Schools: Gardening

Debate between Lord Nash and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Monday 24th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Lord makes a very good point. We are very keen to protect school land and school playing field land. There is a legal requirement on anyone holding public land which has been used for a maintained school or academy in the last eight years—or 10 years in the case of some playing field land—to seek consent from the Secretary of State. This will include land used not just for playing fields but for horticultural purposes.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, the Ashden charity, of which my daughter-in-law is the chairman, gives awards for sustainable energy across the world, including in England. It gave an award to a primary school which dug up a small amount of the playground and planted vegetables. Does the Minister think that this ought to be encouraged?

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Nash and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Grand Committee

[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.

Education: Unregistered Schools

Debate between Lord Nash and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Thursday 14th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

On the first point, I assure noble Lords that we are working very closely with Ofsted and I would be very happy to write to the noble Lord about it. We do not propose to regulate institutions such as Sunday schools and one-off residential settings which teach children for a short period every week. We are looking specifically at places where children receive intensive education, which we think will be defined as more than six to eight hours a week.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, are the Government looking at madrassahs that teach fewer than 12 children? I gather that 12 is the number which means that some inspection can be done but, as the noble Lord will know, many madrassahs have fewer than 12 children.

[Lord Nash]

We are not specifically looking at madrassahs but we will be covering institutions such as those to which the noble and learned Baroness referred in our call for evidence, which has just closed. We will consider all this in the legislation we propose to bring forward in relation to institutions teaching above six to eight hours a week.

Child Exploitation in Oxfordshire

Debate between Lord Nash and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness makes an extremely good point, and I will attempt to do that in future.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, will the Minister pick up two points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, about vacancies among social workers and resources? Vacancies and a lack of resources are major problems for social workers dealing with child sexual exploitation.

[Lord Nash]

I will have to write to the noble and learned Baroness on vacancies. On resources, through the innovation fund, we have funded a number of new methods of social work experiment, and we are investing heavily in terms of money, but I will write on that point, too.

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Lord Nash and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Monday 9th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest at the beginning of the Report stage as a governor of Coram and as a patron of, among others, BAAF, PAC and Childhood First.

I start by saying that I think that this is a good Bill, though it needs some improvements. What is absolutely splendid is that in certain places the Minister has listened with great care and, like the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I am extremely grateful to him, not only for a number of very useful meetings on this particular amendment and indeed others, but also for the outcome. I am really very grateful indeed and look forward to that being a source of relief to a number of families.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I assure my noble friend Lady Hamwee that we will consult on this immediately after Royal Assent. I thank both her and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, for their comments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful. I understand entirely the noble Baroness’s position. The guidance will also state that adopters of a different background/ethnicity may need additional training and support to help them support their child. This will include how to identify and deal with racism. On the matching process, it will ensure that the adopters can engage with the cultural background, heritage and ethnicity of the child. We will take my noble friend Lady Benjamin’s point about the importance of the child’s life story—the life book—and ensure that this point is in the statutory guidance. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Eccles for his support for this approach.

We do not think that having ethnicity in guidance but not in legislation is confusing and we are funding the British Association for Adoption and Fostering to provide training seminars for all local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies on this matter and the rest of the adoption reform programme. Training to support ethnicity issues will be part of the 2014-15 sessions and places at these sessions are free. Of course, good matching is important for all children and all adoptive families need access to adoption support at different stages of childhood. We are addressing these issues for all adoptive families and the guidance will reflect that. We will also add other issues that may arise in our discussions with the NSPCC and other experts. During the consultation I will put a copy of the consultation document in the House Library and send a copy to former members of the Select Committee. I hope that many of you will respond. To make that as easy as possible we would be delighted to host a round-table discussion with Peers about the guidance.

However, improving outcomes for black children is not only about adoption. For many, fostering will be more appropriate: three-quarters of all looked-after children are in foster care. For others, it will be special guardianship with a relative or former foster carer. Where adoption is the right outcome for black children, we must do better to find them families as quickly as we do for other children. For those children for whom adoption is the right permanent outcome we need action on several fronts. This includes recruiting more adopters generally, including from minority ethnic communities. This year we have given £150 million to local authorities through the adoption reform grant to help boost adopter recruitment and £16 million for the voluntary adoption agencies to help recruit more adopters who can meet the needs of children needing adoption. For example, Southwark has come up with innovative ways of recruiting adopters from the black community.

