Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Earl of Listowel

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I strongly support these amendments. The political commitment to give the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child due consideration in policy-making was very important and is welcome, but it is not enough, as the JCHR’s report on the UK’s compliance with the convention in the last Parliament clearly demonstrated.

I declare an interest as a former member of the JCHR, along with the noble Lord, Lord Lester. The duty does not apply, for example, to local authorities or other public authorities. The Government have said that they remain to be convinced that such a duty would make a real practical difference to children’s lives and outcomes, rather than—as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, noted—produce a so-called tick-box mentality and create bureaucracy, rather than change mindsets and culture. Yet Parliament’s own committee, charged with safeguarding human rights, supports these amendments.

As we have the heard, the evidence from Scotland and Wales suggests that such a duty makes a real, practical difference. The criticisms made of this country by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child suggests that what we have at present simply is not sufficient to safeguard children’s rights. Can the Minister spell out what further evidence the Government need to convince them of the practical value of such a duty? What evidence do they have that it would produce box ticking, rather than cultural change? I fear that the current political commitment has not produced the cultural change that I agree we need. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, has said, by opposing this very basic amendment, which is doing no more than putting a convention that we have signed up to into our legislation, the Government are sending out the totally wrong message in suggesting that they do not care about the rights of children sufficiently to ensure that they are safeguarded in law.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I support this amendment. The Minister will be aware of the fantastic work done at Leeds, one of the leading children’s services departments. It recently presented its work in Parliament and used the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as the foundation of this achievement. It committed itself to all the children in the city in respecting and thinking about the UNCRC. It managed to reduce the numbers of children coming into care and give really good service for those children in care. I know of schools that use the UNCRC in a similar way—as a fundamental approach to what they do—and they have great successes, so I support this amendment.

I have a personal reflection, which may resonate with your Lordships. If we respect the rights of children and give them a secure upbringing, then when they are adults they are far less likely to be swayed by demagogues —I am thinking of today’s election in the United States —and manipulated by people who dwell on their worst fears.

Finally, this would help to answer our problems about productivity in the workforce. If we respect children’s need for family life, education and recovery from trauma, we will have adults who are not missing work because they are mentally ill or depressed; we will have a more productive workforce. There are many good reasons to support this amendment.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Earl of Listowel

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I support Amendments 14 and 28A, with particular reference to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and the regularisation of immigration status. I look forward to reading the EU sub-committee’s report. I want to refer back to a report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I was then a member, on the human rights of unaccompanied migrant children and young people in the UK. We took a lot of evidence about the position of unaccompanied migrant children and young people, including questions around legal provisions—this was before the LASPO provisions were fully effective. We said that the picture painted of the legal landscape in this area was deeply troubling, and we called for an immediate assessment of the availability and quality of legal aid and legal representation for unaccompanied migrant children in England and Wales. I suspect it is going to emerge that the position is even more troubling today than it was then.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, I spent many hours wrestling with the Immigration Bill. One of the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, and myself, following representation from Amnesty and the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens, was the position of an estimated 120,000 children in the UK subject to immigration control and without leave to remain, over half of whom were born in this country and many of whom were in the care of a local authority. We drew attention to the evidence of the failure of local authorities to support these children in making a timely application to regularise their immigration status, or to register as British citizens.

As the Refugee Children’s Consortium, to whose important work in this area I pay tribute, pointed out, a child without a way to regularise their immigration status in local authority care becomes a young person without support at 18. As some of us pointed out then, you do not magically become an independent adult when you turn 18; when the clock passes midnight, you are not suddenly able to look after yourself. We do not expect any other children to be able to do so, so why should we expect it of the most vulnerable children in care—unaccompanied asylum-seeking children?

Finally, a recent briefing from the UNHCR and UNICEF sets out what the UK can do to ensure respect for the best interests of unaccompanied and separated children. One of the recommendations is on the need to strengthen procedural safeguards for assessing and determining a child’s best interests, including by ensuring high-quality legal representation and advice for unaccompanied and separated children. I hope that the Government will take that on board because it is not too much to ask. They should consider what a difference it could make to an extremely vulnerable group of young people.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, the report In Care, Out of Trouble: How the life chances of children in care can be transformed by protecting them from unnecessary involvement in the criminal justice system, an independent review chaired by my noble friend Lord Laming and sponsored by the Prison Reform Trust, was published about a month ago. Can the Minister tell us how the report has been received and when it is likely that a response to the recommendations made in it will be forthcoming?

