Schools
Baroness Pinnock Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. The former Labour Prime Minister and former Member of your Lordships’ House, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, once opined that a week was a long time in politics. Well, rather a lot has happened in the past week in politics, particularly in the area of education, beginning with the leak, accidental or otherwise, of government plans for an expansion of grammar schools. Since then, we have had a Statement from the Secretary of State saying that there was really nothing to say, followed a mere 24 hours later by a detailed Statement from the Prime Minister, which begs the question as to whether the two actually speak to one another. Now we have a 36-page consultation document outlining radical plans for an expansion of grammar schools, a relaxation of restrictions on faith schools, plus new demands on universities and independent schools. At this rate, we can expect a Bill tomorrow and the completion of legislation by the time Parliament rises on Thursday.
It is only natural that the Prime Minister wants to make her mark early, but the proposals contained in the consultation document are little more than a hastily put-together hotch-potch of wishful thinking. These plans will neither help to bring about an inclusive education system nor promote social mobility; in fact, they will do quite the opposite. It is all very well to reference “ordinary working-class people”—ignoring the fact that the biggest proportion of the population now regards itself as middle class, ordinary or not—but to say that these people will become the Prime Minister’s priority is simply not credible when so many schools are underfunded, there is a teacher shortage and parents are to be denied any say in the manner in which their children’s education is to be forced into the straitjacket of academies.
That begs the first question for the Minister: where do the plans announced today leave the hitherto mantra of the great drive towards academisation? Judging by her remarks on Friday, it is a question that the former Secretary of State would also like to have answered. Secondly, from where do the Government believe that they gained a mandate for such a radical change to the education landscape, breaking a consensus that has existed for 40 years? The fact is that they have none, and no legitimacy to introduce these retrograde proposals. If it is the Government’s intention to form this into legislation and attempt to get it through Parliament, can the Minister indicate the timescale that that might involve?
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement but regret to say that it appears no more than a dog-whistle response by the Conservatives to the current state of the nation. How much easier it is to throw up the idea of more grammar schools than to concentrate on the real difficulties facing many working people across the country. There can be no other explanation for this situation. Earlier this year, we spent much time in this House debating and then enacting the Education and Adoption Act, which aimed to improve the quality of education in our schools through the academies route. Some of us did not support entirely the aims of that Bill, but certainly we could understand why the Government were pursuing that. Presumably, all that is now jettisoned so that we can have grammar schools brought back.
One thing on which we can agree on this side is that all children need, deserve and have a right to the opportunity of a good school. Given the figures that the Minister repeated this afternoon of more than 1 million children not having education in a good school, it seems to be a failure of this Government not to have addressed that earlier.
I will focus my comments on the proposals for introducing more grammar schools. One reason given is that it gives parents more choice. I cannot see, where schools are in the position to do the choosing, that parents have any choice. That is the whole problem of selection by test or examination: the school does the choosing. There is no way that we on this side can support that.
The second argument in support of bringing back a failed education policy from the 1950s and 1960s is that it will help children from deprived areas. At the same time it is argued that we currently have selection by house price. Apparently, this new proposal is to help children in working-class families. However, such families do not have a problem with selection by house price because most of them are in rented accommodation or in poor parts of the country where house prices are not an issue.
Thirdly, I have always thought that we ought to base our education policy on evidence. All the research over all the years, and currently, points to the fact that selection at 11 fails hundreds—thousands—of children. For the 80% of children who go into the non-grammar schools, but even for many of those who attend grammar schools, the statistics and evidence show that they do not necessarily thrive. I do not see how the Government propose to make the case for grammar schools based on evidence. I would have more faith in what they were doing if, instead of saying that they wanted to promote more selection, they said that they were actually going to promote more secondary modern schools, because that is precisely what they are doing. They are going to write off the 80% who are not going to get through the 11-plus—or whatever new test they have devised—and at 11 those children will feel that they are failures. No one who cares about children will be able to support such a divisive approach.
In conclusion, I am astonished that the Government have come forward with this proposal and we on this side will vigorously oppose it.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I note the criticism of our plans by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, but I do not believe I have heard any plans at all from the Opposition Benches recently in relation to education. I would be very interested to hear their thoughts. We have only just made this consultation document available so it is completely understandable that people have not had a chance to read it; it is quite long. In answer to his point about academies, paragraph 13 on page 7 says:
“These proposals complement our wider approach to school improvement and our drive to build capacity in the system through multi-academy trusts. It remains the Government’s ambition that all schools ultimately benefit from the autonomy and freedom to innovate and to meet the needs of their community that academy status brings, and we will be supporting schools to make this transition”.
As far as the timescale is concerned, as I have said before in this House on this matter, we intend to have a thorough consultation. We are asking for an open debate and when we have analysed the responses, of which I am sure there will be many, we will reflect and design the precise details of our plans and bring them forward to your Lordships’ House in due course. We believe that it will be possible to enact our plans in a way that benefits the wider school system as a whole.
With regard to the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, about house prices and rental accommodation, I am afraid she lost me. I do not really follow the argument so I think we had better have a private conversation about that. I would be interested to understand that better.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Baroness Pinnock Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, many noble Lords have already spoken about many of the issues surrounding these proposals, and I want to focus on the key one of independence, to which all speakers so far have referred. I thought it would be worth while reading the policy statement issued in June about regulating social workers. It was quite revealing because it demonstrated that there was uncertainty at the heart of government about which road to take—whether the regulator should be independent or closer to government. Paragraph 48 says:
“In considering what form the new regulator should take we have considered whether a new fully independent regulator should be established”,
and the next paragraph goes on to discuss the pros and cons. One argument against it is:
“The establishment of a wholly independent body would inevitably take significant time as leadership and infrastructure are built from scratch and would, we think, be more expensive than the alternatives”.
The decision about the independence of the regulation of a profession as important as social work, which from time to time has the duty of challenging the state, should be based on more than simply time and expense.
The statement, in further paragraphs about the body’s establishment, continues:
“Government is proposing to establish an executive agency”,
which it says will be distinct. Further, it says that:
“Government recognises that professional regulation for many other professionals is organised on a more independent footing”,
and therefore propose that it,
“should be kept under review”.
To me, that says loud and clear that the Government are undecided. On the one hand, they know that it ought to be independent; but on the other, they want to bring it closer to government. The danger is that we will end up with social work being seen as politicised according to the colour of the Government who are in control. That is a very dangerous path to take. I urge the Government to look through the arguments that were made in their own policy statement and to come down on the side of independence rather than cost and expense.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I very much welcome the briefing that we received from Ministers last week on the questions we are debating. I was also impressed with the vision set out by the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and his ministerial colleagues about the need to achieve a high level of social work, with a heavy emphasis on improving practice. So there is no disagreement with us on the aims that the Government have set out. I applaud them, as they are absolutely right to focus on the quality of social work practice. Our concern is the form that these aims take in the Bill. Not only will it not do the job but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley have suggested, it will detract from the real effort that needs to be put into encouraging, supporting and helping social workers to improve what they do.
Noble Baronesses have already raised the Education Select Committee report. What is striking is its reference to a vacancy rate of “17% of the workforce”, while the Government’s own figures,
“conceded that there were retention concerns, with the average career in social work lasting less than eight years, compared to 16 for a nurse and 25 for a doctor”.
This is not the time to be messing around with regulation when it is working in a perfectly satisfactory way at the moment.
There are five concerns about the way that the Bill has been drafted. First, we still do not understand why, within two years, there has been a complete reversal of government policy. Why has there been that reversal? I have yet to hear one proper explanation for why that has happened. Secondly, why was there no proper consultation or discussion with anyone in the field about the changes? Thirdly, why is regulation being confused with improvement? The fourth issue, which is ultimately the most important, is why the Government are setting themselves up as the regulator of a profession, while the fifth is parliamentary. It is about the use of regulations in this Bill, rather than the proper use of primary legislation.
On the reversal of policy, the Care Standards Act 2000 established the General Social Care Council while, in parallel, a College of Social Work was established. I think that none of us would say that those organisations always covered themselves with glory, but, towards the end of its life, it was quite clear that, under its last leadership, the General Social Care Council was pulling its act together. There is no doubt about that at all. I opposed the transfer of social work regulation from that body to the HCPC for the very reasons that the Government now use to justify the change in policy. Paragraph 38 of the policy statement says:
“The system that the HCPC operates is designed to maintain appropriate minimum standards of public safety and initial education, rather than raising standards”.
Of course—that is what the HCPC exists to do. The Government were told that when we debated it. They ignored it and went ahead with this proposal. So why this sudden reversal of policy?
Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, one could scarcely fail to notice that when the Minister talked about the very welcome aspects of the things that this new regulator is going to do, they were, as others have said, mostly focused on the improvement of social work. There is no disagreement about this. Everybody wants to improve and support social work. However, the actual functions of a regulator always come very far down the Minister’s list when we talk about registration and the fitness to practise of social workers. Fitness to practise involves not being fit to practise and social workers being struck off a register, which is a very important part of what a regulator does.
Any regulatory system for social workers should ensure parity of esteem for the social work profession with that accorded to other public service professions entrusted to undertake high-risk professional tasks. For me, that is an argument for keeping the system within the Department of Health, which regulates many of those other professions. Any regulatory system should also provide stability for social workers. One thing that we have not given social workers in recent years is any form of stability. Some of us here are old enough to remember CCETSW before we had the GSCC, and all the controversy surrounding that. Then we went to the HCPC. That lack of stability has added to the problems of the workforce and the severe current retention problems with which we should all be concerned.
Any regulatory system must also be cost-effective to both central and local government and not be provided for at the expense of resources needed for service delivery, about which my noble friend Lady Howarth—I call her my noble friend—has already talked so eloquently. It must not result in the deterrent of unacceptably high registration fees falling on very poorly paid social workers. I am still not convinced about that. It seems to me that the HCPC already does parity, stability and being cost-effective. We could leave regulation there, along with consulting the HCPC to undertake some improvements, which I am sure it would be willing to do, and with the existing oversight of the Professional Standards Authority and a responsibility to the Privy Council, which is also where the HCPC sits. If we did that, and had a separate improvement agency, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said, could be set up very quickly, and given the great amount of agreement from everybody in your Lordships’ House and across the piece, why does not the Minister at least give that serious consideration over the summer?
