Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Warner and Lord Ramsbotham

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, added my name to the noble Baroness’s amendment, and I echo what she said about the many organisations which have supported it. Many times during the Bill’s passage, mention has been made of the postcode lottery regarding the performance of local authorities around the country. If this assessment procedure is adopted, who will perform the quality assurance of the delivery of the assessment around the country? It cannot be the expert advisory board, which has a completely different purpose.

[Lord Warner (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendment, to which I added my name. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, on her persistence on this, which has been well recognised by those who work in the sector.

As a former director of social services, I think it is essential that we recognise the need to assess many of these children. That is not to say that large numbers of them will necessarily progress to the most demanding parts of the system, but we know that if you do not assess and pick these problems up early, they go in only one direction: they get worse. We end up with children who have already had a pretty tough time having to fight their way into a CAMHS system which is itself struggling to cope with the demands made on it. We need to give children coming into care, those who are looked after, a good shot at getting access to the services that they need.

I think that the amendment has met the Government’s concerns about flexibility, which were legitimate. This House and the Government have always argued for parity of esteem between mental and physical health. This is another piece of the jigsaw to try to ensure that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I, too, strongly support the amendment, but as a sceptical old Whitehall warrior, I will open up an issue that may suggest it is not the Minister and his colleagues in his department who might be the villains in this area, but other interests across Whitehall. As I understand it, if the Government accept the amendment they will then have to accept amendments relating to all the other services that are of concern to children. It would be very difficult for them to accept the amendment if they have reservations about the cumulative effect of implementing the convention in this way through statute for all the services that may affect children.

My suspicion about Whitehall, because I am of a suspicious nature given my background, is that there are problems around an impact assessment on what the implications of all this may be. Instinctively I feel that somewhere in this mix are our old friends at the Treasury and the control of public expenditure. They are often to be found when we have these long periods of inaction in any particular area. Some of the areas where children could be seriously affected—clean air, benefits and access to health services to name but a few—go much wider than the scope of the Bill.

I do not expect the Minister to divulge the workings of government, but can he throw any light on whether it is necessary to provide across Whitehall an impact assessment on what the costs of implementing this through statute would be? Do the processes by which these things have to be agreed across Whitehall have any chance of being agreed before the Bill completes its passage through Parliament?

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I support everything that has been said and pick up on the words of my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf. It is very sad that the last two reports of the UN committee coming to this country have started with the words that they regret that so little has been done to implement the recommendations they made five years earlier. If, as my noble and learned friend has suggested, the convention or the causes should be made the centrepiece of cross-government action in this area, then there is a solid basis for all affected ministries in Whitehall to rally round and make certain that their contribution to what is required is not criticised the next time the committee visits.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Warner and Lord Ramsbotham

Wednesday 13th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, my name is on this amendment, which is probably bad news for the Minister, and I support what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said. I want to add a couple of points on setting up a new unit by coming back to the issue of the Department of Health and adult social workers. It needs to be a unit which would deal with both groups of social workers, which means it needs some machinery that represents the interests of both the Department of Health and the Department for Education. I still see no really convincing evidence that it has been thought through in terms of those departments working together on something to benefit the range of social workers—those who work with children and those who work with adults. If we were to go down this path, there would have to be an agency or unit. I do not think one would mind what it is but it would have to be a convincing agency that looked across the spectrum of social work with children and adults.

I also want to pick up on some of the Minister’s comments in the discussion on my Amendment 135B. At the end of the day, if the Minister has all this money and wants to get on quickly—he said that he had the money and wants to get on speedily with the job of improving social work—then I would say, having been a Minister in government, that the fastest way to do that, as some of us have done, is to set up some kind of grouping across the piece. It would include the types of social workers for adults and children, and all the outside interests. The Minister could almost do that before the autumn and before we come to this on Report. At a later stage, that could be turned into an executive agency if he wanted to do that. There is nothing to prevent the Government putting in place very quickly indeed something of the kind that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, suggested if they have the money and the capability. If they have those then they should do it; they do not even have to ask Parliament.

If the Government want to improve some of the training requirements for social workers, they could also have a conversation with the HCPC, which will be looking at education in September. It has committed to that as part of its work programme. I am sure that any regulator in this area would always listen to a government department or the Government of the day and consider the evidence for change.

If the Minister is really in a hurry and wants to take people with him, why does he not use what is available now, get on and have a discussion with the HCPC and set up a unit jointly with the Department of Health to do as much improving and make as many changes as he wants? Why are we all being subjected to, and spending some of the best years of our lives discussing, the shambles that is Part 2 of this Bill? It is a sad waste of parliamentary time and I do not think that it is terribly good for the profession, which is being subjected to a lot of uncertainty when it needs more confidence and more certainty. I hope that, even at this late stage, the Minister can see that there are some merits in the approaches of the two amendments.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I was attracted to putting my name to Amendments 135B and 135C because of their cleanliness and simplicity, and the fact that they picked up all the points that had been made in the Government’s policy statement, Regulating Social Workers, which was published last month. There was nothing missing. Furthermore, what the amendments proposed was independent and objective, and therefore they were likely to attract the support of the profession.

I could not help reflecting on two things. One was that when I was Chief Inspector of Prisons, when I inspected a prison that had an under-18 wing the social services were responsible for under-18s at that time, so I took a social services inspector with me. She said that if it had been a secure children’s home, it would have been closed because of the lack of facilities. Those facilities were then under the direction of the Home Office, which claimed to be responsible for young people in custody. That has always suggested to me that government should not get close to the delivery of these things.

The second thing, which I admit struck me as strange, was on page 19 of the Regulating Social Workers report. One paragraph says:

“Ministers will lead on issues such as setting standards and delivery of responsive improvement programmes to raise the calibre and status of the profession”.

The next paragraph says:

“While Ministers retain ultimate responsibility, decisions will be kept at arm’s length”.

How can you lead at arm’s length? It struck me that there was considerable confusion in all this and that therefore the Government can consider the clarity of Amendments 135B and 135C as helping them to deliver what they want. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, we all want improvement as quickly as possible, and I think that the profession does as well. We appear to be in the mire of confused thinking, which could be avoided by withdrawing from it.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Warner and Lord Ramsbotham

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Warner]

That certainly was not what he said.

[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—