Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I welcome these amendments and support them. I agree with the Minister about his Amendment 45: that is a better way to do it. It gives a certain amount of flexibility, which is clearly required because no one today can specify which organisations in 10 years’ time are likely to be involved. Affirmative regulations give us some safeguards.

Amendment 36 agreed.

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[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 37, 38, 41, 46 and 47.

These relatively minor refinements, through Amendments 38 and 47, to the terminology used provide greater specificity and focus to the clauses. The Government believe that this will more precisely clarify the overall purpose of the new local and national reviews. Clauses 12 and 20 refine and strengthen the description of the purpose of local and national reviews, to be conducted by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel and the safeguarding partners respectively. Amendments 38 and 47 provide more specific detail around what should be published following those reviews, where it might be inappropriate to publish the full review. The amended wording states that the purpose of a review should be to identify,

“improvements that should be made”,

rather than,

“to ascertain what lessons … can be learned”.

Amendment 37 relates to the national child safeguarding practice reviews, and requires the identification of improvements that the safeguarding partners should make to improve safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, following the review. Amendment 46 relates to the local child safeguarding practice reviews, and requires the identification of improvements that persons in the local area should make to improve safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, following the review.

We have listened to noble Lords’ comments in Committee, and heard consistently that reviews of incidents of serious harm to, or death of, children should focus on what can be done to reduce the chances that such incidents will be repeated. We therefore feel that it is necessary to step away from the broad language of “lessons learned”, which all too often has focused on what went wrong and who is to blame, rather than focusing on why things went wrong, and what can be improved to reduce these incidents in the future. Amendments 38 and 47 are linked to this.

In the unlikely event that it is deemed not to be appropriate to publish the full child safeguarding practice review following an incident, Clauses 12 and 16 require the panel and safeguarding partners for national and local reviews respectively to publish certain information about the case. Amendments 38 and 47 specify that the information published, in the absence of the full report, should relate to the,

“improvements that should be made”,

rather than the “lessons to be learned”.

Amendment 41 adds to new Section 16B(9), inserted by Clause 12, a definition of who the safeguarding partners are. This is necessary as Amendment 37 introduces the safeguarding partners into new Section 16B(2). I beg to move.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I think we should welcome this and thank the Minister for listening to what was said in Committee. I take it that in setting out an improvement agenda, which is to be welcomed, the Government will, of course, draw on lessons that will have been learned from cases that have gone wrong. As I understand it, these should be used in a non-punitive way, as much more a learning experience.

Amendment 37 agreed.

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, clearly there are huge constitutional issues around the independence of the judiciary and there would be a very strong view in your Lordships’ House of the need to protect at all costs that independence in the judgments they make. Equally, what we would like from the Minister is some assurance that, in the generality of judicial actions in this area, there is at least some work in relation to lessons to be learned. The change in the wording from “lessons learned” to “improvement” reinforces the case that the impact of judicial decisions must surely be considered as part of a general improvement agenda, without in any way seeking to interfere in the role of the judiciary and, of course, its judicial independence.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, for this amendment and for the important issue that he has raised. As noble Lords will recall, in Grand Committee he raised the role of the judiciary in serious cases involving children, with particular reference to the tragic case of Ellie Butler. I have since written to him further on this matter, as he said. Noble Lords will also recall that, in the Butler case, Ellie’s father had his conviction for grievous bodily harm in relation to injuries suffered by Ellie overturned by the Court of Appeal. Later, a finding of fact judgment, which took place as part of care proceedings, was also overturned. That led to the return of Ellie and her sibling to the care of her parents, a process overseen by an independent social work agency under instruction from the court, as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has said. Tragically, within a year of being returned to her parents, Ellie was murdered by her father.

No one can fail to have been moved by the circumstances of that case, and it is understandable that queries have been raised about the impact of judicial decisions in particular cases, and the role of the judiciary in the serious case review process more generally. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has mentioned, the judiciary is independent and, for constitutional reasons, it cannot and should not be held to account by the current serious case review process, or, in future, by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. This does not mean that there is no process for responding to decisions made by judges—which may be appealed at the time. Alternatively, if there is concern about a judge’s conduct, a complaint may be made to the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office.

I appreciate the noble Lord’s concern—which he has also put in writing to me— about the potential impact of judicial decision-making on the ability of local authorities to discharge their statutory functions. I agree that this may be a matter which reviews carried out on behalf of the panel could highlight. The noble Lord will appreciate that, through this Bill, it will be the role of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel to identify serious child safeguarding cases that raise issues which are complex or of national importance and to supervise the production and publication of reviews. The panel will certainly be concerned to make recommendations, through its reviews, as to what improvements should be made by safeguarding partners or others in respect of the safeguarding and welfare of children. Where such recommendations relate to, or could relate to, judicial practice, the Department for Education will continue to work closely with colleagues from the Ministry of Justice to communicate these recommendations to the judiciary, so that the judiciary can consider what, if any, impact there should be on judicial practice. Judicial practice does, of course, remain a matter for the judiciary itself.

It is not that the panel cannot review and make recommendations; it can. It just cannot direct the judiciary, although we will work with it to make sure that lessons are conveyed. Given the panel’s remit and concerns that have been expressed regarding the need for the panel to be independent of the Government, I do not feel that it would be appropriate to include guidance from the Secretary of State to the panel on this issue. The panel must be free to set its own terms of reference for individual reviews, and I would expect this to include consideration of how a local authority has discharged its safeguarding responsibilities under all circumstances—or if, indeed, it had had difficulty in discharging them for whatever reason. Indeed, this consideration would also apply to all other agencies and could be a significant finding in a review leading to improved practice across the country. However, as each case will be different, general guidance to address what will be a case-by-case consideration is not likely to be beneficial or practicable.

On whether independent social workers are regulated, I assure the noble Lord that all social workers are professionally regulated. In view of this, I hope that he will be reassured about the scope of the panel’s functions, including the need for the panel to be able to treat each situation on a case-by-case basis and make the recommendations it sees fit, and therefore will feel able to withdraw the amendment.