Children and Social Work Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Emma Lewell-Buck and Simon Hoare

Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 10th January 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

I invite the hon. Lady, either now or later in her remarks, to set out what she has, in principle, against professional local authority officers and elected local councillors seeking to serve their communities to tailor services to meet local need and demand, compared with the man in Whitehall with the bowler hat and the umbrella, who seems, in her mindset, to know best. What has she got against the localism agenda in respect to tailored local solutions?

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I will come on to that later in my comments. To clarify, I have nothing against local authorities knowing what is right for them and making decisions. [Interruption.] However, this is a slightly different case and if the hon. Gentleman keeps calm and listens, I will get to my point.

Another change concerns statutory requirements selected by the Government for special treatment. There are six sections of the Children Act 1989 and the Children Act 2004 and one part of one schedule to the Children Act 1989 that cannot be touched by this new power. I am sure I am not alone in wondering how the Minister came to select this list of core legal duties. Can he explain how he decided that the many remaining duties in the Children Act 1989 and the Children Act 2004 and their associated statutory instruments could, in principle, be disapplied? How did he decide that none of the children’s social service functions in any of the following Acts of Parliament are worth saving: the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970, the Mental Health Act 1983, the Housing Act 1996, the Adoption (Intercountry Aspects) Act 1999, the Adoption and Children Act 2002, the Mental Capacity Act 2005, the Children and Young Persons Act 2008, the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, and the Care Act 2014?

Are we really being shown a glimpse of a brave new world where all that will be left of children’s social care legislation could be these six saved sections of two Acts of Parliament? I point the Committee to some of the frightening scenarios sent to us by Dr Ray Jones. We cannot say that we have not been warned how dangerous these new clauses are.

Children’s rights charity Article 39 has listed a number of statutory requirements that could be removed. These include—although this is not exhaustive—a local authority’s duty to provide accommodation to children it is looking after, assess the support needs of disabled children as they approach adulthood, allow children in its care to have reasonable contact with their parents and visit children it looks after. Is the Minister really convinced that none of these duties are fundamental to promoting and safeguarding the welfare of vulnerable children and young people? Why is there such resistance to undertaking a public consultation prior to the introduction of these clauses? Does the Minister not want to ensure that he and his Government have got this 100% right?

Let us also remember that part of this Bill will also be under threat of exemption once—and if—it receives Royal Assent. In fact, every single future children’s social services function that this House introduces will have a fragile and uncertain existence if we allow these new clauses to go ahead.

The Minister has written to the concerned parties, claiming these new clauses are about empowering the frontline. The frontline does not want these powers. The vast and varied range of organisations that have submitted evidence to the Committee want us to reject these new clauses. In fact, 47 organisations have come together specifically with the goal of opposing these new clauses.

The Government set out their stall on this radical new power in their strategy “Putting children first”, which was published in July last year, two months after the Bill appeared. It said that exemption trials would offer

“a controlled environment in which we could enable local authorities to test deregulatory approaches that are not currently possible, before taking a decision to make substantial changes to existing legislation that would apply across the board.”

Any proposed full repeal of legislation would have to come back to Parliament—I understand that—but for trials to have any credible and reliable influence on future legislation, they must be ethical and robust. Nagalro has correctly told us that if a local authority obtains an exemption, all the children in its jurisdiction will be subject to it whether they agree with it or not. They will have no individual say in the matter. What on earth does the Minister envisage happening if some children who do not agree come back to a future Government and claim that they were treated wrongly compared with those in neighbouring authorities?

In “Putting children first”, the chief social worker for children and families asserted:

“We must be enabled to use our professional judgment in flexible and creative ways, rather than having to follow a procedural path”

or a set of “legal rules.” The chief social worker avoiding having to follow legal rules is concerning and not a positive message for social workers or those considering joining the profession. Who would choose to work in a local authority that has fewer duties to vulnerable children and young people than its neighbouring councils?

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[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank the Minister; I will get to what I am insinuating very soon.

