Family Justice (Transparency, Accountability and Cost of Living) Bill
Debate between John Hemming and Steve Barclay(12 years ago)
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John Hemming
I agree entirely with what the hon. Lady says about the networks issue. There are so many reasons why this is wrong, but it happens. Urgent action has been called for to fix it, and the Bill provides that.
That leads me successfully to clause 3, which deals with the issue of children in care. We all now know, and it is becoming increasingly obvious on a daily basis, that children in care are not safe. There are always going to be children in care homes, but they are not safe. At the moment, the independent reviewing officer is actually an employee of the local authority. We have talked about how public bodies have a bullying management style, and people are often pressurised. We have talked about how whistleblowers are not protected—the independent reviewing officer’s job is to be a whistleblower in a culture that reacts against whistleblowers.
Clause 3 states that
“if a child in the care of an authority has made a complaint of serious harm—
(a) that complaint shall be investigated and determined by an independent body”.
There is considerable evidence that local authorities have not investigated or have ignored complaints by children in their care.
On 24 September, The Times reported that
“confidential papers showed a decade of abuse in South Yorkshire.”
It said that
“police and child protection agencies have held extensive knowledge of this…for ten years.”
It continued:
“Girls were collected from…residential homes…in Rotherham… Internal care reports and individual case files show that countless girls were betrayed by…police and social services…Confidential documents…reveal how one young girl known by social services to have been abused…was offered classes…to engage her in education.”
It also said:
“As long ago as 1996, a social services investigation uncovered concerns that girls were being coerced into ‘child prostitution’ by…men who regularly collected them from residential care homes.”
It also stated:
“A July 2010 independent review for the Rotherham Safeguarding Children Board…described the offences as ‘child sexual exploitation at the top end of seriousness’.”
Last month, Mail Online reported that Rochdale council and police had had
“127 warnings about sex abuse”.
Its headline contained the words “gang raped dozens of children, finds damning report”.
The article continued:
“NHS warned Rochdale Borough Council…on dozens of occasions over six years about sex abuse risks”.
There are numerous other examples of this.
In the Lancashire case—A and S v. Lancashire county council—Mr Justice Jackson concluded that children in care had “suffered real, lifelong damage” but that the council’s actions
“did not come under independent scrutiny.”
Jon Fayle, chair of the National Association of Independent Reviewing Officers, told Parliament that
“the local authority cannot always be trusted to act in the child’s best interest.”
He also said that having an “independent scrutineer” is “essential”. It is also the wish of children to have an independent complaints system. As Maxine Wrigley, the chief executive of A National Voice, told Parliament:
“an independent person to help you, particularly to make a complaint…seems very important to young people.”
Subsection (4) would make it an offence to discriminate against children in care or care leavers. There is considerable evidence that such discrimination is widespread. A care leaver told us:
“I have twice lost my job when my employers have come across my upbringing, despite having more professional experience and qualifications than my managers. We are viewed as mad, bad or sad.”
Another told us:
“I lost my job and at the Employment Tribunal the barrister told them that as a result of being ex-care I would have a residual tendency to fabricate.”
In July, the current children’s Minister, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), launched a report by the all-party group on looked after children and care leavers. It said:
“There was also concern raised that the attitude of teachers towards children in care remains mixed, with some children being labelled as troublemakers simply because of their looked after status.”
A documentary entitled “Barriers to Employment”, made in 2010 by the young people themselves, reported:
“Young care leavers face discrimination from employers because they are stereotyped as being prone to crime”.
The Who Cares? Trust website states:
“The discrimination faced by children in care is brought to life time and time again through our interactions with young people.”
A lot of these things were raised with me by a group of professional care leavers, who had managed to succeed having left care over a number of years. One of them was Ivor Frank, who was brought up in care but is now a family court barrister. His concern was that no remedy was available for care leavers; there was no way they could adequately challenge the system.