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, the Minister referred earlier to the regulator having a role in fitness to practise. He is absolutely right; that is what a regulator has a duty to do. However, I refer again to the policy statement produced last month by the Department for Education and the Department of Health. It refers to professional standards which will cover four elements: on proficiency, performance, conduct and ethics and, it says:
“Continuing professional training and development”.
If I were looking through the eyes of a social worker at what was being set up here, I wonder how happy I would be to have a regulator that was going to establish the standards and have the right to strike me off if my proficiency was not up to scratch in any way, yet was also going to set out my continuous professional development. When we had the meeting with the chief social worker, she said that social workers have a range of ambitions when they go into social work, at one end of which is their role in challenging society and how the Government see society. That is one of the complex and noble reasons why people become interested in and go into social work.
Paragraph 119 of the policy statement relates to CPD. It states:
“The new regulator will set new standards for CPD”,
and refers to,
“options on how to ensure compliance … This will include appropriate sanctions for non-compliance”.
Here we have a regulator concerned with fitness to practise, as regulators are, while it may impose sanctions for non-compliance with what it has set up for professional development. That is at the heart of what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said earlier when he referred to the medical profession. He spoke about the importance of separating the state and government from what is at the heart of social work, as opposed to regulation.
So what is at the heart of development? Which route should we go down when we train social workers for mental health practice, for instance? Should it be the route that the Government may want, ensuring that more people are taken into secure units, or should the approach be more one of community care? If the regulator has responsibility for both fitness to practise and compliance with its own list of what CPD should include, we are down a very dangerous route, and I am sure the Minister would not want that to happen. CPD needs to be separate. If we have a profession, as we do, continuous professional development must be separated from the regulator. That is at the heart of this amendment, which I support.
Lord Nash
My Lords, in view of what the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said about how we are apparently wasting everybody’s time, I will try to be brief, but I shall deal with his first point about the involvement of the DoH. The two departments have been working very closely together and will continue to do so. I have two officials from the DoH here today, and both departments will be involved in the governance.
Amendment 135C seeks to establish a new social work improvement agency under the auspices of the Government which will have responsibility for promoting the highest standards of practice, conduct, education and training and professional development. I understand the intention that this new agency would work in partnership with an independent regulator to raise standards across the social work profession.
As noble Lords will be aware, regulators traditionally have three key roles: first, to set and maintain standards; secondly, to control entry to the profession; and, thirdly, to take action in response to concerns raised about registrants. These functions are distinct from the quality improvement activities commonly carried out by a professional body or college. We understand the concerns that have been raised by the sector and the Professional Standards Authority about conflating regulatory and improvement functions in the one organisation. We agree that the blurring of these functions can lead to conflicting and competing priorities, and can leave regulators open to accusations of marking their own homework.
Let me be clear: we do not intend to set up a regulator that also doubles as an improvement agency, nor are we setting up a professional body. The agency, however, will have a remit that goes beyond simply setting minimum standards for public protection. Just as the GMC standards define good medical practice, so the standards of the new regulator will seek to set out what constitutes good social work practice rather than what is just acceptable. Social work requires an approach that goes beyond the traditional safety net role of professional regulation. Social workers take critical and complex decisions in high-risk environments on a daily basis. Therefore, it is only right that regulation is focused on ensuring that all social workers have the knowledge and expertise to not only be fit to practise but to be able to practise well. We make no apologies about this.
Unfortunately, the social work profession has been unable to sustain a professional body to support the work of a regulator in raising standards. Most other healthcare professionals are supported by strong professional bodies which take an active role in quality improvement, supporting and completing the work of the regulator. The Government have invested significantly —over £8 million, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred—in the College of Social Work to address this gap. However, the College of Social Work was unable to attract the membership required to make it financially sustainable.
The Government understand that the development of a strong professional body is important to raise the status and standing of the profession in the long term. The Government cannot do this alone. An organisation that can articulate the views and interests of social workers and complement the work of the regulator is needed. However, our recent experience with the failed College of Social Work makes clear that this is for the profession to develop, own and maintain. We are not asking the agency to also perform this role. We are happy to continue to talk to the sector about whether it can establish its own body but, as I say, it must be developed and maintained by the sector.
As I set out previously, to bring about the reforms needed the social work profession needs a bespoke regulator with an absolute focus on raising the quality of social work education, training and practice and setting new and more specific standards. Alongside improvements to the regulatory system we will, of course, continue to invest in supporting the profession. The new agency will have a wider regulatory remit than traditional regulators and will go beyond minimum standards. It will do this through the setting of specific and higher standards.
The reforms that are needed to practice standards cannot be addressed through the development of an improvement agency. To allow us to rapidly deliver improvements and to embed the new regulatory system, the regulator will set new tougher standards for initial qualification, focus on professional standards for post-qualification, set new standards for continuous professional development, maintain a single register of social workers and oversee a fitness-to-practise hearing system, to which the noble Baronesses, Lady Pitkeathley and Lady Pinnock, have referred.
I can assure noble Lords that the Government do not intend to set up an agency with dual and conflicting roles. The new regulator will ensure that all social workers have the knowledge and expertise needed not only to be fit to practise but to be able to practise well. I hope the arguments I have set out will give the noble Lord the confidence to withdraw the amendment.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Baroness Pinnock Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Watson of Invergowrie
None the less—I understand the laughter from other noble Lords—there are interesting developments on my side of the fence, too. The Committee will forgive me for not commenting on that.
What the Minister said in his letter was reassuring. None the less, the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, would ensure an automatic review of child deaths, which obviously is a serious matter that I do not mean to treat lightly at all. Those are the two amendments that I wanted to specify, but all the amendments listed would strengthen the section of the Bill. For that reason, as stated earlier, we are pleased to support them.
As noble Lords will know, my noble friend Lord Hunt is a signatory to the proposal to oppose the question that Clauses 12 and 13 stand part of the Bill, and it is to this that I now wish to speak. We have concerns about the manner in which the functions of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel are to be established. Clause 12(1) states that the Secretary of State shall have power delegated to her to decide what the functions of the panel shall be. The functions are not set out in any detail; the Secretary of State is to be given the right to decide how the functions are to operate. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee stated in its report on the Bill:
“The arrangements made by the Secretary of State will determine more precisely how those functions are to be exercised, and will accordingly play a significant role in shaping what the Panel is required to do and how it is required to do it”.
The committee goes on to say that as a result, it believes that the arrangements made by the Secretary of State should be contained in a statutory instrument subject to the affirmative procedure. So do we, which is why we believe Clause 12 must be strengthened.
We also have objections to the guidance issued by the Secretary of State to the panel, as outlined in new Section 16B(8) in Clause 12. Again, our concerns are shared by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which commented that as the guidance clearly must operate hand in glove with the arrangements being made by the Secretary of State in relation to the panel, the guidance, too, should be subject to parliamentary scrutiny, this time by negative resolution.
The same could be said in respect of Clause 13 and the definition of “regulated setting”, relating to the death of a child. “Regulated setting” is not defined in the Bill, which the DPRRC regards as a major failing. The committee says:
“The definition of ‘regulated setting’ is fundamental to determining the scope of a local authority’s duty to provide information about cases”,
within this section of the Bill. That gives the Secretary of State unlimited discretion to determine what falls within the definition, and the committee goes on to say that the delegated power conferred by Section 16C(3) of the Children Act 2004 is inappropriate in providing for the definition of “regulated setting” to be set out in regulation.
More seriously—not least, I suspect, for the Department for Education—the committee proceeds effectively to rubbish the department’s claim that:
“This is a narrow power which will only provide for a list of regulated settings, not raising matters of substance which the House will need to debate”.
The Delegated Powers Committee does not just describe that power as a wide one; it concludes that it is a Henry VIII power, which means that it should be subject to affirmative procedure.
The number of delegated powers contained in the Bill was the subject of some dispute, shall we say, between noble Lords and Ministers at Second Reading. Doubtless we could schedule a separate debate in Committee to resolve just how many there are but, with the exception of the Ministers, every noble Lord who has taken part in debates on the Bill will agree that however many there are, there are too many.
The definition of a Henry VIII clause is of course one that seeks to amend primary legislation by secondary legislation. I cannot resist quoting the comments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, who spoke strongly against such clauses when he was Lord Chief Justice. He stated:
“You can be sure that when these Henry VIII clauses are introduced they will always be said to be necessary. William Pitt warned us how to treat such a plea with disdain. Necessity is the justification for every infringement of human liberty: it is the argument of tyrants, the creed of slaves”.
That may be just a little strong for this Bill but the message is quite clear. There are more egregious examples elsewhere in the Bill of the abuse of parliamentary procedures through secondary legislation—but, for the reason I have outlined, we believe that the definition of “regulated setting” has to be on the face of the Bill.
As was stated in Committee last week, there are concerns over the establishment of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel, partly because of the fear that it could be used to blame, or perhaps even scapegoat, social workers if a high-profile local case is referred to the new national panel without full knowledge of the local elements of the case. That is why the greatest attention must be given to defining the arrangements and functions of the panel as clearly as possible and, where they cannot be placed on the face of the Bill, to ensuring that there is adequate parliamentary scrutiny of those aspects of the Bill. For these reasons, we do not believe that Clauses 12 and 13 should stand part of the Bill.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, I support everything that previous speakers have said about both the amendments and in opposition to Clauses 12 and 13. During our last day in Committee, I made the case that in principle the proposal for the national safeguarding panel failed because it did not take sufficient account of local accountability, local knowledge and local professionals who have a duty to safeguard children in their area. The Wood report, from which a lot of the changes proposed by the Government come, is clear on some of these issues. One factor that it picks out in its analysis of local safeguarding children’s boards is that a review by the Local Government Association found,
“dissonance among the partners between the accountability and the authority of an LSCB”.