Some local authorities are being placed in an impossible situation. If they do not back the Government, is it fair to assume that they will not receive funding—especially given that, last October, many of them received a rather threatening letter from the chief social worker stating that if they did not back the new clauses they could never again complain about bureaucracy and grandly suggesting that this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance for them all to do the right thing? If she is so certain that this policy is in the interests of young people and children, why has she not shared her thinking with the Committee? It is telling that the Committee has received no evidence from her.

The fact is that the Local Government Association is being placed under immense pressure to back the new clauses. Is it not the case that only a small number of local authorities, if any, back them? Can the Minister tell the Committee that the Secretary of State’s intervention powers will never be used to coerce local authorities into applying for exemptions?

My final comments concern the Minister being well aware that much of the anxiety about the new clauses comes from the fear that they pave the way for the privatisation of child protection services. Despite new clause 2(3), those fears legitimately remain. If the Government are so resoundingly against profit in child protection, why, in the explanatory memorandum attached to the 2014 regulations, do they advise companies that subsidiaries of profit-making companies are not banned from running such services?

The Deregulation Act 2015 now means that social work services to individual looked-after children and care leavers operating outside local authorities are no longer required to register with Ofsted. Add to that the LaingBuisson review, commissioned by the Department at the behest of the chief social worker and two others, which gives advice on how the market could flourish in children’s social work and says that independent providers are happy to play the long game on a journey to whole-system outsourcing.

Companies such as G4S, Serco and Virgin Care have all attended meetings with the Department to consider how they can play a role in delivering and shaping statutory children’s social care services. It is little wonder that very few trusted the motivation behind the original clauses or that fears persist that behind this power is an insatiable appetite for breaking up children’s social care. The Minister has tried to distance himself from this report for which his Department wrote the terms of reference and which it funded, yet refused to release for a considerable time. Perhaps it is waiting until the Bill has passed through both Houses.

If the Minister really means what he says about profit and child protection, he should be seeking to prohibit subsidiaries of profit-making companies from delivering social care functions. Getting legislation right in children’s social care is extremely important. Our legal duties are vital in protecting those most in need. We should always approach change in this area with great care and caution, to ensure that children and young people are not put in any jeopardy.

The new clauses have no place at all in the Bill. I implore hon. Members to reject them and to bring an end to the enormous fear and concern that have built up outside the walls of this place. The Minister has not fully responded to the comprehensive critique from the Lords, and there remains a gaping black hole as to which legislation the sector is crying out to be exempted from, and who on earth is crying out for the exemption.

The Government should withdraw the new clauses as a matter of honour and out of respect for the vulnerable children and young people who depend on the legal protections that Parliament has given them over decades. The Minister may then undertake some robust and meaningful consultation, and could return to the House later if he wished.

[Simon Hoare]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. We should be grateful to the hon. Member for South Shields for sharing with us her Momentum-commissioned essay; possibly the instruction was “Write an essay about what you think a wicked Tory Government might want to do with regard to children’s social services”—that is, without actually having seen any of the new clauses that the Minister has tabled.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I assure the Committee that I have read the new clauses, thank you very much.

[Simon Hoare]

It is an enormous shame that having read them the hon. Lady did not include them, or edit her speech having reflected on them. I am not entirely sure—[Interruption.]

[Simon Hoare]

Thank you, Mrs Main. I have great respect for the hon. Member for South Shields, and it is with great respect that I say that I do not think she has read the clauses. She seemed to conjure up a picture in which the current rules and regulations are perfect and the best practice and statutory requirements set out for local authorities to follow are so beyond any form of change or improvement that there should be no scope for innovation. [Interruption.] I do not want to detain the Committee too long.

