Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Lord Nash Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Warner (Non-Afl)
Will the Minister think about a very simple question? If you take powers to bring things up to national level and away from local level, I suggest that you then have an obligation to monitor what happens to the output from that new national body and to account yourself for whether anything has been implemented. Can the Minister explain to the Committee a little more about how that aspect of all this is going to work?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, in this group Amendments 105, 107, 108, 109, 109A and 110 concern places of detention, serious child safeguarding cases and serious harm. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Baroness Walmsley, for these amendments. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Watson, for his very encouraging opening remarks—but I understand that the new Prime Minister will not be in No. 10 until Wednesday evening, so noble Lords will probably have to put up with us at least until then.
Before I turn to these amendments, I confirm that I would be delighted to convene a meeting to give noble Lords more detail on the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. A meeting was specifically requested at our last Committee session by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, but the invitation obviously extends to all noble Lords.
I will begin with Amendments 105, 107 and 110 concerning places of detention. I had hoped that I had reassured noble Lords about the independence of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel at the end of the last Committee sitting—particularly the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, who raised these concerns. As I said then, the establishment of a strong, independently operating national panel is essential. Because of its independence, the panel will have the autonomy to use its judgment about the circumstances in which it deems it necessary to carry out a national review, although we intend to provide guidance that will aid its decision-making in this regard. I assure the noble Lord that we will take particular care to reflect on the importance of children held in detention, and to consider carefully the ways in which the guidance for the panel reflects not just the deaths of children, but children who have been abused or neglected.
The existing 2015 statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children, sets out that a serious case review should always be carried out when a child dies in custody, in police custody, on remand or following sentencing in a young offender institution, a secure training centre or a secure children’s home. The same applies where a child dies who was detained under the Mental Health Act. We will want to consider carefully how any new guidance produced for the panel takes this into account, bearing in mind the panel’s basic functions of the panel.
On Amendment 109A, I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, that anyone may notify the panel of serious events in institutional settings, or indeed of such events in any place. Clause 13, as drafted, deals with requirements on local authorities but does not prevent others making direct notifications. In respect of the proposal to add a specific reference to guidance, I assure the noble Lord that Clause 12 already provides for the panel to have regard to any guidance issued by the Secretary of State in respect of its functions, and Clause 13 provides the same in respect of local authorities’ duty to notify. We will make it clear that others may notify the panel of events directly.
I now turn to Amendments 108 and 109. Amendment 108 seeks to add to the definition of serious child safeguarding cases by including specific reference to cases where physical injuries or harm are caused by unlawful or abusive restraint in any institutional setting. Amendment 109 seeks to broaden the scope of the definition of serious harm to include both ill treatment and the impairment of physical health. I agree entirely with the premise behind the amendments. However, inevitably, any such definitions cannot be exhaustive and include all circumstances, or cover all settings within which children might suffer injury or harm.
The definition in Clause 12 of serious child safeguarding cases includes reference to children who have been seriously harmed. This is based on the definition set out in the current safeguarding statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children, which was drawn up following consultation last year. The definition of serious harm includes the factors stated in subsection (9). The wording proposed is not intended to cover all scenarios. Great consideration was given to the factors to be included in the definition of both serious child safeguarding cases and serious harm for the purposes of the clause. It will be for the panel to consider each case in line with these definitions to identify serious child safeguarding cases and determine what form of review is required. We expect that to include cases where factors such as those outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, are a feature.
Clause 12 sets out the functions of the new panel. The panel will identify serious child safeguarding cases in England that raise issues that are complex or of national importance. The purpose of any such review will be to ascertain how practice by local authorities or others to safeguard children can be improved as a result of learning from the cases. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, that this is about improvements in practice that can be disseminated nationally, not about the blame or public censure of individuals. Any disciplining of individuals will be done through the usual employment processes where they are working, or with reference to professional bodies, if needed. Reports on serious cases should not name individuals, whether they are professionals, children or family members. Writing reports in a way that ensures individuals are not named has been a long-standing convention in serious case reviews, and this should continue under the new arrangements. I assure the noble Baroness that the guidance will make this point absolutely clear.
As for her point about Amendment 114, we will come to it in detail in two groups’ time.
Baroness Meacher
I am aware that this practice has gone on—you have anonymity, and so on—yet somehow the media or national politicians get the names of the front-line people and their lives are wrecked. Therefore, there needs to be very clear separation of those matters that remain local and do not find their way up to the national panel, national politicians and the rest of it, most particularly the media. I hope that the Minister would be able at least to reflect on that or perhaps give us some reassurance. As for keeping anonymity, the media know jolly well how to find out people’s names—they crawl around, as the Minister well knows. We need procedures and practices that make very clear the single objective of the national panel—to learn lessons and disseminate—and that it does not need all the information about an individual. Somehow, a wall needs to be created to safeguard those people, otherwise we will not have front-line staff.
Lord Nash
I will reflect and look into that in more detail. Once it is in the public domain that a particular instance is being investigated, knowing the media, however much you try to protect an individual’s identity, I cannot see quite how one can do it—but I will certainly look at it. The noble Baroness raises a very important point which we are aware of.
I should add that the Government have now responded to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, in answer to some of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Watson. The response confirmed the Government’s intention to bring forward an amendment at a later stage to modify the provisions to ensure that the arrangements to which the clause refers be subject to affirmative parliamentary scrutiny.
Lord Nash
Yes is the answer.
Clause 13 requires local authorities to notify the panel of events in their area where a child has died or suffered serious harm and is known or suspected to have suffered abuse or neglect. The clause will place the process of notifying such events to the panel on a statutory footing for the first time, demonstrating the importance that the Government attach to this process and leaving no room for doubt as to whether to report an incident.
If this part of the process is not made a statutory duty on local authorities, there is a risk that some events may not be notified, thereby reducing the likelihood of events being scrutinised and action taken to reduce the likelihood of such an event taking place in future. The DPRRC also commented on this clause in its report. The Government’s response to the report confirms an intention to look again at the definition of regulated setting, as well as agreeing that any future amendments to the definition should be by the affirmative procedure. We intend to return to this matter at a later stage.
The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, asked about the importance of taking into account local issues. The panel will make its decision on the basis of information from local areas. It will include the probation service in the list of relevant agencies. We will come shortly to a set of government amendments that respond directly to Alan Wood’s recommendations on local accountability. If I may, I will cover the rest of her points then.
She also asked a very good question, supported by my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay, about how learning will be implemented. Our whole reform to social work and the point of the national panel is to improve implementation. Our new What Works centre for children’s social care will have a key role in disseminating learning and making sure that it is acted upon. As under current arrangements, local safeguarding will be expected to report on practice improvements identified through the reviews and on action taken in response.
My noble and learned friend Lord Mackay commented on the guidance. I will not talk about guidance in general, but we have significantly reduced the statutory guidance on child protection in the past five years, and we keep it constantly under review. I hope that the explanation of Clauses 12 and 13 provides reassurance about the Government’s intentions, and I therefore urge the noble Lord and the noble Baroness not to press their amendments.
“( ) The Panel may enforce the duty under subsection (2) against the person or body by making an application to the High Court or the county court for an injunction.”
Lord Nash
My Lords, I will speak to this amendment, which enables a request for information by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel to be enforced. It is essential that the panel is able to request information to enable it to perform, or assist it in performing, its functions. This may also include normally privileged information, which is frequently an integral part of what has to be considered as part of the review process. This is already set out in Clause 14.
This amendment enables the panel to apply to the court for an injunction, should a person or body refuse to comply with a request by the panel for information. In the case of normally privileged information, the panel will consider the reasons for that. It may ask the person or body to justify any refusal, but may ultimately compel that information to be provided. As previously discussed, however, this provision would not apply to the judiciary, whose independence is a constitutional matter.
The Wood review highlighted the critical importance of effective and speedy sharing of information and data in relation to protecting and safeguarding children. This clause will underline the importance of sharing relevant information with the panel, backed up with the power of enforcement. I beg to move.
Lord Warner
My Lords, we had a good go over the issue of the judiciary on our last Committee day. The Minister slid very quickly over this particular issue in his remarks—namely, that judges are exempt. Can he pray in aid what the provisions are that stop a review panel looking at the conduct of a judge? We spent a lot of time on the case of Ellie Butler, but that was clearly a case where the practice of the judge could be called into question—not just on the individual circumstances but on the systems issue of whether the judge could actually replace social workers who had been protecting the child for some period and bring into being a new review of the child’s circumstances by a set of private social workers, for whom the child was a new client. That is a systems issue; it is not just about the judgment of the judge but about a piece of practice that seems to me to be at least arguable. Why, in that set of circumstances, should the judiciary be exempt from review by this panel?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I have just picked up the debate we had in Grand Committee on 6 July, when the noble Lord, Lord Warner, raised the issue of legal and medical privilege. Then the noble Lord said he did not think that anything needed to be added to the Bill, although he recognised that guidance would need to be given to the panel in respect of the information it requests.
I assume that there will now be a considerable time between Committee and Report. I understand that this is a very complex matter. The question of the independence of the judiciary is clearly paramount; equally, my noble friend has made an important point about the need for the panels to obtain relevant information. So, rather than a quick letter, I hope that the Minister will agree to consider this important matter in some depth.
“Local arrangements for safeguarding and promoting welfare of children
After section 16D of the Children Act 2004 (inserted by section 14 of this Act) insert—“Safeguarding partners for local authority areas16E Local arrangements for safeguarding and promoting welfare of children(1) The safeguarding partners for a local authority area in England must make arrangements for—(a) the safeguarding partners, and(b) any relevant agencies that they consider appropriate,to work together in exercising their functions, so far as the functions are exercised for the purpose of safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children in the area.(2) The arrangements must include arrangements for the safeguarding partners to work together to identify and respond to the needs of children in the area.(3) In this section—“relevant agency”, in relation to a local authority area in England, means a person who—(a) is specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State, and(b) exercises functions in that area in relation to children;“safeguarding partner”, in relation to a local authority area in England, means—(a) the local authority;(b) a clinical commissioning group for an area any part of which falls within the local authority area;(c) the chief officer of police for a police area any part of which falls within the local authority area.””
Lord Nash
My Lords, I would like to speak at some length to Amendments 113 to 120, and I will include Amendments 133 and 134 as they are related but purely technical amendments.
Amendment 113 is central to the new arrangements. It requires the safeguarding partners, namely the local authority, chief officer of police and clinical commissioning groups to work together, along with the agencies they consider to be appropriate, to make arrangements to exercise their functions to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in the area. These safeguarding partners must also make arrangements to identify and respond to the needs of children in the area.
In May this year, the Government published the Wood review into the role and functions of LSCBs. This review, through extensive consultation, identified the key role of local authorities, police and health services in the safeguarding and welfare of children. The review found that without the agreement and full collaboration of these three bodies, the strategic decisions necessary to underpin effective practice cannot be taken. The new clause gives these key safeguarding partners the flexibility to determine which other relevant agencies they need to work with, and to decide how they can work together most effectively to identify and respond to the needs of children in their local area.
The new clause will allow the Secretary of State to specify in regulations the agencies which exercise functions in relation to children. This will, of course, include relevant agencies such as schools, youth offending and justice agencies and a range of others which exercise functions in relation to the welfare of children. The key change here compared with existing arrangements is that local areas would decide which agencies to involve and in what ways, rather than having a list imposed on them by central government. We intend that statutory guidance will specify that the safeguarding partners will be expected to consult locally before making the arrangements.
Evidence suggests that too many local safeguarding children boards are currently ineffectual and that significant reform is required. The Wood review found that the organisational boundaries between local authorities, police and health services too often act as a barrier to effective multiagency working. This provision would place upon these three key safeguarding partners an equal responsibility to work together. It will enable their vital contributions towards the safeguarding and promotion of the welfare of children to be better co-ordinated and deployed, and reduce the duplication of existing work. It will provide greater flexibility for local areas to arrange their services according to local assessment and agreement.
Amendment 114 sets out the requirement on safeguarding partners within a local authority area to carry out local child safeguarding practice reviews. This proposed new clause links closely to Clauses 11 to 14, which set up the independent Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel and a system of national reviews, and sets out a requirement for the safeguarding partners to make arrangements for local reviews. Most reviews into serious cases will take place at local level. Safeguarding partners will identify serious child safeguarding cases which raise issues of importance for that area and supervise the review of the cases as they so determine. The primary focus of such reviews will be on how practice by local authorities or other local bodies can be improved as a result of the case. If the safeguarding partners identify a serious child safeguarding case which they think may raise issues that are complex or of national importance, or where it becomes apparent that a case raises such issues, they will be free to refer it to the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
I shall add one more question to those posed by this very important set of amendments about how to improve local arrangements and have more effective multiagency safeguarding. I can think of nothing more important than that this works.
When I looked again at Alan Wood’s very interesting report, I saw two sentences that so far have not been picked up in this debate. They read:
“I would also add that national government departments do not do enough to model effective partnership working between themselves for local agencies. The join up demanded of local partners is not particularly evident at national level”.
For the new arrangements to work, and it is critical that they do, it is vital that government departments are modelling more effective collaboration in the area of safeguarding. I would be grateful to the Minister if, when he responds, he could tell us what steps government departments are taking nationally to model this behaviour.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I am grateful for this debate. On the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, local arrangements may include elected representatives but this is a matter for local determination. On her second point, Amendment 113 gives the safeguarding partners flexibility to determine who the other relevant agencies are but, having determined that, those relevant agencies have to co-operate.
On the publication of annual reports, my answer says that this enables public scrutiny as it is transparent. As for the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about how local areas organise themselves—the noble Baroness also asked about flexibility on the areas to align operational reach—I can confirm that the local authority area will be the key area and accountability will be to the local authority. It is designed to ensure flexibility within that structure but, to answer the noble Lord’s point, there is no hidden agenda. We are concerned here purely with the matter of improving child safeguarding.
The noble Baroness asked about monitoring progress and reviews. I already covered some of that in my answers about the What Works centre for children’s social care. The duty remains for local arrangements to report on their practice and action taken in response. The second question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, was who the safeguarding partner will designate as a relevant agency so that it can keep track of what is going on. I will certainly look at that. His third question was about Amendment 119 and whether the guidance will be statutory. It will.
The noble Lord, Lord Warner, made a point about Amendment 116 and a common identifier and whether we could not use the NHS identifier. Obviously, we want this to work well. That is an entirely new point to me; I will take it back and look at it in some detail.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, as we are in Committee I say to the Minister that the latest report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has miraculously reached me and that it comments on his Amendments 113 and 115. It refers to two instances where the committee considers that the delegated power conferred in the amendments is inappropriate. I do not expect him to respond today, clearly, but I hope that between now and Report he will give that some attention.
Lord Nash
We are considering that report and we will respond in due course. On the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, about national government departments modelling effective collaboration, we are indeed taking considerable steps to work together effectively, in particular with the Home Office and the Department of Health. In view of what I have said, I hope noble Lords will support the amendment.
Baroness Pinnock
In response to my question about local elected representation, the Minister said that that ability was currently there. Yes it is, but as observer status. If there is to be an opportunity to challenge it, the membership of that board needs to be on the same level. An observer status puts the individual in a much lesser category of importance on that body. In order to have elected challenge on the panel, they ought to be full members of the board.
“Local child safeguarding practice reviews
After section 16E of the Children Act 2004 (inserted by section (Local arrangements for safeguarding and promoting welfare of children) of this Act) insert—“16F Local child safeguarding practice reviews(1) The safeguarding partners for a local authority area in England must make arrangements in accordance with this section—(a) to identify serious child safeguarding cases which raise issues of importance in relation to the area, and(b) for those cases to be reviewed under the supervision of the safeguarding partners, where they consider it appropriate.(2) The purpose of a review under subsection (1)(b) is to ascertain what (if any) lessons can be learned from the case about the way in which persons in the area should work to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.(3) Where a case is reviewed under the supervision of the safeguarding partners, they must—(a) ensure that the reviewer provides a report on the outcome of the review;(b) ensure—(i) that the reviewer makes satisfactory progress, and(ii) that the report is of satisfactory quality;(c) provide the report to the Secretary of State and the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel.(4) The safeguarding partners must publish the report, unless they consider it inappropriate to do so.(5) If the safeguarding partners consider it inappropriate to publish the report, they must publish any information relating to the lessons to be learned from the case that they consider it appropriate to publish.(6) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about—(a) criteria to be taken into account by the safeguarding partners in determining whether serious child safeguarding cases raise issues of importance in relation to the area;(b) the appointment or removal of a reviewer by the safeguarding partners, including provision for a reviewer to be appointed by the safeguarding partners from a list provided by the Secretary of State;(c) the time when a report is to be provided to the Secretary of State or the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel, or published;(d) the procedure for a review;(e) the form and content of a report.(7) In this section “reviewer” means any one or more persons appointed to review a case under the supervision of the safeguarding partners for a local authority area.””
“Information
After section 16M of the Children Act 2004 (inserted by section (Child death reviews) of this Act) insert—“16N Information (1) Any of the child death review partners for a local authority area in England may, for the purpose of enabling or assisting the performance of functions conferred by section 16M, request a person or body to provide information specified in the request to—(a) the child death review partner or any other child death review partner for the area, or(b) another person or body.(2) The person or body to whom a request under this section is made must comply with the request.(3) The child death review partner that made the request may enforce the duty under subsection (2) against the person or body by making an application to the High Court or the county court for an injunction.(4) The information may be used by the person or body to whom it is provided only for the purpose mentioned in subsection (1).””
“Abolition of Local Safeguarding Children Boards
(1) Omit sections 13 to 16 of the Children Act 2004 (Local Safeguarding Children Boards).(2) In Schedule 1 to the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970 (social services functions of local authorities), in the entry relating to the Children Act 2004—(a) for “13 to 16” substitute “16A to 16Q”;(b) omit “targets for”;(c) omit “, and to Local Safeguarding Children Boards”.”
Lord Nash
This new clause is purely technical, but fulfils some important functions. Subsection (1) means that the existing provision for LSCBs, as set out in Sections 13 to 16 of the Children Act 2004, will be repealed. Local authorities will no longer be required to establish LSCBs. Instead, they will work with chief constables and clinical commissioning groups to set out Working Together arrangements, as specified in amendments to the Bill that we have previously discussed.
Subsection (2) amends the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970 to redefine social services functions by removing the reference to LSCBs and including provisions in relation to joint working arrangements in child death reviews that are the subject of amendments to the Bill. Where the term “social services functions” is used in legislation in respect of local authorities, the arrangements which these amendments provide for will be included. This is consistent with existing provisions for local authority functions relating to LSCBs.
An example of the importance of this provision is the Secretary of State’s intervention powers where local authorities are failing properly to fulfil any of their social services functions. The amendment means that should local authorities fail to fulfil their functions as set out in Sections 16A to 16Q of the revised Children Act 2004, the Secretary of State will be able to issue a suitable statutory direction. I should stress that this provision relates only to local authority functions. It does not cover any failures by clinical commissioning groups or chief constables in these arrangements. Existing provisions for intervention—sitting elsewhere—already cover other such failures. I beg to move.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, the Minister said that this is a technical amendment. Yes, it is, but the introduction of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel will see the disappearance of local accountability for the most serious child abuse. The current process has an independent chair appointed by a national panel of experts, who are themselves independent. That means that local knowledge is retained, because representations can be made by those who are involved with the child and indeed the family, and, importantly, those who have an understanding of local characteristics. If the local safeguarding children boards are scrapped, how can the Minister reassure us that the local input will not be lost?
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville
I will also speak to Amendment 126. I believe the relationship between what is currently the local safeguarding board and the national one is very clearly understood, with clear roles and responsibilities for each. My county council’s view, from experience, is that safeguarding absolutely must be owned by the local agencies that are responsible on the ground for improving safeguarding. The national safeguarding panel should therefore have a role in understanding local issues. I am concerned that, if the intention is to centralise at the national level, the national panel might not have the capacity or the local knowledge and experience to review and intervene in a timely way. I agree entirely with the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Watson.
Lord Nash
On the points that have just been made, I thought we had discussed them at considerable length two groups ago. In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, I said that the panel is perfectly free to have elected representatives on it, as distinct from the current situation with LSCBs. They would not have to be co-opted, but can be full members of the panel. We have also made it clear, as we have discussed in some detail, that the panel can involve relevant agencies as it sees fit. As the whole point is to improve the analysis of what happens at local level, I feel that we have covered this issue. If the noble Lord or the noble Baroness thinks that we have not done so, I am happy to write to them with more details.
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, I concur with all the concerns that have been expressed so far about Clause 15. It is not that any of us are against innovation per se, but we are concerned about the proposed non-limits to the innovation.
At the heart of this clause is a dichotomy. On the one hand, children’s social work is probably the most regulated of all public services and has the most legislation surrounding its practice. On the other hand, if we take the clause at face value, it appears to allow any innovation within those regulations to be set aside. I asked civil servants what the criteria are for innovative practice, what the boundaries for it are and whether anything is off the table. The answer was that there are to be no limits. I found that quite disturbing. It is not as though we are dealing with anything mechanical here; we are dealing with the most troubled and vulnerable children in our society, who deserve our protection. What we need to try to achieve is set out in the Putting Children First report, which offers a blend of innovation and protection that works.
I have not yet understood how, on the one hand, Leeds City Council, which has been referred to in earlier debate on the Bill, has been enabled to innovate without difficulty—I know that it has been allowed to set aside some regulations, without the need for this clause, and has been successful in doing so—yet on the other, Doncaster Council, which sadly have a long history of inadequate children’s services, has not achieved much improvement despite all the efforts that have been put into it. The answer is that it is not so much legislation and regulation that is the problem, but having the support of key professionals—making sure that we have highly trained, effective and good leaders in social care, who can make a difference. That is what the report, on which I guess that many of the clauses in the Bill are based, says. Can the Minister tell us: is anything off the table as regards innovation, or is protection of children coming first?
Lord Nash
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 129, 130, 131, 131A, 131B and 132, in this group regarding the power to test new ways of working. I thank noble Lords for tabling these amendments to the clause, providing me with an opportunity to explain its purpose and operation in more detail. In short, this is purely to improve the provision of services to children.
Before I go into detail, I would like to return quickly to our discussion about profit of last week. I could not help reflecting that I might be the only noble Lord present who has spent most of his life, until recently, proudly in pursuit of profit. That fact may itself raise wider issues, but I say again that we have no intention of revisiting the settled position on profit-making in children’s social care or of using Clause 15 to circumvent that position. I gave that assurance at Second Reading and do so again now. The policy paper Putting Children First, published last week, makes the same commitment and the Minister for Children and Families reiterated the point in his speech to the Association of Directors of Children’s Services last week. I hope that that makes things absolutely clear.
At the heart of this power to test new ways of working is the intention to achieve better outcomes for children and young people. This unwavering focus is at the very core of the department’s agenda to drive innovation and improvement. More significantly, the push to remove procedural barriers to better ways of working is in direct response to what local authorities are telling us young people are saying to them. They want things done differently.
The Government’s £200 million children’s social care innovation programme has enabled local authorities to develop and test new ways of working, but in some aspects of provision this has reached the limits of what is possible under current children’s social care legislation. This power responds to the sector’s appetite to go further by allowing it greater flexibility to support young people in the most effective way. A number of noble Lords referred to examples of good innovation, some of which have been pointed out by Ofsted. They referred particularly to Leeds, one of our partner in practice local authorities, which has told us that it is proud of the innovation it has achieved so far within the current framework—but it is also keen to go further for children and families in its area. It cannot do that without this provision.
This power is about creating a safe mechanism to test new ways of working to improve outcomes for children.
Lord Warner
I really must help to reinforce this message to the Minister, because from what he has said so far he does not seem to get it. What we need, in writing, are the primary and secondary legislation blockages that are stopping innovation and why in those cases you cannot use the Secretary of State’s power of direction or an amendment to the statutory guidance. That is the issue, and he has not come anywhere near tackling that proposition.
Lord Nash
I heard the noble Lord the first time. I have not got very far but if I am allowed to continue I shall get to it. This power is about creating a safe mechanism to test new ways of working to improve outcomes for children. It creates a controlled, time-limited space to test new ideas. It is not about eroding children’s rights or removing the basic duties of local authorities to safeguard children. The power is not about questioning the fundamentals of what local authorities need to do, but about exploring how things could be done better.
I will try some more illustrations. I do not suppose they will get me very far but since I have more to say, perhaps people could bear with me. I shall illustrate this point with two examples. First, it is felt that on some occasions applying the full gamut of care-leaver regulations associated with children on remand, who automatically become looked-after when in custody, is not always the best option for those children. Local authorities are interested in developing a service that better responds to their needs, informed by the young person, which, where a local authority can make a professional decision, would ensure better and informed choices without an unwanted service automatically being triggered by legislation. A real-life example of that was given to us by one of our partner in practice local authorities. In this instance, the young person was returning to live with their grandmother. Applying the burdens and processes associated with looked-after children placements unnecessarily overcomplicated matters for both the authority and, most importantly, the young person and their family.
