Children’s Social Care

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes an important point about the relationship between this work and the work of MHCLG. Just a week or so ago, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and the MHCLG Secretary met with the Care Leavers’ Association. We are working with MHCLG on planning provision for additional children’s placements, in order to ensure that high-quality placements can be developed more quickly. I take her broader point about the way in which we literally build our communities in order to protect our children, and I am sure that good planners and good local authorities will be thinking about that.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my registered interests. I strongly welcome the Statement and particularly the confirmation that, wherever possible, children should remain with their families. Where it is not possible, children should live close by, not miles away. From what the Minister has said, I have not fully understood how long it might take to achieve that objective, given the Government’s plans.

I see in the Statement that the Government plan to set out funding plans on children’s social care in the upcoming local government finance settlement. I hope it will be possible to have a debate on that, because that settlement will include many things, Sometimes we have a Statement—often there is not even that—but I think that this settlement will need a debate.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I welcome the noble Lord’s welcome for this work. I agree with the point that has just been made that it is important that we work closely with partners across local government to address this. The noble Lord is right that more detail will be set out in the local government settlement, but it is not for me to decide whether there will be a debate. However, I assure the noble Lord that, if there is one and if I am called on, I will be more than happy to come and give more detail on how the spending will help to support progress on the objectives that we have set as quickly as possible, as he rightly says.

The problem of how far children live from their homes—I think over 20% of children live more than 20 miles away from their home authority—has been around for a very long time. That is not a reason not to take quick action; the noble Lord is right. This will be difficult, but we are absolutely determined to make progress.