Deregulation Bill

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, those of us who were involved in the early discussions about the possible privatisation of areas of social work were assured at the time that child protection would not be something that went off the radar and that, in particular, we would see registration of child protection services take place, along with a proper review. Why have we suddenly had that foreshortened? I really do not understand that.

Other areas of childcare have registration—and it works. The noble Baroness just mentioned those. Surely this is the highest-profile area as well as the one where most of us would be deeply concerned. A lifetime in child protection work tells me that we must deal with this with the utmost care. I am not saying that in the long term we will not find services that work but rather that we need to view them with the utmost care at the moment and that registration and a review of it will help to ensure that we do not take the wrong step at the wrong time. A standard answer this afternoon on this would not be good enough. We have the national inquiry going on and child protection on the front page of every newspaper, and on television and radio. Yet here we are suggesting that we remove the safeguards from one area of child protection. That is just not good enough.

I am often on the receiving end of contracts with local authorities in other areas. As we heard from both noble Baronesses, local authorities are exceptional at child protection. We have had some extraordinary failures, which are in the papers at the moment—and we all deeply regret them. However, day in, day out, thousands of children on child protection registers are looked after and cared for by social workers up and down the country, usually working hours way above those they are contracted for and putting themselves at risk because if they get it wrong they will not only endanger a child but destroy their career overnight. As someone who has sat through two child abuse inquiries, and survived them, I know just how painful that can be for those involved.

We acknowledge what social workers do, but the local authorities’ contracting services are still in their infancy. One thing that local authorities tend to do because of the pressure they are under is look for what might be the cheapest rather than the best- quality service. I hope that they would not do this in child protection, but I see it in the delivery of adult services, because local authorities are under so much financial pressure at the moment. I do not criticise them for trying to find the best way to deliver their services.

My other concern is that if Ofsted does not have time to do the registration, as we have been told, however will it find time to do the right kind of inspections of these services? We have heard in other places that Ofsted is under extreme pressure. Again, I am not being critical. I understand that; I have been a regulator in another important place. But if we are committed to quality and to truly protecting our children, and if we recognise where this is on the national agenda, we will surely take a little more time—that is all the amendment asks for—to evaluate whether this is the best way forward. I ask the Minister to consider that very carefully in the interests of the nation’s most vulnerable children.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the arguments made this afternoon by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and my noble friend Lady Donaghy. At the heart of the concerns raised by everyone is that the Government have not presented an adequate case for why the changes to social work regulation are necessary. The Minister does not need me to tell him of the perilous state of social work provision in the country at present. Demand for intervention is increasing massively, particularly in the wake of the new focus on child abuse cases. Meanwhile, children are being put at risk because about 11% of social work posts are unfilled. A recent NSPCC report warned that social workers are,

“frequently operating without the support, time, knowledge and training they needed to ensure the identification of sexual abuse and the protection and well-being of extremely vulnerable children”.

Those concerns apply not just to social workers employed in children’s departments but across the spectrum, including the charitable and private sectors. Only yesterday, the Home Secretary said:

“With every passing day and every new revelation, it is clear that the sexual abuse of children has taken place, and is still taking place, on a scale that we still cannot fully comprehend”.—[Official Report, Commons, 4/2/15; col. 658.]

So why are we making these changes at this very sensitive time?

My co-signers to the amendment have rightly identified that there is a chorus of opposition to the proposals from those involved in the sector. The changes are opposed by the Local Government Association, the College of Social Work and Unison, which represents those working in the sector. All have identified the risks of reducing regulation in the sector. Their concerns have been echoed by the Children’s Commissioner, who is the independent voice protecting the welfare of children in England, who stated:

“We consider all delegated social care services should be required to have formal registration with Ofsted in addition to an expectation that they will be held to account by rigorous and expert inspection, just as local authorities currently are”.

We should be taking heed of these voices.

If the reason for the proposals is to save money, it would be helpful to know just how much the Government believe will be saved. As has been said, it may well be that Ofsted feels that it is overworked and does not have the resources to carry out the regulation function adequately—but then we need to address that issue head on, rather than simply allow it to walk away from the role. If the intention is to transfer responsibility for regulation of those providers to local authorities, it would be helpful to know whether they will be given the additional funds to carry out their work—I rather suspect that that is not the case.

However, fundamentally, this is not about money, it is about risk. The Government have provided no evidence that they have weighed the risk of removing regulation from third-sector social work organisations. I remember raising concerns with the previous Government about the reduced regulation of private care homes. It has taken many years and a lot of suffering—even deaths—before we realised that we, the state, had an overwhelming responsibility to protect the most vulnerable, whoever is providing the service. Let us not make that same mistake again

Ofsted already inspects local authorities and in-house children’s services. It already regulates the private and charitable sectors providing social work services. This includes checking that they pass the fit and proper person test. Of course, we could be talking about very large companies, so local authorities may have very difficult relationships with them. Why would we want to lose those skills at this critical time for the sector? The role being assigned to local authorities is very different from that of a regulator. They are not the regulator. Their function in contracting out social work services is focused on procurement and contract compliance. We would end up with a fractured line of accountability for the services provided by contracted-out social workers.

Our amendment would provide a crucial pause in the Government’s proposals. It would provide time for the Government to have further talks with those who continue to have major concerns about the changes. Most crucially, it would allow the Government to carry out and publish a proper risk assessment, so that we can all be sure that child protection functions will be protected under their proposals. The consequence of getting this wrong is just too traumatic. We need to take the time to get this right, and we have the responsibility to do so. I hope that noble Lords will support our amendment.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I suppose that I should declare an interest: my son has lived and worked in the United States for seven years and his American wife is a qualified children’s social worker. She has worked in Boston and is currently working in Chicago, so I have learnt a certain amount about the Massachusetts and Illinois systems of privatised provision of child protection. I am not completely unaware of some of the delicacies in this area. I am of course also acutely aware of the sensitivity of the issue of child protection in British political debate at present.

I thank the noble Baronesses for raising this issue and for coming in to discuss further with my noble friend and officials some of the underlying issues at stake. I am well aware that the College of Social Work has strong views on this, although as I understand it the area of social work is not entirely of one mind in how far one needs registration as well as inspection. The questions of registration and inspection are related but not identical. The system of delegation is purely permissive. Local authorities may continue to provide their own services or, as the noble Baroness suggested, delegate to third sector providers or commercial providers in the field. Some do so; many others continue to provide their own direct services. The removal of registration does not mean the removal of inspection.