Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Tuesday 18th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I, like my noble friend, am very grateful for government Amendment 20, which we fully support. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and my noble friend Lady King spoke eloquently about children adopted from care outside England who are now resident in England, and on the need for educational equality. We, too, very much welcome the Minister’s intention to bring forward amendments in the other place. Obviously, they will come back to your Lordships’ House in the new year.

The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, made a very telling point about the particular challenges of looked-after children in custody. At heart, it is a question of whether the Minister’s department’s intention is consistent with that of the Ministry of Justice. It would be very helpful if, between now and Report, the Minister would enable some discussions to take place with the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, just to make sure that there is absolute consistency, because I very much take the point that he raised.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I join in welcoming government Amendment 20, which seems to fill an important loophole. In passing, as I did not have an opportunity in the previous grouping, I also thank the Minister for his previous amendments, which are important and which we raised in Committee. As is so often the case, the Minister listens and takes action, and I am grateful to him when he does so, as he did earlier and in this case.

Education and Adoption Bill

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his helpful reply. I found it very reassuring in terms of my particular concern about sponsors. I think that he was saying that most sponsors will already have a track record, and they will be the ones who are being looked at.

Perhaps he could say what proportion is likely to be coming in new to the field, and answer this example. Let us say I ticked all the boxes to become a sponsor for an academy, and seemed to be a very good person to do the job, but I thought that schools were places for work, not play, and that school playtime should be quite short. What would be the process to enlighten me that that is not the case or to weed me out and keep me away from the academy? How much influence might I have? I am thinking here of the story of an academy, which may be apocryphal, that was built without playgrounds for some reason, as somebody believed strongly that that should be the case.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that 28% of five to 15 year-olds are either overweight or obese? Is that not the point that he wishes to stress on this issue?

[The Earl of Listowel]

I thank the noble Lord for saying that. That is a very important point which, with his health background, he would raise. I am simply trying to give an example of a possible candidate and how he might be processed by the system. But from what I heard from the Minister just now I am very much reassured that most of these academy sponsors will be experienced and will have a track record, and we can have confidence in them because of that.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I shall speak also to my Amendment 34A. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, regrets not being present and would have liked to support these amendments—she spoke eloquently on these issues at Second Reading. Perhaps I may also say how good it is to see the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, in his place. When he was Education Minister many years ago taking through Parliament the Children (Leaving Care) Act, he listened to the concerns of noble Lords and extended protections for children.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

I should just correct the noble Earl: for some reason, they would never let me near the Department for Education. I took the Children (Leaving Care) Act through as a Health Minister. Of course, I well recall our debates, because the noble Earl eloquently and consistently raised the issue of the poor outcomes of children in care, and we were concerned about the transition from care into adulthood and about making sure that there was still a duty on local authorities to support. We made some progress but, alas, the figures speak for themselves as regards the outcome for children in care. That is why this issue of mental health is so important.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I could not agree more. If we are reflecting for a moment on the past, Governments have invested a huge amount of money and resource into young people in care, and perhaps that money might have been better spent if more thought had been given to ensuring that mental health was fully integrated with all the educational support that is given to young people in care.

Amendment 32A extends the ability of the Secretary of State to allocate functions and includes the provision of child and adolescent mental health services for children in the adoption system as well as an assessment of their mental health needs. I suppose that the Secretary of State might say of a charity such as the Brent Centre for Young People, “They do a very good job—maybe they should do it more widely, and maybe a certain local authority needs them to give it help in this particular area”.

Amendment 34A ensures that the quantity and quality of mental health support provided for in the adoption system will be maintained or improved by these steps to ensure that there is a movement forward, not backward, in any changes made. The headline I put to your Lordships is that, while this is quite narrowly focused on children in the adoption system, I hope that the Minister might allow me to make a plea for improved mental health support for young people coming into care. In particular and most important, currently, children who come into care have a health assessment by a GP, which is welcome. I will expand on this later, but they really need a mental health specialist or perhaps a clinical psychologist to give them an assessment that is focused on their mental health. Following on from that assessment, they need the services that follow to help them meet the need to recover from the trauma that many of them will have. Therefore, that is the headline I put to your Lordships: an appropriate clinical professional at the very beginning, the services to follow up, then ongoing monitoring to ensure that those services are being provided, as well as of the mental health of the young people. That would make a huge difference.

