Safeguarding of Young Children

Lord McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am sure that the noble Lord’s suggestion may be part of the solution, but to expect any single thing to resolve these difficult and complex problems will not be sufficient, hence the more comprehensive approach that we are taking.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, when I became a Minister with some of these responsibilities more than a decade ago, my noble friend Lady Walmsley gave me two pieces of advice. First, she said, “Always remember that social workers do not murder children, although they sometimes get the opprobrium when something wrong happens.” The other piece of advice was that the interest of the child comes first.

With that as a background, last year, Emily Dugan, the social affairs correspondent at the Sunday Times, ran a series of articles about mistakes being made through either misdiagnosis or misinformation where children were taken away from families with traumatic results. Will the report that we are expecting on Thursday cover this element, because it causes problems for the families affected and puts additional burdens on social workers instead of concentrating on the children in real danger?