Secondly, as I highlighted at Second Reading, there is a widespread view that adoption and fostering panels do not always add value, and can often delay the process of approving prospective carers. These panels are only advisory, with the ultimate decision resting with the local authority. Local authorities explain that they think they could get to the same decision quicker without the panel in some circumstances. The freedom likely to be requested would be to remove the requirement always to have the panel in place for all cases, and for the agency decision-maker, who currently makes the decision, to continue to exercise their professional judgment. In straightforward cases, the decision would be made quicker to allow the best solution to be progressed faster so that children get the support they need. I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said about the concerns that Coram has in this respect, and we will be very happy to talk to Coram about its concerns in some detail.
I will speak to other examples as I go through my response to the amendments. In turn, the department will look to evaluate the use of the power so that we understand the impact, where there is a case for permanent changes to the legislative framework—changes that would of course come back for further scrutiny to this House.
I turn to Amendment 129, clarifying the purpose of this power to innovate. I agree that a focus on improved outcomes for children and young people is key. However, the drafting of the clauses already makes clear that the power is focused on outcomes for children and young people. Clause 15(1) refers to children’s social care legislation. The Children Act 1989 and its associated legislation is designed with the outcomes for children and young people at its core. By referencing children’s social care legislation explicitly, it is clear that the clause is directed at outcomes for children and young people.
On Amendments 130 and 131, I agree that the Bill should not lead to any changes that adversely affect the rights of children or lead to the withdrawal of support or services that they depend on. The whole point of these clauses is to allow local authorities to do things better. We do not propose to put an independent review panel in place. However, there will be a variety of safeguards in place to ensure that the power is not misused and that all applications are subject to very robust consideration before they are approved.
In particular, I draw noble Lords’ attention to the requirements both on the local authority to consult its safeguarding partners and relevant agencies and on the Secretary of State to consult Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills and the Children’s Commissioner. Of course, representing the views of children and young people is a key part of the Children’s Commissioner’s role, and Ofsted will also need to consider its functions of promoting the best interests of children when consulted on the use of the power. It is also important to note that any changes to primary legislation will be debated in both Houses, which in many ways constitutes the independent reviewing process that these amendments seek. In answer to the point on consultation with children in care and their representatives made by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, I agree that the voice of the child should be recognised when requested freedoms are being considered.
While I am not proposing to accept the amendment, I would like to provide reassurance that children are at the core of this provision. In most cases, we would expect local authorities to have consulted children affected by any change and in fact many of the possible changes that local authorities have discussed with us originate from requests from children, as I have already said. For example, in the case of independent reviewing officers, children have fed back to our partner in practice authorities that they do not like additional people who they do not know to be present at their case reviews discussing intimate information. More specifically, in the case of North Yorkshire, just over 400 children and young people are looked after. The vast majority are very settled and achieving well. Older young people in this position tell the authority that they find regular formal reviews unsettling and that they would like to be treated like their non-looked-after peers. There is then a much smaller number, on average 20, who are not currently settled and require regular in-depth reviews. This is one area in which a request for use of the power to innovate may well be made to make more effective use of the experienced cohort of independent officers.
The noble Lord, Lord Watson, talked about the risk assessment of exemptions. I agree that it is vital that we consider this carefully before any exemptions are agreed. We will need to do that, looking at the merits of each application from the local authority, when bringing forward regulations under Clause 15. Noble Lords may know that in responding to the DPRRC report I committed to bring forward an amendment to ensure that all regulations will be accompanied by a report setting out anticipated benefits and the protections to be put in place by local authorities to mitigate risks. That, combined with the other safeguards that we have in place, means that risk will be assessed and managed.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, raised a point about how local authorities would be chosen. I would expect any local authority that wants to apply for an exemption to demonstrate strong leadership and either strong performance or a clear trajectory of improvement consistent with the approach that it wants to test. Ultimately, the Secretary of State will not take forward any requests if she has concerns about the local authority’s ability to implement the change safely or to learn from the testing and share its insights with the wider sector. That is why I anticipate that the first application will be from our partner in practice authorities—a group of 11 of the best-performing children’s services in the country.
The noble Lord, Lord Warner, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, raised points about Professor Eileen Munro and what she wanted. She said:
“I welcome the introduction of the power to innovate set out in the Children and Social Work Bill. This is a critical part of the journey set out in my independent review of child protection towards a child welfare system that reflects the complexity and diversity of children’s needs”.
I am delighted that so many noble Lords have referred to excellent examples of innovation by various local authorities, but of course just because some innovation is taking place without changes to legislation does not mean that others will be able to innovate without making such changes. Of the examples that we have been discussing with local authorities, all need exemptions from secondary and in some cases primary legislation. I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, setting out what primary and secondary legislation blockages are in place before Report.
To answer the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, there are no limits to what can be requested; the Secretary of State is concerned about the impact on children, and if she thinks it is appropriate, it will proceed.
However, in view of noble Lords’ concerns and suspicions about our motivation, the best way forward—in addition to writing to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, and sharing that letter with all Peers—is to have what I suggested. I hope that all noble Lords who are interested will come to a meeting with a number of local authorities and individuals where they can explain in detail why they need this power, and noble Lords who feel that they can achieve the same objective without using it can talk about that. We can have a detailed, granular discussion about specific examples, rather than a high-level discussion, which is always, in my view, rather dangerous. I commit to organising that, and I hope that all noble Lords will attend.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down— I thank him for his response—is not the requirement really to have a meeting with parliamentary counsel to see how Clause 15(2) can be redrafted in such a way that it is clear that the kind of change that the noble Lord wishes to make is essentially small-scale and minor? The problem is that, although he has made that commitment from the Dispatch Box, none the less, this is such a huge power. It is not the issues, it is the way it is drafted. Surely there must be a different way to draft a power that allows for certain discretion in the circumstances he describes without seeming to exempt the whole of social care legislation. I suggest that parliamentary counsel might have a role to play.
Lord Nash
I think it would be much better to make that analysis when we have had the sort of meeting I am talking about and we have more visibility on particular examples.
Amendment 121A, tabled by the noble Earl, deals with support and safeguards where the power is used. I briefly return to my previous point that the power is about creating a controlled mechanism for testing, strengthening and improving the current system. It is not about removing basic rights that are essential to improving outcomes.
I give another example to illustrate the use of the power. Local authorities tell us that a carer who is either a family member or friend is often thought to be the best placement option for a child in care, but the requirement that they become an approved foster carer after a 16-week grace period can be difficult to achieve, especially where family and friends have no real desire to be local authority-approved foster carers generally. We discussed in Committee last week the important role that grandparents can play. This is exactly the sort of area where use of the power could make better use of the strengths they bring.
Exemption from this requirement could mean local authorities being able to place a child with the person to whom they have the greatest attachment. There could still be an option for the carer to become an approved foster carer if they wish, but the exemption would give flexibility for the carer and a better chance of achieving the most suitable option for the child being selected.
Returning to the amendment, requiring a local authority to reinstate existing processes and procedures upon individual request would considerably weaken a local authority’s ability to assess the effect of the power. As outlined in my example above, however, there is nothing to stop a local authority offering this level of service if it was in the best interest of the child. Let me reassure noble Lords that exemptions will be granted only for a time-limited period because the local authority and the Secretary of State are persuaded the new approach holds out the likelihood that the child or children can be better served in a different way.
In order to test and evaluate exemptions properly, I feel it is right that local authorities should not be subject to an infinite range of requirements in respect of different children, but can use their professional judgment in response to the child’s request. I remind noble Lords that if regulations made under the power are not found to have had the desired effect, they can be revoked swiftly using the negative resolution procedure. In addition, authorities are and will be subject to the usual Ofsted inspections and will be monitored via the department to evaluate and create an evidence base of what works.
I recognise that Amendment 131B reflects the recommendations of the DPRRC. I am happy to say that in my response to the Committee last week I signalled my intention to make amendments to achieve the same effect. In view of that, I hope that the noble Lord will feel reassured enough not to press his amendment at this time and will support our amendment at Report.
Finally, I turn to Amendment 132 and the interaction between this power and the corporate parenting principles. There are numerous broad, overarching duties on local authorities in children’s social care legislation in different Acts of Parliament. The corporate parenting principles are an example of such an overarching duty. Our conversations with local authorities have not been focused on these overarching duties. They want to focus on how they could change the way of working to allow their children’s social care staff to focus more on children and families themselves, not on changing their overall objectives. Specifically to exclude an overarching duty such as corporate parenting would beg the question as to why it had been singled out. Excluding some but not others could give rise to the same question. Equally, excluding all overarching duties from the many pieces of primary legislation in the area of children’s social care would make the clause unnecessarily complex.
““relevant agency”, in relation to a local authority area, has the meaning given by section 16E(3) of the Children Act 2004;“safeguarding partner”, in relation to a local authority area, has the meaning given by section 16E(3) of the Children Act 2004;”
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Dubs for bringing forward this amendment. The standard of debate has been high and I do not want to add too much more to it. The experience of my noble friend Lord Dubs in this matter—most recently on the Immigration Bill—is well documented and hugely appreciated. When unaccompanied children come to this country, however they arrive here, and try to fend for themselves, it is fraught with all sorts of dangers. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, has just talked about children at school but many of these children never reach school because they are kept in an environment where they are exploited; they are not educated or made into good citizens. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, made a point about a two-tier society, and that should resonate with us.
My noble friend Lord Judd, in talking about the action plan, spoke of setting the tone, but I would put that tone into a wider setting. One or two noble Lords referred to the events of a couple of weeks ago which were described as—it is a description that I would subscribe to—pulling up the drawbridge on the world to some extent, and that is the way it is viewed. Britain’s reputation has plummeted and has been matched only, it would seem, by the value of the pound in the last two or three weeks. We need to look at positive ways of showing that that is not all we are about.
I was profoundly depressed to read a report at lunchtime by a man called Mark Hamilton, who leads for the National Police Chiefs’ Council. He was reporting on an unprecedented spike in hate crime in the country within the last three weeks, directly related to the vote on 23 June. If we have an opportunity to show that we can do different and more positive things and that, despite the impression we have given, we are outward looking and welcoming as a country, then small measures can build into larger things. I think that this amendment is one of those acorns that may grow into something much more substantial.
I wish my noble friend Lord Dubs well in his meeting with Mr Brokenshire. I hope that the Minister will go to that meeting as well so that a way can be found of accommodating this amendment. It is important not just for the framework of this Bill and not just for the individuals concerned but potentially for the way that we are perceived as we approach difficult situations and respond to tragedies in other parts of the world. For that reason, I very much hope that a positive outcome for the amendment will be found, because it certainly deserves it.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, for his amendment. I recognise that it seeks to safeguard and promote the welfare of this vulnerable group, and I assure him that I appreciate the sentiment and good will behind it. I also appreciate the strength of feeling in this Committee about the plight of unaccompanied minors who seek refuge in the UK, as illustrated by the contributions to the debate by other noble Lords, and I share those feelings.
The amendment seeks to ensure clarity on the action that will be taken and the support that will be offered to local authorities looking after unaccompanied children. Under the Children Act 1989, unaccompanied children become looked-after children once they have been accommodated for 24 hours. They will then have their welfare promoted in the same way as any other looked-after child. I emphasise that their country of origin and the circumstances under which they arrived in the UK will have no bearing on the support that these children are entitled to.
The number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children has risen significantly in recent years. In 2015 we saw a 56% increase in the number of unaccompanied children claiming asylum in the UK. However, as noble Lords have pointed out, until now the majority of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children have been cared for by a handful of local authorities. This has placed a considerable strain on their children’s social care services, which sometimes has been to the detriment of local children for whom the local authority has corporate parental responsibility. That is why the Government on 1 July launched a new voluntary transfer scheme that encourages all local authorities to participate in the care and support of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who arrive in the UK.
The National Transfer Scheme was created after extensive consultation with the Local Government Association, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services and individual local authorities. The scheme is based on the principle that no local authority should be expected to care for more unaccompanied children than its services are able to provide for—whether asylum-seeking children, as the majority will be, or unaccompanied refugee children brought to the UK through our resettlement scheme.
The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, raised the point about funding. To support the National Transfer Scheme the Government have increased the amount of funding that they will provide to local authorities caring for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. Annual support for each child aged under 16 has risen from £35,000 to £42,000, and each unaccompanied asylum-seeking child aged 16 or 17 will attract £33,000 per annum. This represents a 20% and 28% increase in funding respectively.
Because we are increasing the number of local authorities that look after unaccompanied children, these children will be better able to access services such as mental health and other healthcare services, and local authorities will have more capacity to deliver excellent social work support and care. Local authorities will also be able to prepare themselves and commission the new services that are required, such as appropriate accommodation.
The National Transfer Scheme includes a rigorous administrative process by which the Home Office and the local authority in which the child first presents are able to collect information about each child and then ensure that the local authority receiving the child receives all that information. The scheme seeks to build on existing regional structures and use the regional strategic migration partnerships to co-ordinate regional hubs and enable the regional pooling of knowledge and resource.
A central administrative hub based in the Home Office will work with the regional hubs to ensure a nationally co-ordinated but regionally implemented scheme. Funding that might be provided to the regional hubs via the regional strategic migration partnerships is currently under review, while each region is considering its own data, process and resource requirements. The Home Office will consider any proposals for regional structures to underpin the scheme. Service providers are being encouraged to contact the regional hubs to share their expertise. We know that some regions are already discussing how to pool resources and share expertise.
In addition, two training initiatives are under way. I can announce today that the Department for Education will commission an organisation to deliver training for the foster carers and support workers of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who are at risk of going missing from care due to being onward-trafficked. That is a new provision. In collaboration with the Department for Education, the Home Office has already said that it will commission a training programme for the existing independent advocates, who are provided for in statute. This will improve their awareness and understanding of the specific needs of trafficked children and how to support them.
Noble Lords will appreciate that a great deal is happening in this area to promote better support, and the details are laid out in the scheme. While the support and care of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children is undoubtedly an important issue, I do not believe that a published national action plan for their welfare is required, given all that is happening under the National Transfer Scheme.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, asked about the Children’s Champion. The Office of the Children’s Champion will remain in the Home Office to ensure that all children’s safeguarding issues are addressed and attended to. In addition, the Children’s Commissioner in the Department for Education speaks on behalf of this group of children.
The noble Lord, Lord Judd, asked about asylum applications. It is always open to a person to make an application for asylum. There is no age barrier and as soon as an asylum application is lodged, it will always be considered.
The Government remain committed to ensuring that Parliament is kept informed about these issues. No one should be in any doubt of our commitment to bring vulnerable refugee children from Europe to the UK, as underpinned by the Immigration Act 2016. Unaccompanied refugee children with family connections to the UK continue to arrive from France and other European countries. We are also in active discussions with the UNHCR, UNICEF, NGOs and the Italian, Greek and French Governments to strengthen and speed up the mechanisms to identify, assess and transfer to the UK children who meet the criteria where it is in their best interests. This is in addition to the support for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who arrive from Europe without any assistance. Last year, there were over 3,000 claims for asylum in the UK from unaccompanied children.
I will reflect on the points that noble Lords have made and that will no doubt be discussed in the meetings with Mr Brokenshire. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, will feel reassured enough to withdraw the amendment.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Lord Nash Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 89, 90 and 90A which seek to amend Clause 8. Before I do so it may be helpful if I take a moment to set out the intention behind Clause 8. It seeks to improve decision-making about child placements and to improve the information that is put before courts in care proceedings. It is about making sure that children’s long term-needs are at the forefront of decision-makers’ minds when significant decisions are made about where the child should live. Under current legislation, when deciding whether to make a care order, courts must consider the local authority’s long-term plan for the upbringing of a child. Clause 8 asks courts, when doing this, to consider the individual needs of the child now and, crucially, in the future, particularly in the light of any abuse or neglect they have experienced, and to consider how well the proposed care placement will meet those needs. The intention is to ensure that children receive placements which will meet their needs throughout their childhood.
I turn to Amendment 89, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Watson of Invergowrie and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. Every child deserves a loving and stable family. For those children who cannot live with their birth parents, it is vital that we find them permanent new homes as quickly as possible. Often, the best place will be with kinship carers or foster carers, and that is why we remain committed to improving those routes to permanence. The Government are pro adoption because it is a strong, permanent option for many children which provides them with the support and care they need throughout their lives. However, we also support other forms of permanence. Indeed, the Bill includes measures to improve educational support for children who leave care through a special guardianship order or child arrangements order, and the clause we are discussing will improve decision-making for all permanent options, which I think we would all agree is a good thing.
I recognise the intention behind the amendment, which is to ensure that all placement orders are given equal consideration. However, the amendment would duplicate wording that is already set out elsewhere, in the Children Act 1989. Section 22C of the 1989 Act and accompanying statutory guidance sets out clearly how looked-after children are to be accommodated by local authorities. This includes placements with family members, foster placements and placements in children’s homes. We have no evidence that local authorities and courts are not clear about what placement options they need to consider during care proceedings, so the amendment would add nothing to the current legislation.
Amendment 90, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, proposes additional wording for Clause 8 to ensure that courts take into account the wishes and feelings of the child when deciding whether to make a care order. I am sure that no one questions the need for the child’s voice to be heard by the court charged with making important decisions about them. It is absolutely crucial that a child’s wishes and feelings should play a significant role in any decision-making about their upbringing. However, I want to reassure the noble Baroness and others that this principle is already captured in existing legislation.
On the point raised by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, Section 22F of the 1989 Act states that in making any decision in relation to the child, the local authority should give due consideration to the child’s wishes and feelings, having regard to that child’s age and understanding.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
I apologise to the Minister, but that is in Part 3 of the Bill, which deals with the accommodation of children who are not children in care. The point about the amendment is that this provision should be included where the parent is also the local authority. The local authority has parental responsibility under Part 4, which it does not have under Part 3, when it is looking at the care plan. Authorities do not look back at Part 3 when dealing with Part 4. I suggest to the Minister that he is not being entirely legally accurate about this.
Lord Nash
In view of that suggestion, I will not attempt even to get to that ball, let alone try to hit it back over the net. I will have the appropriate conversations and write to the noble and learned Baroness. We will certainly get our minds clear on this point.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady King, for Amendment 90A, which seeks to place a specific duty on local authorities and NHS mental health services to support the needs identified in children’s care plans. Where children are in the care of a local authority, as the corporate parent it is under a specific duty to both assess and meet all their support needs. The Department for Education and the Department of Health have issued joint statutory guidance on the planning, commissioning and delivery of health services for looked-after children. It aims to ensure that these children have access to any physical or mental healthcare they may need. Statutory guidance is issued by law so both local authorities and health authorities must follow it unless there is a good reason not to do so.
We are also working with the Department of Health and NHS England to develop a mental health care pathway for looked-after and formerly looked-after children. The expert working group on the mental health of looked-after and adopted children will look at the needs of parents and what interventions can be applied to improve outcomes for the whole family. This would include adopted children. All clinical commissioning groups have had to set out how they will implement the CAMHS review, Future in Mind, and improve support for adoptive children. Given the reassurances and the undertaking to discuss some of the points further, and given that the intentions behind these amendments are already largely captured in legislation, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, will withdraw his amendment and the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady King, will not press theirs.
Lord Warner
Will the Minister clarify the position of social enterprise companies which often have to make a surplus or a profit, depending on where you come from? The Minister and I have been having a flourishing series of exchanges through Written Questions and Answers on what happens when Ofsted regards children’s services as inadequate. The outgoing Prime Minister seems to think that two strikes and you are out is a good idea. I have been asking the Minister for a lot of information about the cost of setting up these trusts, which are quite considerable, and what the Government’s policy on this is. The Government’s policy, most recently exemplified in relation to Birmingham, seems to be that where there are two inadequate reports from Ofsted the local authority could well be required to put its services into what is sometimes called a voluntary trust. On further, closer inspection, a voluntary trust can also be a social enterprise company, and social enterprise companies need to generate surpluses or profits in order to invest in continuing improvements in the services they are running. Since Ofsted has said that one-quarter of children’s social care services are inadequate, will the Minister clarify where this agenda is going? Does it mean that in five or six years’ time we will see a very large number of local authorities’ children’s social care services placed under contract with a number of bodies separate from the local authority, with the local authority still held accountable? Those separate entities, I understand from the Answers I have been receiving, could include all social care services, including child protection. Where are the Government taking this agenda? Have they thought through their position on surpluses or profits from the kinds of organisations that would be under contract with local authorities in which Ofsted determined that social services were inadequate?
Lord Nash
My Lords, I spoke to this issue at Second Reading. It is an important question to clarify, and I am very grateful to noble Lords for the chance to return to it so that I can be crystal clear. We are not seeking in this Bill to revisit the established position on profit-making. That is not our intention. There has, of course, been a mixed market in children’s social care for many years, and local authority children’s services regularly work with private and third sector organisations—for example in the provision of foster care and residential care. The Children and Young Persons Act 2008 allowed local authorities to take this relationship further by contracting with these partners for the full discharge of their functions relating to looked-after children and young people.
Noble Lords will remember debating regulations in 2014 to widen the range of functions that a local authority could delegate in this manner to cover other children’s social care functions, notably child protection. The Children and Young Persons Act 2008 (Relevant Care Functions) (England) Regulations 2014 explicitly ruled out profit-making from this wider set of functions. Nothing is more important than the safety and well-being of children, and we are committed to supporting professionals in finding new and more effective approaches to improving outcomes for the vulnerable young people in their care. In recent years that has involved promoting new models of delivery, but we have absolutely no intention of revisiting the position on profit-making settled by Parliament two years ago. I reassure noble Lords that any change to the 2014 regulations would need to be by the affirmative route.
As the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, we will revisit the innovation clauses next week, but I will say again now that we have no intention of using Clause 15 to allow the existing position to be circumvented. In our conversations with local authorities, there has been no discussion of using Clause 15 to allow profit-making. This is not what we are seeking to do with that clause. I think noble Lords were reassured when we showed them the examples of innovations and they understood a bit more what this was all about. I hope that further examples will help clarify the position.
The noble Lord, Lord Warner, referred to the depressing situation in Birmingham. He slightly lost me on the concept of profit, because obviously organisations such as charities or local authorities are often trying to generate a surplus in order to reinvest. I do not think it is very helpful in this debate to wander into that, but I hope that when we give further examples of how the clause on innovation will be used, noble Lords will be reassured.
Lord Warner
Can I challenge the Minister on this? I would agree that there is a world of difference when it comes to a private company, which is perhaps going to make profits to distribute to its shareholders. That is one set of circumstances, but we then start to move down a series of alternatives. I cited the example of a social enterprise company, which is a body corporate and is entitled to make surpluses. They are not called profits, but it is taking income out of the local authority and building a surplus in an organisation which is not a public body. That must have some effect on the extent to which the resources devoted by the local authority to that social enterprise are available for services in any one given year. How big can those surpluses get before they have an impact on the volume of services that can be delivered? The Minister is trying to brush this away. I am not trying to score points, but the noble Lord, Lord Watson, has raised an important issue. You cannot just say that these are not distributed-profit companies—these companies can build up surpluses which could have an impact on the revenue that is available in any one financial year for the provision of services.
Lord Nash
I will reflect further on what the noble Lord has said. What we are trying to do in these situations is make sure that where services have been provided badly—in the case we are talking about, they clearly were—they are provided better by alternative suppliers. I will reflect further on the point he makes and come back to him on it, but in view of the reassurance I have given to noble Lords that we have no intention of revisiting our position on this, I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am very glad to wind up for the Opposition and speak in this short debate. As the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said, there are sound reasons why out-of-area placements may occur, but they present real challenges, not least the inconsistency of approach between different local authorities and this particular problem about a multiagency response.
The noble Earl raised the issue of vulnerability to trafficking, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, brought unaccompanied asylum seekers into consideration. I have already referred to my own concerns about the role of the National Health Service. We know that mental health services, especially child and adolescent mental health services, are inadequate and that many disturbed young people are being sent a long way from home.
The Minister in a previous debate referred to an agreement, or work, between his department and the Department of Health in establishing the care pathway. That is to be welcomed, but I would like to hear more about how he is going to make it grip when it comes to children who are being placed out of area and a long way from their homes. Has the Minister’s department had an opportunity to see how the Welsh protocol is working in Wales and whether there would be an opportunity to build on the good practice that has been developed there?
Lord Nash
I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for this amendment and for raising the very important issue of children being placed at a distance from their home authority.
