Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Lord Storey and Baroness Longfield

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

Actually, I have spoken to only one director and I would not wish to comment on what they said, because it would perhaps give the wrong impression.

The noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, rightly said that our child protection procedures are the envy of the world. She is right to say that, but it does not mean that we are complacent about the fact that we have good child protection procedures. You have to constantly look at any policies or systems and change and improve them. I am always impressed that children are at the heart of everything we do. When we had the Question on media literacy, and I rather cheekily asked what the Government’s number one priority was, the Minister rightly said that it was child protection. That is symptomatic of how we as a House react. We cannot stand still but, when we make detailed changes, we have to be sure that they are right. We should pilot them, perhaps learn from the pilot, and then use that to change and adapt, and we have to make the resources available.

I am particularly concerned about qualifications—they are the hallmark of safety. You would not want a plumber without any plumbing qualifications to come to your house, nor would you want an electrician without qualifications to look at the wiring. So it is in child safety, where we must make sure that the people around the table are qualified to give judgments and opinions to protect children.

As somebody who has said that he is not an expert by any means in this area, I hope that, when the Minister replies, she might simply spell out for me why she wants to make those changes and why she has not taken the advice of somebody who clearly is an expert and knows what they are talking about, and who has—probably through frustration—had to write a letter to the Times.

[Baroness Longfield (Lab)]

Perhaps I might add a few thoughts from my experience. As Children’s Commissioner for six years, I found that the greatest level of responsibility was around children in care, and I looked in detail at the experience of children in care throughout that time. One of the things that was absolutely clear to me was that the ability of local authorities to focus on early intervention diminished hugely during that period. The amount that was spent on early intervention halved during that period, while the amount that was spent on crisis doubled. You do not need to be a great mathematician to realise that the more you spend on crisis, the less you will have for early intervention.

At the heart of Josh MacAlister’s review and recommendations, which were incredibly and extensively consulted on with people at all levels, from expert practitioners to leaders of children’s services and care-experienced people themselves, was that we had to move and reset the system towards early intervention, and do so boldly in a timely manner, because it was unsustainable for the public purse to do anything other. As important, if not more important, is that more children were being left without support.

Everyone needs to be alert at any time to the consequences of any move towards increasing harm for children. What we now know and have known for some time is that more children are coming to harm now because they are not getting that support early, so it is absolutely essential that there is an urgency about that. As I said on Tuesday, those directors of children’s services that I speak to want to see that change urgently and are very much in line with the proposals that are being put forward. There will always be things that directors of children’s services will want to amend locally and test out—that is absolutely right—but what they want to know is that there is a framework nationally for them to work within and clear guidance. So, it is so important that this is here. That is not to say that those individuals will not have their own expertise in delivering.

When there are experts involved in delivering these expert practitioner roles, they are actually going to use their judgment all the time. It is not going to be about process; it has to be about children and about those families. Anyone who is just following a process because the process is there is not the expert practitioner in that role that we have the ambition for. They are going to be looking at children’s lives and responding to individuals, but at the heart of it, we have to move boldly forwards, to—