The report goes on to say that,
“the duty to cooperate has not been sufficient in ensuring the coherent and unified voice necessary to ensure multi-agency arrangements are consistently effective”.
So from the Wood report we hear that local accountability is one issue that has been raised. The LSCBs are not sufficiently accountable locally, and that has, in part, led to their lack of effectiveness.
The proposals in these clauses move power and accountability, in the most serious cases, from the local to the national level and put it in the hands of the Secretary of State. I think that that places too much power at the national level and not enough locally, and it is also in danger of politicising the whole process, reflecting what the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said, with which I totally agree. The lack of elected representation on the current safeguarding boards has resulted in them being ineffective. Currently, the boards consist of professionals and there is no full representation of non-professionals—that is, elected representatives—who are also corporate parents. It seems to me that a lack of challenge from non-professionals, who are corporate parents, has contributed to this lack of effectiveness of the safeguarding boards.
I will make a further comment, which is reflected in the Wood report, about the membership of the local boards and the duty to co-operate. The Government’s proposals in later amendments would remove the requirement for some of the professional organisations to be members of the local panels. One of those, the probation service, has in my council area—I draw the Committee’s attention to my entry in the register of interests as a local councillor in the Borough of Kirklees—since the fundamental changes to the service not attended the local safeguarding children boards. The later government amendments remove that requirement. It is a big mistake not to require the probation service to attend to discuss safeguarding children.
Clause 12, which lays out the functions of the new national panel, falls far short of what is required. Let us consider what has happened with serious case reviews over the past 30 years—probably and sadly—from the Climbié and Baby P reports to the many, many others that we can all draw to memory. They have all issued recommendations to which everybody has agreed but which no one has implemented effectively. Everyone says, “These are good; we must do that”, but they are not implemented.
The big failure in Clause 13, which is why I will oppose it standing part, is that nowhere does it say how learning will be effectively implemented. We can all learn, and social workers across the country will have read the 48—I think—recommendations in the Baby P report, but implementing them is the difficult bit. The Wood report refers to that and makes a powerful case for thinking in much greater detail not about the learning—the learning has been done—but the implementation. In all these cases, similar recommendations are made about the need to co-operate and the lack of collaboration and communication. We have yet to crack how to put that into effect.
If we are serious about child protection and safeguarding children, one element which must feature is how the recommendations are to be put into effect, monitored and reviewed. If we do not do that, we will never move forward. That is my fundamental reason for supporting the proposition that Clauses 12 and 13 should not stand part of the Bill.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)
My Lords, I strongly support what has just been said. Over the years—it goes back quite a long way—there have been very serious cases of child injury and, sadly, in most of the cases, child deaths. There has been no shortage of inquiries. All sorts of very distinguished people have been asked to inquire into the situation. As the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said, there is always a focus on the individual social worker. Managers somehow stand a little back from the situation to let the light shine on the individual. That is a natural protection that management is apt to have and one that we must think about.
I strongly support the view that any number of lessons have been learned, in the sense that reports have told us what was wrong and what should be different. But I know of absolutely no mechanism to make sure that these recommendations are acted on and that something actually happens. We have only to look at some of the earliest reports in relation to this to see that very clear recommendations were made. The report is published, the public and the press comment on it—and then it is forgotten until the next one. Surely if we are to set up a national body of this sort, we should incorporate within it a clear mechanism for bringing the recommendations forward for implementation.
Baroness Pinnock
I thank the Minister for his very detailed explanation of these amendments, which are aimed at putting in place new arrangements for local safeguarding children boards. I have a number of questions and would be grateful if the Minister could respond to them so that I can fully understand and appreciate the implications of what is being proposed.
First, I thank him for his assurance about local accountability. However, one element is not specifically referred to in the detail that he gave about the composition of the new panels, and that is whether the panel could include local elected representatives. I referred to this in a previous discussion and raise it again because the safeguarding boards currently consist of professionals—for example, social workers, the police, health service workers and members of the probation service—but no non-professional, on the basis of local knowledge, can challenge what goes on. Such a challenge from a non-professional standing up for local people is very important in terms of safeguarding, even more so as local elected representatives have a duty as corporate parents and they are judged on how they fulfil that role. I think that the addition of non-professionals would enhance the status of the panel. It would be not just a collection of professionals taking responsibility but a collection of professionals plus some local representation saying, “This is not good enough. What are you going to do?”. They could do that if they were effective local representatives, and I would like to hear what the Minister has to say on that.
I turn to my second query. I totally understand the proposals for greater flexibility in composition and geographic areas, and so on. In principle I do not have a problem with that because the Wood report says, and my own experience tells me, that the current arrangements can become a bit bureaucratic—a case of going through the motions, rather than dealing with the issues. For me that is not an issue but, from what I heard the Minister say, under the new arrangements there will be three statutory representatives—from the police, the health service and local authorities—and they will consult on what other representation there should be, which is welcome. My query concerns whether any additional members from those organisations would be required to attend or whether they would just be asked to attend.
Lord Nash
We are considering that report and we will respond in due course. On the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, about national government departments modelling effective collaboration, we are indeed taking considerable steps to work together effectively, in particular with the Home Office and the Department of Health. In view of what I have said, I hope noble Lords will support the amendment.
Baroness Pinnock
In response to my question about local elected representation, the Minister said that that ability was currently there. Yes it is, but as observer status. If there is to be an opportunity to challenge it, the membership of that board needs to be on the same level. An observer status puts the individual in a much lesser category of importance on that body. In order to have elected challenge on the panel, they ought to be full members of the board.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, we are very pleased to support this group of amendments, to which my noble friend Lord Watson has added his name. My noble friend Lord Wills has made a strong case for seizing the opportunity under the Bill of extending the whistleblowing arrangements and protections currently applicable in the NHS to those working in public bodies providing social services and children’s services, and local authorities, in respect of looked-after children and children at risk of harm, and well as to social workers. The Francis report into the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust was the trigger for enhancing important whistleblowing protections in the NHS, and it is right that we now have similar effective arrangements covering the provision of vital social services.
Under Amendments 127 and 137, which would bring in new clauses after Clauses 14 and 26, the Secretary of State would be required to issue a code of practice on whistleblowing arrangements that could be taken into account by courts and tribunals when whistleblowing arises in public bodies providing social services and employing registered social workers. My noble friend rightly refers to the whistleblowing commission’s code of practice for employers, workers and trade unions, published by the charity Public Concern at Work, which could provide the model or framework for the proposed code. It would also underline that protection for whistleblowers is a statutory requirement with parliamentary enforcement. The commission’s recommendation was that the code should be “rooted in statute”, and we support that.
Current protections offered to staff who challenge poor standards of care, both those covering widespread systemic failure and those involving day-to-day concerns about unsafe or poor practice, are certainly inadequate for those making disclosures in the public interest. The joint Community Care/UNISON workplace zone on whistleblowing underlines that many social workers and care professionals are too afraid to blow the whistle on poor practice. Their regular surveys of social workers give detailed accounts of staff trying to report their concerns, only to come up against bullying colleagues, managers with what they refer to as “selective hearing” and processes that protect the organisation over its staff—the pervasive and powerful organisational culture that my noble friend has identified as operating in workplaces, particularly in large-scale institutions where you have to be very brave and persistent to raise concerns.
The CQC’s quick guide to whistleblowing and the Ofsted reports on whistleblowing about safeguarding in local authority children’s services would give little comfort and reassurances to potential whistleblowers regarding their future security and career. Ofsted has no regulatory powers to investigate whistleblowing complaints but can use them as a trigger to bring forward inspections of council services. The CQC guide outlines clearly the procedures to take but its preface stresses to the staff member raising the issue:
“We don’t have any powers to protect you from action taken against you by your employer”.
The proposed code of practice on whistleblowing arrangements, with the enforcement of the Secretary of State providing guidance that can be taken into account by courts and tribunals, would help to provide reassurance to potential whistleblowers and provide practical guidance to both employers and staff.
Amendments 128 and 138 specifically address the discrimination that whistleblowers who have made a protected disclosure under the Employment Rights Act 1996 in their previous employment can face when applying for a job. The current exclusion of job applicants not considered workers under the Public Interest Disclosure Act can result in whistleblowers being blacklisted and finding it virtually impossible ever to get work again. As noble Lords have stressed, this situation should not be allowed to continue.
One of the key provisions of whistleblowing policies is the requirement for employers to provide assurance to the worker that he or she will not suffer detriment for having raised a concern—in other words, to make every effort to provide protection to whistleblowers who feel they may be vulnerable. These amendments would help to address the current gaps in providing the protection that whistleblowers urgently need and deserve.
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, I shall not repeat what many other noble Lords have said about whistleblowing, but confirm that we on this side totally support what has been said and the amendments that have been tabled.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wills, for these amendments and to noble Lords for their contributions. I assure noble Lords that whistleblowing is an important issue and one that we are taking very seriously. Every child deserves to be safe, and those organisations entrusted to protect our children must work as effectively as possible to achieve that.
Registered social workers work with some of the most vulnerable people in our society, supporting children, adults and their families, often at the most difficult times in their lives. It is important that registered social workers and other employees work in a culture of openness, where they feel confident to speak out when they are concerned about the practices of their employing organisation. They should be able to raise concerns free from fear and victimisation, as the noble Baroness said, with processes and procedures that encourage, support and protect employees when they do so. Disclosures can help to improve the services provided to children, adults and families and safeguard the vulnerable from abuse and neglect.
With regard to Amendments 127 and 137, I agree with the principle that there are clear expectations on local authorities and other public bodies on whistleblowing issues related to child protection and social work. We have a framework of employment protections for whistleblowers and I agree that it is important that employers should act in accordance with that. The coalition Government reviewed the statutory framework in relation to whistleblowing in 2014, following the report of the whistleblowing commission, as the noble Lord said, and the Government’s call for evidence on the matter. The Government concluded that the right balance was to be struck by guidance and a non-statutory code of practice, rather than a statutory code of practice recommended by the commission. The Government published that guidance and statutory code in March 2015.