I recognise that the amendment seeks to improve safeguards and access to services for children placed outside their home authority. I reassure your Lordships that there are already significant safeguards in place that ensure children are placed out of area only when it is in their best interests and, importantly, that appropriate agencies are notified. Most crucially in relation to this amendment, local authorities are already required to notify the host local authority and health services when making out-of-area placements under Regulation 13 of the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010. This also requires the host local authority to be given a copy of their assessment of needs and care plan. Much of the information this amendment seeks to have included in out-of-area placement notifications is already legislated for, because the care plan already contains it or it is in statutory guidance. We have issued guidance that contains a model notification for out-of-area placements to help guide authorities, which includes the key information about the child. Personal education plans should identify any statement of educational needs or any education, health and care plan. Placement plans must include details of how welfare will be promoted and safeguarded.
I note noble Lords’ desire to ensure the police are made aware of children placed in their area and given their care plans so that they can help support these vulnerable children. We have already amended the regulations so the police can access the addresses of children’s homes in their area, enabling them to form positive relationships with children’s homes and to be more aware of children placed from other areas. I again sympathise with the intent behind providing the police with children’s care plans, but these plans contain deeply personal information, and children in care have, as part of previous government consultations, expressed concern about police access to less sensitive information. Children absolutely need to be protected, but this must be balanced with protecting their privacy.
We shall consider the Wales protocol and how it could be helpful to local authorities in England. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, raised the point of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children being placed out of area. They will be looked-after children under the Children Act, and so will be subject to the existing duties placed on local authorities in that Act and under the care planning regulations. The local authority must therefore give notification when a child is placed out of area. In view of the strong safeguards and notification requirements already in place regarding out-of-area placements, I hope that the noble Earl will feel reassured enough to withdraw the amendment.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham for adding his name to this amendment and to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, for his support. I am also grateful to the Minister for his careful reply, which I will examine with care but to a large extent find reassuring. It is good to be reminded of the important steps the Government have taken in recent years to protect children placed out of their local authority area better. He refers to the fact that there is now a duty for police forces to be told of the whereabouts of children’s homes in their area, which is an important step forward.
However, as I think the Minister appreciates, there is still considerable concern about the numbers of children being placed outside their own local authority’s care. In March 2015, 37% were placed outside their local authority. Clearly, these are more vulnerable children, and it might be helpful to look at some examples of good practice to reinforce the improvements the Government have made so far. For instance, the Children’s Society has an example from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority which the Government might wish to look at, and I will send the Minister information on that. I am grateful to him for agreeing to look at the Wales protocol and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady King, for raising the issue of adopters being exempt from the policy that child tax credit and the child element of universal credit will be limited to two children from April next year, and for her moving speech. I assure her that, in relation to her expectation of me, the feeling is entirely mutual. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Warner, for their comments.
I am very glad that the noble Baroness, Lady King, mentioned the experience of my colleague, Minister Timpson. I put on record the achievements of his mother, who sadly died relatively recently, in fostering over 80 children. I am very happy to be stalked by her; I think that I would probably prefer that than to be stalked by the noble Lord, Lord Warner—no offence. I am very interested in the point that she makes about the income background of people who foster and adopt. I would be delighted to meet, discuss and understand the issues further. I know that Minister Timpson has been having discussions with the DWP—it is that department’s responsibility. But, of course, I would be happy to discuss this further and take it up with the DWP. I hope that against that background the noble Baroness feels able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness King of Bow
I am sincerely moved by all my colleagues who came in behind me. It means so much to me, and I thank them. I am very grateful to the Minister for his sympathetic response. I feel a duty to explain to some of my colleagues that in October I shall be taking leave of absence from this House. I would not for a second want anyone to say, “Where the hell did she disappear to?” after this discussion. Without a shadow of a doubt, this will be brought back again; I shall table it again at Report. I hope that my friends—all of you are my friends at this moment—will be able to maintain the argument, as I feel so passionately that it is important. The argument is about the illogicality of it, which I am sure that the Government do not intend. The important point made by so many is about the cost; it is so much more expensive for us to have the state taking the role that those low-income foster families are willing to take when they adopt. On the basis that the Minister has been very responsive, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I shall add a couple of words to the excellent introduction by the right reverend Prelate. His argument about the need to collect statistics to look at the relationship between poverty, child abuse and neglect is very persuasive. The Minister will know that local authorities have now been given responsibility for public health. Each local authority employs a director of public health and the practice—I think it may be a requirement—is for the director of public health to produce an annual report on, essentially, the health statistics of the people living in the local authority area identifying the problem areas and weak spots to drive the public health policy of the local authority. It strikes me that to poverty, child abuse and neglect, you can add health and well-being. One practical way through might be to add to the responsibilities of the director of public heath a duty to produce consistent, uniform statistics throughout the country. It would also mean that the local authority response would not be in relation to just one sector but would be a more general response. I suspect that if one were to look at the statistics in relation to health outcomes, one would find that many of the families to which the right reverend Prelate referred would also be affected by those health issues. A holistic response is probably required here.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for raising this important issue. High-quality data are crucial at both national and local level. They can inform the development of government policy, help us to understand how the system is working, help us to support and challenge local areas and facilitate local learning. At local level, high-quality data can ensure that children’s needs are identified early, resources are targeted appropriately, services are commissioned effectively, risk is managed well and the right support is put in place for children and their families. I assure noble Lords that we are looking at ways in which we can improve the quality of the data we collect.
Noble Lords may be aware that following Professor Eileen Munro’s 2011 review of child protection in England, the Government produced a children’s safeguarding performance information framework to help professionals get the most out of the range of data available nationally and locally. We are also taking steps to improve the national children in need census data collection. For example, last year, for the first time, we published factors identified by social workers in assessments of children, exactly the sort of issue raised by the World Health Organization’s report. Indeed, the World Health Organization suggested that a cost-effective way of implementing its recommendations would be to include key questions in existing or planned surveys. The Department for Education will shortly be running its first children’s services omnibus survey. This biannual survey will allow us to gather a range of useful information from local authorities. The questionnaire is still in development, but we intend to ask local areas about how they analyse demands for services locally, which should include using socioeconomic factors. We know that many local areas are making great strides in their data analytic capabilities. Noble Lords may be interested to look at the Association of Directors of Children’s Services’ Pillars & Foundations report.
We continue to work across government to align collections, better join up different collections and make use of technological advances to collect data in real time. However, we do not believe that requiring the Secretary of State to produce a report on ways to implement the World Health Organization’s recommendation in the European report on preventing child maltreatment is necessary. We have lots of work planned in this area and already in train. I hope that noble Lords are assured that the Government recognise the importance of effective data collection and are striving to make improvements in this area. I will pass on to colleagues in the Department of Health the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about a more holistic approach, but in the light of what I have said, I hope the right reverend Prelate will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
The Lord Bishop of Durham
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response, and I have no doubt that my colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, will examine minutely what he has said; I shall certainly look at it as well. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for his comments and for the Minister’s agreement to take the issue away and report it elsewhere. At this point, I am content to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, I very much support this amendment. We have already heard in previous debates about the danger of the repeat performance—women who have been in care becoming mothers and having a problem with children being taken away. It is a vitally important matter. My noble friend Lady Howarth mentioned Pause as one of the organisations offering practical help in this respect. It certainly could be called on. I hope that in this instance we will be able to get support from the Minister so that this can be looked at rather more seriously than, perhaps, in the past.
Lord Nash
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for moving the noble Baroness’s amendment. This is an important issue, and I am pleased that she has raised it. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Howarth and Lady Howe, for their comments. The Government believe that children are best looked after within their families, with their parents playing a full part in their lives, unless intervention in that family’s life is truly necessary and in the child’s best interests. Legislation reflects this, and local authorities have statutory functions to provide services that support children in need and their families. They also have a duty to return a looked-after child to their family unless this is against their best interests.
The noble Baroness is right to emphasise how important it is to support parents who have had children taken into care. They need the right support to allow them to be effective parents to any other children in their care and to any children they may have in the future. We share this commitment. Our statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children is clear that every assessment of need must be child-centred. The statutory guidance acknowledges that many of the services provided as part of the child in need or child protection plan need to support the parents to make sustained change. The plan that arises from this assessment should set out the expectations required of parents, detailing clear measurable actions and indicating the services they should engage with in order for their child to remain at home. If a child is removed, their parents should continue to receive help and support. If the parents go on to have further children Working Together to Safeguard Children is clear that the level and nature of any risk to the child needs to be identified at a prebirth assessment and appropriate help and support should be given to these parents to help them make a sustained change.
I am sure noble Lords will be interested in the Department for Education’s innovation programme’s support to the tune of £3 million for Pause’s project to support women who have experienced or are at risk of repeat removals of children from their care. The project aims to break this cycle and give women the opportunity to develop new skills and responses to help them create a more positive future. Changing practice like this provides a more effective means of ensuring that we attempt to break the cycle. We want to extend approaches such as Pause’s into new areas to break this intergenerational cycle of care. This is of particular importance to care leavers who go on to have children in their late teens that are at risk of being taken into care. Mandating local authorities to provide counselling or therapy may help some, but it will not be the answer to all the complex problems in this context. Given what I have said, I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I thank the noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate for their support. Clearly, this is an issue in relation to mothers, in particular, who have a number of children after one of their children has been taken into care. I was glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, raised the work of Pause. The Minister referred to the money that his department it giving to it. That is very good to hear. The Minister said he does not think mandation is the right avenue down which to go. Some noble Lords who have spoken agree with the Minister. I am sure my noble friend will wish to consider that between now and Report. The principles here are well recognised. We have the great work of Pause. We clearly have good practice in a number of local authority areas, and the question is how best to ensure that there is more consistency and uniformity throughout the country. Whether it is through mandation or just through spreading good practice is a matter for another debate. I thank the Minister for the tone in which he responded to this amendment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Nash
My Lords, Amendment 99B seeks to place a duty on local authorities to,
“put in place early intervention strategies to prevent children and young people in their area who are on the Troubled Families Programme going into care, which may include providing those children with specific support”.
We expect local authorities to have early intervention strategies to prevent children and young people going into care irrespective of whether those children are part of the troubled families programme. Our statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children 2015, is clear that providing early help is more effective in promoting the welfare of children than reacting later in their lives, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has said.
The existing legislation in Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 imposes a general duty on local authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in need in their area, and so far as is consistent with that duty, to promote the upbringing of children by their families. This is achieved by providing a range and level of services appropriate to those children’s needs. Services are provided to children and their families and should help families to make sustained change in their lives so that children are safe and can remain living with their parents. Such services can include accommodation, assistance in kind or cash.
The working together guidance provides that local authorities and their partners should develop and publish local protocols for their assessment of children’s needs and how any social care assessment should be informed by other specialist assessments. The purpose of an assessment is to provide support for children and families to address their specific needs. Our troubled families programme, which has been very effective, is one such intervention that can support families to work together and with other agencies, including children’s social care, to help improve outcomes for children. Where levels of risk of harm remain high for children and their needs cannot be met from within their families, it is right that steps are taken for children to be taken into care. In other cases, intensive support combined with challenge may allow children to remain safely with their families. The recently published document, Putting Children First: Delivering our Vision for Excellent Children’s Social Care, highlights how the Government will work to effectively reduce the needs and risks for a specific group of,
“children right on the edge or just within social care”.
We will use our innovation programme to test and develop national understanding, and over time use the new What Works centre to bring together learning and spread best practice. In view of the existing duty in primary legislation to provide services and support for children who are in need, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel reassured enough to withdraw her amendment.
Lord Nash
My Lords, Amendments 100, 106 and 112 are technical amendments regarding the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. A separate amendment proposes the repeal of Sections 13 to 16 of the Children Act 2004 relating to local safeguarding children boards, and Amendment 100 will enable the new provisions relating to the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel to be sited correctly in the 2004 Act. Amendments 106 and 112 will ensure that the language in the clauses which cover the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel is consistent throughout the clauses. I beg to move.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
My Lords, I declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, which is particularly concerned that the national panel is too closely controlled by the Secretary of State. The association believes that that risks politicising the serious case review process. If reviewers are to identify the root cause of safeguarding failings, the association believes that they must be fully independent of government control to ensure that they are able to consider without undue influence whether changes are required at both the national and the local level. The association also believes that to ensure that reviews of national significance are able to pass comment on the impact of national policies without undue influence, they must be able to identify these root causes, again without undue political interference. I therefore support Amendments 101 and 102.
It is important to recognise that the Local Government Association, which wants to work with this process and take some of it forward, has these concerns. We are in this position as a result of having so little time to look at these amendments. The basic principles are probably ones with which we would all agree but there are some fundamental flaws in the way the process is being put together.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, for their amendments relating to the arrangements for the new child safeguarding practice review panel set out in Clause 11, and for the observations of the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Howarth.
Amendment 101 raises an important issue, which is that both Houses should have an opportunity to scrutinise regulations in secondary legislation where it is appropriate to do so. Noble Lords will be aware that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has issued its report on the clauses within the Bill. I hope that noble Lords can be reassured that while the DPRRC commented on other clauses, it raised no concerns about this one. The arrangements that will be made in respect of the establishment of the panel set out high-level matters that relate to the processes, arrangements and administration of the panel rather than matters of substance that the Houses would need to debate. This clause covers processes and arrangements. I will turn to the question of regulations in a later discussion on the functions of the panel. This clause provides for the making of arrangements that are necessary to enable the functioning of the panel which may include clarity around such matters as reporting and its day-to-day operation.
Amendment 102 seeks to involve the Education Select Committee in the appointment of the chair. I would expect the appointment of the chair to be subject to a full and open Cabinet Office public appointments process involving advertisements for the position, applications and formal interviewing. Panel members could also be subject to this process if that were deemed necessary. I would expect the number of panel members to be sufficient to enable the effective operation of the panel and for the chair to be able to draw on the expertise that he or she considers necessary for the right decisions to be made about individual cases. We would of course welcome any views that the Education Select Committee may have, but we do not believe that we should prescribe a pre-appointment hearing. In view of this, I hope that the noble Lord will feel sufficiently reassured to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
I thank the Minister for that response, predictable though it was. I take his point about someone who is appointed being subject to the full appointments process; that is understood. However, I feel that there is room for the affirmative resolution procedure that I mentioned earlier, but clearly that is not going to happen. I think also that it would have been appropriate to involve the Education Select Committee at least in the initial appointment of the first chair of the panel. However, no other Members of the Committee have insisted on this, so on that basis I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Warner
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 103 and 104. Amendment 103 seeks clarification from the Minister on the powers of the new child safeguarding practice review panel to require information in relation to its functions. In Clause 14 a,
“person or body to whom a request … is made must comply with the request”,
without, apparently, any exemption.
The report of this House’s Constitution Committee published on 13 June pointed out that:
“This is a broad obligation … and could possibly include information of an incriminatory nature”.
As far as I can see, there is no explicit exemption for material that would ordinarily be the subject of either legal or medical privilege. I can see that a broad exemption of that kind could hamstring the panel in its difficult work. and I will say a bit more about that in relation to a particular case. However, I do not think that we should wait until a case of this kind arises and then find that we are not sure what the rules really are. That is why I support the Constitution Committee’s request for greater clarification.
To illustrate my concerns, let me cite a recent case that could be said to raise this issue if the new review panel were in existence. We have already mentioned today the recent case where Mrs Justice Hogg was criticised by a case review for her decision to take Ellie Butler away from her grandparents and return her to her parents where her father beat her to death 11 months later. My understanding—the Minister may be able to correct me if I have this wrong—is that the judiciary does not consider that the judge can be required to explain her actions to a review panel. In particular, this would make it difficult to consider the system implications of whether a judge should have been able to set aside the judgment of the local authority social workers who had been protecting Ellie and appoint new private social workers to make a different assessment of the protection she required, which sadly resulted in her being returned to her parents with catastrophic results.
This is a systems issue about how the judiciary works. I can see that that could involve incriminatory evidence. Let me reassure the Minister that I am not trying to discuss this case but I am using it to indicate that there may be confusion in the wording regarding the panel’s ability to request information when people may or may not conform for reasons of incrimination. I hope that the Minister can help us with this because we need greater clarity about whether there are any exemptions to a request for information by the panel and the nature of those exemptions.
Amendment 104 is an attempt to introduce time limits into the production of review panel reports. This panel will be considering serious systems matters which are referred to it. It is important that we complete these reviews quickly so that people can learn from mistakes. We do not want very long and drawn-out reviews that hold up learning. We need some kind of time limit here. I am not particularly wedded to the six-month time limit that I put in just to probe the issue, but it would be worth the department and the Minister considering the insertion of time limits for the work of these review panels. I beg to move.
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, I think there was some confusion over which of us was going to speak. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, who gave notice of her intention to oppose the Question that Clause 11 should stand part, is not present, so with the Minister’s permission I will speak to that element in the group.
There is a fundamental concern about the proposal in Clause 11. It does not have anything to do with the establishment of a national safeguarding review panel, which is appropriate, but what it contains and the way it is defined in the Bill are of concern because apparently it will remove local responsibility and accountability for the most serious of child abuse and harm incidents. The current situation is that local safeguarding children boards follow statutory guidance for conducting a serious case review. The LSCB itself is chaired by an independent expert and includes representatives from local NHS organisations, the local authority, probation, housing, the voluntary sector and so on.
Following a serious case of harm to a child, the LSCB must notify the national panel of independent experts and Ofsted. It will then appoint one or more reviewers to lead the serious case review. The lead reviewer must be independent of the LSCB and any other organisations which are involved in the case. The LSCB should also submit the names of the reviewers to the national panel of independent experts. The key factors in the existing process are that the chair is independent and formally agreed to by a national panel of independent experts and that, crucially, representations can be made in the same geographical area by individuals who were involved with the child and the family and thus have an understanding of the local context.
None of this is to deny the positive contribution that potentially can be made by establishing a national panel to improve national learning from these serious case reviews. What is unfortunate is that local knowledge and understanding may be lost and, worse still, that a national panel would take away local responsibility from those who are charged with safeguarding children. A national hearing can seem remote. It will lose the local context and therefore the nuances of understanding in these most complex of situations. It would be most helpful if the Minister would be willing to set up a meeting for those of us who are concerned about the implications of these proposals so that we can discuss these matters. It is not because we oppose them, but because we are concerned about how they will be implemented.
I shall refer again to the review document which I think was published yesterday. Paragraph 118 on page 55 refers to Alan Wood on the role and functions of the local safeguarding children boards. He wants to set up a stronger statutory framework that will introduce greater accountability for the three key agencies involved in safeguarding children; namely local authorities, local police and the local health service. That is why I was willing to oppose the question that Clause 11 should stand part so that these issues can be explored further before we make a decision to move to a national safeguarding review panel for the most important and serious cases, thus eliminating local involvement, responsibility and accountability. I think that that is very important if we are to make progress in preventing, if possible, some of these serious incidents. But certainly we should get national learning from the local example.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has raised some important points and the name of my noble friend Lord Hunt is also on the clause stand part debate. We do not propose to do that just now; we think the broad principles can be transferred to the debate that we shall have on Monday on the next section or group. We shall say no more at this stage.
Lord Nash
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, for Amendment 103. This raises important issues, which I welcome the opportunity to discuss. My exchanges with my noble friend Lord Lang of Monkton and the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, at Second Reading followed the helpful report of the Select Committee on the Constitution. This report cogently raised the question of how the panel will handle information subject to legal or medical privilege. I explained at that time that the Bill does not prevent those whom the panel asks for information asserting legal or medical privilege, where applicable. The panel would need to consider any such assertion against the need for the information. This amendment would add a specific provision for the Secretary of State to include, in her arrangements for the panel, information about the panel’s powers to secure the submission of material, subject to legal or medical privilege. I agree that it will be important for the Secretary of State to specify clearly to the panel the considerations which it should bring to bear in respect of the information which it requests. I agree that this should include specific reference not only to the question of legal and medical privilege but also to the way in which it handles this information, once requested and received. This is particularly important in respect of the information which is included in final published reports. The panel will be expected to handle all the information it receives with due care. Much of the information which it gathers will be highly sensitive, including information which is privileged in the way the noble Lord has set out.
As far as the issues arising from the very sad case of Ellie Butler are concerned, the independence of the judiciary is a constitutional matter and enforcement provisions will not apply, although there is scope to appeal judges’ decisions. I do not believe, however, that it is essential to say anything more in the Bill. It will not add anything to the powers of the panel to request this information, which are clearly set out in Clause 14. In view of this, I hope the noble Lord will feel reassured enough to withdraw his amendment.
Clause 11 requires the Secretary of State to establish a child safeguarding practice review panel and is central to this discussion. I will speak at a little length on this topic and in doing so, I hope to address some of the concerns expressed by noble Lords during the Second Reading of the Bill. The Government first announced their intention to decentralise the serious case review process in December last year. The background to the decision to seek to legislate to introduce the panel was set out in response to Alan Woods’s review of local safeguarding children boards. Alan Woods suggested that the body which supports the centralised review process should be one that is independent of government and the key agencies and operates in a transparent and objective fashion. The intention is to establish the panel as an expert committee, defined by the Cabinet Office as a committee of independent specialists who are politically and operationally independent. The panel is clearly set up to make its own decisions. We have just discussed arrangements for the appointment of panel members.
The Secretary of State will also be responsible for removing members, if satisfied they are no longer able to fulfil their duties—for example, due to ill-health, or if they are adjudged to have behaved in a way incompatible with their role. The clause also makes provision for the Secretary of State to provide whatever assistance is required to enable the panel to carry out its functions, including staff, facilities or other assistance. The Secretary of State may also pay remuneration of expenses to the chair and members of the panel. This will be commensurate with the level of time and commitment required. The clause further provides that the Secretary of State may make further arrangements to support the functioning of the panel, including, for example, the production of an annual report. This will serve to enhance the transparency of proceedings and in addition—although this is not specified in the Bill—I am able to say that the panel will be free to offer advice to the Secretary of State on such matters as it sees fit, and to make any such advice public.
The establishment of a strong, independently-operating national panel is an essential component, along with the What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care, in taking forward the Government’s plans to develop a better understanding of the factors which give rise to serious cases, in order to inform policy and practice nationally, and to support local agencies in improving the quality of the services that they provide to vulnerable children and families.
Teachers’ Strike
Lord Nash Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I would like to repeat an Answer to an Urgent Question given in the other place by the Minister of State for Schools earlier in relation to the NUT strike today. The Statement is as follows.
“There is absolutely no justification for this strike. The NUT asked for talks, and we are having talks. Since May, the Department for Education has been engaged in a new programme of talks with the major teaching unions, including the NUT, focused on all the concerns raised during this strike. Even before then we were engaged in round-table discussions with the trade unions and both the Secretary of State and I meet the trade union leaders regularly to discuss their concerns. This strike is politically motivated and has nothing to do with raising standards in education. In the words of Deborah Lawson, the general secretary of the non-striking teacher union, Voice, today’s strike is a,
‘futile and politically motivated gesture’.
Kevin Courtney, the acting general secretary of the NUT, in his letter to the Secretary of State on 28 June made it clear that the strike was about school funding and teacher pay and conditions. Yet this year’s school budget is greater than in any previous year, at £40 billion, some £4 billion higher than in 2011-12. At a time when other areas of public spending have been significantly reduced, the Government have shown their commitment to education by protecting school funding.
We want to work with the profession and with the teacher unions, as we have been doing successfully in our joint endeavour to reduce unnecessary teacher workload. With 15,000 more teachers in the profession than in 2010, teaching remains one of the most popular and attractive professions in which to work.
This industrial action by the NUT is pointless, but it is far from inconsequential. It disrupts children’s education, inconveniences parents and damages the profession’s reputation in the eyes of the public. But because of the dedication of the vast majority of teachers and head teachers, our analysis shows that seven out of eight schools are refusing to close.
Our school workforce is, and must remain, a respected profession suitable for the 21st century, but this action is seeking to take the profession back, in public perception, to the tired and dated disputes of the 20th century. But most importantly, this strike does not have a democratic mandate from a majority even of NUT members. It is based on a ballot for which the turnout was just 24.5%, representing fewer than 10% of the total teacher workforce.
Our ground-breaking education reforms are improving pupil outcomes, challenging low expectations and poor pupil behaviour in schools and increasing the prestige of the teaching profession. This anachronistic and unnecessary strike is a march back into a past that nobody wants our schools to revisit”.
Lord Nash
I note that the noble Lord met with some of the 9.4% of teachers who have called this strike. I am personally saddened by the strike. We would like to promote teaching as a profession, but there is no doubt that the reputation of teachers is harmed by this strike—or at least the reputation of the 90.6% who did not vote for the strike is affected by the 9.4% who did.