One might almost think that the cases of Baby P and Victoria Climbié, for example, had never taken place. I am in no way suggesting that the new clauses tabled by my hon. Friend the Minister will guarantee that such atrocities do not happen again, but there may well be benefits from the use of local professional expertise and from local authorities’ designing of innovative proposals for better care of vulnerable young people.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

rose—

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[Simon Hoare]

The hon. Gentleman has fallen into the trap of misreading or misconstruing, accidentally or otherwise, the purpose of the new clauses. We can all read them, but the Opposition Front Bencher has characterised—

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Simon Hoare]

No. The way the hon. Lady has characterised the proposals in her remarks is—I conjure up a scenario—that someone from some town or city hall knocks on the door of the Secretary of State and says, “I have a whizzy idea: we are going to do this,” and the Secretary of State says, “Oh, that sounds quite interesting—go ahead and do it,” in some secret smoke-filled-room deal.

Let us look at new clause 2: it talks about the purpose of helping to promote physical and mental health. Contrary to what the hon. Lady said, it is also about

“taking into account the views, wishes and feelings of children or young people”.

That is in subsection (1)(c). As to the idea that there is carte blanche for the private sector, I suggest that she look at subsection (3), which specifies a different set of criteria. The hon. Lady talked about six years as a de facto, but if she looks at the new clauses she will see that the period can be up to three years with one further three-year extension, which makes six years—not six years from the outset, as the hon. Lady said. The Secretary of State will also need to be persuaded of the need for an extension.

It is not only the Secretary of State. We are very lucky to have a Minister who, owing to his personal family experience, is recognised for his interest in and understanding of this subject. However, my hon. Friend will not always be the Minister in charge. The Bill is not couched or tabled in a way that purely relies on the bespoke integrity of my hon. Friend. New clause 6 clearly tells us of the new obligations on the Secretary of State. They

“must invite an expert panel to give advice about…the capability of the authority”,

because it is absolutely key that the authority should have the wherewithal, financial skills and so on to be able to deliver the innovation. That advice must also assess “the likely impact” and

“the adequacy of any measures that will be in place to monitor the impact”.

The idea that the hon. Lady did her best to present to the Committee as the root of her opposition to the new clauses—that finger in the air, pie in the sky, blue-sky thinking ideas would merely require the sign-off of a Secretary of State—is, I think, a gross distortion of what the new clauses intend. If the hon. Lady and her Opposition colleagues have no faith in the independent veracity of, for example, the Children’s Commissioner or the chief inspector of education, children’s services and skills, who are stipulated in new clause 6(2)(a) and (b) to provide advice to the Secretary of State, I think that is a poor state of affairs.

On the consultation, new clause 6(4) and (5) clearly state the timetable and the trigger for action that the Secretary of State must follow. I do not see the new clauses as a way for local authorities to duck out of their obligations. I served on a Local Government Association panel for several years, and I must tell the hon. Lady that the LGA is unbeatable and incoercible; if it thinks a Government of whatever stripe are doing something wrong, it will always tell the Government that that is the case.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

The fact is that local government is split on this issue; there is not a consensus. In relation to all of the times the hon. Gentleman refused to give way, he should go back and read Hansard; he has misquoted everything I have said and I look forward to his apology.

[Simon Hoare]

I will certainly be reading Hansard; I do not quite follow William Hague’s example of reading it under the bedclothes at 2 o’clock in the morning, but I shall look at what the hon. Lady said; if I have misconstrued her, I will of course apologise unreservedly. However, I took from what she said and how she presented her arguments that this will give carte blanche to a Secretary of State, in cahoots with a chief executive or a head of children’s services in a local authority, to find a way to deliver below-the-radar financial savings and to deliver some sort of third or fourth-rate children’s protection, and that there is a whole cadre of local authority professionals who are desperate to be freed from the shackles of statute, regulation and guidance.

I was not quite sure what the hon. Lady was moving us towards in her thinking—whether those people will turn around and say, “Gosh, we are now free of all of that, we are saving ourselves a huge amount of money; we can sit around and have a cup of tea and a biscuit and talk about things in a rather ideological or theoretical way”, or whether they are going to pilot things that are so conspicuously dangerous and ill-advised for young people that there would be an enormous rise in the amount of terrible cases. That is the impression with which the hon. Lady left me and, I suggest, other Government Committee members.