I am afraid to say to the noble Lord that we are not persuaded of the need to reopen this question in the context of the Bill. If the noble Lord has concerns about the practices specifically of local authorities and public bodies that provide children’s services and employ social workers, we would be happy to consider them. There may be more that we can do, for example, to draw our guidance to the attention of those bodies and ensure their compliance with it.
In relation to the question asked by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, we confirm that whistleblowing protections in the Employment Rights Act apply to all employers, both private and public.
On Amendments 128 and 138, I share the noble Lord’s concern that those who make a protected disclosure under the Employment Rights Act should not suffer adverse treatment in their current employment or their future career. I understand that some workers have been concerned that whistleblowing may lead to them being placed on some form of informal blacklist that will prevent them getting other employment in the sector. We would be extremely interested in any evidence of that happening and would be very concerned if it was found to be the case.
As the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, mentioned, provision has already been made to protect job seekers in the National Health Service from such discrimination, following the report into whistleblowing in the NHS undertaken by Sir Robert Francis QC, Freedom to Speak Up.
I believe that the Department of Health will shortly be consulting on the necessary secondary legislation. We will be interested to see the issues raised during that consultation. Together with any examples of whistleblowers who have suffered in this way in children’s services, this will inform our consideration of any case for future change. I have asked Department for Education officials to work with colleagues from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department of Health, and to contact the noble Lord to discuss further the issues arising from these four amendments.
Although I understand that some of my response will not be welcomed by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, I hope he sees that we are taking action and will take further action, and therefore feels able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
My Lords, I want to ask a very specific question. Could an exemption of the kind envisaged in the amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, occur under Clause 15?
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, I concur with all the concerns that have been expressed so far about Clause 15. It is not that any of us are against innovation per se, but we are concerned about the proposed non-limits to the innovation.
At the heart of this clause is a dichotomy. On the one hand, children’s social work is probably the most regulated of all public services and has the most legislation surrounding its practice. On the other hand, if we take the clause at face value, it appears to allow any innovation within those regulations to be set aside. I asked civil servants what the criteria are for innovative practice, what the boundaries for it are and whether anything is off the table. The answer was that there are to be no limits. I found that quite disturbing. It is not as though we are dealing with anything mechanical here; we are dealing with the most troubled and vulnerable children in our society, who deserve our protection. What we need to try to achieve is set out in the Putting Children First report, which offers a blend of innovation and protection that works.
I have not yet understood how, on the one hand, Leeds City Council, which has been referred to in earlier debate on the Bill, has been enabled to innovate without difficulty—I know that it has been allowed to set aside some regulations, without the need for this clause, and has been successful in doing so—yet on the other, Doncaster Council, which sadly have a long history of inadequate children’s services, has not achieved much improvement despite all the efforts that have been put into it. The answer is that it is not so much legislation and regulation that is the problem, but having the support of key professionals—making sure that we have highly trained, effective and good leaders in social care, who can make a difference. That is what the report, on which I guess that many of the clauses in the Bill are based, says. Can the Minister tell us: is anything off the table as regards innovation, or is protection of children coming first?
Lord Nash
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 129, 130, 131, 131A, 131B and 132, in this group regarding the power to test new ways of working. I thank noble Lords for tabling these amendments to the clause, providing me with an opportunity to explain its purpose and operation in more detail. In short, this is purely to improve the provision of services to children.
Before I go into detail, I would like to return quickly to our discussion about profit of last week. I could not help reflecting that I might be the only noble Lord present who has spent most of his life, until recently, proudly in pursuit of profit. That fact may itself raise wider issues, but I say again that we have no intention of revisiting the settled position on profit-making in children’s social care or of using Clause 15 to circumvent that position. I gave that assurance at Second Reading and do so again now. The policy paper Putting Children First, published last week, makes the same commitment and the Minister for Children and Families reiterated the point in his speech to the Association of Directors of Children’s Services last week. I hope that that makes things absolutely clear.
At the heart of this power to test new ways of working is the intention to achieve better outcomes for children and young people. This unwavering focus is at the very core of the department’s agenda to drive innovation and improvement. More significantly, the push to remove procedural barriers to better ways of working is in direct response to what local authorities are telling us young people are saying to them. They want things done differently.
The Government’s £200 million children’s social care innovation programme has enabled local authorities to develop and test new ways of working, but in some aspects of provision this has reached the limits of what is possible under current children’s social care legislation. This power responds to the sector’s appetite to go further by allowing it greater flexibility to support young people in the most effective way. A number of noble Lords referred to examples of good innovation, some of which have been pointed out by Ofsted. They referred particularly to Leeds, one of our partner in practice local authorities, which has told us that it is proud of the innovation it has achieved so far within the current framework—but it is also keen to go further for children and families in its area. It cannot do that without this provision.
This power is about creating a safe mechanism to test new ways of working to improve outcomes for children.
Baroness Pinnock
I am very pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, has tabled the amendment and again raised the issue that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and I referred to at Second Reading. At that time I referred to the investigation by the EU Sub-Committee on Home Affairs into unaccompanied migrant children. It raises some important issues that reflect on what the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, has tabled in his amendment. One or two examples from the report expand on the issues raised. Evidence from Kent social services states:
“There have been issues in respect of the apparently competing demands of the immigration legislation and the childcare legislation in respect of over-18’s”.
That was the fundamental issue that I raised at Second Reading. We are in danger of creating a two-tier approach to care leavers. We quite rightly say that care leavers who are born in this country will receive support until the age of 21 or 25, but unaccompanied minors who have been through the most awful and traumatic experiences are suddenly deemed at 18 to be able to act as adults. Further evidence summarises the problem facing unaccompanied migrant children approaching 18. The report states:
“Those children who are given temporary leave on the basis that they are children are suffering terribly in their protection needs and, as has been identified for many years, their leaving care provisions. We recognise how much children need help in that transition to adulthood. For most of us in this country, we do not suddenly feel and behave like adults when we turn 18”.
We had evidence of the potential consequences of unaccompanied minors, as they approach 18, not given leave to remain but not wishing to return to the troubled area of the world from which they came. One of the consequences is:
“The severe delays experienced by some unaccompanied migrant children in their asylum claims and in accessing services may compound their lack of trust of state authorities. In such circumstances, smugglers and traffickers may come to be regarded by children in some cases as a preferable source of support—‘by choice, through desperation, or through exploitation and abuse’”.
That is the evidence that I have referred to. I do not think anyone in the Committee, which has now spent 20 hours or more considering how we can improve care for the most vulnerable children in our society, would want this particular group of young people to be affected in this way. As we approach Report, I hope that the Government can bring forward their own amendments to help to address the issues of unaccompanied minors as they approach care-leaving at 18, to provide them with the support they desperately need and confidence that they are not going to continue to be returned to the war-troubled areas of the world whence they came.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, I apologise for not being here sooner, but I was the last person standing to chair the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children this afternoon. That is where I have been, and it is always revealing. I support the amendment because I have raised this issue on a number of occasions. I hope the Minister will look at this, though he knows well that I do not like long amendments; lists in Bills are not helpful.
I cannot understand why, from the moment when the child is identified as an unaccompanied minor in a school, we do not start not only to stabilise the child’s status but to look at their mental health issues. We know of the trauma they have been through. I know that mental health services are poor across the country—we have heard that repeatedly—but these children have very particular needs. I am appalled when I learn that often schools do not even know the status of these children. I have met a number of youngsters who realise their immigration status only when they are about to go to university and discover that they cannot. Instead, they spend a year on appeal, appealing being deported to countries about which they know nothing. One young man I met had been here from the age of six. He had been in a foster home and suddenly discovered that this was his status.
I am sure that that is not the way this Government wish to treat children. These children happen to be in this situation only by chance. There might be another child next door who happened to have come in to the country, or be part of a family, on a very different basis. We must treat these children equally.
I am not against returning children home when that is the appropriate answer. We know that there have been very successful programmes of returning children to their country of origin with the right support and understanding; but we have to start sooner than we are starting now, get the position of the child right, make continuous assessment and not leave it until their 18th birthday, when it becomes a crisis.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Baroness Pinnock Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Pinnock
“Early intervention
A local authority must put in place early intervention strategies to prevent children and young people in their area who are on the Troubled Families Programme going into care, which may include providing those children with specific support.”
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, on both previous Committee days and at Second Reading, there has been a reference to the importance of early intervention and prevention strategies. Amendment 99B adds a clause that draws attention to the fact that early intervention and prevention is a better outcome for the child and may be as cost-effective as well.
The thrust of this whole Bill is to improve outcomes for care leavers because, currently, however good the foster or residential care, these children do not, on average, do nearly as well as they might otherwise. The Government’s troubled families programme has demonstrated that a collaborative approach from government and local authorities in a well-defined, focused way, can turn lives around, and prevent children from going into care. As set out in the Queen’s Speech, the programme is now being expanded to work with up to a further 400,000 families in the years ahead, targeting a wider range of families with a wider range of problems—including debt, drug and alcohol addiction, mental and physical health problems—and children under the age of five.
Unfortunately, the Government have halved the cost benefit to local authorities in this phase of the programme. For example, in Leeds, the city council’s families first programme—a much more positive way of naming it—focuses particularly on families with youngsters classed as children in need by social services. Many of the 1,300 families identified so far have come via reports of domestic violence. Police already refer any household where they find children are resident, when they are called to an alleged incident, to social work teams. These families typify those in which children are often taken into the care system. We know that once children are taken into the care system, the outcomes for them are not particularly promising. There is also a significant cost to the public purse. While there is a huge range, the National Audit Office figures from 2014 for the average cost of maintaining a child in foster care is about £500 a week. In residential care—again with a very wide range—the average cost is about £2,500 per week.