On funding, we have protected the schools budget and the pupil premium. We have substantial resources available through the Education Funding Agency financial toolkits and benchmarking information. A great deal of advice is on offer to help schools with the challenges facing a lot of people resulting from higher pension costs, national insurance et cetera. Multi-academy trusts are particularly well placed to do this and many of them are very effective in this regard. Outwood Grange, one of our most highly performing multi-academy trusts, has a system called curriculum-led financial planning, which uses sophisticated, bottom-up modelling to make sure that resources are focused on the front line. They make this available free to other MATs and schools and it is proving particularly effective in improving resources for teachers.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, it is a sad day for education when teachers feel that they need to strike. It must not be ignored that those hit hardest by this strike will be the pupils and students, who miss out on part of their education, and low-income parents, who do not have the disposable income to pay for childcare on a whim. The Minister has said that these strikes are unnecessary, as the schools budget is the highest that it has ever been. However, by doing this he is steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the dire financial situation that many schools now face.
The noble Lord, Lord Nash, stated in a Written Answer to me on 9 May that the on-costs of teachers’ salaries have risen by 25.4%. On 25 May, he proceeded to reiterate the Government’s promise from the spending review that they would protect the core schools budget in real terms during this Parliament. Why is it then that the Institute for Fiscal Studies forecasts that school spending per pupil is going to fall by 8% in real terms by 2020? Does the Minister deny that figure? Whether he agrees with the figure or not, the Government need to recognise that, with on-costs and other factors, schools are facing real cuts to spending. Will the Minister therefore explain how he intends to keep the promise made in the spending review?
Lord Nash
I entirely recognise the figure. As I have said, many schools and organisations are facing this kind of increasing on-cost—everybody is. We live in a climate of scarce resources. However, as I have attempted to explain, there are many resources available to schools to improve their budgeting. Schools are facing pressures on their budgets that, for many of them, are far greater than they have ever faced. Most school leaders have been brought up in a climate of ever-increasing income and they have never really had to go back to a bottom-up modelling of their schools. When they do that, they find significant savings and it results in money actually being spent where they want it—rather than what is often happening in a lot of schools where sometimes the budgets have grown like Topsy. We are finding much more effective financial modelling in schools now and this is resulting in a much greater focus of resources into the classroom.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
The Minister was complaining that the teachers had a democratic mandate of just 9.4%. Will he tell the House what his democratic mandate is?
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Lord Nash Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
I thank noble Lords who have contributed to this short debate. I am happy to signify my support for the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, which is a common-sense amendment. Let me just express the hope at the outset that the Minister will find it in him to make a clean sweep of all our contributions—we shall see.
In moving Amendment 4 in Committee last week, I mentioned some of the arguments in favour of broadening the scope of the corporate parenting principles outlined in Clause 1. It is logical to adopt as comprehensive an approach as possible to corporate parenting and ensure that all those who can improve outcomes for looked-after children and care leavers have a role to play in parenting those children. In his reply on day one, the Minister stressed that the principles applied to all local authorities in England and that they apply to all parts of the local authority and not just to children’s services. That is important. He went on to highlight the fact that other bodies—such as central government, the National Health Service or housing organisations—are not corporate parents and therefore do not fall within the remit of the Bill, or this part of the Bill. He pointed out that NHS clinical commissioning groups had specific responsibilities for looked-after children, who were also specifically mentioned in NHS England’s mandate. That was certainly welcome to those who were unaware of it.
This amendment goes rather wider and includes the police but, given the proportion of looked-after children and recently looked-after children who have become involved with the youth justice system, that also has some relevance. That being the case, I hope the Government will accept the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, which seeks only to formalise the relationship between local authorities and other organisations, not least housing services, which increasingly are not found within the responsibilities of local authorities. What is of paramount importance is that there is joined-up thinking and working, leading to an outcome whereby all agencies, to use that umbrella term, ensure the most productive relationships on behalf of looked-after children.
Section 10 of the Children Act 2004 includes a duty on local authorities to co-operate with “relevant parties”. However, if that mechanism were working effectively, noble Lords would not have been contacted by various organisations working with or for looked-after children seeking to have the relationship tightened up to provide better outcomes across all agencies. They clearly believe that more needs to be done and we should listen to them, as they are involved on a day-to-day basis with the children the Bill is designed to help.
The Minister mentioned last week that the Government would look at the lessons that might be learned from Scotland. I hope he will note that there the widest possible range of organisations is given the role of corporate parents. Whatever potential obstacles appeared north of the border were clearly overcome. The Minister also stated:
“I would expect partners such as police and health bodies to consider how they can contribute to supporting care leavers. I also hope that many organisations in the private and voluntary sectors will commit to supporting young people leaving care through the care-leaver covenant”.—[Official Report, 29/6/16; col. GC 52.].
I submit that expecting and hoping sounds more like a recipe for disappointment than anything else. Such sentiments are by no means firm enough and the Minister should look to the Bill as a means of ensuring that those things happen. That is what young people leaving care, as well as those assisting them in doing so, have a right to expect.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, before I respond, I am sure noble Lords will be interested in the documents that my department has published today relating to children in the social care system. The first is a policy paper entitled, Putting Children First: Delivering Our Vision for Excellent Children’s Social Care. It sets out our programme of reform to children’s social care for the next four years. The second is an independent report on children’s residential care by Sir Martin Narey, the former chief executive of Barnardo’s, who is an independent social care adviser to the Department for Education. Sir Martin paints a positive vision for the future role of residential care and we are grateful for his report. I am sure noble Lords will be interested in both publications, which we have today emailed to all noble Lords who were present on the first day in Committee. They will be available in the Library of the House.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, for this amendment. I fully appreciate the intention behind it. However, what he seeks to achieve is already encompassed within the corporate parenting principles and existing legislation, which I will explain.
The fourth corporate parenting principle is designed to ensure that the local authority, as a whole, acts as a corporate parent, and helps looked-after children and care leavers to gain access to the services and support they need, including those provided by other relevant partners—to avoid the silo mentality that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, referred to, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, to ensure that all those who can help are involved. On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, about Section 10, I apologise for the confusion. I am sorry to have created so much homework for him. Perhaps in future he can send me a short note and I could save him some time. After all, that is what officials are for. As the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, we are talking about the Children Act 2004, and I will write to the noble Lord with the relevant section and an explanation.
On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, to make this section and duty more effective, for the first time we are bringing in the principle of corporate parenting. I am happy to discuss that with him further and, to take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, to hold a meeting to clarify amendments and ensure, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, says, that we get a sensible Bill without imposing too many new duties that are not really necessary on local authorities.
Local authorities are already under a duty under Section 10 of the Children Act 2004 to make arrangements to promote co-operation between the local authority and each of its relevant partners, including health bodies, schools, local policing bodies, probation boards and youth offending teams, as well as the voluntary and community sector. On the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, I know she would always like to have more money, but this does not impose any more responsibilities on local authorities. The intention of the existing duty is to improve the well-being of children in the local area and the corporate parenting principles are matters that the local authority must consider under the existing legislation. They do not add further functions.
Therefore, it seems inconceivable that under the existing legal framework relevant local agencies would not be aware of the needs of looked-after children and care leavers in the area. If that is the case, the issue must be with how well the local authority is putting its existing responsibilities into practice rather than it being a problem with the law. Therefore, I see no need to add to the seven principles in the way the noble Lord suggests.
The approach used in the existing legislation is broadly similar to the way the duty to co-operate works in the Care Act 2014, which the noble Lord, Lord Warner, referred to during the Committee’s first sitting. The local offer for care leavers will take us further than ever before in helping to ensure that the needs of care leavers are in the minds of services related to health, housing, education, police and employment. In developing their local offer, local authorities will need to talk to those services about what they intend to bring to the table based on what care leavers have told them they need.
For too long care leavers have told us that they do not always have the information they need about the services they need to access and about what they are entitled to. We expect the local offer to set out in one place the full range of relevant services, any additional facilities or entitlements that are on offer, and information about how to access them.
The care leaver covenant, which I have mentioned previously, provides a truly exciting opportunity to build the offer of services and support from a wide range of agencies and individuals. There is no reason why there should be a limit on this. We would like local communities to be as inventive as possible in finding ways of supporting and helping their children in care and care leavers.
I appreciate the very positive intentions behind the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Warner. However, I do not think it is necessary, given the requirements of the existing legislation and the enhanced focus on children in care and care leavers which the corporate parenting principles and the covenant will bring about. I therefore ask him to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Warner
My Lords, I listened very carefully to the Minister. Before responding, perhaps I may say that he offered to write to me. When I did not receive a letter, I went to the Library.
With this approach of simply asking local authorities to find different obligations in different bits of legislation, the Minister is undermining the strengths of Clause 1 and the corporate parenting principles. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham has given me some interesting information about the Children Act, so technology is giving us instant access to some of these bits of information. However, they do not cover some of the issues that were raised in the debate about the corporate parenting principles; they are narrower in scope where the partners are asked to intervene. We have been having a debate about the full range of services and agencies that need to co-operate with the local authority to enable the corporate parenting principles to be delivered to children. The Minister did not really deal with the issue in the second part of my amendment, which is about the local authority taking the initiative and showing children and young people what services are available.
I looked very carefully at Clause 1(1)(d). It is a pretty general proposition about helping young people, and it does not define who the “relevant partners”—the wording in the legislation—are. If the Minister wants to get the best out of this well-intended set of corporate parenting principles, we have to beef up the Bill in terms of the duty to co-operate placed on the full range of services, and we may need to specify them in the Bill with something along the lines of my Amendment 29. I will certainly come back to this, as I suspect will other Members, on Report. In the meantime—
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I urge the Minister not to make this provision too prescriptive. Good local authorities like flexibility and support. What is important here is the outcome for young people. Yes, I understand about early intervention and prevention work, which is very important, but the reality is that we will still have children in our care, for many reasons. The importance of the Bill is that it gives local authorities the flexibility to give that support in the way that is right for that young person. The noble Earl was quite right in saying that some young people get to the age of 16 and the last person on earth that they want to speak to again is their PA or social worker. We need the flexibility to use family friends or members to whom they may be close and to give them support to support that young people. They may be volunteers or mentors, but we need that flexibility to look at different ways of doing it.
As for money, it is important that every local authority makes every member of that local authority understand the importance of being a corporate parent. In Wiltshire, where I am the leader, every single member of that council has to sign up to agree that they are a corporate parent and have a day’s induction to understand what that really means. When it comes to budgets and prioritising budgets, the whole council then really understands the importance of that position. It is important to have flexibility and not be too prescriptive—and that we can look at each young person as an individual, as we would our own children, and give them the support that they need into the future.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I shall speak to the group that includes Amendments 41, 43, 45, 47, 51, retabled as Amendment 74A, Amendment 54 and the proposed new clause in Amendment 98A. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken to them. All these amendments are concerned with the continuing support that care leavers receive.
First, I address Amendments 41, 43 and 45. Clause 2 requires local authorities to publish information about the services that they offer to care leavers, based on an understanding of their individual needs, as well as other services that they offer to help care leavers to prepare for adulthood. In preparing those local offers, local authorities must consult care leavers and relevant representative groups of care leavers, including children in care councils.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, talked about what the local offer should cover. The clause already includes a duty to publish information about services relating to health and well-being, education and training, employment, accommodation and participation in society. That is a non-exclusive list; the local authority may include other matters as it sees fit. Given the work that local authorities will already be undertaking, an additional requirement to assess the services required to meet the needs of care leavers would be overly prescriptive. Rather, these matters will be detailed in the guidance that my department will produce to inform the practical application of the corporate parenting principles, to which I have already referred several times during this debate.
With regard to the national minimum standard proposed in these amendments, the Government’s intention in legislating for the local offer is to raise the bar for services provided to care leavers. We want local authorities to aim much higher than a minimum standard when it comes to what they offer. We want to enable comparisons of the offer between local authorities so that there is upward pressure for them to do more. Ultimately, Ofsted will be the arbiters of how good a local offer is.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, referred to New Belongings. We eagerly await the evaluation results of the New Belongings programme at its dissemination event this Friday. That will inform our thinking. The care leavers strategy will support programmes that empower care leavers to drive change locally, such as New Belongings. I will come back to the noble Baroness on the care leavers fora and the other points that she made. In light of this, I hope noble Lords are sufficiently reassured not to move their amendments.
I now address Amendments 47, 51—retabled as Amendment 74A—and 54, which all concern the support that care leavers receive up to the age of 25. No care leaver will be left to fend for themselves when they reach 21. Through Clause 3, a care leaver aged up to 25 will know of their right to request support, including access to a personal adviser. If a particular service provided under the local offer is appropriate and meets a particular need, of course the young person should be able to access it. That is the purpose of the local offer, and personal advisers are responsible for identifying and co-ordinating the provision of services for the care leaver.
However, mandating a personal adviser for every care leaver, regardless of their wishes, and a requirement to provide such services would be disproportionate. To do so raises several obvious practical issues. Some care leavers want independence at the earliest opportunity and to sever any ties with their corporate parent. Some move away from the area and become hard to trace. Even those still known to the local authority will be in very different circumstances, with different needs and aspirations. Some will value the help of a personal adviser and some will look for guidance and support elsewhere, as my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook said. Often, this will reflect how well the relationship with the personal adviser has worked, how helpful they have been or might be, and their relationships with others.
If we were to impose the support of a personal adviser on every care leaver, there is a real risk that that would divert support from care-leaving teams away from those who really need it. Rather than impose a personal adviser service, it is better to make the personal adviser service optional for those who want it so that resources can be effectively targeted—as is done successfully in Trafford. However, we want to make sure that all those who want the support of a personal adviser can access it.
There are two important issues here. The first is whether and how care leavers are made aware of the offer of support from a personal adviser. I suggest that the obvious place for that is the local offer. The second is whether a care leaver who has lost contact with their personal adviser should be able to resume this if and when they feel the need to do so at a later date. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, referred to an example of this. I can certainly confirm that that would be possible through the existing legislation and Clause 3 for care leavers up to the age of 25. The guidance we are producing will encourage local authorities to carry out this new entitlement clearly, proactively and positively so that care leavers are encouraged to take it up.
We need to set an expectation that local authorities should attempt to remind care leavers of their entitlement to this support so that a young person refusing support at age 22 does not feel that they should be barred from accessing it later. I accept that this is an important point. I should like to reflect further on this in discussion with local authorities and over the next few months before we return on Report.
Lord Wills
I understand the force of what the Minister is saying and the Committee will be grateful for his offer to keep looking at these points. Could he also take into account my point about data and the importance of keeping some sort of better check on what happens at least until the age of 25? What he has said so far does not really address that point. Perhaps he could reflect on that and come back to us either with a letter or on Report.
Lord Nash
I was about to say something about data which I hope will satisfy the noble Lord. If it does not, I shall be very happy to discuss it with him further. Local authorities are required to provide data on care leavers aged 19, 20 and 21. From October this year, we will also publish data on care leavers aged 17 and 18. We are also now able to link with datasets held by the MoJ and HMRC, which will allow us to track care leavers’ longer-term outcomes. However, I shall be happy to discuss this further with the noble Lord.
The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, asked about funding. We do not believe that Clauses 1 and 2 represent new burdens on local authorities. However, as I have already said, we recognise that extending personal advisers to all care leavers up to the age of 25 will have financial consequences, and we have made a commitment to provide new burden funding to meet these extra costs. Our initial estimates are based on our experience in Trafford, which is a very high-performing local authority, and we will publish the figures shortly.
My understanding is that Amendment 98A, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, would extend the higher rate of universal credit to single-parent care leavers. The benefits system recognises the special needs of care leavers. However, in the current system there is considerable complexity around the rates for young people, with some differences between benefits. The structure of age-related rates in universal credit is much simpler than the benefits it replaces, with just four rates of the standard allowance compared with, for example, 15 in employment and support allowance. These age-related standard allowance rates are now established in universal credit.
Making changes such as those set out in this amendment would replicate some of the complexity that we are seeking to remove. Rather than handing out money to young people and expecting them to fend for themselves, universal credit seeks to support vulnerable young people and parents to stabilise their lives and find work. For this reason, the DWP extended second-chance learning from age 19 to 21. This allows care leavers to claim income support and housing benefit if returning to full-time, non-advanced education to make up for missed qualifications. In addition, single-parent care leavers who are working will be able to access help with 85% of their childcare costs up to the cap.
With that information, I hope I have reassured noble Lords that care leavers will receive and be able to access the support they need, and I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s response and particularly for what he said about keeping an open mind and thinking further about the degree of the burden on local authorities from keeping in touch with and being proactive towards young people up to the age of 25. What he said about guidance on being proactive was very welcome. Are there currently issues regarding those up to the age of 21? Under the current duty, do local authorities express concern that the duty sometimes causes them to expend resources unnecessarily? Do young people feel a bit harassed by the current system? Otherwise, I am not clear why one should treat those over the age of 21 any differently from those under 21. If there are no current issues, I am not sure why it should be an issue to transfer the provision to under-25s. However, I am sure that that can be answered in subsequent discussions and, as I said, I am grateful to the Minister for his response.
Lord Ramsbotham
I noticed that the Minister has kindly arranged a meeting with Mr Brokenshire, the Minister in the Home Office responsible for immigration. Will the provisions in Clause 2 apply to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children until the moment they lose the right to remain and have to leave, with them then appealing?
Baroness Wheeler
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response and for undertaking to look at the New Belongings project. He is right: there is a dissemination event for the project on Friday. It is very widely subscribed, I look forward to it and I am sure that a number of noble Lords and others here will be attending.
I am disappointed that the Government do not consider the need for a statement of minimum standards. Many local authorities do not have the support or resources to work out what is needed, so national standards and national guidance are very important. I understand what the Minister says about raising the bar and aiming high, but the reality is that many authorities struggle to reach the bar at all. This goes back to the issue of consistency of approach and avoiding variations in standards across the country that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and others have referred to.
The introduction of the local offer arrangements in themselves do not necessarily lead to a step change in improvements. Detailed consideration needs to be given to how they will operate in practice, what impact they will have and how we can ensure that the offer is there for all and not just for some, depending on where they live. Minimum standards for services and the important issue of extending offers to care leavers up to the age of 25 are important, and I am grateful that the Minister said that he would look at this again. I shall read his comments very carefully but we will certainly return to these matters on Report.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, I want to say a word about personal advisers. The first thing we have to look at is who these children are and what their needs are. I have heard recently in the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children and in the European Union sub-committee which is discussing a report on unaccompanied asylum seekers just how vulnerable these children are—and how, in that vulnerability, they may find it difficult to make decisions and have the confidence to choose or request a personal adviser. Their relationships have suffered so much by their experiences that they may not trust anybody. We need to look at the children first. They may of course not wish to have a personal adviser, while some of them may not know exactly what they want so might try out various support systems before they decide. Personal advisers should not be available on request but should be there automatically for those children who are so vulnerable.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Wills, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, for tabling this group of amendments. Let me begin with those amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, which would replace “former relevant child” with “care leaver” throughout Clause 3. I understand that the noble Lord’s intention is to apply provisions to all care leavers. I offer reassurance that the issue is already addressed in existing legislation. Different groups of care leavers and looked-after children are defined in legislation and I will set out how Clause 3 applies to them.
“Eligible children” are looked-after children aged 16 to 17 who are subject to the care planning process and the regular review that this brings. They are entitled to receive advice and support from a local authority personal adviser. “Relevant children” are aged 16 to 17 and have ceased to be looked after. They too are entitled to receive support and advice from a personal adviser. “Former relevant children” currently receive support from a local authority personal adviser up to the age of 21. If they pursue education or training they can retain that support until they are 25. Clause 3 will now address the gap and provide a personal adviser to all “former relevant children” up to the age of 25, where they want one. Whether they are in education will no longer be a qualifying factor.
In Amendment 52 the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, propose that personal adviser support should be provided whether requested or not. I have already spoken at some length on an earlier group about the practical issues involved in providing support up to age 25 even if care leavers no longer want a service. I will therefore not repeat the arguments.
The noble Lord, Lord Wills, referred to my reflecting on certain matters in relation to the role of personal advisers. I was going to come to this later in group 6, in relation to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, but I will deal with it now.
We want to learn from those areas where the personal adviser service is provided effectively and make sure that that becomes the standard of support that care leavers across the country can expect. We also need to make sure that the purpose of the role is clear, that the right people are recruited to take on the role and that they have the right opportunities to learn and develop so that they can better respond to new challenges that care leavers face. That is why we are reviewing the personal adviser role. The first phase of that review is already under way. My officials are carrying out a series of eight deep-dive reviews to local authorities. They are meeting with leaving care managers, personal advisers and care leavers so they can better understand: first, what support personal advisers currently provide; secondly, which issues care leavers most need support on; and, thirdly, how personal advisers provide the mentoring and befriending support which can be so critical to care leavers’ well-being and which we know they value so highly.
The second phase of the review will build on and be informed by the first phase, but will focus on wider issues such as: whether we have done enough to articulate the key purpose of the personal adviser role, as currently articulated in secondary legislation in the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010; how we can best raise the status of the role; and what opportunities exist for personal advisers to access continuing professional development. In conducting this review, I would like to offer reassurance that we will consult all relevant parties. I will also ensure that noble Lords have the opportunity to comment and contribute.
On Amendment 60, I can provide reassurance that local authorities will continue to develop and review pathway plans. As corporate parents, they will do this irrespective of other partners and the support that they bring. Local authority-appointed personal advisers will work with the care leavers to review plans on a regular basis. Local authorities are already required by law to manage these obligations as the corporate parent. Amendment 72 is unnecessary, as the functions of the personal adviser role are set out not in statute but in secondary legislation—the Care Leavers (England) Regulations 2010 and the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010. If any changes are made to the functions of personal advisers, an amending statutory instrument would need to be laid before Parliament, which would provide an opportunity, through the negative resolution procedure, to make any objections if needed.
To turn to Amendment 74, let me clarify why the Bill extends the role of the virtual school head to children who leave care through adoption, child arrangements or special guardianship orders but not to older children. In practice, virtual school heads and designated teachers do not suddenly turn a blind eye to the children in care whom they have been looking out for and supporting just because they have reached the age of 18. The arrangements in place will continue up to the time they leave school unless, of course, their circumstances have changed. In many local authorities, the virtual head plays a role in relation to care leavers. For example, in Hertfordshire, the virtual school head has included within it the post of a personal adviser for students at university. For care leavers, the main support in relation to education is from the personal adviser.
For older care leavers, a range of alternative support is already in place. Pathway plans for care leavers should include information about support for education and career aspirations. Care leavers are also a priority for the 16 to 19 bursary, worth £1,200 annually, and they receive a one-off bursary of £2,000 if they progress to higher education. I hope that this provides noble Lords with sufficient reassurance not to press their amendments.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
The Minister rather peremptorily dismissed the arguments advanced by other noble Lords and me on Amendments 52 and 53. He said that he had answered them in respect of some other amendment, but he uttered the words so quickly that I could not identify what he was talking about. Is he quite content that what he is proposing—he talked of practicalities—means that no young person who would benefit from the information and support that he or she needs will slip through the net simply because they either did not know or did not understand that they could ask for that information? Would it not be far better to ensure that people who do not need the information have it rather than that those who need the information do not have it?
Lord Nash
I do not think that we are arguing about anything here. It seems to me obvious that, to take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, we cannot just leave young people to ask for help; they have to know about it. The minimal expectations in the local offer from the local authority have to be absolutely clear, including, in my view, that children should have some financial education training and some domestic skills and that they should know what they are entitled to once they leave care.
That should be absolutely clearly spelt out in the local offer. As has been said, it seems to me that although a child or young person has rejected the need for a personal adviser at the age of 21, by the age of 23 they may well have changed their mind. They should be regularly reminded by the local authority of this right. I do not argue with that and we will set out our expectations of local authorities in relation to the local offer and what they will do to make care leavers aware of their rights and entitlements not just once but regularly until they are 25.
Lord Warner
The Minister seems to be praying me in aid as somehow opposed to the amendment advocated by the noble Lords, Lord Wills and Lord Watson. I am not; I was supporting what they are saying. I am sorry if I was not clear but I want to put it beyond peradventure to the Minister that I support their amendment to delete “on request”.
Lord Wills
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to everyone who has taken part in what I thought was a useful short discussion on all the amendments. On the one which has taken up the most time, the question of reversing the onus of requesting continuation of support in this way, I will read and reflect carefully on what the Minister said. I understand that the Bill is full of good intentions and I know that he is personally. I worry, however, that, as other noble Lords have said much more powerfully than I, we are still placing an unrealistic burden on very vulnerable young people who do not suddenly stop being vulnerable when they pass a particular age. At least until 25, many of them will be in very difficult circumstances and not all of them will be capable of making these informed, rational decisions, as the Minister said, however accurately informed they are of their entitlements. I will look at the Hansard record of what he said, but, given the widespread support for a change to this part of the Bill, we may return to it at Report.