I too share the concerns about the status of young people in the immigration system as they leave care. I would like to emphasise the point that has been made on all sides, most recently by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, that these young people need advice early on when they enter care about their immigration status so that they can make early applications in order that when they leave care, it has been sorted out. Often they do not get that support and everything is up in the air for them. This is such an important point.

Immigration Bill

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Earl of Listowel

Monday 21st March 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 123B, 123C and 123D. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister of Burtersett and Lady Hamwee, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich for attaching their names to these amendments.

These amendments affect a subgroup of young people leaving care. I am very glad and grateful that at the last Conservative Party conference the Prime Minister chose to speak about his particular concern about young people in care. Edward Timpson MP’s work in improving security for care leavers and introducing “staying put” to allow young people to stay with their foster carers until the age of 21 was a huge step forward in the coalition Government. There has been much welcome work in this area and recognition of the vulnerabilities of these young people. I am therefore not at all surprised that the Minister has paid great attention to these amendments. I appreciate our correspondence, the meeting that we and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, had about this, and the Minister’s consideration and the adjustments that he has made, particularly with regard to young people who were not offered the chance to make an application for their immigration status to be regularised while they were in care under the age of 18, and to young people who have been trafficked.

These amendments ensure that young people leaving care are able to continue to access leaving-care support from their local authorities in circumstances where their departure from the UK is not envisaged. This includes young people with pending applications to remain in the UK whose long-term future may be in the UK, and young people who cannot leave the UK because there is a genuine obstacle to their removal.

This Bill creates a two-tier system of support and discriminates against care leavers on the basis of their immigration status, with damaging consequences for young people who have sometimes been living in the UK for many years as unaccompanied children, including potential victims of child trafficking and those who have no family but their foster family and their corporate parent, the local authority. It is not clear to me why a separate system is needed when the Children Act 1989 and the provision for care leavers, in particular the entitlement to a personal adviser and pathway planning, provide the most appropriate mechanism for supporting young people leaving care whatever their long-term future in the UK.

Central and local government have a unique relationship with children in care and care leavers, as they are corporate parents. That means that they have a statutory responsibility to act for young people in the way that a good parent would. The Government have indicated that very similar types of support could be provided under new paragraph 10B in the Bill, including continued foster placement, the advice and support of a personal adviser and social care support. That is most welcome. However, the Bill is drafted so that the duties to meet the welfare needs of care leavers, in line with wider care-leaving legislation, have been replaced by a power to make regulation. It is therefore anticipated that these young people will generally be prevented from staying in foster placements, continuing education, having a personal adviser and pathway plan, being supported with their health and so on.

The Bill’s provisions affecting migrant care leavers are inconsistent with government policy on care leavers generally, and fundamentally undermine the corporate parenting responsibility. Under these provisions, the Government estimate that 750 care leavers will be affected and therefore prevented from accessing the full range of leaving-care services that their peers receive. However, the Bill will also affect care leavers with pending immigration applications that are not their first application, and others whose long-term future may be in the UK. Young people caught by these provisions will include those who face genuine obstacles to removal, which may persist for lengthy periods of time, and those with non-asylum human rights claims based on having lived in the UK for significant periods of time, if this is not their first application.

I am very grateful to the Minister for the attention that he has given to the needs of these young people, and for the extent to which he has moved during the passage of the Bill. I would really appreciate it if he and the Government could go a bit further in ensuring that as many of these young people as possible have access at least to a personal adviser and a pathway plan. That is crucial for these young people at the age of 18 who have had troubled starts in life. It may also be to the benefit of the Government in their wish to create a robust immigration system. If these young people are engaging in a relationship with their personal adviser, it is easier for the authorities to have contact with them, so it should be easier for the Immigration Service to keep in touch with them and remove them when it is possible to do so.

I would appreciate it if the Minister could give a clear commitment to meeting the needs of these young people and, if he can, to move further forward than he has hitherto. If he could bring something to the House at Third Reading that would make the protections for these young people clear in the Bill, that would also be very welcome. I beg to move.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I support this group of amendments, to which I have added my name, for the reasons outlined by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, who has been resolute in his defence of the rights of care leavers. I want to raise some issues arising from the Government’s rationale behind creating a separate system of support for care leavers who have no leave or who are appeal rights exhausted, particularly the removal of the duty to provide these care leavers with a pathway plan and personal advisers, and the dispersal of care leavers outside their local area. I am grateful to the Refugee Children’s Consortium for its briefing.