This month, the Government published the document, Putting Children First—Delivering our Vision for Excellent Children’s Social Care. Paragraph 139 states:
“The Troubled Families Programme is undoubtedly one programme already adding to our understanding of what works to support complex families to secure better life chances for themselves and for their children, to avoid the need for children’s social care to get involved, and to break the cycle of disadvantage, in particular through getting parents into work. The Programme continues to be a key plank of the government’s life chances agenda, and will increase its focus on improving parenting, family stability and ensuring pre-school children within the Troubled Families cohort are meeting child development milestones.
All that we have heard so far, and indeed what is set out in the Government’s own strategy, suggests that what we ought to be doing is putting much more emphasis on early intervention and prevention. It would be helpful to have in the Bill a reference to that in order to ensure that the focus of those who have to put it into effect look first at early intervention and prevention strategies rather than focusing on improving the lives of children who have been taken into the care system. That would be in line with what the Government’s intentions seem to be, according to the document from which I have just quoted. From what I have read in government sources, focusing on intervention and prevention can result in a much better future for a child and represents a cost saving for the local authority, hence the purpose of this amendment. I beg to move.
Baroness Pinnock
I thank the Minister for that response and for quoting the subsequent paragraph to the one I quoted. The current troubled families programme does not necessarily focus on children who, as it states, are,
“right on the edge or just within children’s social care”.
What the role of children’s social care should be for those children is what needs to be focused on. That is the purpose of the amendment that I put before your Lordships’ Committee. Focusing on the troubled families programme does not necessarily meet the needs of those children right on the edge of going into care. The more we can do through interventions to ensure that those children do not go into care, the better it will be for them and, indeed, for the public purse. With those comments, I thank the Minister for his response and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, Amendments 101 and 102 are in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Hunt. The Bill establishes a national Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. Concerns have been raised about a potential diminution of local accountability and about the panel being rather too closely linked to the Secretary of State, which could undermine the independence of the reviews undertaken and limit the ability to suggest meaningful change at national level.
We hope that these issues can be appropriately dealt with, but in general we welcome the introduction of the panel and the Government’s decision to adopt some of the recommendations in the Wood review on local safeguarding children boards and serious case reviews. At their best, serious case reviews offer an opportunity to review current practice, alter systems that are ineffective and provide insight into some of the problems that face the wide range of professionals responsible for the safety of vulnerable children. A system that adds weight to the process and encourages the development of expertise in this area is therefore welcome.
Part of our concern with the Bill as a whole relates to the large extent to which it relies on secondary legislation. The establishment of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel does not even have that fig-leaf, because the Bill allows the Secretary of State to make any arrangements she thinks fit when establishing the panel. We believe that is not good enough. The panel will consider serious child safeguarding cases and form an important part of the landscape in the months and years ahead. It is an important part of the Bill, and therefore requires oversight. The arrangements for establishing the panel should be for affirmative regulations, offering your Lordships’ House the opportunity to consider the draft regulations and express its opinion.
As for Amendment 102, the appointment of the chair of the panel will be important, particularly in the first instance. There is no reason why the Secretary of State should not have enough confidence in the person whom she decides to appoint to that position for him or her to face a pre-appointment hearing with the Education Select Committee. The committee contains considerable experience, and a public hearing will provide the wider sector the opportunity to get an understanding of the potential strengths of the Secretary of State’s candidate. I beg to move.
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, I will respond to what the noble Lord, Lord Watson, has said. I totally agree with him that the proposals in the Bill are so important that they ought to be subject to the statutory instrument procedure that he defined. In particular, the chair of this safeguarding review panel should be appointed after a public hearing with the Education Select Committee has taken place. The noble Lord has our support.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
My Lords, I declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, which is particularly concerned that the national panel is too closely controlled by the Secretary of State. The association believes that that risks politicising the serious case review process. If reviewers are to identify the root cause of safeguarding failings, the association believes that they must be fully independent of government control to ensure that they are able to consider without undue influence whether changes are required at both the national and the local level. The association also believes that to ensure that reviews of national significance are able to pass comment on the impact of national policies without undue influence, they must be able to identify these root causes, again without undue political interference. I therefore support Amendments 101 and 102.
It is important to recognise that the Local Government Association, which wants to work with this process and take some of it forward, has these concerns. We are in this position as a result of having so little time to look at these amendments. The basic principles are probably ones with which we would all agree but there are some fundamental flaws in the way the process is being put together.
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, I think there was some confusion over which of us was going to speak. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, who gave notice of her intention to oppose the Question that Clause 11 should stand part, is not present, so with the Minister’s permission I will speak to that element in the group.
There is a fundamental concern about the proposal in Clause 11. It does not have anything to do with the establishment of a national safeguarding review panel, which is appropriate, but what it contains and the way it is defined in the Bill are of concern because apparently it will remove local responsibility and accountability for the most serious of child abuse and harm incidents. The current situation is that local safeguarding children boards follow statutory guidance for conducting a serious case review. The LSCB itself is chaired by an independent expert and includes representatives from local NHS organisations, the local authority, probation, housing, the voluntary sector and so on.
Following a serious case of harm to a child, the LSCB must notify the national panel of independent experts and Ofsted. It will then appoint one or more reviewers to lead the serious case review. The lead reviewer must be independent of the LSCB and any other organisations which are involved in the case. The LSCB should also submit the names of the reviewers to the national panel of independent experts. The key factors in the existing process are that the chair is independent and formally agreed to by a national panel of independent experts and that, crucially, representations can be made in the same geographical area by individuals who were involved with the child and the family and thus have an understanding of the local context.
None of this is to deny the positive contribution that potentially can be made by establishing a national panel to improve national learning from these serious case reviews. What is unfortunate is that local knowledge and understanding may be lost and, worse still, that a national panel would take away local responsibility from those who are charged with safeguarding children. A national hearing can seem remote. It will lose the local context and therefore the nuances of understanding in these most complex of situations. It would be most helpful if the Minister would be willing to set up a meeting for those of us who are concerned about the implications of these proposals so that we can discuss these matters. It is not because we oppose them, but because we are concerned about how they will be implemented.
I shall refer again to the review document which I think was published yesterday. Paragraph 118 on page 55 refers to Alan Wood on the role and functions of the local safeguarding children boards. He wants to set up a stronger statutory framework that will introduce greater accountability for the three key agencies involved in safeguarding children; namely local authorities, local police and the local health service. That is why I was willing to oppose the question that Clause 11 should stand part so that these issues can be explored further before we make a decision to move to a national safeguarding review panel for the most important and serious cases, thus eliminating local involvement, responsibility and accountability. I think that that is very important if we are to make progress in preventing, if possible, some of these serious incidents. But certainly we should get national learning from the local example.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has raised some important points and the name of my noble friend Lord Hunt is also on the clause stand part debate. We do not propose to do that just now; we think the broad principles can be transferred to the debate that we shall have on Monday on the next section or group. We shall say no more at this stage.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Baroness Pinnock Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, I also support the noble Lord’s amendment. He said that other bodies might be involved and I would draw particular attention to the position of the justice system in this context. Some of the young people involved will already have been involved in the justice system or may subsequently go into the justice system and, of course, have to emerge from it. It is important that there should be adequate liaison between the local authority and its services and those who have responsibility in the justice system, whether that is a custodial institution or another service. When the noble Lord returns to this—perhaps at a later stage—he might want to consider including that in the ambit of his amendment.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
I support what the noble Lord, Lord Warner, proposes in this amendment. Before I make the next remarks, I draw Members’ attention to my interests in the register as a member of Kirklees Council. My concern with the amendment, and others we will discuss in the course of this Committee, is the number of proposals that add to the responsibilities of local authorities. As anybody who is associated with local government will be aware, additional responsibilities nearly always require additional spending. I just wanted to draw the attention of Members of this Committee to what is happening to the budget for children’s services in Kirklees Council, which is no doubt repeated across local government. Kirklees Council is a large metropolitan borough serving 420,000 residents, which puts the figures I shall now cite in context. The budget that the council intends to spend on children’s services, which excludes what it spends on schools, was £71.6 million for last year and is £70 million for this year. For next year, the proposed budget is £53.4 million. Despite every effort by members of the council and officers in Kirklees—we have done all we can to protect spending on children’s services—the reduction over the next couple of years will be £18.2 million. As Members of the Committee will quickly calculate, that is a reduction of 25%. Within that reduction, there is a reduction of 10%—more than £3 million—in services specifically for looked-after children.
Will the Minister take into account the dire consequences of the Bill adding to local authorities’ responsibilities? Of course, it is not that local authorities have no wish to have better services for care leavers and looked-after children, but there is a big reduction in the amount that can be spent on them. Consequently, any additional responsibilities will be very difficult to fund.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, I have great sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said. We all work with local authorities that have extraordinary constraints on finances. However, I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, because it can make things easier rather than more difficult. I need to support it as it relates to what I said both at Second Reading and previously in Committee about the two things that are important.
First, any amendments must be tightly drawn. I am really concerned about the next batch of amendments because they could add considerably to local authorities’ responsibilities. Many people agreed that if you are a director of children’s services, you do not want to have to wade through yet more legislation. We are looking for less legislation but legislation that is clearer and more tightly drawn, to be freed up to get on with the job of looking after children.
The other important item is that we make clear that this is the responsibility of wider services. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, acknowledged that his was not a comprehensive list of those people who could do more to benefit these young people. I know that some of the amendments may be out of the frame. Some of the issues I raised last time in relation to financial services need more refinement. However, if we had these two things—tightly drawn legislation and a wider range of services with the responsibility—it would not add to the responsibilities of local authorities but streamline their work and ensure that others took their part. I declare an interest as a vice-president of the LGA.
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, I have listened carefully to the strong case made by the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, for the amendments and agree with much, if not all, of what she said. I repeat, however, that they would place additional duties, and therefore inevitably extra costs, on local authorities. That must be recognised. Can the Minister give the Committee before the end of this stage an estimate of the additional costs imposed on local authorities by the Bill? In response to my earlier point, the Minister claimed that I was asking for additional funding. Actually, I was making a plea for cuts not to be made. A 25% cut in children’s services spending is bound to have a significant impact on what local authorities can do for children in care and care leavers. I make a plea for having not so large a cut in local government funding.