There will be better training for professionals. We have appointed BAAF to provide training on a range of issues, which next year will include ethnicity. Places are free for all local authority and voluntary adoption agencies. There will be better adoption support. We know how important this is, not only when the child is first placed with the family, but also later on, perhaps when they are dealing with the trials of adolescence and maybe, as my noble friend Lady Benjamin alluded to in one particularly moving case, questioning their identity. In September 2013 we announced a new fund with a contribution of nearly £20 million to help adoptive parents access the best possible support to meet their children’s needs. This fund will be rolled out nationally from 2015 but will be trialled from next year. The investment will make a difference to adopters in providing the support they need and better guidance, and I have explained the steps we are taking here.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said so incisively, we have, I believe, complete consensus right up to, and including, the point of diagnosing the problem. The issue is precisely how we change a culture of behaviour, but we have no intention of moving away from the importance of the child’s cultural and ethnic background. It is imperative that these are taken into account on every front.

I hope that we do not vote on this matter. That would be unfortunate given the nature of the matter that we are dealing with. I am personally committed to spending as much time as possible with my officials, the NSPCC, noble Lords and other interested parties to ensure that we get appropriate guidance in place to enable this matter to be handled in a way that takes into account the best interests of the children so that, on the one hand, their ethnicity is fully taken into account in all placing and matching decisions and, on the other, they are not left on the shelf and short-changed by the system, as many are now.

I hope noble Lords will agree that we are all very much in the same place and that statutory guidance gives us the scope to steer social work practice in a more nuanced way than through blunt statements in the Bill. On that basis, I hope the noble and learned Baroness will withdraw the amendment.

I now turn to the amendment in the names of my noble friends Lady Hamwee and Lady Walmsley. I am grateful to my noble friends for their innovative thinking on this matter, proposing to remove references to age and sex from Section 1(4)(d) of the relevant Act. I understand the thinking behind the amendment, which I believe is designed to remove from legislation any of the specific characteristics about a child, and rely wholly on the phrase,

“the child’s background and any of the child’s characteristics which the court or agency considers relevant”.

After careful reflection, I do not propose to follow this line of thinking at present. This is because there is no evidence that there is an issue with the way that the courts or adoption agencies are interpreting the words “age and sex”. There is a fairly technical issue at play here. Clause 2 seeks to remove subsection (5) of Section 1 of the 2002 Act. This is a requirement which applies only to adoption agencies—that is, local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies—when placing a child for adoption. Subsection (4) of Section 1—what is known as “the welfare checklist”—applies to the court as well as to adoption agencies, so seeking to amend this suggests a change for the courts as well as for adoption agencies.

In addition, this provision in the welfare checklist reflects an identical requirement on the courts in Section 1 of the Children Act 1989 when considering orders under that Act. Therefore, if we were to change the wording in the Adoption and Children Act 2002 in the way suggested by removing the reference to age and sex, that would send a strange signal to the court as it would suggest a different decision-making process under the Adoption and Children Act 2002 from that under the Children Act 1989.

However, in the end I come back to the very serious issue we want to address: the delay that black children and other ethnic minority children experience while waiting for adoption. As I said at the beginning, we have today paid tribute to one of the greatest advocates of racial equality ever. I listen frequently to the wonderful speech given by the other great advocate, Martin Luther King, which in my view is the greatest speech ever made. It is not the “I Have a Dream” speech, which everyone thinks of, but the one he made two months before that at Cobo Hall in Detroit in June 1963, which was then the centre of popular music, in which he used that wonderful musical analogy that all God’s children, from base black to treble white, are equally important in God’s world and on God’s keyboard. However, that does not seem to be the result in terms of the outcomes for black children in our adoption system, and this Government are determined to change that.

It is the requirement on local authorities and other adoption agencies at Section 1(5) in the Adoption and Children Act which—albeit it was placed there with the best of motives—I believe has contributed to the delays that black children face, as I think all noble Lords have acknowledged. The statutory guidance gives us the opportunity to provide much more nuanced advice and guidelines which will benefit all children being adopted, not just those who are visibly different from prospective families. For this reason, I urge the noble and learned Baroness to withdraw the amendment.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I thank all those who have spoken on what in my view is an important issue, although it may be, as several have said, a question of balance and degree. I will start by answering some of the Minister’s points. As a former judge who tried adoption cases, I am well aware of the unacceptable delays that there have been in adoptions of non-white children and children from other cultural backgrounds. I believe that Section 1(5), requiring social workers and the courts to pay particular regard to ethnicity, was wrong and I am happy that the Government wish to remove Section 1(5) from the Adoption and Children Act 2002. However, I do not believe that putting these words into the checklist would have the effect that the Minister says.

The Government are putting forward a number of extremely sensible suggestions, many of them coming from the important reports that have been published. I hope that these will lead to far better adoption situations, and for all children who should be adopted to be adopted more quickly. Therefore, I very much appreciate the work the Government are doing. It is interesting that agencies remain unconvinced by the Government’s arguments, although they are, like the NSPCC, willing to work with Government to improve the statutory guidance if this amendment does not go through. I very much support any sort of enhanced guidance and training, but I am afraid that this is not enough.

