Queen’s Speech

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, not everything that matters needs to be done by legislation. At this stage, the Government should be working just as hard on implementation as on new legislation. It is perverse to say in one breath that there is too much legislation and in the next to complain that there are not enough Bills in the Queen’s Speech. In taking that view, I agree totally with the closing words of my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford.

I give noble Lords an example. One of the most important Liberal Democrat policies that was inserted into the coalition agreement was a properly funded pupil premium. The case was made and accepted. Research and practice in other countries had proved the worth of such a policy, so we put it in the previous Queen’s Speech. We legislated for it and did it. The funding was made available—small at first, but growing every year to £2.5 billion per year by 2015. The purpose of the premium is to narrow the gap between rich and poor, and help to achieve the Government’s other primary objective of improving social mobility. How can it be that in a modern, open society such as ours, and after 13 years of a Labour Government, a child’s destiny is still determined by their background?

Now we have to monitor what schools are doing with the premium because we are not telling them exactly how to spend the money. Teachers are professionals, after all. We need to research what works, look at how the best teachers are spending the money and getting results, and make sure that best practice becomes general practice. That is what we are doing and you do not need legislation for it. In his speech yesterday to the National Education Trust, Nick Clegg outlined a package of measures to make sure that this money achieves what children and the country need it to do. Bear in mind that this is linked directly to the Government’s first objective of getting this country back on its financial feet. Every child who does not fulfil his educational potential incurs cost and is a potential loss to our future productivity and GDP. None of this needs legislation but it follows up previous legislation and makes sure that it works properly.

Another initiative, most of which does not require legislation, is the new adoption plan that was published recently by the Minister of State, Mr Tim Loughton. We are told that an important measure in the children and families Bill will be to ensure that adoptions are not held up by officers looking for a perfect racial match. It horrifies me that children can wait an average of 22 months from going into care to moving in with an adoptive family. The measures that are being taken to speed things up are very welcome. However, I feel that more people would come forward as potential adoptive parents if there was more post-adoption support. There would also be fewer failed placements. It is bad enough when a foster placement fails, but when an adoption fails it is a catastrophe for the child and the adoptive family. Therefore, I ask the Minister: what measures are being taken to improve post-adoption support?

I should also like to ask about kinship adoption. I am familiar with this because it has happened in my own family when the child’s mother died, and I believe it has a very high rate of success. The reason for that is probably because it provides a baseline of family love and history on which to base the new relationship. Of course, love is a key ingredient in all these caring situations. Could the Minister say whether kinship adopters will be given the same level of support as other adopters, since the child will still have undergone considerable trauma in many cases and may need a lot of help to settle?

I also very much welcome the announcements in the gracious Speech about the new system of providing joined-up support for children with disabilities or special educational needs. My honourable friend Sarah Teather, the Minister for Children, can be congratulated on her very hard work in pulling together legislation and a pilot scheme—which is, I believe, the reason why the Bill will not be introduced just yet—that gives a child and his family an education, health and care plan that goes right up to the age of 25, and does not fall off the cliff at 16 as before. It should be a Lycra plan—seamless both horizontally and vertically. However, while I applaud the idea of giving parents a budget and a choice of how to spend it, I should like to know whether there is a mechanism in place to help them make good decisions. Bad decisions and bad placements will be bad for the child and a waste of that precious budget.

Finally, I welcome the strengthening of the remit of the Children’s Commissioner for England. It is very important that the commissioner has a new overall function to promote and protect children’s rights, as set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is a fulfilment of something for which I campaigned—against strong resistance from the Labour Government—when the legislation to appoint the commissioner went though Parliament eight or so years ago and ever since. I also welcome the new powers to carry out assessments of the impact of new policies and legislation on children’s rights. However, I should like to know whether this is supposed to be the mechanism that will give effect to the promise made by the Children’s Minister in December 2011 that legislation would be scrutinised to ensure that it complied with the UNCRC. If so, the commissioner will need much more funding than she has now.

May I point out that the Committee on the Rights of the Child expects the commissioner to comply with the Paris principles? Therefore, she should be independent, properly funded and have the role of protecting children’s rights. She should also be accountable to children, the public and Parliament. In this regard, are the Government inclined to accept the idea that the Select Committee to which she should be accountable should, in future, be the Joint Committee on Human Rights? I believe that this was raised at a recent hearing and makes a lot of sense, since the commissioner’s powers cover so many different departments, not just the Department for Education, where the responsible Minister sits. Having said that, this is one of the most welcome and important measures announced in the gracious Speech.