My only other comment is about the role of the virtual school head. I thought I heard the Minister say that in many cases, they do not just turn a blind eye but go on being involved. That is precisely the point: it is in many cases, not necessarily in all. Again, I am not altogether reassured by what he said but will read what he said in Hansard and reflect, but we may return to it on Report. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Wills
My Lords, as we have heard, this is a complex and difficult issue. I have huge sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, the right reverend Prelate, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said about the need for flexibility. These young people are very vulnerable. They have a wide range of needs and they will respond differently to different people. It is not a question of having one professional group that will deal with every young person in the same way. We must be very careful about this because everything that I have learned about this complex subject suggests that one of the most crucial things is stability in the lives of these young people. The more difficult and restricting we make the area in which we can recruit these personal advisers, the more difficult it will be to provide stability, so there is clearly a huge problem here.
Having said that, we should not let all those difficulties dissuade or deflect us from the fundamental importance of what the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has said. There is always a temptation in government—I remember it very well from all my years as the Minister—that when things come complicated and difficult, particularly in such sensitive areas, to push it aside, kick it down the road a little bit and have a review which, in the circumstances, will not necessarily produce anything very valuable. We have heard the experience of all those people with a lot more experience than I have in these matters of how these problems come to light only after the damage has been done.
I urge the Minister to grapple with those difficulties, not lose sight of the importance of what the noble Lord, Lord Warner said, and to produce a substantive response today.
Lord Nash
I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, for his amendment and the points that he, the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, the noble Lord, Lord Storey, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, the noble Lord, Lord Wills, made about the importance of safeguarding young people from predatory adults and the qualifications, training and management of personal advisers. These are of crucial and, in the case of safeguarding, paramount importance, and I will ensure that these points are covered in our review of personal advisers, to which I have already referred in some detail. This will inform what we say on Report, although I recognise the points made by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lord, Lord Wills, about flexibility and stability and will look at the worrying delays to which the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, referred in relation to vetting.
I hope that the noble Lord will accept that I do not want to prejudge the outcome of our review by accepting his amendment now, and I hope that he will therefore consent to withdraw it, but I assure him that I recognise the importance of the points he makes.
Lord Warner
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister and everyone else who has spoken in this debate. I could really identify with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wills. I recognise how complex this issue is, certainly do not want to go into bat for the particular wording of the amendment and I accept that the Minister needs to carry out a review.
However, given what we have learned about predatory adults and vulnerable people over a long period, I ask the Minister and his department to reflect whether we should signal the issue of vetting in some brief way in the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, made the important point that there are two sides to this: the vulnerability of young person but also that of the personal adviser if they are isolated without adequate supervision. This is a difficult area and it is not easy to find solutions, but it behoves all public bodies and Governments, particularly with the Goddard inquiry going on, to recognise upfront that this is a real 21st-century issue which has to be wrestled with. Signalling in the Bill not the detail but a willingness to grapple with the issue is very important. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Nash
I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley, Lady Bakewell and Lady Pinnock, the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for these amendments and their comments, and for the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler. I am grateful for their brevity. In that regard and without wishing to be rude, I know we are debating important matters but if we are to get through this Bill in four days in Committee I would be grateful if noble Lords could come back on Wednesday in that vein.
First, I will respond to Amendment 135, on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. I offer my reassurance that the Government remain fully committed to this important convention. The recent report by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child on the UK recognised the progress made by the Government in protecting and enhancing children’s rights over recent years. The Government are unconvinced that putting a statutory duty to pay due regard to the convention on Secretaries of State or other bodies would have a real impact on children’s lives. In 2010, the coalition Government made a Statement to Parliament stating that the Government would give due consideration to the UNCRC when making new policies and legislation. This Government maintain that commitment.
Legislation is already assessed to ensure compatibility with the UNCRC. A rigorous child rights impact assessment was conducted on this Bill, for example, and shared with the Children’s Commissioner and the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Similarly, at a local level we believe that putting additional duties on public bodies is not the right approach to either raise awareness of the UNCRC or to change the way decisions are made. More targeted approaches through guidance and support to specific professionals or related to specific aspects of children’s rights are more effective. In 2013, for example, we issued statutory guidance to DCSs to have regard to the general principles of the UNCRC and to ensure that children are involved in development and delivery of local services. The Children’s Commissioner’s primary function is to promote and protect children’s rights and ensure that they are properly understood, including by children themselves. She raises awareness and ensures that their views are brought to the attention of decision-makers at both local and national levels.
Turning to reporting mechanisms, under the UNCRC process we are required to provide a full UK report on a five-yearly cycle. The reports are publicly available on the UN website. Any additional requirement would risk duplicating our existing obligation. I recognise the value of impact assessments carried out on legislative proposals where they affect children, as referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. We carried out a very full analysis of the Bill’s impacts on children’s rights, interests and families. The Government are committed to giving due consideration to children’s rights on matters such as this, as I said. Of course, there are aspects of children’s rights where we can and should do more. I assure noble Lords that we are considering the recommendations of the UN Committee, published earlier this month. We will respond to the concluding observations this year.
Amendment 75 proposes that a similar duty is put on the Secretary of State to promote the rights and well-being of children and young people who are looked after or care leavers. We believe that introducing such a duty is unnecessary. This is due to the duties which the Secretary of State already owes and the commitments that the Government have already made. The Children Act 1989 sets out the legal principle that the child’s welfare shall be the paramount consideration in decisions regarding children in the social care system. The guiding principle of any decision taken in relation to looked-after children will be to have their well-being as the primary consideration.
Section 7 of the Children and Young Persons Act 2008 obliges the Secretary of State to promote the well-being of all children in England and empowers her to take action to promote the well-being of care leavers. Clause 1 introduces the corporate parenting principles. The first principle sets out that a local authority must, in carrying out functions in relation to looked-after children and young people, act in their best interests and promote their health and well-being. We hope that this will reassure the noble Baronesses.
Turning to the social justice premium grant, the Government fully support the principle behind Amendment 76. As a Government, we are committed to improving the life chances of care leavers. Our forthcoming care leaver strategy will set out our ambition that care leavers should have the same opportunities, experiences and life chances as other young people. The best local authorities, such as Trafford, already provide additional support to care leavers to improve their life chances and to narrow the gap between them and their peers. Trafford ring-fences apprenticeship opportunities for care leavers and gives them free access to leisure centres.
Our goal is to see more local authorities providing excellent services that improve the life chances of all care leavers. This Government are committed to an all-out assault on poverty and improving chances for all children, regardless of their background and past experiences. Our forthcoming life chances strategy will set out our plan for transforming the life chances of disadvantaged children and their families and for tackling deep-rooted social problems so that no one is held back or prevented from making the most of their lives. In view of the measures that we have already taken to promote and protect children’s rights, particularly for children in care and care leavers, I hope that noble Lords will feel sufficiently reassured not to press their amendments.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply and for what he said about child impact assessments on child-related Bills. But is it not even more important in Bills about housing and welfare that there are such child impact assessments? Those Bills have a huge impact on children and their families and one does not get the sense that the impact on children is really thought through. American academics who come to this country talk about how important housing is to children and bewail the fact that there does not seem to be awareness at senior levels of government of that necessary connection.
Schools: Religious Education
Lord Nash Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Taverne
To ask Her Majesty’s Government in what way the guidance produced by Dr Satvinder Juss on the implications of the High Court’s ruling in R (Fox) v Secretary of State for Education is “inaccurate” as they have stated.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, the Government believe that Dr Juss’s guidance is inaccurate in a number of respects, not least in its suggestion that the need to accord equal respect means that the teaching of other principal religions must be balanced by compulsory and systematic teaching of a non-religious world view to the same extent. We do not accept that it is appropriate for such views to be presented to schools as statements of fact. It is right for the Government to say that they do not agree.
Lord Taverne (LD)
My Lords, first, I must declare an interest as a member of the British Humanist Association and apologise for the obscurity of the Question. The case referred to was a very complex but important case in which the judge ruled in favour of three humanist parents who challenged the Government’s policy that non-religious views could be excluded from schools’ curricula of religious studies. The judge found that the Government had made an error of law and that such studies should be pluralistic and should include non-religious world views. Dr Juss of King’s College London issued guidance on those lines.
Will the Government explain why they have condemned this guidance, which on the face of it is a fair interpretation of the judgment? More generally, it is of course right that children should be taught about religions of the world and about the importance of Christianity in the history of this country, but is it really the Government’s view that children should not be encouraged to think critically and make up their own mind and should not be made aware of the views of a very large and growing number of people in this country who do not subscribe to any religion?
Lord Nash
The case was on a very narrow, technical point, but the noble Lord may be pleased to hear that all six GCSE-awarding bodies’ GCSE content includes development of students’ understanding of wider beliefs, including a non-religious world view. The judge made clear that there was no challenge to the content of the GCSE and no requirement in domestic or human rights law to give equal air time to all shades of belief. We do not accept the wider interpretation that Dr Juss places on the case.
Lord Harrison (Lab)
Do the Government not recognise that their advice to schools may in itself contradict the law, as just explained by the noble Lord, Lord Taverne?
Lord Hughes of Woodside (Lab)
The Minister says that he disagrees with the judgment. Will he explain why the Government have reached that decision?
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, as we have heard from three humanists in a row, may I be allowed a word? Does my noble friend not agree that it is very important that children should have a good grounding in the faith of their country, or of their particular group if they are Muslims or Jews or whatever, because they cannot challenge what they do not understand? It is right that adults should have the proper opportunity to challenge, but if they are challenging on the basis of flimsy information, that is not very sensible.
The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford
My Lords, I address the House at this point in my capacity as a lapsed atheist. I make it clear that I welcome the place of non-religious world views in religious education; they are very important. However, will the Minister further agree that one of the best ways in which people can counter the race hatred, xenophobia and misunderstandings that we see in our society at the moment is by strengthening religious education in schools?
Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)
My Lords, one of the most popular words at the moment is “binary”, as in in/out. When it comes to the question of science and religion, it is a question not just of teaching doctrines but of the examination of the compatibility of, for example, Christianity with the Big Bang origin of the universe. It is not just a question of a binary argument about what should be on the curriculum.
Lord Storey (LD)
Will the Minister reflect on why, if the Government believe that non-religious beliefs have a full and important place in religious studies, they have moved to encourage schools and those who set syllabuses to ignore a legal judgment that sets out exactly that position?
Baroness Browning (Con)
My noble friend mentioned science in respect of religious studies. However, will he accept that science is quite properly evidence-based, while whatever faith a person is it is not called faith for nothing?
Lord Blunkett (Lab)
Will the Minister agree that what might combine both an understanding of the role of science and of religion in the world is good teaching of citizenship in schools so that young people can develop critical thinking skills in a way that enables them to apply them to their life and to the well-being of the community around them?
Lord Nash
I entirely agree with the noble Lord. The same could be said of PSHE and character education. We are looking at what more can be done to strengthen the curriculum to further prepare pupils for life in modern Britain through citizenship, PSHE, character education and other matters.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
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Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, when I first studied the raft of amendments tabled to this important Bill it seemed likely that we would have a high quality of debate and of argument. Certainly, what we have heard in the last 36 minutes bears that out. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for moving the amendment. I shall speak to Amendment 7 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Hunt.
Some noble Lords may have been present in the Chamber about an hour ago when the Minister responded to a Question on care leavers and my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws asked—I paraphrase her remark—what life had come to when we had to have corporate parents. I certainly echo the view that it is unfortunate that there has to be such a term, but the Minister answered the point well when he established that the term “in loco parentis” is very important in these situations. I believe that corporate parents have a duty to do no less for children in their care than do birth parents for their children. That is a very important role indeed—perhaps one of the most important roles of a local authority. I know from experience that elected councillors take their responsibility in this regard very seriously. Corporate parenting should mean the full and active involvement of the formal and local partnerships needed between local authority departments and services and associated agencies responsible for working together to meet the needs of looked-after children and young people as well as care leavers. Recognising that different component parts each have a contribution to make is critical to success.
One challenge of being a good corporate parent is to help each individual child. In many cases it is not recognised that every child is an individual. Often the only thing that they have in common is that life has not been easy for them and that perhaps at some stage a local authority or a court has decided that compulsory intervention was necessary. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, also made the important point that whenever possible, corporate parents should prevent children coming into contact with youth justice. The Government have recognised many of these sentiments in the seven corporate parenting principles outlined in Clause 1, but principles must reflect duties established by existing legislation and it seems that, in some instances, the principles in Clause 1 actually confer fewer responsibilities on local authorities than currently exist in social care legislation.
I sit somewhat in awe when I hear noble and learned Members of your Lordships’ House pronounce on legal matters, and I would not for one moment seek to question them, so I was very pleased when the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, talked about the “having regard to” in Amendment 7, to which I am speaking. If I picked him up correctly, he said at one stage that it would be difficult if a local authority decided to set aside those responsibilities in full. I would be more concerned if there were situations where a local authority concluded—there could be reasons many why—that it could not or would not meet those responsibilities in full. Anything less than that would potentially steer that local authority into difficult waters in terms of the service it was providing as a corporate parent.
I am not going to comment on the detailed legal principle of that, but there seems to be further ground to be tilled in that respect. I am sure that we shall do that and perhaps the Minister can respond, having taken appropriate advice. Just talking about “having regard to” seems rather weak. That is why I hope the Government will recognise that Amendment 7 is put forward in a positive and constructive manner. It seeks to strengthen the Bill and the support provided by making it a requirement that local authorities must ensure that these principles are met in full.
There were other notable contributions, in particular that of my noble friend Lady Armstrong, who talked from experience not just in her own working life but as a Minister in this important sector. I would be very concerned if there were situations where, as she suggested, corporate parenting was used as an excuse for not trying to achieve what should in many cases be the desired outcome: settling the child with his or her family, if that is at all possible. When children and young people become looked after, it is essential from the outset that there is robust and flexible planning for their future. Certainly stability is crucial to a child’s development and happiness, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said. The system should support stability through minimising moves and seeking permanent solutions wherever possible.
For that reason, I believe that the wording in Clause 1 needs to be strengthened in order to demonstrate that we all want our children and young people to have successful and productive lives—and, to ensure that that happens, that we will provide the services and support in every form which will help them succeed, particularly when they have problems to overcome. The amendments in this group offer considerable opportunities to contribute to that and I would not take issue with any of them. I hope that the Minister will respond in a positive manner.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Howe, Lady Walmsley and Lady Pinnock, and to the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham, Lord Bichard, Lord Hunt and Lord Watson, for their amendments relating to the corporate parenting principle set out in Clause 1. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, commented on timing and I can assure him that the usual channels, as he so comprehensively described them, will be made aware of his point.
In designing the seven principles, the Government have set out the key decisions that young people tell us are of fundamental importance to being a good corporate parent. Given their importance, it is absolutely right that we should debate the principles to ensure that when they are enacted, they do what is intended—namely, to change the culture within local authorities so that they take into account the needs of looked-after children and care leavers when discharging their functions.
At the outset, I want to be clear that the Government intend that the corporate parenting principles will have a life beyond the statute book. My honourable friend the Minister for Children and Families tells me that he wants every social worker, housing chief, leaving care adviser and council leader to have those principles on the wall of his or her office. He wants them to be discussed at council meetings, at looked-after children review meetings, and by foster carers when they talk to their children’s teachers. In short, he wants to drive a culture of good corporate parenting across the whole local authority and not just through the children’s services team. We cannot change culture through legislation alone, but we can legislate to influence how people talk about their responsibilities and how they discharge those responsibilities in relation to looked-after children and care leavers.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, just before the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, replies, the Minister mentioned on several occasions the 1989 Act, which has a very strong and clear set of principles and duties in it. The Minister has heard from many noble Lords that we feel that the way in which Clause 1 is worded is nowhere near as strong. Does the Minister agree that it is not as strong as in the 1989 Act? Which set of duties has supremacy? To have the duty on Clause 1 worded in a much weaker way than in the 1989 Act can benefit only lawyers; it introduces confusion.
Lord Nash
With respect to the lawyers present—including myself from many years ago—I will not comment on the last point. We are trying to set out principles and not put local authorities under any more duties than necessary or into any kind of straitjacket. But the noble Baroness makes a point about a number of duties and we will go back and look at this in more detail.
The Earl of Listowel
I thank the noble Lord for answering my point about siblings. I look forward to the debate on the amendments. I also thank him for his clear reply to the important point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top. He said that the care plan process must involve parents. However, the experience so often is that parents do not get the help they need with their addictions or mental health support. So I hope that the noble Baroness will consider bringing back an amendment on this on Report. In the interim, I look forward to having discussions with colleagues to get their advice on whether anything more can be done to ensure parents get the support they need.
Lord Nash
My Lords, Clause 1 introduces for the first time seven principles to which local authorities must have regard whenever they exercise their functions in relation to looked-after children and care leavers. The principles are applicable to all local authorities in England and they apply to all parts of the local authority, not just children’s services. These principles are important because they create an overarching framework to guide everyone, not just social care teams, in all local authorities in the way that they carry out their key functions in relation to looked-after children and care leavers.
The noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, seek to apply these principles additionally to the “relevant partners” of local authorities, as defined by Section 10 of the Children Act 2004, so that they, too, would have to have regard to them. In particular, there is a desire to ensure that health and housing bodies must have regard to the principles in exercising their functions. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has sought to apply these principles to other organisations, including central government, and to the United Kingdom as a whole.
Let me first respond to Amendments 3 and 31A. These would require every government department in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to have regard to the corporate parenting principles. They would require government departments in these countries to have regard to any guidance issued by the Secretary of State for Education in respect of the corporate parenting principles which are placed on English local authorities only.
The reason Clause 1 seeks to apply the principles in law only to local authorities in England is that it is they that are corporate parents for looked-after children and care leavers in England. It is the local authorities in England, and not central government departments, that are charged with carrying out functions in relation to looked-after children and care leavers, such that they are the corporate parents of those children and young people.
The clause does not extend to other parts of the United Kingdom. So even if we wished to apply the principles to central government departments, I expect that the devolved Administrations, which have their own legislative frameworks determining the arrangements for looked-after children and care leavers, would have something to say about that.
The noble Lord, Lord Watson, made a point about corporate parenting principles being applied widely, as in Scotland. The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 applied corporate parenting to 24 bodies. It has been in force for only a year and so it is a bit early to say what its impact will be.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
I was just suggesting that that should be looked at and that lessons could be learned.
Lord Nash
The noble Lord makes a good point: we should look at it and see what lessons can be learned, as Scotland is at least a year ahead of us on this.
To focus on England, we absolutely acknowledge that there is a role for central government—but it is a different role. Central government departments are not the corporate parents of the children taken into care or accommodated by local authorities. The role of government is to set the broader policy framework.
That is not to say that government departments across Whitehall do not recognise that looked-after children and care leavers need more support and assistance. That is why, if we take health services as an example, the NHS Constitution for England makes clear the responsibilities of clinical commissioning groups and NHS England to looked-after children and, by extension, care leavers. It is also why looked-after children are mentioned specifically in the mandate to NHS England.
The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, made a point about CAMHS not being willing to treat children not in a stable placement. Child and adolescent mental health services should treat children according to level of need, irrespective of the stability of their placements. The expert group set up to look at care pathways for looked-after children will specifically address this point, with a view to ensuring that access to treatment is according to clinical need and in line with existing statutory guidance.
There are other examples where central government in England has championed looked-after children and care leavers. That is why they now attract pupil premium at a rate of £1,900 per pupil—higher than for other eligible pupils. That is why they also get priority in school admission arrangements.
In 2013, the first cross-government Care Leaver Strategy was published. It recognised the need to work coherently across government to address the needs of care leavers in the round. As a result, a number of changes were made, including measures to better identify care leavers so that they got tailored support—for instance, through the introduction of a “marker” by Jobcentre Plus so that care leavers could be identified and offered additional help. This work continues. We are now working on a refreshed strategy, and have been working closely with seven other government departments in England. The development of the strategy, which will be published shortly, has the backing of the Social Justice Cabinet Committee.
Amendments 36 and 37 seek to require government departments to publish information about services that will help care leavers prepare for adulthood and independent living. As with Clause 1, Clause 2 is about local authority services. The local offer is a manifestation of what it means for each local authority to be a good corporate parent. I agree that central government has responsibilities to looked-after children and care leavers alongside local government. The work we have been doing with each government department at both ministerial level and involving senior officials meeting regularly to discuss what more can be done to support care leavers at the level of national policy represents a significant step forward in increasing the understanding of and commitment to care leavers across Whitehall. Guidance of course is incredibly useful and we shall be consulting fully on what the guidance on corporate parenting should include. But although—quite rightly—central government can and is setting the framework for good corporate parenting, the biggest impact on the lives of looked-after children and care leavers will be made at local level.
We have not extended the principles beyond local authorities in England because it is their duty to both looked-after children and care leavers—and I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, for her remarks in this regard. These principles will guide local authorities in how they should exercise their existing functions and duties in relation to these vulnerable children and young people. As I have said, through these high-level principles we want to embed a corporate parenting culture across the whole local authority.
I recognise that looked-after children and care leavers need more support and assistance from a variety of public bodies. They will need to be able to make best use of services provided by other bodies, including clinical commissioning groups, NHS England, schools, housing and sometimes youth offending teams. That is why the fourth principle sets out a requirement to have regard to the need to help looked-after children and care leavers gain access to and make best use of services provided by the local authority and its relevant partners.
Of course, one could seek to apply these principles to a whole range of other public bodies. However, I believe that in doing so we would risk creating an overly bureaucratic tick-box approach that would do little to improve the life chances of looked-after children and care leavers. Instead, we need to embed a cultural shift. As I have said, the duty to co-operate with the relevant parties is already on the statute book in Section 10 of the Children Act 2004, where there is a duty to co-operate to improve the well-being of children and care leavers.
I emphasise that though we do not believe that extending the principles in law to other bodies is the way forward, we recognise that there is more to do to raise the awareness of these young people. Indeed, the consultation which local authorities will undertake with their local practitioners on developing the local offer being introduced under Clause 2 will ensure that access to NHS services and housing is inevitably brought into the process without the need for further prescription. To reinforce this, the department will also set out in statutory guidance how the corporate parenting principles should be applied in practice. Partnership working and commitment to care leavers is at the heart of the sea change that is needed to transform their lives.
Last month the Prime Minister signalled the Government’s intention to create a care-leaver covenant. This will provide a means through which public, private and voluntary sector organisations will be able to demonstrate how they support these young people and improve their lives. I would expect partners such as police and health bodies to consider how they can contribute to supporting care leavers. I also hope that many organisations in the private and voluntary sectors will commit to supporting young people leaving care through the care-leaver covenant.
I hope that noble Lords are reassured and that the noble Lord can be persuaded to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Warner
Can the Minister explain what part of Section 10 actually requires other agencies to co-operate? It looks to me as though Section 10 is all about combined authority functions, which is not the same as the point being made in this debate about other agencies. Can he also respond to the point that both the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and I made about looking at the Care Act to see the way in which the coalition Government took account of the need to require agencies to co-operate with the primary responsibility given to local authorities to deliver the health and well-being of people covered by the Act? We are asking the Minister to consider that and I did not hear anything in his speech that suggested he would take away the proposition that he should look at requiring a duty from these other agencies to co-operate with the local authority as the corporate parent.
Lord Ramsbotham
I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. Many issues have come up during the course of the debate, not least those raised by the noble Lord, Lord Warner. I suspect that this subject will reoccur on Report and I hope very much that, unlike the period in the lead-up to Committee, it will be possible to have meetings with the Minister and his officials to discuss it. I suspect that at least the Local Government Association and local authorities will wish to be consulted on what actually appears in the Bill. So in the hope that that may happen—
Lord Ramsbotham
I am most grateful to the Minister. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, undoubtedly many telling points have been made on these wide-ranging amendments. I cannot offer my support for all of them, but I certainly can in respect of those tabled by my noble friend Lady Massey and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, concerning mental health. My noble friend urged the promotion of mental health, something that we might imagine was not necessary but unfortunately it is. Current statutory guidance requires that children entering care should receive a physical health assessment by a trained clinician, yet mental health and emotional well-being are assessed only through a strengths and difficulties questionnaire. That is not an alternative to a full assessment conducted by someone with the appropriate qualifications in mental health, which should be instituted as a matter of urgency. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, sets it out clearly in her Amendment 87. This is not a new demand. I can recall asking for it on several occasions during our consideration last year of the Education and Adoption Bill, and I was not alone. Noble Lords from all sides of the House expressed the same call.
