Draft Child Safeguarding Practice Review and Relevant Agency (England) Regulations 2018

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Tuesday 8th May 2018 General Committees

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I am sure the Committee will be pleased to hear that I do not intend to detain us too long or rehash the arguments we have already been through, and that we will not divide the Committee on the regulations. However, I seek some clarity from the Minister on a few key points.

The Minister will know that there remain concerns within the profession and among agencies more widely about unacceptable levels of involvement by the Secretary of State. It is puzzling that a Government who have thus far been committed to localism should impose such a top-down approach. It is inappropriate for the Secretary of State to have the power to appoint and remove panel members, including the chair, and to make arrangements regarding the panel’s proceedings, reports, staff, facilities, pay and expenses. The Minister is nodding, so he must agree with me that it is unacceptable.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I was doing no such thing.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

It remains unclear whether the Secretary of State will be able to override panel decisions in relation to which cases are and are not put forward to the panel. If he can do so, then the panel’s independence and political neutrality will be entirely compromised. I hope that the Minister will advise us on that in his response.

Will the Minister also expand on a related point? It remains unclear what requirements—such as qualifications, professional body registration and experience—will be deemed appropriate for reviewers and panel members. In recent years, the Department has tended to appoint people with experience of finance and investment to boards, as opposed to people with actual frontline experience of working in child protection. I am sure the Minister will agree that experience of child protection is vital when it comes to safeguarding and reviewing the most serious cases where harm has been caused to a child.

[Lisa Nandy]

I apologise again to everyone in the room for intervening.

I agree with what my hon. Friend is saying about frontline professionals, but the group of people that I have found to have the best understanding of what needs to change in child safeguarding and child protection are young people who have been through the system themselves, and who have often suffered serious harm. They quite often tell us that they want to see less of a blame culture and much more learning enacted when we have conducted these reviews. I did not hear any indication from the Minister that the Government are listening to those young people, or that they will make sure that what is learned from these serious case reviews or national reviews is actually implemented so that we do not have to keep having review after review where the same things are highlighted but very little is done. Perhaps the Minister will correct that in his closing remarks.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. She comes to a point that I will be making shortly—great minds think alike.

May I also ask the Minister what his Department envisages will be the cap, if any, on pay, remuneration and expenses for the panel’s chair, board members and reviewers, especially since he gave assurances today that the new arrangements would be no more costly than the current arrangements?

The Minister will be aware that, despite the efforts of noble Lords and MPs from the Labour party throughout the passage of the 2017 Act, there remains a concern that reliance on local safeguarding partners is limited to the local authority, clinical commissioning groups and chief officers of police. That leaves schools and others who have always been core partners in local safeguarding arrangements out of the loop. Can he explain why, despite representations in the consultation phase expressing concerns about the absence of schools in particular as core partners, the Department is still struggling to understand that schools are vital in this process?

My final query relates to the dissemination of lessons learned and their practical application. Historically, the same lessons to be learned are highlighted time and time again when a child has been seriously harmed and such harm has resulted in their death. Yet rarely does anything on the ground change. Instead, a blame game is pursued. How does the Minister envisage the new arrangements making a difference, and what checks and balances does he feel are in place so that the same old outcomes of blame and increased bureaucracy and legislation will not be the stock go-to solution? That is ever more important against a backdrop of savage Government-imposed cuts that have served only to strangle a profession that is already undermined and is becoming increasingly demoralised.