Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord Avebury and Baroness Hussein-Ece

Monday 7th April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, I shall add a few words to this important debate. There cannot be many of us in your Lordships’ Chamber who have not been moved by the plight of these very vulnerable young people and children who have been treated so badly. We know the numbers are not huge; nevertheless they are significant. I welcome what the Government said earlier about introducing a pilot system of advocates. However, I do have a problem with how far this would go, having been a local authority councillor and a cabinet member with responsibility for child protection and for unaccompanied children who have often been trafficked. We know that this problem has been going on for many years—the status quo is simply not acceptable. We must act to protect these vulnerable young people.

As I understand it, an advocate is somebody who speaks on behalf of someone else, in this case the child. However, my worry is whether the advocate would have any legal responsibility in the way that a parent would, or, under the amendment, a guardian. The amendment gives the guardian some parental responsibility to act and take decisions in the best interests of the trafficked child, and to work across agencies. We know, as has already been said, how local authorities are stretched. Often a child will have three, four or five social workers in a year. That is not unusual. Very often, they simply get lost trying to navigate a very complex system.

The attraction of a guardian, which is so compelling in the amendment, is that this person would be required by the Secretary of State to take a far more official and statutory responsibility for individual young people and to act in their best interests. I hope that my noble friend will perhaps address this when he comes to respond. Would he be satisfied? Does he think that we should be satisfied that this six-month pilot scheme with advocates will go far enough to protect these very vulnerable children and young people? Otherwise, we would have to consider this very carefully in evaluation, and it may well be too late. What worries me is that we will have a six-month pilot period, followed by the evaluation, but all the time young people are falling between the cracks, going missing, not being picked up and not being protected. At the end of the day, that is what we want—for these children and young people to be protected as long as they are here in our care in this country.

[Lord Avebury (LD)]

My Lords, I will just pick up a point that my noble friend made about the difference in powers between the advocate on one side and the guardian on the other. The point was raised in the memorandum sent to us by the Refugee Children’s Consortium whether or not, without “legal powers”, there will be anyone,

“to instruct solicitors on a child’s behalf and ensure that decisions are made in their best interests”.

Would the advocate have those powers to instruct a solicitor on the child’s behalf? I take it that a guardian certainly would have those powers, which is an important difference between the two proposals that we now have before us.