Children and Social Work Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Emma Lewell-Buck and Simon Hoare

Committee Debate: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 10th January 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Simon Hoare]

I take the hon. Lady’s point but I think we are looking through different ends of the same telescope. I do not think it would be sensible, or maximise the benefit of the thrust of the new clause, if faith schools were able to say “This aspect of human sexuality is contrary to”—I use that term in its broadest sense—“our religious doctrine, and we will not teach it.” The point I am making is that it should be taught because it is part of human nature—people are born straight or gay, or whatever phraseology one cares to use—but the school would not be in breach of any regulation or legislation to say to the class “We are a Muslim”—or Catholic, Jewish or Methodist—“school: this happens in human life, but the religious teaching of our majority faith in this classroom is that we don’t promote it”, or “That is not what we think.”

That is in part why this sort of debate is not best suited to the Committee. These discussions should take place across the genders and across the parties in preparation for Report. I am conscious that in trying to answer a legitimate point, fairly raised by the hon. Lady, I may have used terms that a 47-year-old white Catholic would use, which some people might find slightly old-fashioned and out of date, or perhaps not as politically correct as they should be. The thrust of what the hon. Lady is talking about is absolutely right, and germane to the whole of the Bill. However, if we are to command support from the religious as much as the secular, the sensitivities and anxieties that people often jump to—“This is all about promotion and trying to convince children at six that they should be gay, and if they are not there is something wrong with them, etc.”—need to be clearly and sensitively identified, so that those particular hares do not start running.

That is why I urge the hon. Lady, if she and her colleagues are serious about the new clause getting a fair crack of the whip, not to press it to a vote this afternoon but to work in a cross-party way to see what can be achieved, hopefully with the support of the Minister—we shall listen with interest to his remarks in a moment—on Report.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

It is a pleasure to speak in support of the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, which would ensure that all local authorities would provide accurate, age-appropriate personal, social and health education, including age-appropriate sex and relationship education. I believe that we speak for most of the hon. Members in the Committee Room, and in the House more broadly, in saying that steps in such a direction are necessary and important to ensure that children can stay safe, happy and healthy in the 21st century. The current guidance in the area, as my hon. Friends have said, is out of date, and therefore woefully unable to address the challenges and possible dangers they outlined. The education system must respond to change in society to provide young people with the skills and knowledge they need to be safe. While guidance in PSHE and particularly in sex and relationships education is not able to do that, the dangers are clear, as is the case for acting.

I welcome the fact that the Minister and the Education Secretary seem to be coming round to the cross-party consensus on the issue, with suggestions in the media that the Education Secretary is planning a change of policy in that area. The issue is not about politics or partisan point scoring, but about protecting the best interests and the health of children. I am sure all Members in this room will agree that that must be one of our highest priorities.

The Bill offers an ideal opportunity for the Government to make the changes in our education system that are so badly needed. I hope the Minister will support the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow.

Children and Social Work Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting)

Debate between Emma Lewell-Buck and Simon Hoare

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 15th December 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

My hon. Friend is right—adoption should not be the only option for a child. It is lazy to think that. That approach does not take into account all the other options that are there and that are in the best interests of the child.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

To the best of my memory, “Philomena” is a film set in the 1950s in the Republic of Ireland, so it has nothing to do with the Government of the United Kingdom. If the hon. Lady is really suggesting that her opposition to the clause should be based on the adoption policies of the Republic in the 1950s, parents interested in adoption may look rather askance at that.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I think I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. However, I will not dwell on the point, because I think he has missed the context of what we are trying to describe here.

Children and Social Work Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Debate between Emma Lewell-Buck and Simon Hoare

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th December 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

It shows strength on the part of the Lords who made the amendments, but weakness in the Government who introduced a Bill in need of so many changes.

