.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

I have no wish to continue this debate for too long. I first declare the interest that I, too, have a very dyslexic granddaughter. The fact that so many of us are able to point to younger family members with dyslexia marks how much better diagnoses have got in the past 20 or 30 years. Previously, people were very often thought to be rather stupid, so the diagnosis has greatly improved things. We have come a very long way in providing good diagnoses and excellent treatment at school level. Dyslexic boys and girls get a tremendous amount of help in school: they get more time for their examinations, technological help and so on. In the university world, there is enormous help: large numbers of dyslexic young people taking final examinations get special help, extra time and all that is necessary. It seems absurdly wrong that, at a time when we have expanded apprenticeships—and like the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, I am immensely proud of what this Government have done about apprenticeships—we have left this lacuna in the middle of the provisions. Schools do well and universities do well, yet when it comes to apprenticeships we have this absurd drafting of legislation—probably a slip of the pen—which makes it impossible for dyslexics, and people who have other handicaps to do with writing and speaking, to get through. I hope that the Minister will not just say that it is all okay and that nothing needs to be done. I really believe that something could so easily be done in this legislation now, and this is a good opportunity to do it.

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 158 in my name and in the names of my noble friends Lady Hughes of Stretford and Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and to Amendment 161 in my name.

Clause 39 deals with requests for particular schools or institutions in EHC plans. As drafted, the clause sets out that if the school requested is unsuitable for the child, or incompatible with either the provision of efficient education for others or the efficient use of resources, the local authority will ensure that the plan names a school or specifies the type of institution which could be appropriate. This amendment would ensure that parents agreed with the school chosen by the local authority when their first choice did not work out, before the local authority is able to name the second choice school in the EHC plan. This issue has already been discussed in relation to a previous clause.

It is, shamefully, already the case that some schools unfairly reject children with special educational needs; the Bill would continue to allow them to do so. I have been taking part in the Lord Speaker’s outreach programme and not so long ago I visited a school. I looked through the school’s prospectus, which said, “We welcome children with disabilities and special educational needs”. The next sentence started, “However”. That is, I fear, too often the case. Concerns have already been expressed about this issue by other noble Lords—notably, at Second Reading, by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. This amendment would ensure that, where parents try to name a school and a local authority relies on an exception under subsection (4) in order to refuse to name that school and then puts forward another school, the second choice school can only be named on a plan if the young person or parents agree.

I turn to Amendment 161. Clause 41 enables the Secretary of State to approve certain institutions, such as independent schools, for the purpose of enabling the institution to be the subject of a request to be named in an EHC plan. Subsection (5) gives the Secretary of State power to make regulations about giving and withdrawing approvals. This amendment would require the regulations to also set out the rights of appeal, the timetable for that and what the relationship with the local offer will be in such circumstances.

A similar amendment was tabled by Robert Buckland MP in the House of Commons. Robert Buckland was my Conservative opponent when I was first elected to Parliament. He is now chairman of the All-Party Group on Autism and is a doughty champion of people with special educational needs. He has done a tremendous amount of work and many of his arguments are well worth listening to. When he argued this in the other place, the Minister said that:

“The indicative regulations set out the procedures and timetable for the Secretary of State to follow on approving institutions … Regulations 5 and 6 set out the procedures for the Secretary of State to follow in withdrawing approval.”

However:

“The regulations do not set out procedures on how to appeal or review the Secretary of State’s decision”.—[Official Report, Commons, Children and Families Bill Committee, 16/4/13; col. 508.]

The Government appear to believe that such regulations are unnecessary. Consequently, without this amendment, families and young people are left without a route of appeal in such circumstances. That is a serious omission from the legislation which serves to undermine the power of children, young people and their families to get the best for their youngsters’ needs. The Minister’s colleague did not see the merits of that argument when it was advanced by Robert Buckland in the other place: I hope he will be convinced by it in this place.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)]

My Lords, I very much support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Lexden. I recently spent a day at Gretton School in Cambridge: an independent school entirely for children across the whole range of autism. Some of the most severely autistic young people are in classes of four and five. At the end of my visit, I took my hat off to the patience and skill of the school’s teachers. As I said, it is an independent school; it also offers boarding. It takes children from a wide range of local authorities from the eastern and East Anglia regions. Most of them come with statements from their local authorities and are supported by them, but many parents have to pay additional fees for boarding. Gretton School and others such as those my noble friend described have an important part to play in the range of offerings for disabled children. It is important that they are named in the Bill, as otherwise local authorities may simply assume that they cannot be included in EHC statements. I very much hope that the Minister will look sympathetically at these arguments.

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)]

My Lords, I ask the Minister: why is this not already happening? It seems crystal clear that at least keeping siblings in contact with each other is common sense, is vital and makes emotional sense. I do not understand why there is a problem here. Why are children being separated when they go into care or adoption proceedings?