I was probably wrong in my opening remarks to your Lordships in concentrating on ethnicity, because the words that I proposed should go into the checklist are four factors:

“religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background”.

They are all equally important and I was at fault for concentrating on ethnicity. It was a shorthand version and probably misleading.

I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, about statutory guidance being good enough, but I ask him: if statutory guidance is good enough, why do we have the checklist? Surely the checklist could equally well go into statutory guidance. The checklist in Section 1(4) of the Adoption and Children Act has six paragraphs, (a) to (e), and three sub-paragraphs, (i) to (iii), and it is thought necessary to include them in the checklist, not just in statutory guidance. So why are the other factors in the 2002 Act so much more important than these four points that I have just set out, which I propose should be slipped neatly in with the rest of the checklist?

It has been suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, that the words “have regard” might be seen as prescriptive, but sitting as I did as a judge, to “have regard” to something is not in the least prescriptive. One can have regard to it and then disregard it. One does not have to keep on regarding it. I certainly had no problem in the Children Act and the Adoption Act in having regard to something, then discarding it. There is nothing at all prescriptive about “having regard”. However, a checklist is a reminder to social workers and judges that they must not ignore it. To take it out altogether, which the adoption agencies are concerned about, is to swing that pendulum too far the other way, because it is not then anywhere.

It is suggested that the words “background” and “characteristics” are clear, as the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said, and one does not need anything else. If I may respectfully disagree with her, I actually think that you do. You need a bit of a jolt. What do “background” and “characteristics” mean? They have to include certain points that I am not certain every social worker, however senior, might necessarily have in mind unless they were there. I say again that statutory guidance is not quite as good as having a checklist in primary legislation. The pendulum should be in the middle, and the middle means putting it in somewhere, but not making it too important. That is what I would like to see with this amendment, and I would like to test the opinion of the House.

National Curriculum: Violence against Women

Debate between Lord Nash and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Monday 28th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I pay tribute to the noble Baroness’s work on women’s and girls’ rights and opportunities. We support the principle behind her Question, and the DfE fully supports the Home Office’s excellent strategy in this regard. However, we do not believe that the most effective way of doing this is for the department to try to send messages to all girls. We are looking into how best to get information and messages to them. The This is Abuse campaign run by the Home Office is already doing good work in this regard. Later this year, Ministers from the Department for Education, the Home Office and the Department for International Development are to meet representatives from head teachers’ and teachers’ unions to discuss how best to raise awareness among staff and pupils of risks linked to gender-based violence. I am sure that the noble Baroness will also agree that any messages need to go to boys as well as girls.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, has been passionate about the importance of parenting being part of citizenship. If the Government took that on board, the very important issue of domestic violence would fit very neatly into it.

[Lord Nash]

I take the noble and learned Baroness’s point. We should do everything we can to improve parenting in this country. But, I am afraid, it is also the case that there are many children whose parents are not going to do the job and we must do that in schools.

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Lord Nash and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Nash]

The answer is yes.

In developing the guidance, we would welcome discussions either bilaterally or by hosting a round table discussion, whichever is more helpful. Once the draft guidance is prepared, we intend to consult publicly before publishing a final version next year. This will give schools one term’s notice of when the new duty comes into force.

I have listened with interest to the debate on the other grouped amendments. I hope the Committee will agree that the amendment I have tabled will help to support a significant group of children, many of whom meet the Equality Act definition of disability, who previously may not have been explicitly covered by the provisions of the Bill. I would like to reflect further on the other points raised in debate today in relation to the other amendments before us and consider them further. In doing so, I would be grateful for the Committee’s help in providing specific examples of other conditions or other groups of children who are having their educational opportunities restricted, and who are not supported by either existing legislation or the provisions of the Bill as they currently stand.

The noble Lord, Lord Low, gave some specific examples, most of which would be covered by the amendment that I have tabled, but other examples would be helpful. It is always a pleasure to reply to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, who is one of our country’s greatest athletes—

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

I have listened to this debate with great interest, very much as a novice in this area, although I have been governor of two schools where we had disabled children. I got the impression from what various speakers have said in this debate that there are problems for all disabled children, not just individual groups. The Minister should take away the problems of all disabled children in all sorts of schools.

[Lord Nash]

I thank the noble and learned Baroness for that intervention. Clearly, we all got that impression, but we would like help on precisely what category of children are not covered by the existing legislation. I will take away all the points made today and we will reflect further.

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Lord Nash and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for enabling me to clarify this point. I am not saying that it is the sole cause at all. It is one of a number of factors and we believe that our approach will be one element in helping to address this imbalance, which is leaving ethnic minority children short-changed.