I am most grateful for the many measures that the Government have taken to improve the adoption system, in particular with the assistance of my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss with regard to the adoption support fund. I look forward to hearing from the Minister how that will apply to this particular area, and on accelerating the adoption process so that children get to a loving family more swiftly than in the past.

There are challenges. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, 60% of children who come into care have experience of neglect or abuse, and 45% have a mental disorder in care as against 10% of the general population. Therefore it is not surprising that they will have often experienced trauma in their lives before arriving into care. Being taken into care—being taken from one’s family—is a traumatic process in itself; then there may be further trauma as regards shift of placements in care. Therefore, there is a huge mental health element to the work that needs to be done here as well as the educational attainment, which is being better grasped for.

It is very welcome that the Children’s Minister, Edward Timpson MP, is well aware of these issues. His father has written on the issues of attachment in the past and, of course, Mr Timpson has siblings who are adopted. He is very sympathetic and has been meeting with the NSPCC and young people who have left care recently to discuss these particular issues. I commend him for paying such attention to this area.

Education and Adoption Bill

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

This is another puzzle because the terms of the agreement with Greater Manchester focus on growth in the economy and specifically mention the skills agenda. I have listened to the Government talk about the issue of skills—albeit at the same time as destroying further education, which of course is where most of these skills are taught; but we will leave that aside for the moment—and I am absolutely amazed because the argument they put forward is that while skills are crucially important, the role of schools is to make sure that, when they come out, young people are ready to go into the workplace; that is, those who do not go into higher or further education, if any is left when they reach the age when they move on from school.

Why on earth is education being taken out of this really exciting development? I am enthusiastic about what is happening in Greater Manchester, and potentially it is hugely exciting, but I just do not understand why education is being left out of it. This is but one example of how, when the Department for Education says that it is consistent with the localism agenda, it is, frankly, completely unbelievable.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I am sorry that I was not able to be present in Grand Committee last week, but I have read with interest the Committee report. Two things come to mind in relation to this debate. The first is that I am most grateful to the Minister for organising an extremely helpful meeting with head teachers and regional schools commissioners. At the meeting I raised a question about local accountability which followed from our debate at Second Reading. On the question of regional accountability, I put to a regional schools commissioner the case that while it is important to improve academic outcomes for young people, there may be a reason to override the local interest of parents in their schools. I hope that I am paraphrasing him correctly, but he said that it is really important to bring the local community with one, which seems to support the notion of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and others that if one is to have a successful school, one needs to bring the local community on board as far as possible.

The second point I want to raise is that, having read the Hansard report of the previous sitting, I am concerned by the Government’s focus on a very narrow assessment of education; that is, on academic attainment. Of course it is extremely important that our children should do well academically so that they leave school being able to read and write and are ready in terms of employment, and that is important to their parents as well, but as was made clear in that debate, children need a rounded education. Some children in particular benefit from an education which perhaps does not emphasise academic attainment so much but allows them to excel in sport and vocational attainment in other areas. My sense is that we need to allow some young people to fail and fail and fail again. Young people in care in particular may do poorly in terms of their academic attainment while they are at school, but many of them will do well in their early 20s or even their late 20s. If one puts great pressure on schools to ensure that all children do well academically, the risk is that those children who do not have so much academic capacity may be excluded, be given less attention, or to some degree will be seen as an inconvenience.

Perhaps that is an argument for giving local authorities and local bodies more influence over and supervision of what goes on in academies and elsewhere. The people in Manchester may think, “Well, in this area we have a particular interest in vocational success and we would like to see our schools equipping our children to enter apprenticeships”. I am probably not expressing myself well. I think that my chief concern arose when I read about the new pressures being put on head teachers to ensure that children do well academically because of the emphasis that the Government are placing on this. I worry about those children who may not have so much academic potential but do have potential in other ways. Perhaps the amendment that has been put forward will allay some of those concerns.

Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Tuesday 21st July 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, may I just remind your Lordships with this particular concern that health visitors have recently been put under the responsibility of local authorities, so this may be an opportunity to have a little test of how well local authorities manage health provision? I am sure that health visitors would be very grateful if your Lordships would keep a close eye on their development in the new circumstances, because we do not want to see a falling off, as we have seen in the past, in health visitor provision.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I start by echoing the noble and learned Lord’s comments about the co-operation that has clearly been evident during the passage of this Bill, and I hope that the noble Baroness might be prepared to accept the amendment. It may not be absolutely perfect, but of course the Government would have the opportunity of bringing amendments in the other place. I think that it is clear that the House would like the noble Baroness to do that.