As I understand it, the Government’s view is that a separate system is needed for these young people who are appeal rights exhausted, because they believe that these young people’s future does not lie in the UK, even though in practice many young people who are ARE remain because of the barriers to their removal. However, the Government accept that in some cases additional support, such as access to social care services and remaining in foster placements, will still be needed. In his letter following Committee, the Minister stated:

“I agree entirely that they”—

that is, care leavers—

“should receive support appropriate to their individual needs”,

and that this could,

“include remaining in foster care placement”.

That is welcome, but it is very difficult to see how it will be achieved if the young person’s needs cannot be assessed because they will no longer be entitled to a pathway plan or personal adviser under the provision in new paragraph 10B, which is precisely the mechanism through which individualised assessments currently take place. Are the Government not just going to be reinventing the wheel by creating a whole separate system for this group of young people? Would it not be better to concentrate on ensuring that the current system for planning these young people’s transition to adulthood worked better by using dual or triple planning approaches to plan for all eventual outcomes for the young person’s immigration status, as set out in the guidance? Can the Minister explain whether the Government intend for young people’s needs to be assessed by new and different professionals? If so, would this not simply break the existing links that young people have with their personal advisers?

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Earl of Listowel

Monday 21st December 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel]

I rise to speak to my Amendment 90B which would exempt kinship carers from the benefit cap. I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, for adding her name to the amendment.

I will be brief as the Committee has already discussed kinship care and the Minister has knowledge of it through his charitable work. One does not need to believe in an afterlife to know that there is a hell. One need only hear some care-experienced adults speak of their experience. The experience of too many is: to grow up without love; to be betrayed by those they trust; to be left in that position for years before the state intervenes; to experience rootlessness in care often; to look to alcohol or drugs for respite from guilt and the inability to relate to others; and to give birth to child after child only to have each baby removed by the state.

Our amendment increases the chance that these souls will know heaven rather than hell, and increases the chance that they may know love and security and then go on to love and be loved themselves. The best rehabilitation we can offer children taken for their protection from their parents who cannot love them is the chance that these children can find love themselves and go on to be adults who will start healthy families and have children they can love and who love them.

We know that 30% of kinship carers are on housing benefit and 36% of the larger of these families are on HB. There is a concentration of kinship care in London, with 1.7% of children in this city cared for under kinship care arrangements. Brent has 2.8% of its children in kinship care—the highest level in England. Failure to amend this Bill will put more of these families into poverty and, I fear, uproot others.

What kind of choice is it that the state is forcing families to make when in order that an aunt or uncle should do right by their niece and/or nephew, they must uproot their own children from their home, friends and school, leaving behind their own support network, to live in poverty somewhere they may not know? A grandmother carer said of the Bill as it stands, “I had a really well-paid job and now I worry constantly about money. I always listen to what the Government are doing as the changes with universal credit will affect me and my little one. I am scared of losing my home and being homeless”. I beg the Minister to accept our amendment and ensure that this Bill makes the welfare of these particular children paramount.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

I shall be very brief. I support what the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said about kinship carers. I am delighted that the Minister will come back before Report on the question of carers. I remind him of something he said during the passage of the 2012 Act. He said that one thing the Government were not looking to encourage was a change in the carer’s behaviour so that they stopped caring.

I hope that he will remember that statement—and what he has heard about how strongly Members of this House feel about the inappropriateness or “indecency”, as my noble friend put it, of applying the cap to carers—when he makes these considerations about how to respond to the High Court case.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Earl of Listowel

Monday 14th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak in support of Amendment 59, to which I was happy to add my name. The work allowance was one of the jewels in the crown of universal credit, heralding a shiny new era of improved work incentives and making work pay. How quickly it has turned into the Cinderella of the social security system: first frozen, then cut in real terms, frozen again, and abolished altogether for non-disabled, childless households. When I questioned the Minister on this in an Oral Question on 27 October, he justified what has happened by referring to the experience of single people, arguing that they do not in fact need the work allowance for the incentives. I have since read the Resolution Foundation analysis and I accept that there may be a case for abolishing the work allowance for this group, but the foundation recommended that that should be in the context of the need for improvements elsewhere—in particular, an increase in the work allowance for lone parents, who are very responsive to such incentives, and a shift in the balance of the allowance between the first and second earners in a couple, with a new work allowance for second earners in families, just as some of us argued for during the passage of the Welfare Reform Act 2012. The foundation went on to say that that is a,

“crucial step in making UC pro-women, a test it currently fails”.

The Social Security Advisory Committee picked this up in its report, Universal Credit: Priorities for Action, and agreed that second earners need further attention, and it recommended further consideration of the Resolution Foundation report to the Government. I would be grateful if the Minister told us what consideration has been given to that report.