Social workers will of course continue to pay considerable regard to ethnicity as they and the courts will be required to have regard to,

“the child’s age, sex, background and any of the child’s characteristics which the court or agency considers relevant”,

as part of the welfare checklist. These will obviously include ethnicity. We do not accept that our approach means that this will no longer be considered at all, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister, Lady Hamwee and Lady Benjamin, suggest. Indeed, in her speech the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred specifically to background. “Background” and “characteristics” must include ethnicity. That is a matter of plain English.

There is unequivocal evidence about the negative impact on their development of delay in placing children for adoption. Children need to form attachments with one or two main carers to develop emotionally and physically. There is also clear evidence about delay caused by practitioners seeking a “perfect” ethnic match. Professor Elaine Farmer, in An Investigation of Family Finding and Matching in Adoption, found that of the BME children in the sample who experienced delay, attempts to find a family of similar ethnicity was a factor in delay for 70% of them. A study by Julie Selwyn—

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

Forgive me for interrupting, but I wonder if I could have the date of Elaine Farmer’s report.

[Lord Nash]

The noble and learned Baroness will get that information in a second.

A study by Julie Selwyn, Pathways to Permanence for Black, Asian and Mixed Ethnicity Children found that “same race” placements often dominated the child permanence report over and above other needs and that some social workers were so pessimistic about finding ethnically matched adopters that there was little family finding. She said:

“We found that local authorities were much quicker at changing the decision away from adoption for minority ethnic children than they were for white children. There were a great number of minority ethnic children for whom no families were found and the decision was changed away from adoption”.

Whatever the child may want, would they rather not be adopted at all or adopted late in life so that they cannot form those early attachments that we all know are so important?

The answer to the noble and learned Baroness’s question is 2010.

Amending Section 1(5) of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 does not mean that ethnicity should not be considered. A child’s adoptive family needs to be able to meet the child’s needs throughout his childhood, having regard to all the factors provided for in Section 1(2) and 1(4), rather than simply matching his or her ethnic background or not matching at all. We have published draft regulations on this for your Lordships’ consideration.

We recognise that practice is very important. That is why we are developing a range of training materials and other tools to support the continuous professional development needs of children’s social workers, supervising social workers, team managers and independent reviewing officers working in fostering and adoption. This is part of the Government’s drive to ensure that social workers working in the care and adoption systems have the knowledge and skills they need to get decisions right and weigh the impact of delay appropriately in the decisions that they make about placements for children in care.

Of course, we need more adopters from all ethnicities. That is why we have allocated over £150 million this year to help adoption agencies respond to the pressing needs of children awaiting adoption and a further £16 million over the next two years to expand the sector.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child does not require children to be placed with someone who shares exactly the same ethnicity but someone who respects it. Section 1 of the Act, as amended, will not prevent this. Many children in our society live with natural parents who do not entirely share their ethnicity. I urge the noble and learned Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

I thank my noble friend Lady Hamwee, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, for bringing this important matter to the Government’s attention, both earlier this year through the report of the Lords Select Committee on Adoption Legislation and through this proposed clause.

I entirely understand why the descendants of adopted people may want to find out more about their biological heritage, particularly where there may be a hereditary medical condition. The Government are open to the possibility of reform in this area, but we believe that more detailed thought is needed about the implications and practicalities of any legislative change. For example, we must think carefully about how more information might be provided to descendants, and we need to balance this against the rights and wishes of the adopted adults themselves and their birth families.

This is a complex and sensitive area which needs careful consideration before any change to legislation is considered. That is why the Government are exploring with the Law Commission whether this issue might be included within a possible project as part of the commission’s 12th programme of law reform.

The amendment would enable descendants of an adopted person to find out about the adopted person’s background. It applies to those adopted before commencement of the 2002 Act. Such adoptions were carried out privately and secretly, with very little information shared with the adopted child or his or her birth parents. If a mother, who may never have told anyone about an adoption, was approached out of the blue by her son asking about his adoption, that could have a devastating effect on the individual and the whole family.

We fully appreciate the wishes of descendents and there will be examples—

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

I apologise to the Minister. Under this proposal, there is no suggestion that there should be any direct relationship between the person seeking the information and the person who has been adopted. It would be done through an intermediary, which is the whole purpose. I urge the Minister not to go down that line because that is not what we are asking for.

[Lord Nash]

I assure the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, that we are not seeking to be disingenuous about this and we do regard the issues as complicated. My noble friend Lady Hamwee asked what evidence the Government have to suggest that if we make this provision it could open the floodgates or that the new clause would lead to unwelcome contact. The answer is that we do not have any evidence, which is why we would like the Law Commission to consider it and are prepared to provide funds. I hope that I have provided sufficient reassurance on the amendment and I therefore urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.