It is clearly important that the NHS remains a national service, comprehensive and free at the point of use, where broadly we can get the same quality of service wherever we live in England. Equally, I think that most of us want the NHS to contribute to this new devolution world, and clearly the integration of health and local authority services offers much in itself.

Often, the NHS is the largest local employer in any local authority area, so it has an important contribution to make to the local economy. In my own city of Birmingham, the NHS is responsible for huge inward investment in R&D, and it will be the same in Greater Manchester and in other parts of the country—particularly where you combine medical schools, teaching hospitals, academic health science networks and the encouragement of local industry. One of the things that we all want to see is the NHS being prepared to invest in innovative new products and medicines that have been developed in the UK, which we have been slow to adopt generally.

What we are trying to do here is to take both the huge advantage that devolution gives us and the integration of health and local government but without undermining the essential, national nature of the NHS. Noble Lords have mentioned four areas where that is important. First, in the reconfiguration of services, we cannot have combined authorities getting in the way of the necessary centralisation of specialist and tertiary referral services. Secondly, when it comes to training doctors and nurses, the reason that we have seen a crisis in recruitment and high costs from agency nurses is that a decision was taken in 2010 to reduce training commissions; we have to have national planning and decisions about the number of doctors and nurses that we train. We cannot have local authorities opting out of their responsibilities in that regard.

The noble Earl mentioned health visitors, which is an excellent example of where there has been a transfer of responsibility of public health duties to local authorities. Those health visitors were given a guarantee that they would be employed when they went on their training courses, so we cannot have local authorities now saying, as some are doing, “We can no longer afford to employ you”. Those health visitors were given a guarantee, and as a national service we have to ensure that they are found a job.

What we need to do is ensure that the national characteristic and nature of the NHS—the national rules, the standards and, particularly important, the Secretary of State’s accountability to Parliament for the NHS—are retained in this new devolution package. That is what my noble friend Lord Warner is seeking to enshrine in statute: some clear safeguards that reflect those national characteristics. I hope that the Government will be prepared to accept his amendment.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

I return to my noble friend Lord Warner’s intervention. In the case that he mentioned, it was I who was summoned before the Health Select Committee to explain what we were going to do about the problem. We intervened and told the SHAs that they jolly well had to sort this out. I do not see, under the arrangement that he is proposing, who on earth is going to be able to intervene.

As the noble Lord, Lord Owen, suggested, I suspect that an intervention against Health Education England will be very rare indeed, in terms of being able to be comprehensively assured that HEE had failed in its duty. Indeed, there is surely a risk that if you have a narrow quango, such as HEE, solely concerned with education and training, it will not be concerned about resource issues or about the duty of the Secretary of State to promote or assure a comprehensive health service; only the Secretary of State himself can come to conclusions about the overall direction of the health service; only the Secretary of State can balance the conflicting demands of education, service provision and resources. There is a great danger of seeking to push all these responsibilities offshore, because when trouble comes—and trouble will come—it will be the Secretary of State whom the public and Parliament will expect to intervene. At the moment, I cannot see how, under this system, if things go wrong, they are to be put right.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I take the noble Lord’s point, but I also think of the case of the Youth Justice Board, which has been a very successful non-departmental body and has improved outcomes for young people in the criminal justice system significantly. There has been concern from the Secretary of State responsible for criminal justice about the accountability of the Youth Justice Board, which is shortly to be wound up—well, depending on the views of your Lordships. The virtue of the Youth Justice Board is that it is a great centre of expertise in the area of youth justice. Its chair and board have great experience: one member of the board is a judge in the youth court, another is the chief executive of a children’s charity. The point is that there is great virtue in distancing the Secretary of State to some degree—for instance, the education, perhaps, of health professionals—and giving it, if the board is chosen well, to people of the right calibre.