It is now well past the point when Ministers should get it, by which I mean the fact that 45% of children entering care have a diagnosable mental health condition. Their needs should be identified early and clearly. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, referred to the plans that form part of the implementation of Future in Mind, and I hope that I am quoting her accurately when she said that only 14% of children entering care receive proper mental health assessments despite the proposals in the document. I would suggest that the time for that situation to change dramatically is now long overdue. We missed the opportunity in last year’s legislation, so I hope that will not be allowed to happen again.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 10, 16, 17, 21 to 25, 28, 33 and 34, 80A and 81A, 84A and 87 regarding the promotion of the mental, physical, emotional and social health and well-being of looked-after children and care leavers, as well as their educational outcomes, along with the educational outcomes of children who leave care and return to their parents. I fully agree that promoting the mental health and social and emotional well-being of looked-after children and care leavers and promoting positive educational outcomes for these groups is critically important, and I shall deal with each of the amendments in turn.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, for her Amendment 10 and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, for her Amendment 34. The Government have made clear in Section 1 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 that a comprehensive health service is one that addresses mental as well as physical illness. The Government’s intention is to ensure that the first corporate parenting principle, which refers to promoting the health and well-being of looked-after children and care leavers, is interpreted as covering both the physical and mental aspects. We think that this is clear in the Bill as currently drafted, but we will clarify the position in associated statutory guidance.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield
Given the strength of feeling that has been expressed on all sides about the mental health amendments in particular, would the Minister be prepared to agree to a meeting for those of us who tabled those amendments, and other Peers who have spoken with such passion on the subject, between now and Report?
The Earl of Listowel
Before the noble Baroness withdraws her amendment, I want to say how very pleased I was to hear that Dr Peter Fonagy, director of the Anna Freud Centre, an institution with such an illustrious history in the treatment of abused children, is being appointed to run a working group looking at how mental health professionals can better work with children in care. The Minister might consider taking to Dr Fonagy, at the beginning of his research, the concern about children’s homes. In his report in the 1990s, Choosing with Care, the noble Lord, Lord Warner, highlighted the fact that best and widespread practice on the continent had psychiatrists or relevant mental health professionals working in partnership with staff in children’s homes, as much to support staff as in meeting the mental health needs of these children. Only about half of our children’s homes have a connection with mental health professionals in that way.
This issue is so important. Although there has been progress in terms of the qualifications of staff in children’s homes, still we have a long way to go. They need the best mental health professionals supporting them. I would be most grateful if the Minister could flag that up to Dr Fonagy.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, I will speak briefly. Amendment 27 seems to underpin the other amendments with regard to protection against poverty and destitution. This is pivotal to the life chances of this particularly vulnerable group of young people. The Government’s own Care Leavers Strategy points out that when you do not have a supportive family to fall back on, particularly when having to meet the challenge of independent living at a much younger age than your peers, having access to timely financial help is crucial. Care leavers have told us that they often find it difficult to navigate services and work out what financial support they are entitled to, and we have heard how sometimes the financial support is not very much. I am not going to restate the case—and anyway the Minister may well have been briefed on this.
Amendment 48, which refers to income support and working tax credit, will be overtaken by events with the introduction of universal credit. For example, with regard to sanctions, the Children’s Society has suggested that under universal credit this group should be made subject to the work preparation requirement under Section 21 of the Welfare Reform Act 2012. That seems very reasonable to me.
The Minister himself referred earlier to one or two local authorities that provide exemption from council tax, when he was giving an example of how local authorities can support care leavers. I can only reiterate what has been said: this is so important that it cannot be left to the vagaries of local authority discretion. It has to be looked at again.
I hope that the Minister will be able to take away these practical suggestions for how local authorities and central government can support local authorities in their corporate parenting responsibilities. I realise that they sit in other government departments, so what would be helpful would be to have a commitment from the Minister today to take away these ideas and discuss them with his colleagues in the relevant departments, so that he can come back on Report. Possibly he could even hold informal discussions before then so that we might be able to make some progress on this set of eminently sensible suggestions.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Bakewell and Lady Howarth, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, for their amendments in this group, which focus on improving the life chances of children in care and care leavers and helping them to avoid poverty and debt. I share the concerns raised by noble Lords and can confirm that reducing poverty and debt will be one of the key themes in our forthcoming Care Leavers Strategy, which we plan to publish shortly.
Amendment 26, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, seeks to add a new corporate parenting principle to Clause 1 requiring local authorities to promote early intervention. I agree with the noble Lords that we should support measures that enable professionals to identify and intervene in cases where children are at risk of poor outcomes. We have launched a number of initiatives to encourage early intervention and have backed this up with increased funding, with government spending on early years and child care rising from £5 billion in 2015-16 to over £6 billion by 2019-20. Early intervention and support should benefit all children, not only looked-after children or those on the edge of care. Our plans for the early years demonstrate our clear commitment to universal services such as free childcare, alongside targeted support for the most vulnerable.
Amendment 27, tabled by the noble Baroness, also seeks to add an additional corporate parenting principle to Clause 1 which would require local authorities to have regard to the need to protect children in care and care leavers from poverty and destitution. We know that care leavers often face challenges with debt. We have heard from them that they worry about how they will be able to pay their rent and that they often feel they lack the relevant budgeting skills to be able to manage their money effectively. We have heard several examples of that today.
I recognise the importance of the issues raised by the noble Baroness. Care leavers already receive support to help them to manage their finances but all young people should receive financial education. I am pleased to confirm that we will include further information in the guidance that we plan to publish under Clause 1 on how, by working within the spirit of the corporate parenting principles, local authorities can help care leavers to avoid poverty and debt. We should cover in the local offers the importance of financial education and we will cover this in our guidance.
During the last Parliament we introduced junior ISAs and encouraged all local authorities to increase the leaving care grant, which care leavers can use to furnish their first home, to £2,000 or more, but we need to back that up with educating them on how to manage those monies. We also provide financial support to enable care leavers to access and participate in education, to which I referred earlier.
Turning to the amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, I understand that its effect would be to extend the category of persons eligible for income support to all care leavers up to the age of 25 and to extend the exemption to the local housing allowance shared accommodation rate from 22 to 25, when their entitlement to housing benefit is assessed. I have consulted with honourable and noble Members elsewhere in government about the noble Earl’s amendment to relax entitlement conditions for receipt of working tax credit for care leavers working at least 30 hours per week. It has been a condition of entitlement to the working tax credit since its introduction in April 2003 but, other than for individuals, including care leavers, who are responsible for a child or who are disabled, a person claiming working tax credit must be aged 25 or over and work at least 30 hours per week. There are already a number of existing provisions within the benefits system aimed at helping care leavers, and I would be happy to write to the noble Earl setting these out in more detail.
On the noble Earl’s suggested change to housing benefit, it is right to say that the rate of housing benefit to which care leavers are entitled changes when they reach the age of 22 and they move to the shared accommodation rate. However, as he will be aware, discretionary housing payments continue to be available via local authorities if additional financial help with housing costs is needed. The Government have already committed £870 million in discretionary housing payment funding over the next five years. Noble Lords will appreciate that this is a significant sum of money to help those who are vulnerable and require additional help with their housing costs.
The amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, would amend the Local Government Finance Act 1992 so as to disregard care leavers from liability for council tax up to the age of 25, ensuring that dwellings occupied solely by care leavers are exempt from council tax. This amendment would provide a blanket exemption for all care leavers under the age of 25 irrespective of their personal circumstances or their ability to pay. If we did so without taking their ability to pay into account, we could find that a lower income tax payer could be supporting a care leaver with a higher income. I am sure that is not the intention behind the amendment.
The Government have been clear that such decisions are much better taken at local level instead of mandating exemptions or discounts from the centre. We have given local councils wide powers to design council tax support schemes, including scope for discounts for particular groups of people. It is therefore a matter for local authorities, which must consult with local communities on their proposals. Concerning the corporate parenting principles, they would impact on all local authority functions, including those relating to council tax or housing, and the guidance will set out how local authorities must ensure that they take holistic decisions in relation to looked-after children and care leavers.
I turn now to Amendment 50, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, which would place a new duty on local authorities to provide suitable accommodation for all care leavers in their local authority area until the age of 21. There are already a range of measures in place that help young people secure suitable accommodation when they leave care. The government’s statutory guidance states that when a young person leaves their care placement the local authority must ensure that their new home is suitable for their needs and linked to their wider plans and aspirations.
I would expect a local authority’s leaving care team to work closely with housing services to help care leavers access supported lodgings or semi-independent accommodation—or, if they are ready, secure and maintain an independent tenancy. Where care leavers struggle to find and maintain accommodation, they have a priority need within the homelessness legislation until age 22, and they are also a priority group within statutory guidance on the allocation of social housing.
We have also introduced, as the noble Earl will be aware, Staying Put to enable young people to remain living with their foster carers where that is what they both want. This provides both suitable accommodation and the sort of gradual transition to adulthood that is enjoyed by the majority of young people. We want to maximise the number of young people who can stay put with their former foster carers and I am delighted—and I am sure that the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, will be pleased to hear—that for the year ending March 2015, almost half of those who were eligible to stay put did so.
The noble Lord, Lord Watson, raised the issue of Staying Put for those care leavers who have been placed in residential care. We are committed to helping all young people successfully move to adulthood but we would need strong evidence before introducing Staying Put on any alternative residential care. Sir Martin Narey’s independent review into children’s homes will set a direction for how we improve children’s experience of residential care, including transition to adulthood. We will publish this report shortly. We have also been trialling innovative approaches to providing care leavers with suitable accommodation. We are also keen to test new ways of supporting those who leave residential care and will set out our plans on this in the forthcoming Care Leaver Strategy.
Finally in this group I will respond to Amendment 80 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth. The amendment would place a new duty on local authorities to appoint a person to make advice and information available to previously looked-after children with a view to improving their life chances. This Government share the noble Baroness’s belief that society should do all it can to ensure that a difficult start to a child’s life does not set them on an inevitable path to poor educational outcomes, homelessness or imprisonment. However, we do not consider that it is necessary or desirable to place a new burden on local authorities to appoint officers to support these children and young people.
There is a clear difference between this group of children and looked-after children or care leavers for whom the local authority is their corporate parent. These previously looked-after children will have parents or persons with parental responsibility who can provide a stable and loving family, support them to do well at school and provide extra help through the transition into adulthood and living independently. Most local authorities also already provide specific ongoing support for those who leave care under an adoption, special guardianship or child arrangement order. To help them in this role, we have already extended the adoption support fund to children who leave care under a special guardianship order. This is helping to ensure that their parents and local authorities are able to provide them with the therapeutic services they need to overcome their early disadvantage.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, asked me to take back these points and discuss them with my colleagues across government, which I will do, and, in view of the points that I have made, I hope that the noble Lords will feel sufficiently reassured to enable them to withdraw their amendment.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his helpful replies. They give us plenty of food for thought. I am clear that he has given very careful thought to these issues and I am grateful to him for that. It was very encouraging to hear that half of those young people eligible for Staying Put have taken up the offer. Of course, we both want it to go further, but it is encouraging. Staying Put is a very important step forward. I am glad that the Minister is listening to young people in care. We talked about that earlier. Listening to young people with experience of Staying Put is a very salutary, encouraging experience.
There is a concern about ISAs. The Minister may correct me, but I think that they represent a large sum of money being given to very young people. There is a risk that they may not use it well and that they will not be supported in using it. There is also a concern about the sums given by local authorities to care leavers. Some social workers will insist on receipts and manage the money carefully while others will just give them the money. At best the young people may waste that money, but some may use it to their own detriment. Perhaps the Minister could write to me to clarify what support there is for young people leaving care to manage those sums well. I would much appreciate that. I also thank him for his response.
Care Leavers: Life Chances
Lord Nash Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Polak
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how the introduction of the first corporate parenting principles will ensure that care leavers have the best life chances possible.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, good parenting is essential to ensure that young people can thrive in childhood and as adults. Our Bill brings together for the first time what it means to be a corporate parent. The principles set a high bar for how local authorities should discharge this incredibly important duty when supporting the most vulnerable young people. In addition, by signing the care leaver covenant, private and public organisations will commit to giving care leavers the start in life they deserve.
Lord Polak (Con)
I thank my noble friend for his helpful Answer. The introduction of this Bill should be welcomed by all sides of this House. For far too long, vulnerable children and care leavers have been left behind. Does the Minister agree that the outcomes for these children should be a matter for the whole of society? Can he explain how these important principles will be adopted by other organisations so that the burden does not fall solely on overstretched local authorities?
Lord Nash
I am grateful for my noble friend’s support. I agree entirely that we want the principles to be embraced by a wide group of organisations—charities, the private sector, businesses and public sector agencies—and that is what the care leaver covenant is all about. It will be a promise from the nation to care leavers that anyone who leaves care will be treated fairly and given the support they need to make the best of their opportunity to make a successful transition to adulthood. It will be a commitment to support care leavers through the way in which we deliver services, the opportunities provided, promoting the covenant and getting others to sign up.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
I apologise; I did not see the noble Baroness. The Minister will know that the children who do worst at school and in life are those on child protection plans, rather than those coming into care. How will the Government ensure that such children have good parenting, either by being maintained in their own homes or being in permanent placements that will give them that life chance?
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
My Lords, my question is simple. How did we get to the place where we talk about “corporate parenting”? I ask this House to think about that notion. The idea that some children might not be able to stay with their own parents is one thing, but the idea that we talk about corporate parenting in a world like this—what does that mean?
Lord Nash
I apologise if the noble Baroness does not like the expression but the intention is to give these children someone who is in loco parentis and can fight their corner. It is about changing and spreading good practice, and making sure that the local authorities’ task in loco parentis does not burden them with a tick-box approach and extra duties.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, the Minister will know how important personal advisers are for care leavers. How do we ensure that they are of the highest quality? Does he believe that there should be minimum qualifications and requirements? Is he hopeful that this might be agreed in the Bill?
Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)
My Lords, how do the Government reconcile the treatment of those from this country who have been corporately cared for with that of young unaccompanied asylum seekers who, when they reach the age of 18, can be deported with no care at all? How can we help those 18 year-olds by changing legislation or putting in new hope for them?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)
My Lords, in the light of the Laming report, the Howard League report and the Standing Committee for Youth Justice report, which all draw attention to our inappropriate criminalisation of children in care compared to the rest of the world, what steps are the Government, whether the DfE or the MoJ, going to take to address this issue?
Baroness Deech (CB)
The Minister will know that children leaving care are much less likely to go into higher education than other children. Are there provisions to ensure supportive parenting of some sort to see them right through to the age of 21 or so if they go into higher education, to ensure that more of them go and that they do not drop out?
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, local authorities that have responsibility for these children are usually the largest employers in their area. Like all parents, they should take more responsibility in ensuring that these children and young people have access to apprenticeships and jobs and have a future. Many do not do this, although there are examples of good practice. Will the Minister say how this will be rolled out?
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Lord Nash Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, it is a privilege to open the Second Reading debate on the Children and Social Work Bill. I was delighted to see such a good turnout at the briefing held on Tuesday by the Minister for Children and Families, Edward Timpson, and me and to hear such positive comments from across the House. I am very grateful to all noble Lords who found the time to attend that meeting and who are present today. I should add that, in order to assist noble Lords, I have written to all those who attended that meeting and all noble Lords whose names are down to speak today detailing a further opportunity to meet officials from my department in order to discuss any aspect of this Bill. The meeting will take place tomorrow between 11.30 am and 1 pm in room W2 in Westminster Hall.
It goes without saying that this Bill is a high priority for the Government and reflects our firm commitment to offer the promise of a better future to children who have endured experiences and faced the kinds of challenges that most of us will never encounter. In fulfilling that commitment, it is important to note that the Bill before us is only part of a wider programme of measures to strengthen children’s services and improve the life chances of all children, especially the most vulnerable.
First, the Bill will ensure that the right practice systems are in place for making sure that children’s needs and interests are at the heart of local decision-making. It has a particular focus on those children who, for whatever reason and through no fault of their own, can no longer remain in their family home and need to be taken into the care of the state. While remaining true to the principles laid out in the Children Act 1989, the Bill will promote greater stability in those children’s upbringing and better support to improve their opportunities and outcomes.
Secondly, the Bill will strengthen local governance and accountability arrangements to help us understand the factors leading up to serious cases and inform policy and practice nationally, and so that local agencies can learn from this and improve the quality of the services that they provide to vulnerable children and families. The Bill will give local authorities an opportunity to test new ways of working in a safe and managed environment so that they can tailor their services specifically to the needs of children rather than slavishly following a set of one-size-fits-all rules.
Finally, and of course, any services are only as good as the people who work in them. Therefore, we are undertaking a series of reforms to the social work profession, building on the excellent practice that we know already takes place in some parts of the country. The Bill will strengthen training, promote higher standards and raise the status of the social work profession. The new regulatory system will apply across the whole of the social work profession, whether it is those working with children and families or those working with adults and their families, supporting improvements in the standard services across the board. Social workers perform one of the most important jobs in the world. It is essential that they have the right knowledge and skills to carry out that role to a high professional standard. That is why we must work with the profession to raise both the status and the quality.
I hope that participants in this debate will want to support our intentions. However, I recognise that there will be considerable interest in the specific measures and how they will work in practice, so I would like to take a few moments to set them out in more detail, along with the rationale behind them.
I will deal first with children in care and care leavers. Clauses 1 to 3 are designed to strengthen the support that is available to the approximately 10,000 young people aged 16 to 19 who leave care each year. All the evidence shows that care leavers are among the most vulnerable young people in our society. Many are still struggling to overcome the impact of the trauma they faced in childhood and, in most cases, they are expected to make the transition into adulthood without the unconditional love and support of a family or close circle of friends. As a consequence, they are far more likely to end up NEET, more likely to experience homelessness or mental health issues, and more likely to end up in the criminal justice system. However, with good, stable care and a more personalised and supported transition into adulthood, those stark facts need not be the culmination of their time in and leaving care.
I am delighted to be bringing forward these provisions because one of my first engagements with policy in this area was around a decade ago, when, having become aware of some of the issues facing children in and leaving care, as a director of the Centre for Policy Studies I commissioned a report on the life chances of children in care and the support for children leaving care. The results of the excellent Handle with Care study, by Harriet Sergeant, were shocking. Improvements have been made, but it is still unquestionably the case that, without the right support at the right time, many children will leave care without the right foundations or stability in their lives to go on and make a success of their adult lives. All too often, the system is failing them as individuals, and the cost to the public purse of this failure in later years is enormous. Acting in this area is not just the right thing to do—which it most certainly is—it is also the financially sensible thing to do.
The Bill will address this by clarifying and strengthening the role of local authorities in promoting and defending the interests of care leavers in key decisions that affect their lives. Clause 1 will establish a set of principles that set out what it means for a local authority to act as a good “corporate parent”, and that applies to the whole local authority, including housing, health and well-being, and other local amenities, not just children’s services. The principles will not just be transformative for care leavers but also apply to any children who are looked after by the state and who need someone to champion their interests in the same way as birth parents do, because these children deserve the same opportunities as any other.
The principles do not place any new duties on local authorities but provide a clear definition of expectations about how the local authority should fulfil this role based on what any good parent would do for their own children. It articulates for the first time, in one place, what support these children can expect. At the same time as introducing the principles in the Bill, the Government will also promote a care leaver covenant in which we will encourage other local agencies and organisations to come together and pledge their support for care leavers.
Many of the ideas are the result of listening to the views of children in care and care leavers. Yesterday, for instance, Edward Timpson, I and the Children’s Commissioner met a group of children in care and young people who have left care here in Parliament and listened to their ideas about how their lives could be improved. It was inspirational, and I was very impressed by the young people. However, it was also deeply concerning as there were many similar stories about how they had had many different social workers in a short space of time, and there was inconsistency in the different people—social workers and advisers—with whom they were working. If anyone was in any doubt about the importance of this legislation and the actions that will flow from it, that meeting made it clear that we are definitely on the right road with our plans. This kind of engagement needs to be part of an ongoing process at national and local level and is a key element of the corporate parenting principles, because this Bill is about giving these children a voice and making sure that their voices are heard.
The Bill will reinforce the principles in practice by requiring local authorities to consult on and publish details of their offer to care leavers, setting out the support available for areas such as education, health, employment and accommodation. It will also extend the support that care leavers can expect to receive individually. Currently, all care leavers are supported by the local authority up to the age of 21, but only those who remain in education and training beyond the age of 21 have the benefit of additional support from a personal adviser up to the age of 25. That seems the wrong way round, because those who have left education and training often live in less stable arrangements or do not have the same support networks to rely on. The Bill will extend the personal adviser service to any care leaver who requests it up to the age of 25. Alongside the Bill, we will also be reviewing the quality and remit of personal advisers so that we can make sure that the support they offer and the relationships they build are of a consistently high standard.
I turn to adoption and long-term care. In March this year, the Government published a new policy statement, Adoption: A Vision for Change, which set out our plans to strengthen arrangements for adoption, including the factors that are taken into account when decisions on permanence are made. The Government are strongly pro-adoption because we believe that it offers a critical opportunity for children to move into a long-term placement where they can build a loving relationship with their adoptive parents in a stable and supportive home environment. However, we recognise that this option is still open to only a small percentage of children who can no longer live with their birth parents. The provisions in the Bill will ensure that the factors which evidence shows have most impact on children’s long-term outcomes will be given due weight when decisions about adoption and other permanent arrangements are made. The changes will require decision-makers to take proper account of the quality of support a child will need in light of the harm they have suffered or the risk they have been exposed to, and the child’s current and potential future needs up until the age of 18. They will also ensure that the relationship between the child and their prospective adopters is considered.
The Bill includes two additional provisions to ensure that adopted children and those in other long-term placements receive ongoing help to improve their educational outcomes. The role of virtual school heads, who currently act as champions for the interests of looked-after children across local authorities, and the role of designated teachers, who hold a similar role in schools, will be extended to adopted children and children who are in long-term placements with other members of their family or special guardianship orders. This does not mean that the same support has to be offered to every child. We will expect the virtual school heads and designated teachers to use their professional judgment to decide on the most appropriate form and level of help to provide.
I turn now to children and safeguarding. Nothing can be more important than the safeguarding and protection of children, especially those who are at greatest risk or the most vulnerable. Sadly, we hear too often of terrible cases where children have suffered unimaginable neglect or abuse. We all agree that this should never happen and that we should take every step possible to reduce the risk of it happening again; yet, sadly, the same issues arise over and over again, including failure by agencies to share information and, all too often, the needs of adults being considered before those of children. Clauses 11 to 14 are designed to establish a new Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel to oversee the review of the most serious and complex cases and, with the support of the planned What Works centre for children’s social care, make sure that the lessons from them are no longer locked at the local level, but provide a stronger national evidence base to inform practice across the country. We estimate that the number of cases to be reviewed by the panel will be around 20 to 30 a year, with the remainder being reviewed, as at present, at local level.
Some noble Lords may have seen that on 26 May the Government also issued a Written Ministerial Statement on the Wood review. As well as looking at serious case reviews, it considered the co-ordination of local safeguarding arrangements more generally. The overall conclusion is that the current system of local safeguarding children boards is too inflexible, too variable and too frequently ineffective. Indeed, Ofsted reviews show that of the 94 LSCBs which have been reviewed, nearly 70% were rated as either inadequate or requiring improvement. We are therefore proposing to introduce a new, more robust statutory framework around multi-agency working that places a greater onus on the three main local partners involved in children’s safeguarding: the local authority, the police and health. We believe that these changes need to happen quickly and we will therefore be tabling government amendments in advance of the Committee stage so that the House can consider them at the earliest opportunity.
The Bill also includes measures which are intended to lead to lasting improvements in children’s social care services. Clause 10 is largely a technical amendment designed to put beyond doubt that the Secretary of State’s power to intervene in local authorities whose services are inadequate will also apply where two or more local authorities have combined those services. Clauses 15 to 19 will allow local authorities and agencies discharging care functions on their behalf to explore and develop more effective ways of working in children’s social care. The use of this provision will be entirely voluntary and locally led. It will allow a local authority to apply to the Secretary of State for a disapplication of its statutory responsibilities in respect of children’s services for a specified period so that it can test out better ways of working, either more efficiently or to improve the quality of support and raise children’s outcomes. The new arrangements will give high-performing local authorities an opportunity to operate more flexibly and trial more effective ways of delivering children’s services.