Lord Wills
The noble Baroness will understand how sympathetic I am, sitting on this side of the Committee. We have now officially ditched austerity as part of the Tory leadership campaign, so circumstances are clearly different. However, I am also conscious that we are living in very difficult times and there is not likely to be much more money. She makes understandable pleas, but does she accept that a lot of this funding will prevent spending being incurred later? If we cannot support those most vulnerable young people at the most difficult times of their lives, they will run into problems and, sooner or later, that will involve more spending by the state when it would be tragic to have to do so. When she pleads for funding, I ask her to accept that this funding has a prophylactic effect, so the extra demand on resources may not be as severe as she suggests.
Baroness Pinnock
When I spoke at Second Reading, I made a plea for the Government to consider shifting money to early intervention and prevention so that we would not have to address issues of looked-after children and care leavers. The idea would be to put effort and funding into family support at an early stage so that children can remain safely with their families and not have to enter the care system. That would be the best outcome for the child and for the state, which is funding children in care. The thrust of my argument is that this is all focused on looked-after children and care leavers. I urge the Government to put the focus on family intervention and prevention of family issues that lead to children going into the care system. The difficulty with that is that we know across the country that children’s centres, which are the focus for early intervention and prevention, are closing. Only at the end of last week, Hampshire County Council made a decision to close all but 11 of its 53 children’s centres. That is the thrust of my argument. I would much rather that we did not have to debate support for care leavers because we had prevented all those children going into care.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I urge the Minister not to make this provision too prescriptive. Good local authorities like flexibility and support. What is important here is the outcome for young people. Yes, I understand about early intervention and prevention work, which is very important, but the reality is that we will still have children in our care, for many reasons. The importance of the Bill is that it gives local authorities the flexibility to give that support in the way that is right for that young person. The noble Earl was quite right in saying that some young people get to the age of 16 and the last person on earth that they want to speak to again is their PA or social worker. We need the flexibility to use family friends or members to whom they may be close and to give them support to support that young people. They may be volunteers or mentors, but we need that flexibility to look at different ways of doing it.
As for money, it is important that every local authority makes every member of that local authority understand the importance of being a corporate parent. In Wiltshire, where I am the leader, every single member of that council has to sign up to agree that they are a corporate parent and have a day’s induction to understand what that really means. When it comes to budgets and prioritising budgets, the whole council then really understands the importance of that position. It is important to have flexibility and not be too prescriptive—and that we can look at each young person as an individual, as we would our own children, and give them the support that they need into the future.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)
My Lords, I apologise for being unavoidably unable to come to the first day of Committee. I should like to add some comments in support of Amendments 61A and 71A. We should see these amendments as being very much about early intervention and prevention. The Bill, welcome though it is, is a little light on early intervention and prevention. The amendments point to situations from the point of view of the babies born to young people who have been in care. Unless there is specific early intervention with a great deal of support provided, we may not be preventing those babies at some point coming into care or being subject to serious difficulties.
I say that for two reasons. We know from the statistics that, generally, babies of young parents—right across the board, not just those who been in care—do not fare as well on any number of developmental indicators, despite the ability of some individual young parents to be outstanding. Those babies suffer a series of stresses from that situation that impair their development, in many instances irrevocably. The vulnerabilities suffered by a young parent who has been in care can only add further stress and difficulty to that situation. It is really important from the point of view of early intervention and prevention for children born to young people who have been in care that there is a specific focus that points the statutory services to make sure that they intervene early and prevent adverse consequences further down the line to another generation of children. I hope the Minister will take these amendments seriously.
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, we have had a very interesting and informative debate on this subject. I do not wish to add anything because everything I might say has already largely been said. All I would say is that this is focused on the principle that I and others raised at Second Reading and earlier today: the fundamental importance of early intervention and prevention if we are to break the cycle of children going into care and the consequent implications for the rest of their lives, and for the costs on local authorities and the state. Everything we know points to the fact that a focus on funding for early intervention and prevention does more than address the issues once children and young people are in the care system. I very much welcome this informative debate and thoroughly support the amendments.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, this has been a persuasive debate. We have already had the evidence that my noble friend Lady Armstrong described from the social justice commission, which is all too depressingly clear on the plight of care leavers who become young carers. My noble friend Lady Massey referred to the Family Rights Group, which produced an excellent briefing detailing some of the challenges that young parents covered by these amendments have to face. I was particularly struck by the evidence that young parents often feel judged by their youth and background rather than their parenting abilities, and particularly that, where support has been provided to them, it has often been done in their capacity as young people leaving care and has rather ignored their roles as parents. This will be a very telling point when we come to the Minister’s arguments.
The amendments seem comprehensive. Amendment 61A would insert into the assessment of the needs of a former relevant child a reference to young parents, while Amendment 71A expands helpfully on the definition of young parents. Amendment 98AA would insert into the Bill a requirement for pathway plans to be provided for,
“looked after children and care leavers who are young parents”,
and Amendment 98AB would amend the Care Leavers (England) Regulations 2010 to incorporate support for young parents, so my noble friend has tabled a comprehensive package of amendments.
Rather like the right reverend prelate, the Minister may say that young parents are implicitly covered in the Bill. However, to come back to the point raised in the evidence we received from the Family Rights Group, is not one of the problems here that in these legislative terms care leavers are thought of as care leavers rather than as young parents? It seems that although the Minister may say that the provisions can be seen to apply to young parents, the fact is that sometimes there is a need to be explicit. There is sometimes an advantage in putting a specific requirement into the Bill. The point I put to the Ministers is that the case has been made today for such an explicit provision, and I am sure that we will need to return to this.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
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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.
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, I support what the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, has said about council tax exemption. The point she made was absolutely right. I would like to add that the report The Wolf at the Door, again by the Children’s Society, showed just how quickly care leavers could get into financial difficulties, and often the trigger is the council tax that they are required to pay. One young person quoted by the Children’s Society said:
“I kept on being charged for council tax”—
I guess we all feel like that—
“I couldn’t pay it. I was just falling further and further behind … I tried telling them that I couldn’t pay that per month, they weren’t having none of it … and then I ended up just leaving it. Even though I didn’t have any money, they weren’t willing to do anything”.
Care leavers need a better package of financial support so that they do not get into the situation where they fail to pay their council tax, and then obviously there are legal consequences from that. The point that the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, made was right, but on behalf of myself and my noble friend Lady Bakewell I would like to add that we should not leave this to the discretion of local authorities. Given the circumstances at their end, it is much less likely that that would be implemented. We would like to see a requirement on local authorities to do what a good corporate parent would do, which is to ensure that a young person’s council tax is paid up to the age of 25.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, I will speak briefly. Amendment 27 seems to underpin the other amendments with regard to protection against poverty and destitution. This is pivotal to the life chances of this particularly vulnerable group of young people. The Government’s own Care Leavers Strategy points out that when you do not have a supportive family to fall back on, particularly when having to meet the challenge of independent living at a much younger age than your peers, having access to timely financial help is crucial. Care leavers have told us that they often find it difficult to navigate services and work out what financial support they are entitled to, and we have heard how sometimes the financial support is not very much. I am not going to restate the case—and anyway the Minister may well have been briefed on this.
Amendment 48, which refers to income support and working tax credit, will be overtaken by events with the introduction of universal credit. For example, with regard to sanctions, the Children’s Society has suggested that under universal credit this group should be made subject to the work preparation requirement under Section 21 of the Welfare Reform Act 2012. That seems very reasonable to me.
The Minister himself referred earlier to one or two local authorities that provide exemption from council tax, when he was giving an example of how local authorities can support care leavers. I can only reiterate what has been said: this is so important that it cannot be left to the vagaries of local authority discretion. It has to be looked at again.
I hope that the Minister will be able to take away these practical suggestions for how local authorities and central government can support local authorities in their corporate parenting responsibilities. I realise that they sit in other government departments, so what would be helpful would be to have a commitment from the Minister today to take away these ideas and discuss them with his colleagues in the relevant departments, so that he can come back on Report. Possibly he could even hold informal discussions before then so that we might be able to make some progress on this set of eminently sensible suggestions.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Baroness Pinnock Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the register of interests as a local councillor and vice-president of the Local Government Association. I welcome the fundamental purpose of this Bill, which is to focus the attention of practitioners, policymakers and politicians on care leavers and looked-after children. However, the question that needs to be answered is whether the proposals in the Bill meet the wholly admirable statement of principles set out in Clause 1.
It is unfortunate that Clause 1 fails to include reference to what is generally described as “the voice of the child”. This means not only listening to the individual child, as already set out in the statement of principles, but also for these most vulnerable of children to have a strong, independent advocate of their needs at both national and local level. A strong role for the Children’s Commissioner nationally, and a named corporate parent locally, could fulfil this.
The other glaring omission in the Bill is any reference to the vital importance of early intervention and prevention strategies. The clear purpose of these is to prevent children from suffering the traumas that lead them to become looked after. Sadly, ensuring that the links are made with this essential element of the continuum of support for vulnerable children is lacking in the Bill. Worse still, funding for prevention, which was largely delivered through Sure Start centres, has been massively reduced, resulting in statistics that indicate that more than 800 centres have been closed. I urge the Minister to consider amendments to the Bill to address these two substantial omissions.
There is much to be supported in the Bill. However, it is much to be regretted that its content is so ill defined. Those who are more experienced in these matters than I claim that the Bill is so lacking in detail that the work of this House in scrutinising and challenging it is well-nigh impossible. I agree with the regret Motion from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, which draws the attention of the House to these significant deficiencies.
The first part of the Bill, relating to care leavers, is a positive statement of the continuing responsibilities of local authorities for children who have been looked after. The aim of the Liberal Democrats in this House is to offer constructive comments to assist in making improvements to the Bill. As a councillor as well as a Member of this House, I am a corporate parent—as indeed are all councillors—for the children and care leavers within their local authority. It is a role which I take very seriously. The Bill, however, seems to conflate the role of local authorities and that of corporate parents. My concern and that of the Liberal Democrats here is that there needs to be clarity about who takes responsibility. It is not clear, for example, how corporate parents will be able through their local authorities to support care leavers who move outside the district, or to know those who move into the area.