The other side of that is that sometimes the Secretary of State will intervene too often and detrimentally to the education of health professionals. In fact, vesting authority in a board which is well chosen and has the full support of health professionals and keeping the intervention of the Secretary of State to the minimum may ensure better continuity in the education and training of the workforce and better outcomes.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, surely there is a very great difference between the Youth Justice Board, the abolition of which is greatly to be regretted, and Health Education England. The Youth Justice Board has to embrace the whole of the responsibility for youth justice. What the noble Earl, Lord Howe, is suggesting with Health Education England is establishing a quango which will have a very narrow focus on education and training. The Youth Justice Board is concerned with that, but is also concerned with the provision of custodial places within our prison system. That is very different.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I thank the noble Lord. I can see the difference and I thank him for that helpful correction.

Academies Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, it is a remarkable testimony to the drawing powers of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, on local government that at 11.08 in the evening, so many noble Lords are present to hear him speak. I should say that when he addressed these matters in Committee, it was also at a late hour. He has raised issues that are of great substance, and I hope that he might be tempted to bring an amendment back at Third Reading when we could have a proper debate about the role of local government in relation to education in prime time.

I believe that local authorities could have a positive role in the future. I read with interest the briefing produced by the Local Government Association, and they could have a useful and constructive role to play, post this Bill, in relation to academies. We had a good debate on SEN where I could see the positive role for local government. I come back to the Minister’s earlier comment that there is a clear tension in all these debates between wanting to let schools have much greater freedom, which many of us sign up to, and the risk that that involves. The Minister said that if you trust people, there will be times when things go wrong, and I think that that is right. The problem the Government face is that unless they have a local mechanism in place for dealing with these issues, they will come right back to Ministers. However much they set up other agencies or say, “It is nothing to do with us, it is a matter for individual schools”, I can tell him that in the end they will come back to Ministers. In that context, local authorities could play a constructive role and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, might allow us to have a wider debate on this next week.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I agree with the thrust of what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has said. He referred back—as did the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath—to our debate on the necessary expensive services to children with special educational needs and the need for a strategic commissioning of such services. There could be an important role for local authorities in that area in future. Like the noble Lord, I would encourage the Minister to set up some kind of forum with the local authority so that there is an ongoing communication with it. Each local authority will have a councillor responsible for the welfare of children within its area; why could there not be informal meetings in which new academies are introduced to such people? This would enable the doors of communication to be kept open?

As my noble friend Lady Howarth made clear, if we want children to succeed at school, we need to make sure that their welfare is catered for. It is important that social services work in partnership with schools. I am sorry to repeat it one more time, but head teachers keep on telling me about the value of social workers when they are connected with a school; or, if they do not have a social worker, how much they would like one attached to their school. It is important to keep these matters in mind and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for making this debate possible.

Academies Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I support the thrust of these amendments, which are about the concern that, under the new pattern of arrangements, funding for essential services to schools will be depleted. This morning, at a meeting on child protection, the head teacher of a large secondary school in north London said that he would like to have a social work team attached to his school because it would make the world of difference. But he cannot get access to that resource. I have heard of other schools with similar resources, which they find extremely beneficial. It would simply take the strain off teachers who could pass that responsibility to social workers who have the relevant expertise and know-how to connect with the necessary services for the child. I hope that in this process we do not lose the push towards proper partnership with all the services which are working to improve the protection and safeguarding of children.

At the same meeting, the director for quality management of Ofsted said that his research at Ofsted indicated that a very important factor in improving the protection of children is seeing that there is a close partnership between schools, social care and all the services, including health, in the area. It is not just about tackling the problem when children are clearly in need. It is about ensuring that the mainstream services are thoroughly connected together and are all working in partnership to promote the welfare of children.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, this has been a short, interesting debate. I too support the amendments moved by the noble Baroness. In relation to funding, three issues have been raised today and in our previous discussions. First, there is a need for much greater clarity about how these financial arrangements will work. Secondly, there is the question of equity between schools. Thirdly, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, suggested, there is a question of whether there will be sufficient resources for the kind of special services that some schools will require.

On clarity, very shortly before our debate today, I received the model funding agreement, as I am sure other noble Lords did. While it is always welcome to receive the funding agreement, in the short time available we have not been able to study it carefully. It therefore would not be amiss to have an opportunity to come back at Third Reading after we have had time consider it more fully. It is helpful to us in these debates.

I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Hill, will be aware of paragraph 17 of the model funding agreement, which relates to pupils. It starts with the statement:

“The Academy will be an all ability inclusive school”.