The Resolution Foundation also emphasises the importance of uprating policy and argues that cuts in income tax should be passed on in full to families on universal credit via an equivalent adjustment to work allowance; otherwise, people on universal credit will not get the same benefit from an increase in tax allowances. Other analyses by the Child Poverty Action Group—I declare my interest as honorary president—and the TUC show that it is much more cost-effective to raise work allowance than to increase personal tax allowances in terms of getting parents into work and addressing child poverty.

In his reply to my Oral Question, I felt that the Minister tried to brush the cuts in work allowance aside as somehow inconsequential. The noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, has spelt out just how consequential they are for new claimants of universal credit. In his oral evidence to the recent Work and Pensions Committee’s inquiry into tax credits, Torsten Bell of the Resolution Foundation said:

“That work allowance change is so large that our view is that it to a degree fundamentally changes how universal credit is going to feel for people on low hours”.

He gave an example and said:

“Before the Budget a single parent on the minimum wage could have worked 22 hours under universal credit before she had any of her universal credit entitlement taken away. After both the reduction in the work allowance, which falls to £5,000 for her next year, and the increase in the national minimum wage”—

I would say, the so-called national minimum wage—

“if she is on that, she will now only be able to work 10 hours before she starts to see quite a significant, 76%, tapering of her entitlement. It is exactly that kind of incentive that the welcome purpose of universal credit was aiming to get around”.

I think that he means disincentive. Picking up on the point made by the noble Baroness, Torsten Bell continued:

“When we are talking about these work incentives, more of the debate should be focused on what we have done to the original purpose of universal credit in these drastic cuts to the work allowances, in particular for single parents”.

I know that the Minister cared passionately about that original purpose of universal credit and I cannot believe that he is happy about what is happening to work allowances. I would welcome a more considered response than it was possible to give in Oral Questions, now that he has more time to give such a response.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I will speak to Amendment 62D in this group and apologise to your Lordships for giving so little notice of it. The issue was only drawn to my attention on Friday. I felt that it was important and timely so I asked for a manuscript amendment. I am very pleased to see that the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, has attached her name. Unfortunately, she cannot be here. I have not had the opportunity to thank the Minister for saying that there would be a life chances strategy and I am sorry that I was so pessimistic. I was very pleased to read the comments made last week by Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, about the success of the economy in terms of employment and improving productivity. The Minister may feel that this is recognition of his good work and that of his colleagues in these areas.

This amendment was brought to my attention by the Family Rights Group and is supported by many other children’s charities. Its purpose is to ensure that lone parents under the age of 25 who are also care leavers continue in the same system under the new arrangements, so that they will be £780 a year better off. I very much welcome the extremely good work the Government have done and are doing for young people leaving care. The strategy has been a great success. Many people recognise that it is very difficult to get different departments to work together. Through the strategy, the DWP identified care leavers and can give them the additional support they need. Other departments also are aware of that. Staying Put has been a very important step forward. It recognises that young people leaving care should have the right to remain with their foster carer until the age of 21 where both parties agree. Some 50% of children in the general population stay with their parents until the age of 22, so these children should also be able to remain.

However, there is much further to go with these young people. Ofsted has recently started assessing care-leaving services. Its most recent report found that, of the local authorities it examined, 63% of the care-leaving services were inadequate or needed improvement. There is a very long way to go.

The Centre for Social Justice has done some important research on births. There is a much higher likelihood of teenagers leaving care becoming pregnant. One in 10 young people leaving care between the ages of 16 and 21 have their child removed. Often, they have been in care and then lose their own child. It is important that these lone-parent care leavers get all the support they can. This additional cash would be very important for them. They do not have the family network that many of our children have to support them. I hope the Minister is prepared to accept this amendment, and I look forward to his response.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s response and for the work which the Government do to support care leavers. I omitted to say why Amendment 62D was timely: today, research from the University of Lancaster highlighted a huge leap in the number of newborns being taken into care. In 2008 it was about 800, in 2013 it was over 2,000; a very considerable number. Some of that is down to better early intervention; taking children very quickly out of damaged families. However, Nicky Morgan, the Secretary of State, is concerned about this and it suggests, again, that we need to be even better at supporting these vulnerable families. I hear what the noble Lord has said and I will look carefully at it.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

Will the Minister say when, roughly, he expects to be publishing the transitional regulations? Will he, in his normal helpful way, commit to publishing a draft of the likely contents first, so noble Lords can discuss them, rather than just be presented with the actual regulations?

