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

Debate between Emma Lewell-Buck and Lisa Nandy

Tuesday 8th May 2018 General Committees

[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.