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Grand Committee

I also endorse the point about matching. You may place a child in a placement for fostering. I have been a social worker for many years and I know how difficult it is to find a placement quickly to meet all the requirements of timescales. You may then discover issues around matching that are not appropriate. I could give examples but I will not waste the time of the Committee on too many anecdotes. I hope that we can look at some of this. I am very unhappy to agree to the Minister’s amendment. I am sorry about that because, like the rest of the Committee, I am committed to improving the speed of adoptions and the placement of children. These are unfortunate ways to take that forward.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)]

I am reluctant to query the noble Baroness because I am aware of her huge expertise in this area and have enormous respect for her, but in my amateur ignorance I do not see in the Bill or the amendment anything which assumes that the local authority must consider adoption. The amendment refers only to where the local authority is considering adoption; it does not say that it must consider adoption. If I have missed the wording somewhere else, I hope that somebody will put me right, but the noble Baroness’s third consideration seems not to appear in the Bill.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

I, too, welcome the Minister to his first Grand Committee day of a Bill and thank him for his time over the summer in dealing with some of my concerns. As I listened to the debate, my mind went back to a meeting four months ago with women whose children had been taken away from them in the 1950s and 1960s. At the time, they were single women and were strongly encouraged to give their child away. Those women bitterly regretted having done so and were campaigning for an apology from government. It is unlikely that this Bill will result in women campaigning in 20 or 30 years’ time for an apology from Parliament for what is being done now, but we really have to raise our game. It is clear that if we took a more consistent approach towards to some of these vulnerable families and helped a few more parents off drugs and alcohol, as we could well do, we would not need to take their children away. We must not be too optimistic and allow children to be kept in those families and be harmed, but we see through the effectiveness of Louise Casey’s focused work with troubled families and through District Judge Crichton’s work in the family drug and alcohol court that, where a real effort is made and where central government is prepared to step up and take responsibility, we can make a difference with those families. I welcome what the Government are doing, but some of these children would not have to be taken into care if we raised the overall quality of our child and family practice.

This debate highlights the great judgment required of child and family social workers. They are in the position of making that lifetime decision: will a child stay with its birth family in kinship care or will it be removed for adoption? I welcome the huge investment that this Government and the previous Government have made in raising the status of child and family social work through the social work college, the new post of Chief Social Worker and the Munro review. Despite those all being very helpful inputs, a social worker who was training in London—an intelligent woman—said to me last week, “I was bitterly disappointed by my training. I didn’t get the feedback. Many of my fellow students felt the same way. I’m now going to Bristol to carry on my training in social work”. There is therefore an awfully long way to go in the nuts and bolts of getting the social work profession to where it needs to be to serve those families properly.

What progress are we making in the retention of child and family social workers? People are saying—I heard it said again recently—that we are getting the best young English social workers into the profession now and have seen a great improvement over the past two years, but are we succeeding in retaining those young people? Are we managing to retain experienced social workers close to the front line so that they can mentor and support those child and family social workers?

I have one final question for the Minister, which he might care to write to me about. It is a concern raised in the past by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and raised today by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, about the outcomes for children in adoptive placements. We need robust evidence about outcomes for children in adoptive placements. We have them already for children in kinship placements. We need to compare, contrast and make good policy decisions based on those. I hope that the Minister can give an assurance that, if that cannot be produced at the moment, research projects will be put in place so that in future we know how stable those adoptive placements are. The worst outcome would be for a child or children to be placed for one or two years, to be settled, and then to be rejected again by their new family. I am sorry to have gone on so long.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I would like to say something about where I think this all came from. We should remind ourselves that in the 1980s racism was rife. When I was working at that time in local authorities, we had people called “race advisers”, some of whom were not the most helpful people. Some changed the whole attitude to racism; some made social workers take a particular view of race. I know that because I was the head of a social work department and was battling to get something rational, while the irrational was being pressed on the workers.

I make this point because I think that this Bill has so much of value and would hate to see one dogma replaced by another, but that is what is happening here. As the pendulum has swung, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, so the Government are feeling that we can stop all this and get placements moved on. However, we need to think about the issues—those points have been made eloquently and I shall not repeat them—and I hope that the Government take a rational rather than a dogmatic view of this issue because it is important for the children. I, too, have talked to young people whose ethnicity is extraordinarily important to them, even though they were placed, and have grown up, in white homes. They need to understand their ethnicity and their links. I hope that the Minister will accept that the welfare checklist is a very straightforward document and that this could be included without any difficulty.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, the UN convention quoted by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, asks for respect for a child’s ethnicity and cultural, linguistic and religious background. If I were putting down an amendment to the Bill, which I am not doing, I would want something that emphasised that. That does not mean that adoptive parents have to be of the same ethnicity or religious conviction as that of the child being adopted, but they have to be the kind of people who genuinely respect that. If I may be allowed an anecdote, although we have just been told not to rely on anecdotes, I can tell the Committee that I lived through such a thing in my own family. When I was a very little girl, my parents “adopted” a child of the Kindertransport. Her parents had sent her away from Hitler’s Germany just before the outbreak of the Second World War and my parents, as Christians—my father was a minister—decided that they would open our home and our family to this little girl, Marrianna, who became my sister to all intents and purposes for several years until her own family was able to take her towards the end of the war. I remember well my parents straining every muscle to allow that little girl to keep her religious identity—we learnt in our family to respect all the Jewish customs and festivals—and they were determined, although Christians themselves and very powerfully so, that they would do that. What we are surely asking for is that kind of genuine respect for the child’s religious, cultural or ethnic background, and not for someone who has to be the same. The rationale of the noble and learned Baroness’s amendment reaches towards that, but I would like something that emphasised the wording of the UN convention, which is “respect for” rather than “the same as”.