It is worth examining what happened in the A and S case. They were two children in the care of Lancashire county council. They were known as “statutory orphans”: they had been freed for adoption before 2005 but had never been adopted. As at 31 March 2011, about 1,300 children had been freed for adoption or placed for adoption more than two years before that date without having then been adopted. If we are going to worry about the adoption of children placed for adoption, we should be examining the situation of those 1,300 statutory orphans. They have been told, “Your parents are no longer your parents” but they have not been found any other parents.
In the case of A and S, when the older boy got to be an adequate age, he found a solicitor who then acted on his behalf. We should not have to wait until these children get to 16—if the NSPCC, as advocate, feels that something is going wrong, it should be able to get an independent review and, if need be, to take the case to court. That is why subsection (2) proposes a scheme whereby a “litigation friend” can be appointed for a child to take the issue to court. The A and S case was not looked at by the court from the time they were placed in care until about 10 years later, because nobody took it back to court to challenge the authority. An independent reviewing officer was in place, but the local authority obviously does not want to be challenged. In practice, it was concluded that human rights had been abused to the extent of not only maltreatment but the breaking of article 3—the no-torture article. There was inhumane treatment of the children when they were in care—we are not talking about before they went into care.
This issue about a remedy being available for children in care does not mean that everything has to go to court, because it is the facility for something to be taken to court that makes people respond. If the local authority feels it can just fob everyone off and ignore them, it will do so and nothing will happen. However, if the local authority knows that someone can take the matter to court if they want and the authority will be forced to deal with it, it is more likely to respond. That is why subsection (2) is important. If the Government do not like subsection (2), it can go away under statutory instrument at the point at which the Government have found a better way to deal with the issue.
There is no alternative but to have an independent mechanism by which a child can complain—potentially, the general practitioner. If the GP feels that a child in care is not being looked after adequately and there is a serious problem, the GP should be empowered to take that through a proper process that could end up in court. The difficulty with the system at the moment is the eternal question of quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The organisation responsible for the quality of care is the local council. In other words, the council is responsible both for providing the care and for monitoring its quality. We should all know that that sort of system does not work and cannot be allowed to continue.
On criminal records, children in care complain that the police are often called for things that they would not be called for if the children were not in care. A relatively recent prosecution involved a child who threw a bowl of cereal at the carer at breakfast. The real problem is that that prosecution follows the child through life. Events that would have been ignored normally end up in a criminal record for assault. When the child becomes an adult, tries to find a job, gets a Criminal Records Bureau check and is told, “You assaulted someone when you were 13,” it comes across really badly. In fact, the child might just have thrown a bowl of cereal. To be fair, that might not happen that often, but it is the sort of thing that can happen when a child is upset. People do get upset from time to time. A parent would generally not take that through the legal system.
I do not suggest in the Bill that we should force people not to take such things to court. All I am saying is that such things should not follow children through the rest of their life just because they got a bit upset when they were 13. That creates an environment where children get used to a higher level of interaction with the authorities, and that is not a good thing. So clause 3 deals with children in care.
On adoption without parental consent, clause 4 basically says that when parental consent is dispensed with for an adoption, the courts should explain why and give the reasons, because normally they do not. In section 1(4) of the Adoption and Children Act 2002, Parliament laid down legal safeguards to which the courts must have regard that include the child’s wishes, where old enough, and needs; the lifelong effect of the child’s losing contact with the birth family; the harm that the child has suffered or might suffer; the child’s relationship with their relatives and the value to the child of its continuing; the ability of the relatives to provide a secure home for the child; and the wishes of the relatives. Parliament has decreed that that must be considered by the judge, but that does not happen a lot of the time. Clause 4 would ensure that that is considered.
Dr Roger Morgan, the Children’s Rights Director for England, told Parliament that children have a strong message: always look to see whether there are family or friends. That is what children say. If a decision is to be taken to move a child from one family to another, the court should explain the basis of that decision, not just say, “We think that it’s a good idea,” which is normally what the judgments say.
