Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Wills and Baroness Pinnock

Monday 4th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Pinnock]

My Lords, I have listened carefully to the strong case made by the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, for the amendments and agree with much, if not all, of what she said. I repeat, however, that they would place additional duties, and therefore inevitably extra costs, on local authorities. That must be recognised. Can the Minister give the Committee before the end of this stage an estimate of the additional costs imposed on local authorities by the Bill? In response to my earlier point, the Minister claimed that I was asking for additional funding. Actually, I was making a plea for cuts not to be made. A 25% cut in children’s services spending is bound to have a significant impact on what local authorities can do for children in care and care leavers. I make a plea for having not so large a cut in local government funding.

[Lord Wills]

The noble Baroness will understand how sympathetic I am, sitting on this side of the Committee. We have now officially ditched austerity as part of the Tory leadership campaign, so circumstances are clearly different. However, I am also conscious that we are living in very difficult times and there is not likely to be much more money. She makes understandable pleas, but does she accept that a lot of this funding will prevent spending being incurred later? If we cannot support those most vulnerable young people at the most difficult times of their lives, they will run into problems and, sooner or later, that will involve more spending by the state when it would be tragic to have to do so. When she pleads for funding, I ask her to accept that this funding has a prophylactic effect, so the extra demand on resources may not be as severe as she suggests.

[Baroness Pinnock]

When I spoke at Second Reading, I made a plea for the Government to consider shifting money to early intervention and prevention so that we would not have to address issues of looked-after children and care leavers. The idea would be to put effort and funding into family support at an early stage so that children can remain safely with their families and not have to enter the care system. That would be the best outcome for the child and for the state, which is funding children in care. The thrust of my argument is that this is all focused on looked-after children and care leavers. I urge the Government to put the focus on family intervention and prevention of family issues that lead to children going into the care system. The difficulty with that is that we know across the country that children’s centres, which are the focus for early intervention and prevention, are closing. Only at the end of last week, Hampshire County Council made a decision to close all but 11 of its 53 children’s centres. That is the thrust of my argument. I would much rather that we did not have to debate support for care leavers because we had prevented all those children going into care.