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, in this debate many noble Lords have already put forward serious issues for the Minister to consider and they have suggested additions that they would wish to see. I know that the Minister will reply to their questions with his usual care and courtesy, and I myself have certainly listened to them with great sympathy. However, the Minister may have nothing to say to me, as I simply want to give a very warm welcome to the Bill. Indeed, there are some provisions in it that give me more pleasure than anything I have seen in the past 20 or so years.

I should like to mention just three provisions which are especially relevant to women, because I believe that the women of this country should celebrate them. In certain areas, they represent a huge step forward, for which we have been fighting for over a generation.

Like many women, I wrestled for many years to balance the responsibilities of a demanding job and the needs of, in my case, four young children. I owed a duty to my employer to give as much time as the job demanded, and I both owed a duty and cherished a wish to be with my family, enjoying their company, as much as I possibly could. I used to say that I lived with a permanent sense of guilt: if I was with the family, I felt guilty about the job, and if I was in the job, I felt guilty about my family. In those days, there was no flexibility in work at all. The hours were fixed, and the expectations of my bosses were for many more hours than the contract strictly required. The very idea that one might plead, for example, an important speech day at one’s child’s school as a reason to leave work a little early was just unthinkable.

Over the years, many employers have become more enlightened, and slow, welcome progress has been made for many lucky workers. Now, there is a wonderful provision in the Bill that gives everyone—men and women—the right to flexible working hours. Work at home on occasions when there is something important to get done quietly without losing time in travel or interruptions from colleagues? Yes. Start late to be there for the children as they go off to school? Yes. Or start early and leave early to be there when they get home? Yes.

How many women have worked through their lunch break to complete a task so as to leave in time to pick up children from school? An American friend of mine who is a very senior banker told me that her bank had recently conducted a study into the work patterns of its employees. She told me, “We found that the first 10 or so people out of the door at close of business were all mothers of young families, and we were very concerned about that. But then we found that those women actually put in more hours in a week than most of their older or male colleagues because they worked straight through their lunch hour”. Now, there will be no need for such stress. While of course these are welcome provisions for both men and women, we know from many studies that in a majority of families women still bear the principal responsibility for childcare, so this is indeed a policy for women to welcome, and I welcome flexible working.

The second area which is good news for women, although it is one where, again, both men and women benefit, is the provision for shared maternity leave. In the past, and for many still today, coming home from hospital with a newborn means at best only a few days with a partner’s help to cope with sleep deprivation and physical weariness. After those few days, the young mother is on her own, often reaching exhaustion at the unremitting responsibility of meeting the demands of a baby.

How wonderful for the new mother now, thanks to the provisions in the Bill, to have several weeks to share the burdens, as well as the joys. How right it is for the child to be able to bond with both parents in those precious early days. The Bill gives infinite possibilities in sharing the 12-month entitlement: time together at the start, and the remaining time perhaps split so that each parent can spend time at home with the baby while the other works. What a welcome and wonderful offering this is.

I do not share the negative doubts of the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes. I am sure that many fathers will welcome this provision. Many men regret the lost opportunities to spend time with a much loved small child. This Bill gives fathers the opportunity of a proper shared role in bringing up a small child. In so doing, it may even provide one more valuable shift in the balance of the roles of men and women in families, helping more young parents to stay together as their children grow up.

The third area where I believe this Bill will be welcomed by many women who care about the emotional and social welfare of children is the presumption of equal access for both parents after separation and divorce. All too often in recent years, the assumption has been not only that the welfare of the child implies that they live with their mother but that the wishes of the mother are paramount in determining what access is granted to the father. Denying a child adequate contact and time with both their parents is not in that child's best interest. The sense of self-worth and confidence in any child comes primarily from one's parents, and continued contact with two parents can strengthen a child's confidence, even after the trauma of divorce. I was interested to read in the Sunday Times the words of Penelope Leach, a guru of childcare in the 1980s and 1990, who said—rather surprisingly, coming from her—that even bad fathers should, with proper supervision and safeguards, be allowed time with their children, because that contact is so important for the child. Although some angry divorced mothers may—understandably, perhaps, in some cases—resent this provision, it is contrary to all we know about the interests of a child to allow any mother to use her children as a weapon in her anger against their father. I am confident that the overwhelming majority of mothers, who see how much their children both love and need their fathers, will welcome this measure. I am proud that the coalition Government whom I support have brought forward what I believe is an excellent Bill for women and for families.