Since Second Reading last week, I have been inundated with expressions of concern that the Bill has progressed so rapidly to Committee without any sittings to take evidence from the sector or agencies that work closely with vulnerable children. Neither the Opposition nor the sector and the agencies working in the field feel particularly comfortable about the Bill’s passage through Parliament. My amendments would strengthen the wording, in expectation of the local authority’s having an active duty to make the provision in question, and remove the weaker, passive expression, “have regard to”.

Of course, when Labour was last in government, it introduced the first ever statutory framework for care leavers, the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000, and followed that with the Children and Young Persons Act 2008. It is clear that the party is committed to children who are leaving care. We welcome any measures that make improvements for the thousands of care leavers, whose numbers are due to grow—bearing in mind that the March figures for looked-after children were the highest since 1985, at 70,440. It is more vital than ever to get support for care leavers right.

We also welcome the spirit of the corporate parenting principles, with the clear definition of expectations about how the local authority should fulfil its role in relation to looked-after children and care leavers. We feel, however, that the principles are totally undermined by the fact that the provision will require local authorities only to “have regard” to them rather than have a duty to fulfil them, as is the case in Scotland, for example.

In another place, Lord Nash said the principles are

“about changing and spreading good practice, and making sure that the local authorities’ task in loco parentis does not burden them with a tick-box approach and extra duties.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 29 June 2016; Vol. 773, c. 1558.]

I have sympathy with that approach, but I fear that, as it stands, it is too woolly and open to interpretation. There is a clear need for the emphasis to shift from the reactive to the proactive. Unless the principles are worded more robustly, local authorities, which may strive to do their best as corporate parents, may nevertheless be obliged to cut corners, especially in these times of stretched budgets. We cannot just rely on culture change or assume that, if there is no duty, new principles will be put into practice just because they exist in theory.

There is already far too much variation in levels of care, because different local authorities have different numbers of looked-after children and children leaving care. All too often, because of the Government’s disproportionate approach to local government cuts, it is the local authorities in the most deprived areas whose budgets have been cut the most. The Government’s misguided idea that they can deliver the outcomes they seek through culture change, without looking at any of the underlying challenges that face councils around the country, is absurd.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady take it from me that reductions in local government expenditure have happened across the country? This myth that it is the more deprived, northern towns that have been hit hardest is just that—a myth.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

Unfortunately, I completely disagree with the hon. Gentleman. The most deprived local authorities have received the biggest cuts.

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[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

It is a classic tale of this Government: give with one hand, take with the other, and we still end up in a worse situation.

[Simon Hoare]

We all have to accept that local government budgets are under pressure, which presents challenges. Does the hon. Lady accept that she is striking at the heart of the Localism Act 2011 and, in particular, the general power of competence? If local authorities such as Birmingham and Wolverhampton decide to set those sorts of priorities, they can do so. That is what localism and local decision making is all about. We do not need the great dead hand of the state and central diktat to allow local authorities to do it.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

Spoken like a true Conservative.

[Simon Hoare]

The hon. Lady pays me the greatest compliment.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

It is not a compliment where I come from.

Immigration Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Debate between Emma Lewell-Buck and Simon Hoare

Thursday 5th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank the Minister and apologise for my semantics.

We do not know what the “genuine obstacle” that must be preventing people from leaving the country means, because it has yet to be defined in regulations. We are potentially talking about denying support to extremely vulnerable families, so the House should be able to discuss and vote on that in primary legislation. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham made that point well in our evidence sessions. That definition will effectively define the scope of support given to people, and it could leave families homeless and destitute. We should be debating that definition now. It is not something to be nodded through the House at the whim of the Secretary of State.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

I do not know whether the hon. Lady was as struck as I was by the evidence sessions. There was only one organisation—I cannot for the life of me remember which it was—that actually prepared people who had gone to see it for a potential answer of no to their application. Everybody else just seemed to be keeping people’s hope alive and burning brightly. Does she agree that if more organisations prepared people for a no, people would be able to plan ahead and think about that, rather than wake up one morning and find, “Gosh, that’s a bit of a surprise”?

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I think we have different recollections of the evidence sessions. I do not recall just one organisation doing that.