There is a consensus stemming back to the landmark Munro Review of Child Protection that over-regulation gets in the way of good social work practice. Addressing this is central to our strategy to reform children’s social care and this new power to innovate will enable us to carefully pilot and evaluate deregulatory measures. It mirrors a similar existing power for schools. We recognise that any relaxation of statutory requirements should not be undertaken lightly. We have therefore built in a number of significant safeguards into the application process to make sure that the use of the new power is properly scrutinised and that the safety of children is always ensured. These include time-limiting the length of the pilots and making their approval subject to regulation using affirmative procedures wherever the proposal is to change the application of primary legislation. We have also included requirements to consult on the proposals with Ofsted and the Children’s Commissioner. These plans sit alongside our £200 million extension to the children’s social care innovation programme—a hugely successful programme involving partnerships between local authorities and charities, which, like the Pause projects, have already had life-transforming effects.
The second part of the Bill sets out our programme of reform for social work. Social work is a vital profession in our society, but one that is often not understood or valued sufficiently. Social workers have the ability to change lives—to enable people, whatever their circumstances or age, to have the best possible chance in life and achieve the outcomes they want for themselves, whether it is ensuring a child is protected or supporting an adult to live as independent a life as possible.
While there are examples of great practice and positive impact, I think we can all agree that there is more that can be done. We want professional practice and judgments to be focused on well-being and led by evidence of what works, not bureaucracy, process and procedure. We want social workers to be recognised and trusted, skilled professionals. The Bill provides for a new bespoke regulatory body dedicated to social work, with the ambition and vision to develop and regulate the workforce across the profession—across a whole career, different specialisms and different levels of seniority. This will represent a much more substantial approach to supporting the social work profession, focusing beyond entry-level qualifications on a whole lifetime career to embrace even the most senior social workers in the country—those leading social care services across England.
The new body will replace the current role of the Health and Care Professions Council in respect of the 93,000 social workers currently registered in England. The change to the system of regulation of social workers is in no sense a criticism of the HCPC. I commend the work that it has carried out since taking on the regulation of social workers in August 2012. Rather, it is a reflection of the unique position of social workers and of the uniquely difficult role they perform in supporting those people and children in society who are the most vulnerable or who have the greatest need. It is the Government’s belief that the interests of the people supported by social workers and the interests of the social work profession will be best served by a specialist regulator with a single focus on this profession.
The key objective of the new body will be to establish a robust regulatory system that will raise standards across the whole profession, while also taking effective action to tackle poor performance. It will: establish the knowledge and skills needed by social workers to practise effectively, both in front-line practice and in leadership roles; maintain a register of professionals that will fully reflect the range, skills and experience of individual social workers; oversee a mechanism for assessing the ability of training and education courses to produce graduates who meet these standards; oversee the rollout of the Government’s plans to assess and accredit child and family social workers; and place a strong emphasis on continuous professional development so that all social workers have the up-to-date and high-quality skills they need to deal with the issues they will encounter. The Bill will also introduce parallel changes in respect of the approval of courses for mental health professionals and best interests assessors in England.
Before I conclude, I shall address the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie. I do not doubt the importance of the topic raised by the noble Lord. However, I hope the following debate will focus on the content of the Bill and the important role it will play in the lives of children and those who support them. I am sure the noble Lord’s intention is not to shift focus away from such a laudable aim, so perhaps he will forgive me if I do not enter into an extensive discussion on the use of secondary legislation. However, I will make three further points on the noble Lord’s Motion.
First, the substance of the Motion is factually incorrect. The clauses referenced, Clauses 20 to 40, actually contain only two new delegated powers and one extension of an existing power proposed. This is vastly different from the suggestion by the noble Lord that the clauses contain “only delegations of power”. Furthermore, the provisions we are putting forward are far narrower than the existing regime of delegated legislation flowing from Section 60 of the Health Act 1999, which was introduced under the last Labour Government. Rather than re-enact that power in its existing form, we have deliberately chosen to propose in the Bill a new power which only covers social workers in England. This new power, unlike the one it replaces, is focused, bespoke and specific to the regulation of social work.
Secondly, the Government are firmly of the view that delegated legislation is the most appropriate vehicle to set out the role and operations of the new regulator, along with the relevant establishment and transfer arrangements, as this will allow us to update the legal framework more easily to reflect changing professional standards and improvements in working practices. This is in line with recent advice from the Law Commission on regulatory reform, which emphasised the need for this type of flexibility in the exercise of a regulator’s functions, within the context of clear powers. After all, we must be flexible in responding to the needs of the profession.
Thirdly, I should like to assure all noble Lords that I fully recognise the importance of this House having all the relevant details before it is able to carry out appropriate scrutiny of draft legislation. The Government have always intended to publish indicative draft regulations and policy statements before the relevant clauses are debated in Committee, and I am happy to confirm that that remains our intention.
I conclude by re-emphasising that the Bill demonstrates the Government’s commitment to making sure no child is left behind. I am confident that we all share the same desire to improve the life chances of the most vulnerable children and that this Bill represents an opportunity to dramatically improve the way this support is offered, after years of these children being often left behind.
The Bill will make broad-ranging and far-reaching reforms to the children’s social care system: an ambition that has been welcomed by the charity sector, local authorities and previously by the opposition parties. It will make a substantial difference to the lives and life chances of the children, families and adults who rely on those services. This is an important Bill that is unashamedly about putting children first. I therefore welcome the level of scrutiny that Members of this House will give it. I look forward to hearing noble Lords’ comments and questions over the next few hours. I beg to move.
Amendment to the Motion
Lord Nash
My Lords, I very much welcome all the contributions that were made to the Second Reading debate today. I am heartened that there is a great deal of consensus on our ambition to improve the lives of vulnerable children and those leaving care and on the improvements we hope to make to the quality of children’s services throughout the Bill. All the contributions to the debate have been, as always, very well informed and constructive, reflecting the considerable expertise and experience which exists across the House in relation to children and their journey through life. This expertise will be invaluable when we come to look at the clauses in the Bill in more detail in Committee.
I will not be able to cover all the points made by noble Lords but I will try to cover as many as possible. Starting with the general scrutiny of the Bill, a number of noble Lords raised their wish for the House to be given adequate time and information for the Bill to receive detailed scrutiny in the House. I share this wish. I very much welcome the expertise of the House, of which this debate is a great example. The Bill will receive the usual detailed scrutiny in Grand Committee. We have also already made arrangements for detailed briefing sessions and discussions on parts of the Bill, the first of which will take place tomorrow. I hope that noble Lords will take advantage of these meetings.
I am also happy, along with my ministerial colleagues and officials, to meet any noble Lords to discuss the Bill if they would find this useful. I am also happy to reiterate our commitment to publishing indicative draft regulations and policy statements before clauses containing delegated powers are debated in Committee, and I am glad that this has been welcomed by a number of noble Lords across the House, including the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, just now.
Turning to some comments by various noble Lords concerning the delegated powers in the Bill, as I said at the start of this debate, I do not want to get into a long discussion on secondary legislation now, but the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Ramsbotham, were both, I am advised, wrong about the number of delegated powers in sections of the Bill. In the case of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, as I said at the outset, and as mentioned by my noble friends Lady Shephard and Lord Lang, Clauses 20 to 40 actually contain only two new delegated powers and one extension of an existing power proposed. This is vastly different from the suggestion by the noble Lord that there were 29 delegations of power.
To explain this further and to assist the noble Lord in looking again at his assessment, he will wish to note that delegations of power appear in Clauses 20 and 39, with an extension of an existing power in Clause 40. Remaining clauses in this part explain the use of the new powers and the purposes to which they will be put, including safeguards such as requiring the Secretary of State to consult on regulations and lay the consultation report before Parliament. It is simply not correct to label each of these clauses a new delegated power.
Similarly, the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, referred to the number of powers in Clauses 15 to 19 and counted five delegated powers in this section. There is, in fact, only one delegated power in Clause 15; the remaining four clauses flesh out that power, including inserting a sunset provision and requiring consultation. The Government are firmly of the view that delegated legislation is the most appropriate vehicle to set out the role and operations of the new regulator. We must be able to update the legal framework to reflect changing professional standards and improvements in working practices. This is also in line with recent advice from the Law Commission on regulatory reform, which emphasised the need for this type of flexibility in the exercise of a regulator’s functions. It is also in line with the approach adopted by the Labour Government in 1999. At the time the 1999 regime was put in place, the Labour Government were happy that was an appropriate use of a delegated power. Again, we will be publishing policy statements and draft regulations for this area before Committee and I am, of course, more than happy to meet noble—and noble and learned—Lords to discuss this part of the Bill if they would like to do so.
Turning to the substance of the Bill, first, I want to respond to the concerns raised by a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Watson, Lord Ramsbotham, Lord Wills and Lord Warner, the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock, Lady Massey, Lady Meacher and Lady Walmsley, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, about the innovation clauses: Clauses 15 to 19. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, raised the spectre of for-profit. In 2014 we brought forward legislation preventing profit making, where local authorities delegate child-protection functions, and we have no intention of revisiting that position. Where a local authority delegates children’s social care functions, Ofsted will still inspect them as part of local authority inspection and hold the council to account for the quality of those services. All applications to the Secretary of State will be assessed on a case-by-case basis. In addition to consultation by both the Secretary of State and the local authority, this will include Ofsted, the Children’s Commissioner and local authority partners.
It may be helpful if I touch on a few examples of where this power to innovate might be applied and where local authorities might apply for exemptions. The first concerns family and friends carers. It is recognised that a carer who is either a family member or a friend is typically the best option for a child, but too often it is hard to get such a carer approved to the same standard as a professional foster carer, particularly within the 16-week time limit. Exemption could allow local authorities to trial making placements for children that put the child at the centre of the decision, prioritising their needs and their attachment to family and friends, without unduly sacrificing the safeguards in place for the child.
Secondly, there is strong consensus in the sector that in low-risk cases the role of the independent reviewing officer brings no additional benefit. Exemptions will allow local authorities to trial redirecting IRO resource differently—for example, to more complex cases—while reducing the number of additional people a young person does not know at their review, which is a known concern, in more straightforward cases.
Thirdly, there is criticism that adoption and fostering panels which are only advisory add little value and can often delay the process of approving prospective carers. Exemption could allow local authorities to trial removing a potentially invasive and unnecessary requirement from one of the many layers of checking, leaving the agency decision-maker who currently makes the decision to exercise their professional judgment.
A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, praised Leeds for its good work. It is, indeed, one of our partners in looking at Clauses 15 to 19, and is itself hoping to make use of the power to innovate.
The noble Lord, Lord Watson, talked about the importance of care leavers receiving advice about leaving care well in advance of that event. The noble Baronesses, Lady Benjamin, Lady Howe and Lady Bakewell, and others talked about the importance of advice for care leavers. Indeed, this was raised by a number of young people yesterday and is exactly the sort of advice that should be covered in the local offer. Two particularly impressive young people yesterday said that their local authority offered a passport to independence, setting out all the things that young care leavers need to know.
The noble Lord, Lord Watson, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and others mentioned the importance of kinship care and foster care, which we, of course, recognise. In 2011, we published Family and Friends Care. Under this guidance local authorities must publish their approach to promoting and supporting the needs of children living with family and friends. The Government have also taken action through regulations to strengthen and encourage arrangements for long-term foster care. Our emphasis then, as in this Bill, is to promote stability in children’s lives.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Hughes, talked about money. The amount spent on child protection and social care has remained steady since 2010. This is not necessarily about the amount of money spent but also the way it is spent. The best provision is not necessarily the most expensive. We hope that the power to innovate will demonstrate that.
My noble friend Lady Shephard made very good points about individual responsibility and mentioned good practice in Trafford. Trafford is, sadly, the only local authority in the country whose services and support for care leavers have been rated as outstanding. Obviously, we would like many more local authorities to aspire to that level of success. She also mentioned Norwich for Jobs, of which I am aware. I am delighted to hear that it is now bringing that programme to NEETs.
The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, asked about apprenticeships for care leavers. Employers receive full funding for the training costs associated with an apprenticeship. This has been extended to care leaver apprentices up to the age of 24. We will now go further and extend this to 25.
A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Watson, the noble Baronesses, Lady Tyler, Lady Walmsley and Lady Howe, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, spoke about corporate parenting. The local authority has statutory responsibility for the care of looked-after children and care leavers, and therefore in law is the corporate parent. However, we recognise that other agencies will also have an interest in, and potentially an impact on, the lives of children in care and care leavers. That is why under our wider care-leaving strategy we are promoting a care leaver covenant which will encourage other agencies and organisations to adopt the principles and have regard to them in their planning and decision-taking. Importantly, the fourth principle also sets out a requirement on local authorities to work with local partners to ensure that young people can access their services.
The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, talked about the lack of success that often results from government departments joining up. I acknowledge that but this Bill is an example of good joint working between the DfE, the Department of Health and the Home Office in particular. The Social Justice Cabinet Committee has also had a number of discussions on and with care leavers to ensure that their needs are well understood across government.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Benjamin, the noble Lords, Lord Wills and Lord Bichard, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott and others talked about the importance of personal advisers and whether it was sufficient to leave it to the child or young person themselves to request an adviser. This is an extremely good point which I would like to go away and reflect on. We had hoped that the local offer would make it absolutely clear to all care leavers that they have this expectation, but I would like to consider this further.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, talked about an overreaching look at things in legislation and whether we could look more widely. The legislation is, of course, only part of the solution: practice is absolutely key and a great deal of work is focused on this. Many noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Farmer, the noble Lord, Lord Warner, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, raised the matter of personal advisers. Minister Timpson has asked officials to conduct a review of the personal adviser role, to determine whether the functions should be amended to give more emphasis to the mentoring and befriending aspects of the role. He has asked for this review to be undertaken at pace, so that its findings are available to inform further thinking as the Bill proceeds through Parliament. It will cover areas such as consistency, relationships, quality and requirements.
My noble friend Lord Farmer, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel and the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes, Lady Massey and Lady Hodgson, talked about the importance of early intervention and early years. I could not agree with them more: they made some extremely good points. I would be delighted to set up a meeting between the noble Lords and Minister Gyimah, who is responsible for this area, to discuss this further. The noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Walmsley, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham talked about the circumstances where a national review might be called for. I would like to reflect on this more. Concerns were raised about the distress of good social workers whose cases are considered by this kind of panel. I assure noble Lords that the panel will in no way focus on individual blame, but only on issues which may lead to timely improvement at national level. I note the concerns of the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Pinnock, that lessons learned from national reviews trickle down to the local level.
The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, raised questions about the dissemination of learning, concerns about the two-tier system and the criteria for national reviews. The dissemination of findings from reviews is critical. That is the role of the proposed What Works centre for children’s social care. The centre will build a robust evidence base and share learning on what does and does not work. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, made an extremely important point about the importance of social skills. She might be interested in a report just out from Harvard, a copy of which I can provide her with. It states that all new jobs in America created over the past 10 years have gone to people with the essential social and life skills, and predicts that this is likely to continue in future. She also asked about our definition of coasting schools. This will be laid before Parliament in the autumn, after this year’s exam results are published. On life skills, in our recent White Paper we have placed greater importance on building character and resilience in every child. We will also significantly expand the National Citizen Service and expect schools to give every pupil the chance to take part.
The noble Baroness, Lady Young, asked about records access. The Children Act 1989 statutory guidance sets out the requirements which local authorities must follow in relation to care records. It states what records should include and that they should be kept for 75 years. That Act requires local authorities to give access to records to people authorised by the Secretary of State and guardians appointed by the court. The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, talked about the removal of a duty under the Children Act 1989 to publish information. I do not believe that there is such a removal. It is simply that an existing duty to publish certain information relating to care leavers has been incorporated into the local offer provisions. I am happy to give her more clarification on that if she would like it.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, referred to the report by the noble Lord, Lord Laming. We welcome this report on an important topic. We are clear that no child living in a children’s home should be criminalised for behaviour that would not concern the police if it happened in a family home. The Government have asked Sir Martin Narey to review residential care and he will make recommendations on criminalisation. We have also asked Charlie Taylor to conduct a review of the youth justice system. He will report back in the summer with recommendations on how to improve the treatment of young people in care.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Tyler and Lady Massey, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, my noble friend Lady Hodgson and the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley, Lady Benjamin and Lady Howe, talked about mental health. Children’s mental health is obviously extremely important, particularly in relation to children in care, and the Government take the issue very seriously. Last year we published Future in Mind, setting out our vision for transforming children’s mental health services, including local transformation plans setting out the mental health services in place to meet the needs of looked-after children. We are backing this with £1.4 billion over five years and we have agreed that an expert group on the mental health of looked-after children will look into the issue of specialist assessment.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, mentioned the UNCRC report in relation to the Bill. We recognise the importance of the committee’s work and the Bill formed part of the evidence that we prepared for it. We are now looking closely at the report. He also mentioned life chances. He is right to say that the Bill supports the life chances agenda and to emphasise the need to make sure that the two dovetail. On unaccompanied minors—a point also raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey—DfE officials are working and will continue to work closely with the Home Office. We recognise that unaccompanied minors have wide-ranging needs and we are working closely with the local government sector to ensure that they receive appropriate support that reflects their needs and experiences, and which do not place disproportionate pressure on the services of any individual local authority.
There was also a question about children going missing from education and about their exploitation. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, particularly raised the issue of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. We take the issue of missing and absent children extremely seriously. That is why last year we placed a duty on councils to offer an interview to children who return from going missing within 72 hours and, for the first time ever, have collected national data on all children who go missing from care, not just those missing for 24 hours. We have strengthened care planning and children’s homes regulations, including requiring all homes to ensure that they have clear policies on preventing children going missing, and responding when children do go missing, in line with local police protocols on missing persons.
The plight of unaccompanied asylum-seekers is of course different from that of children who have been taken into care as a result of their domestic situation. Many are aged 16 or 17 and, as several Members have noted, have experienced long and difficult journeys to reach the UK. Some have witnessed terrible events. Their needs can of course vary hugely from individual to individual. Such children also tend to be concentrated in a few locations around the country, which can put additional pressure on those local authorities’ services. Kent, for example, now faces a shortage of places for its own children who need to be taken into care. The Government are working closely with the local government sector and individual local authorities to ensure that the needs of these children can be met by a much wider group of local authorities. That exercise is under way and the Government are providing additional funding to support those placements, and to ensure that appropriate support can be provided.
A point was made about extending the visits of virtual school heads to FE colleges—I think it was made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes. If a child is looked after, the virtual school head champions their education regardless of the education setting.
The noble Lord, Lord Warner, talked about the HCPC and our plans to take responsibility for social workers away from it. This is not a criticism of the work of the council, as I said earlier, but it regulates 16 professions and we believe that social work requires a different model of regulation—one that is specific to this unique and challenging profession and puts it on a par with other high-status professions. We will work closely with the HCPC to ensure that we maintain what works well under the current regulatory framework. This is a joint approach by DfE and the Department of Health for children and adult social services.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay and the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, talked about a college of social work. Indeed, until recently the Government supported an attempt to establish such a college with £8.2 million. Unfortunately, the college struggled to attract the members it needed and, in any case, this is no substitute for independent, professional standards and regulations. Public protection will remain a central objective of the new regulator. As for the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, about costs, we do not anticipate any immediate changes to the registration fees paid by social workers.
The noble Lord, Lord Wills, talked about whistleblowing. Although Public Interest Disclosure Act protections cover only directly employed foster carers, there are already wider requirements for fostering services to have complaints procedures and whistleblowing policies in place. Standard 21.11 of the fostering services national minimum standards is clear:
“Current and prospective foster carers”,
must be able to,
“make a complaint about any aspect of the service which affects them directly”.
It is also clear that records must be kept of,
“representations and complaints, how they are dealt with, the outcome and any action taken”.
A number of noble Lords asked why we are creating new offences. There is in fact little here that is new: the current legislation already provides the power to create offences in secondary legislation to support the regulation of social workers. The provisions we have made in this Bill are in fact considerably narrower in scope than those that exist in the primary legislation at present. They will enable the creation of a small number of offences that, as now, we judge essential to protect the integrity of the regulatory process.
My noble friend Lord Lang of Monkton and the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, asked about confidential information requested by a panel under Clauses 11 and 14. The Bill does not prevent those asked for information from asserting legal or medical privilege. The panel would need to consider any such assertion against the need for the information, and it is also important to note the care that the panel would take with such information in its consideration with regard to publication. The Bill does not include a power for the panel to compel the provision of information, although public bodies may be required to do so as a result of judicial review. We are currently considering whether additional powers of enforcement would be appropriate and will bring forward a suitable amendment if that is deemed necessary.
The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, talked about the assessment of the SEND local offer. The noble Baroness rightly noted the parallels between the care leaver offer and the SEND local offer introduced in the Children and Families Act 2014. It is still early days, of course, but we are optimistic about its impact. I do not have any data with me, but the anecdotal feedback I have received is very positive.
My noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy asked whether the categories of ceased to be looked after and previously looked after were the same. I can assure him that they are the same. He also raised some points about designated teachers, what works and other matters which I will reflect on and on which I will respond to him. I am grateful for his encouragement to be bold on the question of the power to innovate.
In conclusion, I agree entirely with the excellent comments by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, about the difficulties facing social workers in their vital jobs. We are determined to do everything we can to make the lives of social workers less difficult and to raise both the level of support for them and their status.
Lord Warner
I am sorry to interrupt the Minister in his flow, but he has had a good run at it. Could he say a little more about how the Government are going to answer the very specific question that a number of us raised about Part 2? Could he ensure that we have a joint briefing with Department of Health Ministers so we understand what the Government are doing in this area? As of now, the Minister is asking us to have a clause stand part debate on each of Clauses 20 to 40 so that we can get to the bottom of what the Government’s thinking is in this area.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, earlier in the debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard of Northwold, expressed the hope that the amendment standing in my name on the Order Paper would not dominate the debate. I cannot speak for her, but I think she would agree with me that that has not been the case; nor was that ever the intention of these Benches in tabling the amendment. Many noble Lords have referred to it. In his recent contribution, the noble Lord, Lord Warner, to some extent alluded to the consequences of the paucity of information in Clauses 20 to 40. It is slightly disingenuous of the Minister, although I do not propose to get into a tennis match with him over what is and is not in those clauses—but if we did so, we might call on the services of an umpire. On this occasion, we have an umpire in the form of the Constitution Committee, and I shall repeat a small part of what it said about this Bill. It said that,
“the government continues to introduce legislation that depends so heavily on an array of broad delegated powers”.
That seems unequivocal to me and to my colleagues on these Benches, and that is why the amendment was tabled.
It is inappropriate for the Government to continue to ride roughshod over the views of committees of your Lordships’ House—the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee will give us its views in due course—and the views clearly expressed in this debate by noble Lords. Although it is not my intention to test the opinion of the House on this amendment, if this continues in future and further Bills come forward in a similar form, the Government should expect the Opposition to come forward with a similar amendment, and on that occasion we may not be as accommodating. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Queen’s Speech
Lord Nash Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord King of Bridgwater
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows:
“Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament”.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, it is an honour to be asked to open this debate on Her Majesty’s gracious Speech today. I look forward to the many valuable contributions that I know noble Lords will make during the course of this debate. I also thank my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe, who will be winding up today.
As the Prime Minister said in his address, this Queen’s Speech uses strong economic foundations to make a series of bold choices that will deliver opportunity for all at every stage of life as part of our aim to bring social justice to everybody. Today we will consider the Government’s priorities for education, welfare, health, culture and business for the year ahead. All are vital to a strong economy and a secure future for our country.
I turn first to the Government’s education business. Over the past six years, our education reforms have led to 1.4 million more children being taught in good and outstanding schools, but we are not content to stop there as 1.4 million children is a start but is not enough. There are many more competent young readers thanks to our phonics programme and many more pupils are leaving primary school with the necessary literacy and numeracy to succeed at secondary school. In 2010, one in three pupils left primary school without this. This is now one in five, but we need to do much better. In 2010, only one in five pupils took a core suite of academic subjects at secondary school, which we now call the EBacc. That figure is now 39%, and we are determined to see it far higher as it is so fundamental and is particularly important for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
We are committed to building on these improvements by moving towards a system where all schools are academies, as set out in the White Paper. The vision for an academies-led system where autonomous schools are free of local authority control is built on international evidence that clearly shows that autonomy is linked to improved performance. We have seen these improvements being realised. In sponsored primary academies, those open for just one year have seen their results improve by five percentage points, from 66% to 71%. On average, those schools that have chosen to convert, at both primary and secondary, have built on their existing success with further improvements in standards, and, importantly, are delivering better results for free school meal pupils than their local authority-controlled counterparts.