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Earl of Listowel

Monday 14th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response on vulnerable groups, the mentally ill and others. Perhaps in the letter that the noble Lord has kindly offered to send me on care leavers, he can confirm that care leavers were flagged up in the welfare system and will get this special consideration before any sanction is made on them—and whether he might consider extending that. Currently, if a care leaver is participating in work or education, up to the age of 25, they are flagged up in the DWP system and special measures can be taken for them—but if they are not doing that, they do not get that support; it finishes at the age of 21. So 21 to 25 year-olds not in education or training are missing out. I encourage the Government to think about extending the kind of considerations to vulnerable groups that she was just describing to care leavers who are not in education or training but who would be called care-experienced adults. In a sense, they are the most vulnerable, because they are not in education or training but have been in care and face all the difficulties. I am sorry to speak for so long—but in that letter, I would appreciate some comments on that.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

I am very grateful to noble Lords who have spoken, particularly those who spoke in support of the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, made the very important point that we need to be clear about this before universal credit is rolled out any further. Increasingly, I feel that we are in two parallel universes—the universe of those on the ground and the voluntary organisations and the universe of Ministers and officials. I am very glad that the Minister said that they are meeting to talk but, unfortunately, it seems as if they still operate within these parallel universes, where there is a completely different understanding of what is happening. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord McKenzie for the very comprehensive and thorough case that he made for an independent review. I am grateful, too, to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, who said that he was not opposed in principle to reviews. Perhaps we could look again at his criteria.

My noble friend made the point about timescale—that people suffering as a result of sanctions need this review now. However, I am a very reasonable person and I accept that, by the time the Bill becomes law, it will not leave very long between that and the timescale in the amendment. I would be very happy to discuss with the Minister perhaps a more realistic timescale.

On the remit being too narrow, I say that the whole point of the criticisms of the Oakley review was that it was too narrow. Indeed, Matthew Oakley himself acknowledged the narrowness of his remit and suggested that perhaps something broader was needed. So I am delighted that the noble Lord would like a broader remit than the one suggested in the amendment. The point about the term “sanctions” has already been addressed, but I just wonder how many times the Minister actually used the word; it was probably at least as many times as in the amendment itself. Perhaps, given that the noble Lord does not oppose in principle the idea of a review, he might help me to produce a better amendment for Report, if we decide to come back to this issue.

I am grateful, too, to the Minister. She started by saying that she was not sure whether the proposal was necessary. That seemed a rather tentative statement about something so important because, on this side of the House, we are sure that it is necessary. We have heard from my noble friend Lord McKenzie and others why it is necessary. She did not seem to have taken on board what I said about the yellow-card system. I welcome what is proposed, but it is not exactly the original Work and Pensions Committee recommendation. I was a bit disappointed that she did not explain why there had been that unacknowledged shift from what had been recommended. Perhaps she could write to me, and pop the letter to other noble Lords who have spoken on the specific question that I asked, about why the Government have rejected the Work and Pensions Committee recommendation that there should be a specific evaluation of the efficacy and impact of a minimum of four weeks’ sanctions. That was rejected without any explanation in the response to the report. I asked for an explanation and would be very happy to have one in writing. That said, I am grateful to her for her response. I do not think that it will satisfy the kind of organisations mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, or the people living in the universe that is engaging on a day-to-day basis with claimants suffering as a result of sanctions. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Earl of Listowel

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

Given what the Minister just said, will he now accept the case for keeping the income measures in the Bill even if he abandons the targets? As my noble friend said, the argument has really been purely about targets. I thought targets were quite helpful for the same reason as the noble Lord—my noble friend—Lord Kirkwood, but if that is what frightens the Government and there is really not much difference between us, then okay. What is stopping the Government keeping the measures supported by 99% or whatever of the scientific community that responded to their earlier consultation on child poverty that they seem to have completely ignored?

[The Earl of Listowel]

Before the Minister replies, it might be helpful to remind him that the amendment on targets is in the next group. I quite understand why he might choose to address it here but the amendment he is addressing that I and my noble friend tabled is simply about the measurement. I think the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, began the argument on targets but my amendment was intended to be strictly on the measurements.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Earl of Listowel

Monday 7th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel]

That is very helpful.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

The Minister talked about working with local authorities on child poverty, which obviously is welcome, and I think that he said something about not wanting to do that in a random way—excuse me, it is a bit late so I cannot remember exactly what he said. If that is the case, though, why are the Government removing the duty on local authorities to develop strategies? The letter that the Minister received from the Children’s Commissioners just the other day underlined how valuable that duty has been. I know that local authorities, within the constraints that they are having to work in, have been quite imaginative in trying to think about what they can do as partners of central government in combating child poverty, so I really do not understand why that has been taken away, given what the Minister said about wanting to work with local authorities.