Clause 2 sets out the services that a local authority may offer care leavers. This section makes reference not only to support for housing, which many local authorities already provide, but to employment. I wonder whether the Minister would consider enabling local authorities to have the powers to allocate some of their apprenticeships to care leavers. Many parents already help their children into employment and maybe this should also be the role that corporate parents undertake.
Clauses 5 to 7, relating to educational achievement, are important as all the information available shows that the cohort of children who are looked after, and hence also care leavers, have much lower levels of attainment than their peers. Addressing this would do much to ensure that these vulnerable young people are able to overcome the disadvantages with which they started life. Is this a missed opportunity in the Bill to encourage innovation in addressing these gaps in knowledge and skills?
The proposal in Clause 11 to establish a Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel has much to recommend it. It is right that there is a consistent approach to facing up to the cases where there is a serious failure by the adults charged with the care and safety of a child. What would be unfortunate would be if local ownership of the failures were lost and this were to become an unforeseen consequence of it being a national review, and therefore inevitably more remote.
Clause 15 focuses on “different ways of working”. Some local authorities are already testing new approaches. Leeds City Council is winning many plaudits for its innovative approach to children and has badged the city as “Child Friendly Leeds”. This is a consequence of innovative thinking and leadership by local politicians and officers. It has been achieved without direction from government and without any new powers being required. Innovation is vital but there is surely a need to tread with some caution where changes to working practice with vulnerable children are involved.
The proposal in Clause 15 is to enable local authorities to opt out of meeting some of their responsibilities under previous legislation. The regulations proposed in this clause are vagueness itself, which raises many questions as to the intent, save that of enabling,
“better outcomes … or … the same outcomes more efficiently”.
That statement, in our opinion, has all the hallmarks of a Government bent on permitting the outsourcing of children’s services. If that is the case, the Government should have the courage of their convictions and say so. Then we can debate the pros and cons of enabling more private sector involvement.
There is much private sector involvement already, with private residential care homes, where children are housed well outside their own background, and private foster carers, without whom there would be an even greater crisis in fostering than there is now, but whose charges are considerably higher than those paid by the local authority.
It is already more difficult for corporate parents to hold these disparate providers to account. How will the most vulnerable children in our society have a strong advocate if there is further outsourcing of services? How can there be democratic accountability for the many millions of pounds of public funding? Finally, it is to be hoped that lessons have been learned from the tragic consequences that can result from outsourcing. The Winterbourne View disgrace is not one which we would want repeated in children’s services.
The key to improvements in children’s social care is raising the quality of children’s social workers, so the clauses in Part 2 of the Bill to set professional standards, and standards for education and training, are welcome. However, these clauses beg the question of the definition of these standards and who is required to set them. The proposal to give power to the Secretary of State or an undefined regulator is contrary to accepted best practice, which is that those who may have to challenge the state are not controlled by the state. This proposal must be significantly amended.
The notion that social workers will be subject to criminal law rather than the fitness to practice procedures smacks of an insidious blame culture which, in the end, achieves no positive improvements for children and may result in a more cautious approach by professionals.
Many other aspects of the Bill will be addressed by my noble friends. There is much that is positive and constructive about the aims of the Bill—but, equally, the Government’s solutions to the challenges of supporting the most vulnerable children and young people are not at all transparent. What is needed is clarity of accountability and responsibility for these children and young people; positive support for the professionals tasked with this most challenging of roles; and adequate funding for local authorities whose budgets for children’s services have suffered large reductions at the same time as the Government set even higher demands. I look forward to constructive discussions with the Minister in the coming weeks. If Leeds can aspire to be a child-friendly city, surely the Government should aspire to create a child-friendly country.
Schools: Funding
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Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, will the Minister share his initial thoughts on the weighting for each of the fair funding criteria, which are outlined in the government consultation, so we can understand his definition of “fair”?
Education: English Baccalaureate
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Baroness Pinnock (LD)
I stand up with a bit of hesitation, because the previous two speakers have described with great eloquence all that is wrong with forcing the EBacc on whole years of learning in our secondary schools. I am pleased that we have the Question here today because it sparks off a wider consideration about the purpose and aims of education. Obviously, the answer is partly that it prepares young people for life as adults as well as for the world of work. Another element is that it develops individual talents and provides a sense of achievement and self-worth. The question I have asked myself is: what does the EBacc, which is to be imposed on 90% of our secondary-school pupils, contribute towards these aims?
By sheer chance, I chaired a seminar about education in London today where there were contributions from the world of business by a representative of the chambers of commerce, from a think tank, from academia and from a head teacher of an academy trust. Without exception, all agreed that the EBacc consisting of five subjects was not a problem but imposing the EBacc on 90% of school students certainly was. They all agreed that it was a retrograde step. The business leader said that what business wanted was soft skills in young people entering the world of work. He defined these as the ability to communicate, to collaborate, to co-operate in a team, to be critical and to work on projects—none of which he felt would be developed in young people through the EBacc diet. The head teacher was even more outspoken. He was the executive principal of an academy trust. I have asked him if I can quote him but I will not say where it is as I do not want to endanger his future. He said, “The EBacc is disastrous; it is not relevant to the modern world and not appropriate to modern learners.”
I am a school governor in my own town in West Yorkshire. When I discussed this with other governors and the head teacher there, they said they have a real moral dilemma. Do they follow what the Government are imposing on schools, giving a diet of subject matter which is indigestible to a good percentage of the children in the school, or do they try to meet the children’s educational needs? It is not just the EBacc which is narrow; the content of the subject curriculum is also narrow. So not only have we narrowed down what is taught in the broad sense with the five subjects, but we have narrowed down the content of that curriculum. Altogether, we are proposing a narrow diet for our young people when they face the world of work which is opening up. I beg the Minister to reconsider what he is offering.
Lord Nash
I am sorry; I agree entirely with the noble Lord—we should not. One only has to look at Wales to see what abandoning accountability does for an education system.
I reject suggestions that music and arts are not core subjects. We believe strongly that every child should experience a high-quality arts and cultural education throughout their time at school, which is why at key stage 4 all pupils at maintained schools have an entitlement to study an arts subject if they wish. Our commitment to rigorous arts qualifications is a reflection of the significant and ever-increasing contribution the creative industries make to our country, as my noble friend Lord Freyberg mentioned, bringing in £84 billion a year and outpacing growth and job creation in many other industries. EBacc qualifications help support this growing creative sector, and of course we have introduced computer science.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, mentioned music education hubs. The network of music hubs provides valuable extra-curricular activities, after school and at weekends. These hubs also play an important role in supporting music within the school curriculum. One of their many roles is to ensure that every child has the opportunity to learn to play a musical instrument through whole-class ensemble teaching.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich talked about religious education, which of course counts towards Progress 8. In 2011, 32% of pupils in state-funded schools took a GCSE in RE; the figure is now 46%. I entirely agree with the right reverend Prelate that we need to increase our pupils’ religious literacy, which is so important, particularly in the modern world we live in. I know that the Church of England does a great deal of work on this; I attended an inspiring event recently called Living Well Together, and I know that it has a great deal of plans in that regard. As regards international links, quite a lot of work is done by the British Council on this, and I would be very happy to discuss this further with the right reverend Prelate.
I found some of the things the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said, particularly depressing. A head teacher said:
“‘The EBacc is not appropriate to the modern world. It is not appropriate to modern learning.’ Oh dear. It sounds like the sort of person who would say that you don’t need knowledge because you can look it up on the internet”.
That is an exact quote from another head—I know it is not from the noble Baroness.
Lord Nash
It was not you, but that was what someone said. Modern cognitive and neuroscience makes clear that you need knowledge to develop skills. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Watson, wants evidence. He mentioned ED Hirsch; if he would care to look at the effect of the Core Knowledge curriculum on the “Massachusetts miracle” in schools there, he would see what an effect such a curriculum can have, particularly on disadvantaged pupils.
Some students at key stage 4 may wish to start an element of technical or vocational study alongside the EBacc. We have of course reformed vocational education. Following the review from the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, which we instigated immediately after being elected in 2010, we abolished 96% of vocational qualifications so that we now offer high-quality and valuable qualifications, which employers value. That is also why we also focused on dramatically increasing the quality of apprenticeships.
I hope the noble Lords will recognise that enabling more pupils to leave school having studied a basic academic core is a commitment of the Government—and why we are doing this—which does not preclude the study of additional subjects, particularly creative ones. I am quite sure we can have 90% of pupils taking EBacc; I have absolutely no doubt. I know the noble Lord, Lord Watson, does not like me referring to anecdotes, but when we first arrived at Pimlico Academy in 2008 I remember asking the teachers why so many pupils were doing BTECs. Although the answers came couched in a lot of very politically correct words, they basically said that the pupils could not manage “study” subjects. Well, the same kind of pupils are now managing big time and getting into universities and on career paths which were not previously available to them. From my own experience, children never disappoint if you give them enough challenge and satisfy their curiosity. It may be that when we have 90% of pupils taking the EBacc that we can look again at the incentives that we place in the system and we will, of course, respond to the consultation, but I am satisfied that broadly, for the moment, we have our incentives right and I thank all noble Lords for participating in today’s debate.
Childcare Bill [HL]
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Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his progress report and for introducing the government amendments this afternoon. I am also grateful to him for the many meetings he has arranged since the Bill left this House, and in particular for the briefings on the outcome of the financial review.
As we stated at the outset and continue to make clear, we support the aims of the Bill. Our concern was that what could have been a more effective, ambitious and streamlined initiative to deliver free childcare has been let down by a lack of foresight and planning, and we continue to have that concern. So we were disappointed that the Government chose to reject our amendments in the Commons, because we believe that they would have enabled a more detailed analysis of the childcare funding system to take place, with properly costed long-term solutions to be put in place.