An academy-led system is the best way to tackle underperformance and ensure that every child gets the education they deserve. It will allow the best schools to expand their reach and give excellent leaders and teachers the freedom to run their schools. We will therefore introduce a Bill to convert schools in the lowest-performing and unviable local authorities to academy status. These local authorities either will have failed to help their schools to succeed or will struggle to support the remaining proportion of local schools that remain under their control. We do not want to risk the standard of education that young people in these schools receive.
I assure noble Lords that we will consult fully on how such local authorities will be identified and that Parliament will be able to consider our proposals. We understand the concerns that have been raised about a hard deadline and legislating for blanket powers to issue academy orders. This is why we have decided that it is not necessary to take blanket powers to convert good schools in strong local authorities to academies at this time. However, these schools will still be able to convert at a time that suits them best, and more and more good schools are embracing the benefits of academy status. In fact, in March this year a record number of schools chose to apply for academy status. We are committed to the vision of a dynamic, high-performing school system where every school is an academy by 2022. This will ensure that we achieve educational excellence everywhere, so that all children and young people are able to fulfil their potential, regardless of location, prior attainment or background. That is why this Bill also brings forward fundamental reforms for how children excluded from school are educated and reforms to technical education to give clear routes through to skilled employment. Noble Lords will hear much more about these proposals in coming months.
The Children and Social Work Bill will make a major contribution to improving the life chances of our most vulnerable young people. It represents the next stage in our commitment to making sure that those children in our care get the start in life they deserve. It will ensure that there is a proper framework of support around looked-after children and those leaving care, whether to adoption, to placement with another family member or to make the transition to adulthood. For the first time, we are setting out a clear statement of the principles governing the state’s role as corporate parent to these children, making sure that local authorities think and act in those children’s best interests in the same way that any other parent would.
Through the Bill we are also making sure that support and help do not stop simply because a child has left care. There will be designated people at local authority and school level to promote the educational attainment of previously looked-after children, and a “local offer” to care leavers, setting out clearly the support to which they are entitled. This will include the provision of advice and guidance up to the age of 25. The Bill also focuses on the key professionals working with these children, enabling the establishment of a specialist regulator for social work to drive up standards of both practice and training.
Lastly, the Bill will promote more effective learning at national level from incidences of serious harm. It will help to foster innovation at the local level, enabling forward-thinking local authorities to test new and more effective approaches to delivering social care and to set the direction themselves for future reform and improvement.
I turn to welfare. As the Prime Minister has previously said, this Government are committed to giving,
“the highest priority to improving the life chances of the poorest in our country”.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/3/16; col. 1246.]
This means a relentless focus on tackling the root causes of poverty and disadvantage. That is why in the forthcoming life chances strategy we are introducing life chances indicators that will look at family stability, drug and alcohol addiction and problem debt. This will drive action across the Government so that no one is held back or prevented from making the most of their lives.
We plan to introduce a private pensions Bill. This Government have continued pension reforms to provide greater security, choice and dignity for people in retirement while ensuring that the system is sustainable for the future. It is crucial that people and their employers can have confidence that they are protected when they are putting money into a scheme and when they are ready to retire. Our private pensions Bill will correct the current gap in the regulatory landscape for master trust pension schemes, and will cap excessive exit fees for trust-based schemes. The Bill will allow the reform of the financial guidance landscape, announced at the time of the Budget, to ensure that consumers can access the debt and money guidance they need and have access to straightforward pensions guidance at all stages of their lives.
I turn to health matters. The Government greatly welcome the agreement between the BMA and the NHS, and very much hope that the BMA will support it in its ballot. Noble Lords will have heard of our intention to introduce legislation that would ensure that overseas visitors paid for healthcare received at the public’s expense. To achieve that, the Bill would reduce the number of overseas visitors and migrants automatically eligible for free NHS care while increasing the number of NHS services for which charges would apply. Collectively, these measures would see us take a significant step towards delivering the Government’s commitment to recover up to £500 million a year for the NHS, and would mean that only those living in the UK lawfully and making a fair financial contribution were eligible for free care. We also intend to bring forward measures that would make the cost recovery process more effective and efficient at all points in the health system, meaning that the full cost of care was recovered at every stage, with those funds directed straight back into the NHS. Further details will be brought forward when the Bill is published.
I shall now address the Government’s business on culture and media. Our country is a leader in the development and use of technology. The pace of change is relentless, and our economy, society and government must continue to evolve to keep ahead. The digital economy Bill will build the foundations for the digital future. It will support telecommunications businesses to build infrastructure to provide the connectivity that we all increasingly depend on. The Bill will help people to participate in this new economy and close the digital divide, ensuring that everyone can access communication services for the best value and best service wherever they live. The Bill will also provide important protections, protecting children from online pornography and protecting consumers from spam email and nuisance calls. As the world goes online, we must protect against new harms and we must not allow the social and economic exclusion that would result if we left people behind during our country’s digital transformation.
I know that many noble Lords have waited a long time—12 years, in fact—to hear that the Government will finally bring forward the legislation that will enable the United Kingdom to ratify the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its two protocols. I hope that the announcement of the Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill will therefore be welcome news. The Bill was introduced to the House today, so noble Lords will not have to wait long to debate and scrutinise the Government’s proposals.
The remaining subject of discussion in today’s debate is business, innovation and skills. The first Bill is the Higher Education and Research Bill. Our universities rank among our most valuable national assets, underpinning both a strong economy and a flourishing society. By lifting the cap on student numbers, we have ensured that participation in higher education can be a reality for more people than ever before. However, there is considerable unfinished business. If we are to continue to succeed as a knowledge economy, we cannot stand still. We must ensure that the system is also fulfilling its potential and delivering good value for students, for employers and for the taxpayers who underwrite it.
Through the Higher Education and Research Bill we will ensure that everyone with the potential to succeed in higher education, irrespective of their background, can choose from a wide range of high-quality universities, access relevant information to make the right choices, and benefit from excellent teaching that helps to prepare them for the future. The UK is a world leader in science and innovation, and through the measures in this Bill we will maintain and build on this reputation and ensure that we maximise the Government’s £6 billion annual investment in research and innovation.
We plan to introduce a better markets Bill. Strong competition is the key to a healthy economy, boosting our nation’s productivity. The UK’s regime is already world-class and highly respected internationally. We want the regime to remain an exemplar, keeping pace with dynamic and innovative markets. We also want to empower consumers further to ensure that they fully reap the rewards of vibrant competition. The better markets Bill will help to improve competitiveness in the UK.
To help innovative businesses to negotiate over disputes and avoid litigation, this Government will bring forward legislation to reform the law relating to unjustified threats of intellectual property infringement. The Intellectual Property (Unjustified Threats) Bill will deliver detailed recommendations from the Law Commission in this complex area of intellectual property law.
The gracious Speech sets out a clear programme for taking this country forward. As a whole, the legislative programme contains some highly topical and important issues. It will be here in your Lordships’ House where much of the detailed scrutiny will take place. I appreciate that, in the speeches that follow, a range of issues will be raised by speakers. Those issues, whether they are concerned directly with the Queen’s Speech or not, are likely to set much of the agenda for this Session. I look forward greatly to the contributions to the debate from all around the House.
Education: Academies
Lord Nash Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now repeat a Statement made in the other place earlier today by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education on all schools becoming academies. The Statement is as follows:
“In our White Paper, Educational Excellence Everywhere, I set out this Government’s vision to continue the rise in educational standards in England over the rest of the Parliament. We are committed to building on the reforms of the past six years, which have led to 1.4 million more children being taught in good and outstanding schools. But we are not content to stop there: 1.4 million children is a start, but it is not enough. We have to ensure that we deliver a great education to every single child; it is what we owe to the next generation—to give them the tools to realise every ounce of their potential. The White Paper was called Educational Excellence Everywhere for a reason: as I have said before, for me the ‘everywhere’ is non-negotiable. In the White Paper, for example, we set out our plans for achieving excellence areas, where we will focus specific resources to tackle entrenched educational underperformance.
The White Paper sets out how we want to see the teaching profession take responsibility for teacher accreditation, tackle unfair funding, build leadership capacity and set high expectations for every child with a world-leading, knowledge-based curriculum in a truly school-led, self-improving system, learning from the best from across the world and preparing the next generation to compete on the global stage.
The vision of a fully academised system has attracted most attention. Over the course of the last few weeks, I have spoken to many honourable Members on both sides of the House, as well as to school leaders, governors, local government representatives and parents. What is clear from these conversations is that the strength and importance of academies is widely accepted. There is a clear recognition of the case for putting greater responsibility for the school system in the hands of school leaders.
Let me be clear. We firmly believe that schools becoming more autonomous and more directly accountable for their results raises standards. Academies are the vehicle to allow schools and leaders to innovate with the curriculum, have the flexibility to set the pay and conditions for their staff, and bring about great collaboration with other schools. We still want every school to become an academy by 2022.
We always intended this to be a six-year process, in which good schools should be able to take their own decisions about their future as academies. However, we understand the concerns that have been raised about a hard deadline and legislating for blanket powers to issue academy orders. That is why I announced on Friday that we have decided it is not necessary to take blanket powers to convert good schools in strong local authorities to academies at this time.
In March, a record 227 schools chose to apply for academy status, showing clearly where the momentum lies as school leaders, parents, governors and teachers across the country embrace the benefits that being an academy brings. Since then, we have also issued more than 104 academy orders to underperforming schools, meaning that the young people in those schools will soon benefit from the strong leadership provided by expert academy sponsors.
That is why those who took to the airwaves this weekend to crow about a victory in their battle against raising standards will find themselves sorely disappointed. There will be no retreat from our mission to give every child the best start in life and to build an education system led by school leaders and teachers on the front line, running their own schools as academies.
The Education and Adoption Act 2016 already enables us to rapidly convert failing schools and schools which are coasting where they can benefit from the support of a strong sponsor. As a result, when schools underperform, it is now easier to respond swiftly and effectively. Schools will not be allowed to languish unchallenged for years.
As we set out in the White Paper, and as I have subsequently argued, the most pressing need for further powers is to boost standards for those schools languishing in the worst performing local authorities and to provide for schools in local authorities likely to become unviable. So, instead of taking a blanket power to convert all schools, we will seek powers in two specific circumstances where it is clear that the case for conversion to academy status is pressing.
In our worst-performing local authorities, we need to take more decisive action so that a new system led by outstanding schools can take their place. Similarly, because of the pace of academisation in some areas, it will become increasingly difficult for local authorities to have the ability to offer schools the necessary support, and there will be a need to ensure that these schools are not dependent on an unviable local authority. We will therefore seek provisions to convert schools in the lowest-performing and unviable local authorities to academy status. This may involve in some circumstances conversion of good and outstanding schools when they have not chosen to do so themselves. But the need for action in those limited circumstances is clear because of the considerable risk to the standard of education that young people in those schools receive, as the local authority is either unable to guarantee their continued success or support further improvement.
We will consult on these arrangements, including the thresholds for performance and unviability. I am making a clear commitment that the definition of and thresholds for underperformance and viability will be the subject of an affirmative resolution in this House.
I would also like to reassure honourable Members on concerns raised about how we protect small schools, particularly those in rural areas. I have already made it clear that no small rural school will close as a result of the move to have more schools becoming academies. There is already a statutory presumption against closure of rural schools, but we will now go further. Where small rural schools are converting to academy status, we will introduce a dual lock to ensure their protection: both local and national government will have to agree to a school closing before a decision can be made. There will also be dedicated support to help rural primary schools through the process of conversion and a £10 million fund to secure expert support and advice.
While we want every school to become an academy, we will not compel successful schools to join multi-academy trusts. In order to share expertise and resources, we expect most schools will form local clusters of multi-academy trusts. But if the leadership of a successful school does not wish to enter a formal relationship with other schools, we trust them to make that decision and will not force them to do so. Small schools will be able to convert to stand-alone academies as long as they are financially sustainable.
I began this Statement by saying our goal has not changed. This Government will continue to prioritise the interests of young people in getting the best start in life by having an excellent education over the vested interests that seek to oppose the lifting of standards and the rooting out of educational underperformance—those very same vested interests that allowed schools to languish for years unchallenged and unchanged until the launch of the sponsored academies programme by the last Labour Government.
Our work to improve our education system will continue apace. We will continue to empower school leaders and raise standards. We will continue to hold high expectations for every child. We will establish a fair national funding formula for schools so that young people everywhere get the funding they deserve. We will continue to work towards a system where all schools are run and led by the people who know them best in the way that works for their pupils, as academies. These reforms will transform the education system in our country and ensure we give every child an excellent education so that they have the opportunity to fulfil their potential. I commend this Statement to the House”.
Lord Storey (LD)
I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. It is actually good to listen; it is good to hear what other people have to say rather than immediately jump to conclusions, and I welcome the fact that the Government have listened to people who have considerable experience in these matters and adjusted the likely content of the forthcoming Bill.
The Minister said in the Statement that the Government wanted to,
“deliver a great education to every single child”.
But don’t we all? I suppose that the difference is that some of us do not believe that the blind concentration on structures and types of school is really the answer. We think that, more importantly, it is about the quality of leadership of those schools. It is about the teachers—who are highly trained, highly respected and given proper continuing professional development. It is about a broad national curriculum which every pupil takes, and includes, as some of the Minister’s colleagues believe, PSHE and good careers advice. It is about parents being involved in the education of their child, not divorced from it; and it is about a curriculum which celebrates technical, vocational and creative education.
There is no evidence that turning a school into an academy will improve standards. In fact, academies tend to perform less well in Ofsted inspections than local authority schools do. I hope that we will see, once and for all, the end of the ideological obsession with pushing aside the role of local authorities in community schools. They need to be cherished, nurtured and given the resources to do the job.
I am very pleased with what the Minister said in the Statement about rural schools, which have been neglected for far too long and need special attention. But putting them into multi-academy trusts is not always the best solution. If they have to go into a multi-academy trust, the trust has to have a relationship with the community that the school is in, because the community is hugely important to the rural school.
I have two questions for the Minister. So far, he has resisted publishing tables to compare trusts’ overall performance. Will he now agree that that should happen? Secondly, he has refused to let Ofsted conduct full inspections of academy chains. Will he now agree that this should happen as well?
Lord Nash
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, for his comments about supporting the raising of standards in schools. I have no doubt that he supports that aim.
Many people wanted to see more detail on our direction of travel for academies, so we provided it in the White Paper. However, as I have said, it is clear that the blanket power outlined in the White Paper created anxiety in the system. So we have listened—I am grateful for the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, about that—to the concern of head teachers and teachers and removed those powers so that people can now take time to understand the benefits of becoming an academy or joining a multi-academy trust. I am confident that once people have had the opportunity to understand that, many more will come forward to convert, as schools are in record numbers at the moment. I hope that noble Lords across the House who have not had the opportunity of spending time with leaders of academies or multi-academy trusts or with the regional school commissions will take the time to do that over the next few months. I am happy to arrange visits or meetings. We will continue to listen and to have dialogue with the sector, parents, teachers, governors, unions and local authorities over the next few months.
The noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred to evidence, an issue we have discussed a great deal in this House. I said in answer to his question that schools that have chosen to convert to academies—that is, those that are high performing already—are obtaining better results. Despite their already high performance, they are improving their results and are more likely to be rated good or outstanding by Ofsted. Secondary converters are performing 7 percentage points above the national average and results in primary-sponsored academies open for two years have improved on average by 10% since opening, more than double the rate of local authority maintained schools over the same period.
In answer to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, in certain limited circumstances, high-performing schools may be obliged to become academies—that is, where they are in local authorities that are either performing poorly or are unviable. As I have said, we will be setting out more on that and consulting on what the viability test will be.
We make no apologies for the benefits of schools working in multi-academy trusts. There are particular benefits in relation to leadership development and CPD for teachers. People who work in multi-academy trusts talk often about the retention of staff benefits. They say that when they were running one school they tended to lose their rising stars because they could not offer them career development opportunities. They can now have rising stars programmes in place and retain their best staff. There are benefits such as the sharing of good practice and economies of scale, and many others. I invite noble Lords, when they meet with people from multi-academy trusts, to discuss this with them.
On accountability, as I have said before, academies are held to a higher standard of accountability than local authority maintained schools. They are obliged to publish annual third party-audited accounts, which local authority maintained schools are not; no one in a governance relationship with an academy can profit from that relationship, which can happen in a local authority maintained school; and they are also held to the standards of the Charity Commission and the Companies Act.
As to leadership, the noble Lord, Lord Watson, made a good point about the capacity and leadership. We have £600 million available to develop this programme. We have invested in a leadership programme with future leaders and executive educators, and we are in discussions with a number of business schools about their developing leadership courses for people who work in academies and multi-academy trusts. I hope to say more about that in due course.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for his comments about rural schools. I agree entirely about the importance of their being intimately engaged with their local communities. In answer to his last two questions, we will be publishing MAT performance tables based on this summer’s results. We have had extensive conversations with Ofsted, and agreed an arrangement whereby Ofsted will carry out batch inspections of schools in multi-academy trusts and look at the school improvement services provided by the head office. However, we do not think it appropriate for Ofsted inspectors to inspect the finances, governance and management arrangements of these organisations. We have discussed with Ofsted the idea that in certain circumstances, there may be joint inspections: Ofsted inspecting school improvement and the performance of the schools, and the EFA—possibly working with consultants—inspecting the head office, management, governance and financial arrangements of the trusts. We have also had discussions with Ofsted because we know that it has inspected weak performing multi-academy trusts. We hope that it will soon be inspecting some strong performing multi-academy trusts so that we can see what a really good chain looks like.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood (CB)
My Lords, I welcome much that is in the Statement repeated by the Minister. As a good Cross-Bencher I have no interest in being drawn into any frisson or hint of triumphalism perhaps coming from the other Benches, nor even a collective sigh of relief from the Benches behind the Minister, because that is there as well; both apply.
There are many things in the Statement which I am sure that I and others agree with. We want to ensure that we deliver a great education for every child—who would not? Of course we do. We want to focus resources on tackling entrenched underperformance, and of course the Minister has made it plain that he knows that resources are not simply cash. They are to do with leadership and talent working in the schools in question. The strength and importance of academies is widely accepted. I absolutely agree with that, on the basis of being well acquainted with quite a number of academies and academy chains.
However, I want to register two questions which are premised on the most important point made in the Statement. While we want every school to become an academy, we will not compel successful schools to join multi-academy trusts. That is the point on which many supporters of academies were hung up. It is the most important statement that we have before us. It is also important to emphasise that, yes, we can persuade, but no, we cannot compel. In that context, I would like to be reassured that the aspiration for converting every school into an academy within six years is not a sotto voce way of bringing into play a form of compulsion that will be part of the next series of policy decisions. A reassurance on that is rather important.
Finally, the Minister indicated that the definition and thresholds of underperformance and viability will be the subject of affirmative resolution. Presumably that applies to the Commons, but will it apply to this House? Will we also have an opportunity to debate those issues?
Lord Nash
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, for his comments. Given his vast experience in this area, he always makes helpful observations. He is absolutely right in what he says. There is no doubt that our comments about compulsion had caused anxiety in the system. In order, if you like, to take the heat out of it, we have decided to remove that because we think it is right that people should work out for themselves the benefits of academisation, whether on their own or in multi-academy trusts. In answer to his last point, yes, those issues will be subject to the affirmative resolution of both Houses.
Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)
My Lords, as the Minister responsible for converting the first local authority education schools to independent city technology colleges, at the time I believed that if we could show that they were successful, others would follow; it would be a natural flow of events. In fact, that is exactly what has happened. Progress can be achieved by the natural flow of events rather than prescription, so I am glad that the Government have accepted that approach. I should also say to the Minister that I agree very much with the point made by the noble Lord on the Cross Benches that all good schools should not necessarily join multi-academy trusts. On the other hand, multi-academy trusts are essential between the institutions and the Government, which cannot possibly be responsible for 30,000 schools and the independent schools in our country. I am also glad to see that there are to be tough inspections by Ofsted. There are some very good multi-academy trusts, the best of which is that run by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Peckham, who has been working at it for 30 years. But there are also some poor multi-academy trusts, and a poor multi-academy trust is no better than a poor local education authority.
Lord Nash
I entirely support my noble friend’s comments about success proving itself. Of course, he is vastly experienced in this area and, indeed, if it were not for his invention of city technology colleges all those years ago, we would not be here today. Of course, there are poorly performing academy groups and we are intent on intervening whenever we can to improve them. As my noble friend said—and I entirely support his comments about our noble friend Lord Harris—we now have enough outstanding academy groups, such as Harris, Ark, Outwood Grange and many others. We know that when a multi-academy trust is functioning well, it provides a standard of education to which all multi-academy trusts, we hope in time, can aspire.
Lord Lexden (Con)
I return to the position of rural schools, which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. Do they not face considerable pressures at the moment and require additional support in dealing with them? Secondly, does my noble friend agree that a responsible Government must have the power to intervene where local authorities are clearly failing?
Lord Nash
I agree entirely with my noble friend that rural schools face certain pressures. We are absolutely determined that no school—particularly rural schools—will be left behind. Our national funding formula will, for the first time, provide many rural schools with more support than it has in the past. We are proposing both a lump sum and a sparsity factor for rural schools. As I said, we will have a fund of £10 million to help them explore the academisation. We will have people working with them and will do all we can to help them. We believe that rural schools working together may be able to afford, for instance, a language teacher, which on their own they would be unable to do. On my noble friend’s second point, we accept that where we have underperformance—wherever it is, whether in the local authority or elsewhere—we must have powers to intervene.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister made it fairly clear that although the element of compulsion has been removed at least from the rhetoric for the time being, it is still the determination of this Government to encourage, by whatever means, all schools to become academies. Building on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, when he said that a poorly performing multi-academy trust is no better than a poorly performing local authority, can the Minister say why the Government are so bent on creating this new monoculture? A well-performing academy trust is obviously a very fine thing and we all like to see schools succeed, but some local authorities are also succeeding and are creating and supporting schools that are doing well. Should we not celebrate that success as well as the success of academies?
I shall follow on from the question asked by my noble friend on the Front Bench. The issue of autonomy for schools—much vaunted in the progress of this Government’s determination to encourage academies—is surely diluted in multi-academy trusts where there is, of course, one leadership team. The degree of autonomy that then resides with the individual school must by definition be reduced. Is that really what the Minister has in mind?
Lord Nash
As I have said, I accept that there are multi-academy trusts that are not performing, but we have ambitions to bring them up to the standards of those that clearly demonstrate that this model works. As far as a monoculture is concerned, we would say that we have much more diversity in the academy trust structure than under a local authority structure, whereby a school is stuck in one local authority because of a geographical accident. An academy can choose to convert, maybe on its own or as part of a small local cluster, or as part of a larger group. Of course, there are high-performing local authorities, and we encourage them to spin out and form multi-academy trusts, which some are discussing at the moment, or to subcontract out their school improvement activities.
As far as autonomy of individual schools is concerned, we have said a lot about how we would expect schools in multi-academy trusts to work together in local clusters. We think that is absolutely essential to their being intimately involved with their community. Ultimately, we are concerned with standards and pupils ahead of everything else.
Lord Cormack (Con)
I thank my noble friend for his Statement. I was one of those breathing the collective sigh of relief referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland. I am delighted that the Government have withdrawn the word “compulsion”, but, since he has made his understanding of rural schools clear, I ask my noble friend to remember that in many rural schools—I had some 40 in my former constituency—parent governors play a particularly important part. Just as he will encourage schools to become academies, will he encourage all schools to maintain parent governors?
Lord Nash
I entirely agree that parent governors play a very important part in all schools, particularly in rural schools, where, as we have discussed, they are so intimately connected with their local community. That is why we want parents to be more involved in their schools than they are at the moment. We want them to be intimately involved in all aspects of their child’s education, be that attendance at parents’ evenings or whatever. For the first time, we will create a new expectation that every academy will put in place arrangements for meaningful engagement with all parents to give all parents a voice. We will put in place a parent portal, setting out the key things that parents need to know about their schools. We will introduce more regular surveys of parental satisfaction and we will provide guidance on handling complaints.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for the Statement. I will ask two quick questions. First, what is the Government’s view of the establishment of multi-academy trusts by local authorities? Clearly they will require them to be at arm’s length, but is this something that the Government would encourage to reach that 2022 objective? Secondly, will my noble friend give your Lordships’ House an indication of the pace at which those schools that are some distance below the target in the funding formula will be able to attain it over time?
Lord Nash
To answer my noble friend, as I said, we certainly encourage individuals in local authorities to spin out and set up trusts. Local authorities are allowed to have just under 20%. We will encourage people in local authorities to get involved in MATs in any way that works for them. As far as the national funding formula is concerned, the first changes will take place in 2017-18. We are keen to phase this in over a period of time. The second phase of the consultation will deal in much more detail with the granularity of the figures and the timing.