Which of these provisions would apply to those grammar schools which select their pupils and choose to become an academy? To what extent does this model funding agreement apply to those schools? In terms of equity, it is very important that we know the answer.

My second point as regards equity goes back to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. We have been told:

“Funding of academies will be broadly comparable with that of maintained schools, taking into account their additional responsibilities. While converting to academy status will give schools additional freedoms, those who opt to stay within local authority control will not be financially disadvantaged”.

That is a welcome statement of intent. But, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has pointed out, there is some concern within educational circles that this may not prove to be the outcome following publication of the ready reckoner and the technical note. I am not going to bore the House by going into the details of the ready reckoner, but it is a point that the noble Lord may wish to come back to.

In Committee we discussed the different approach of the seven-year arrangement with schools, and those are the arrangements that are likely to apply to free schools. The noble Lord said then that there would need to be, in a sense, a get-out clause if for one reason or another it was shown that a free school was perhaps not able to handle the funding arrangements or there were problems which meant that the Secretary of State would not want to get himself into a long-term commitment. I understand that, but it identifies a problem with the whole process of approving free schools by this route. It suggests that the Government are not confident that they will have a rigorous process in place, and that is why they are unwilling to agree to the seven-year commitment. For that reason, I strongly support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness.

Finally, I come back to the whole question of clarity. I believe that we need further clarity because these financial arrangements are complex and it is important that all schools feel that the system is fair and equitable. Further, I would remind the noble Lord of the suggestion made by my noble friend Lord Adonis that there is a case for having some kind of independent process of assessment and reporting on the overall scheme for funding academies. I know that the noble Lord has put forward his proposal for how that is to be done, but my noble friend’s suggestion of an organisation like the National Audit Office, one that stands well outside the educational establishment, would command greater confidence. Overall, however, this debate has shown that much more remains to be discussed in relation to the financial consequences of this legislation, and I for one hope that the noble Baroness might press her amendment today.

Academies Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Monday 28th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I support the thrust of the noble Baroness’s amendments. Having visited several nurseries in the course of the Childcare Bill and followed the debates about the early years foundation stage, I believe that it is vital to have good-quality early years care. There is a real challenge in achieving that in this country; we start so far behind the Scandinavians. We have not had a strategy until recently in this area. Many of those working in it are poorly educated and poorly paid young women, and there is often a very high turnover of staff. The settings in schools may be different to that general picture, but I ask noble Lords to put themselves into the shoes of a three year-old being cared for by a woman who then goes—then another one comes and goes, and another one comes. That is a very black picture. I am sure that it is not generally the case, but there is that danger.

The early years foundation stage really helps in setting out clearly what the expectation should be and what these children should receive. In particular, every child in the nursery should have a key person. That should be the person who makes the relationship with the parent of the child and follows that child, changes the nappies and looks after that child. Others will have to take their place from time to time but, rather than the child being passed around from person to person, there is someone there with a particular special relationship with that child. That is an easy thing to lose if there are lots of poorly trained and poorly supported people and there is a high turnover of staff. Given the vulnerability of the children and the challenges to the sector, I would appreciate the reassurance of the Minister that this clear framework for practice in this area will be applied to those children in future.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I lend my support to these amendments, which I know at this stage are probing. I am very proud of the achievements of the last Government in relation to the under-fives and I acknowledge the kind remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. However, the fact is that millions of children have had a better start to life thanks to the considerable investment in free nursery education for all three to four year-olds and the creation of so many Sure Start children’s centres. My concern, which is shared by the Early Childhood Forum and others, is that it would appear that the authors of the Bill have given little thought to its effects on three to five year-olds.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, asked a number of very important questions including about the risk of removing academies from the inspection framework for the under-fives, the issues around welfare and safeguarding and the loophole over reregistration. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, put his finger on some of the important workforce challenges that this sector faces, including issues about the lack of experience of many staff working in the sector. That is why it is so important to maintain the integrity of the early years foundation stage. I hope that the Minister can reassure us that his department has thought very carefully about these matters around early years. If not, perhaps he can give us some hope that there will continue to be national safeguards and infrastructure to ensure that attention is given to the points raised by noble Lords. This is an important matter and we will come back to it on Report if we are not satisfied that it will be dealt with effectively.