Children and Families Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Commons Chamber

I know this issue is fraught with problems—I battled with it, together with the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), in our time at the Department for Education—but given the clear examples of abuse we have seen in some madrassahs, which have been revealed in television programmes and by investigative journalism, it should not continue to fester on the Secretary of State’s desk. New clause 14 is a probing amendment aimed at getting the subject back on the radar, because it has been more than three years since those clear recommendations were made and nothing has been done about them.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Do the hon. Gentleman’s proposals relate only to the schools he referred to as madrassahs, or do they also relate to supplementary schools and weekend schools?

[Tim Loughton]

The new clause is very broad and could effectively cover other supplementary schools, as they are termed. I know that this subject is fraught with problems. No doubt the new clause will not be a satisfactory solution ultimately, but I think it is a working basis on which to take the matter forward, rather than continuing to ignore it.

New clause 15, which has the full support of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, relates to support services for those returning from care. There has been a big focus, rightly, on improving the whole adoption regime. The Government announced a little while ago that £150 million will be taken from what was the early intervention grant to provide adoption support services. It is really important that we have the right degree of support around placements to ensure that they stick.

We hear a lot about adoption support services, improving care homes and better training for foster carers, but 37% of children in care return to their birth parents, and too many of them then return to care after the initial intensive preparation and support because of lack of ongoing support services. In 2012 that affected 10,000 children who returned to the birth parents—treble the number of children who get adopted. We know that that instability, that revolving door going in and out of care, can be really damaging to those vulnerable children. The NSPCC has put together a very credible case. It has totted up the cost of children remaining in the care system against the cost of giving them proper support packages back with their families, where that is the most appropriate destination for them and only where it is in their best interests.

New clause 15 merits serious consideration. It would provide the right social outcome for vulnerable children in care, but it would also save an awful lot of money if we get it right. I am sure that the Minister, who has great expertise in and knowledge of dealing with different types of children in the care system, will be supportive. It is also supported by an interesting paper produced last November by the Social Care Institute for Excellence, which said:

“Returning from public care to live with a parent is the most likely ‘permanence option’ but, for maltreated children, the least successful. There are wide variations between local authorities in terms of the resources allocated to decision-making about reunification, and the quality of practice.”

Finally, I have tabled three amendments on adoption. I have mentioned why adoption needs to be a priority. Many good things have happened in the past two and a half years on adoption, and I am very pleased that the Minister is committed to carrying that work on. The number of children given the opportunity to be adopted has been increasing, although numbers alone are not the be-all and end-all; it is the quality of the placements that really matters. The adoption scorecards that were introduced a year ago lay out with full transparency how well an authority is doing compared with other authorities across a whole range of measures. We have the adoption gateway to help recruitment, we are speeding up legal proceedings for children left in limbo, we are bringing in and beefing up fostering for adoption, we have the adoption support services that I mentioned, and many other things are happening. All that amounts to a very serious structural overhaul, and it is beginning to work, so we do not want to go and mess it up. I fear that in this Bill, the Government, with the best intentions, are going too far.