Children and Families Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, in the context of a debate such as this, it is as challenging and as important as ever to hear the thoughts and insights of the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock.

Some of us have had the opportunity to visit a young offender institution or to visit a court in which young people stand before the magistrates. I am sure that all of us have had the opportunity to look at street corners in our own community and the young people gathered there. If we had then gone on to talk to those young people, it would have been clear that it would be a miracle if those young people were not in trouble.

Of course, it is important to reflect on our responsibility as a society. The Government set great store by the concept of the big society but we cannot have it both ways. If we are talking about a big society, we are talking about the responsibility of society as a whole. When we see failure and delinquency, it is a failure of society, not just of the youngsters or their immediate families. We all need to remember that.

How far are the matters that we are considering this evening related to the whole value system of our society? Are mutual support and caring, as distinct from succeeding and achieving, given sufficient weight in the values of our society? How far does our educational system reflect that? What is clear is that if there is any work to be done by young people at risk, long-term, lasting relationships in the different areas in which that work is carried out are terribly important. Just to be pushed from one person to another in the system compounds the damage.

I often reflect on the fact that, in the interesting life that I have been able to live, I have never seen any structure or any legislation achieve anything. Good structures and good legislation underpin what should be happening with the reinforcing of the law. What matters are the values, personalities and skills of the people within the system and, indeed, their motivation. I have sometimes seen quite antiquated structures where very exciting things are happening because the people are highly motivated. I have seen perfected structures where nothing is happening because the whole thing is dead in terms of real commitment and inspiration.

A point that has been made well by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, is that we are dealing with a matrix situation. We cannot possibly expect the Department for Education and our schools to handle these issues on our behalf successfully alone. As the all-party parliamentary group has pointed out so well, it is important that all departments work together—the Department for Education, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department of Health, the National Health Service and Public Health England, the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office, and the UK Border Agency—about which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester made some very important points. Furthermore, there must be flexibility, because from time to time other departments of government will become highly relevant, including the Ministry of Defence—for example, what happens to young recruits to the armed services? There has to be an effective operational matrix in matters of this kind.

If this is to succeed, it is terribly important that civil society is involved. Civil society must be involved all along the line. We all received extremely well drafted, very powerful briefings from a range of organisations, not simply the ones that are best known—the National Children’s Bureau, the NSPCC, Barnardo’s, UNICEF UK, the Children’s Society and so on—but all sorts of other specialist groups. What characterises them is the dedication, the commitment and, usually, the calibre of the people working in these organisations and what they have to share.

I am not baiting the Government but merely encouraging them, within the context of their own commitments, to think through the implications of their commitments. If we are talking about the big society, I would like to be reassured that these real players out there in the front line are being properly and consistently consulted about the evolution of policy. I know that quite a number of them still have big concerns and anxieties about the Bill. I will make a specific recommendation to the Minister. Between now and the autumn, when we carry this Bill forward, all those organisations—and if he is not sure which they are, I am very happy to respond to any inquiry from his officials about what names I have in mind—should be consulted about their specific anxieties as things still stand. The Government have an opportunity not just to adjust in the face of opposition, in the formal political sense, but to amend legislation if necessary in the light of the crucial importance of the insight of the front-line players in civil society.

We know, in the mean time, that there are key issues arising, including health provision in schools; arrangements for the disabled and for those with different degrees of dyslexia; transition for the physically disabled and psychologically vulnerable from school to university; education for life—personal, social, health and economic—and, I would argue, citizenship, because of the importance of the young being able to see the distinction between citizenship and passive consumerism; and the ability to ask the questions that should be answered and not simply to tick boxes.

The UK played a significant part in the development of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and we gained tremendous international esteem from the role that we played. The world therefore watches us and our performance, and we have to be on our guard. Again, I specifically suggest to the Minister—and the all-party parliamentary group comes to the same conclusion in its excellent report—that it is high time that, in making decisions affecting children, the rights of individual children, whoever they are, from wherever they come, should always be paramount. As the right reverend Prelate reminded us, this applies every bit as much to immigration and refugees as it does to any longer-term established residents in this country.