The amendments would also have ensured a proper degree of parliamentary scrutiny for a Bill which, as we rehearsed at the time, is skeleton in nature and relies on a raft of regulations to bring it to fruition. Instead, we will be reliant on debating secondary legislation —over which, quite clearly, we do not have the same influence—to agree the fundamentals of what the future childcare offer will be. I have listened carefully to the Minister’s outline of the next steps, and I am very grateful for the offer of continuing involvement in the regulations. I hope they will be as meaningful as he has now suggested, and let me make it clear to him that we will hold him to his word on this matter.
In the mean time, sadly, we are left with a Bill which is a pale shadow of its original ambition as set out by the Prime Minister at the election. The truth is that lots of parents who believed the election promises now stand to be disappointed. In order to bridge the funding gap, which, incidentally, we told the Government all along was a problem, the Government have now squeezed the eligibility for free places, so that less than half of all three and four year-olds will be eligible. The original plan was that 630,000 children would be eligible, and now that figure has been reduced to 390,000. It is the poorest parents who will lose out the most—those on the edge of the labour market with short hours, part-time work and zero-hours contracts. As we know, it is those parents, the most disadvantaged, whose children would benefit the most from the provision of quality childcare to help them to close the attainment gap. That is a fundamental regret of the Bill.
At the same time, despite the welcome injection of extra funds, the Government still do not appear to have squared the funding crisis. Research by the House of Commons Library has revealed a shortfall of £480 million over the Parliament, which means up to £470 per child per year. I am not sure that the latest figures announced by the Minister will square that figure. Those figures, which are backed by Ceeda research from the Pre-school Learning Alliance, make the case powerfully that the impact on the capacity in the system may lead to fewer rather than more places becoming available. In addition, as in the past, there appears to be no uprating mechanism, so that funding runs the risk of falling further behind over time. Will the Minister clarify how future costs will be evaluated year on year? He mentioned the national funding formula, but I am not sure that that will address those concerns.
I also regret that the Government did not pay more heed to our concerns and those raised by numerous stakeholders across the sector on these matters. Nevertheless, we do support the Bill. It clearly represents a step forward. For many parents, it will provide a welcome lifeline back into paid work and for many children it will become a new route into quality care, which will obviously give them a much better start in life. It addresses one segment of a much bigger problem of affordable childcare for all and the need to close the attainment gap between children on free school meals and their peers. In the mean time, we will continue to press this case. We will watch the rollout of the Bill with interest and we will participate in the scrutiny of the regulations with vigour. I thank the Minister for his commitment up to this point.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for what he said today and for the discussions that he organised during the course of the Bill. The Bill is very different from the one that first saw the light of day in this House, which was only notable by its lack of detail. It has certainly gained considerable flesh on the original skeleton, and I am grateful for that. However, it is not necessarily a fully formed being just because it has grown throughout its progress. We still have some concerns about the detail that the Minister has finally given the House today.
There has been a broad welcome across the House, which we agreed with, for the Government’s additional childcare offer. I will comment on two particular aspects of the Bill in its final form, in the light of the discussions that we had in this House. First, we have always been concerned about the funding. There were wide discussions in Committee and on Report about the viability of providers if there were no adequate recompense for the hourly rate, and we welcome the additional funding that the Government have put into that, albeit that it is 30p an hour. I have great concerns that it will not up be upgraded annually by either RPI or CPI. If it is not, that will put additional stress on the financial viability of providers.
An issue that we on this side particularly raised in the course of the discussions was that of the additional capital that should be made available to enable providers to offer the further 15 hours, and there were many discussions about how that could be achieved. I welcome the Government’s capital fund that they have set aside for just that purpose, which demonstrates that some of the arguments we made have been recognised, albeit perhaps not enough, in my view.
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, noble Lords will recall that, on this side, we secured the support of the House for our amendment to include a flexible approach to the implementation of the additional 15 hours of free childcare. We did so because parents and providers told us that the main barrier to their working hours was access to childcare after school hours and during school holidays. Indeed, many parents—especially mothers—expressed to us the horror with which they viewed forthcoming school holidays, particularly the long six-week summer holiday, because of the difficulties they had in either affording childcare or dealing with it in some other way through family and friends. I have read with interest, and noted with satisfaction, that the Minister in the other place conceded the need for flexibility when he said:
“I completely agree with the principle of the amendments tabled in the other place”.—[Official Report, Commons, Childcare Bill Committee, 10/12/15; col. 103.]
I have listened very carefully to the Minister today and welcome his statement in support of the need for flexibility. We are, at last, all agreed: flexibility is important. Although we can all agree on the principle, it is the implementation that interests me. I also welcome and thank the Minister for his concessions towards implementing a flexible childcare offer. I am glad that, on this side, we have continually raised the issue of flexibility, which has put that bit of pressure on the Government to think about it and come up with an approach to dealing with it. It is absolutely vital to the lives of many working families that we address their difficult daily conundrums of “Am I going to get back from work in time to pick the children up?” or “What am I going to do in the school holidays?”—in fact, to have an offer which enables people to go to work with the worries of childcare not first and foremost in their minds.
I really do thank the Minister for what he said today. I will summarise it and then I will have a think about whether it is enough. First, he said that he will put in the regulations the need to support local authorities in developing a flexible approach. That seems to have it written down and, as long as the regulations are up to scratch, seems something that will work in providing flexibility. He also said that four out of eight of the early implementers—the pilot schemes, in my phraseology —will test this out. That also seems a very positive and constructive approach. He mentioned extra funding. I did not quite hear how much he said it would be. Perhaps he could repeat that in his response. If there is extra money, I am always in favour of that, especially if it is for childcare. I think he said that local authorities would be required to be transparent in their offer. Using the examples he gave of Bradford, Brighton and Hove, Swindon and so on would show other local authorities what they could follow and replicate. If that is transparent and open, that would also be positive.
I welcome the approach to childminders, who play an enormously important role in the provision of childcare in this country. To encourage them to do more than in their own domestic setting is very much to be welcomed because it will enable a more flexible offer to lots of working parents, who often use more than one provider to enable their working lives to continue. They drop their children off with childminders before work; then the childminder takes them to a professional provider and collects them; the childminder has them at the end of the working day and the school day, and they are collected from there. To envelop all the providers into one—I hope—coherent package is very much to be welcomed.
It seems that great strides have been made towards enabling a more flexible approach, both out of school hours and during the school holidays. I hope that will, first, enable more parents to develop their own skills in the workforce without those constant worries that their children are not being properly and adequately cared for; and, secondly, enable more families to become financially secure, albeit not the families that I mentioned earlier. Given that the Minister has made such a great stride towards meeting the thoughts that I had on the flexible offer in childcare, I will hear what other noble Lords say but I thank him for the movement he has made. I beg to move.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I will speak very briefly on these amendments. As noble Lords will know, we agreed with and very much supported the amendment originally proposed by the noble Baroness on Report and we still think that the principles behind it are important. We also noted, both on Report and in the Commons, Ministers’ wording when they agreed with what was proposed; that is, they agreed with the concept of flexibility and the need to build more flexibility into the system, so obviously that is very welcome. I suppose that my one remaining concern is that “flexibility” may be all things to all people. It can hide a thousand sins. I would like to drill a little more into what is meant by that word. The noble Baroness’s original amendment specifically referred to flexibility being in the context of extending opening hours beyond nine to five and making provision in school holidays. It would be very helpful if the Minister could confirm that “flexibility”, in his terms, is about those sorts of issues and not some weaker concept.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have participated in this debate for their contributions. I particularly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, who has provided scrupulous challenge from the other side of the House throughout the passage of the Bill. She has seen the Bill through to the end of its passage, even though she has changed her responsibilities during that time. I also welcome the meetings and sessions we have held outside the Chamber, particularly on the funding review, which I hope noble Lords found useful.
I also pass on my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Tyler, who have provided a constant source of challenge to this policy, as they have today, always with the best of intentions. I pay special thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, who provided support throughout the passage of the Bill, ensuring the relevant Peers were involved in the crucial steps we took to guarantee the Bill is the best that it can be to deliver this well-intentioned policy to support working parents. I look forward to continuing to work with him and other noble Lords as we produce regulations to make this policy a reality, and I welcome the important scrutiny I know they will provide.
Although we have not had an extensive discussion today on the quality of the entitlement and the workforce, I am thankful for the discussions I have had on these throughout the passage of the Bill, particularly with the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Childcare and I also thank all the officials in the Department for Education who have supported the passage of the Bill. Our particular thanks go to the excellent Bill managers who have so ably supported the Bill through both Houses: first Jenny Preece, then Katy Weeks.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, asked me to be a little clearer about what I meant by flexibility. She is always very suspicious and I am sure she thought that I was trying to use some mealy-mouthed words in that definition—I had hoped she would know me better by now. It covers all the things that she mentioned and others. It will of course depend on the particular needs in the area but it is meant in the widest sense: we are not trying any fastballs here. We believe that the funding we have come up with will be sufficient, including in terms of flexibility, but I note the quite technical points that she makes about the workings of this in relation to flexibility, as well as those made by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. I would be very happy to host a meeting when we have had feedback from the early implementers, particularly on this point, and to have further discussion about this. The points they raise are very important to making sure that this does actually work in practice.
As for the points made by the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Tyler, the summary given by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, was spot-on—it is delightful to see that the art of precis is still alive and well. As I have said, noble Lords will be involved in drafting the regulations in this regard. As to the money, £30 million has been announced for the eight areas mentioned to deliver the 30 hours of free childcare to 5,000 children from September 2016. Four of these, as I said, will focus on flexibility. In addition, we have announced £4 million to support an additional 25 local authorities in testing innovative approaches to flexibility. We agree and understand that balancing capacity and flexibility is complicated, which is why the Government have announced these issues today. I hope that the noble Baroness does not have to think very long and hard whether what I have said today and the assurances that have been given will enable her to withdraw her amendment to the Motion.
Baroness Pinnock
I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this amendment on a flexible approach to the childcare offer and I thank the Minister most sincerely for the important offer that he has outlined today, which will take us very much in the direction of travel that I hoped we could achieve. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.