On the other duties of local authorities, clause 5 basically talks about improving the relationship with grandparents and deals with the duties of local authorities and other bodies when children are in care. Although clause 5 would maintain the position established by the Children Act 1989 that the welfare of children is of paramount importance, it would also require the local authority to ensure that the child has access to and contact with both parents and grandparents, unless such contact was not in the interests of the welfare of the child.
As pointed out previously, clause 5 is in accordance with the coalition Government’s policy and in the manifestos of the Conservative and Labour parties. I would personally prefer to go further. A quite serious problem is developing with the assessment of grandparents. At times, the same assessment is used for grandparents as for foster carers. As part of the consultation, we excluded from the Bill a clause that would have said, “If the grandparents of looked-after children have looked after them adequately, do not assess them,” but I should like to see that in law. If we go round assessing everyone all the time about everything, we achieve nothing.
What often happens, as in the example given by the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries), is that children are removed from grandparents because they have not been assessed, when in fact there is no evidence of a problem. Obviously, there are circumstances where, perhaps historically, those grandparents have a bad record of looking after children and have been subject to child protection proceedings. However, just to say simply that all grandparents need assessments is not right. Again, as part of the consultation in an attempt to make the Bill less contentious, that proposal was dropped.
On the provisions that relate to the administration of justice, these are again similar issues, some of which are dealt with by the family courts and the Court of Protection, but they are also dealt with more widely. I have previously talked about the right to report wrongdoing, but this goes beyond the whistleblowers charter; it is the business of ensuring that, for instance, the police who threaten the hon. Lady’s constituents in an attempt to stop them reporting problems to her would be committing an offence. If we wish the rule of law to apply, we cannot tolerate people being prevented from complaining. If they are prevented from doing so, the authorities do not know that the rule of law is being breached and therefore no action can be taken.
Clause 7 is one of two “no more cover-ups” clauses. Subsection (1) would ensure that people have the right to complain to regulators, whether the police or anyone else. I have encountered a number of court orders that have been purported to prevent people from complaining to regulators. In fact, notwithstanding the Family Proceedings (Amendment) (No. 2) Rules 2009 No. 857, it is still a contempt of court to report experts who are clearly talking nonsense to regulators at times. However, similar constraints have existed on reported crimes. If such orders are appealed to the Supreme Court, they are likely to be struck down, but it is quite difficult to take cases through the appellate system, hence protection is needed at a lower level.
Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
Can the hon. Gentleman clarify the relationship with the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2010 and say why those who want to report issues to regulators are unable to do so under that Act?
John Hemming
I understand the Public Interest Disclosure Act as it relates to employment proceedings and particularly to court orders whereby people are banned from reporting things to the Financial Services Authority. One of the difficulties with a court order that prevents someone from talking to someone else is that it stops not just publication but possibly the reporting of a crime.
There was a murder in Australia, and the police there concluded that, notwithstanding injunctions, they could investigate that crime, but the police here concluded that they could not do so because the case was subject to a super-injunction. The Bill deals with that situation. I am not 100% on the Public Interest Disclosure Act, but I believe that it is mainly to do with employment proceedings.
We have a number of examples. A doctor was prevented from providing evidence to the General Medical Council to demonstrate that another doctor was treating patients wrongly, because of the law of confidentiality. That cannot be right. The GMC needs to decide on the evidence that it has.
Stephen Barclay
On reporting doctors to the GMC, it is very odd that, for example, the GMC does not see the complaints data held by the Department of Health or Care Quality Commission, but I think that issue is being looked at. Such things can be reported, but the legal risk would sit with the doctor. In other words, doctors are protected by PIDA in reporting to the GMC, but they are often bound by special severance clauses or other confidentiality clauses, which are covered by other litigation. Doctors are covered by patient confidentiality in other respects, not confined by PIDA, but the legal risk sits with doctors, who are often reluctant to take that legal risk.
John Hemming
I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point, but I could cite a specific case. I have not got the reference on me, but I could give it to him by e-mail later if he is interested. The case involves a published judgment where the court had a court order saying that the doctor is not allowed to provide evidence to the GMC. There is a High Court order to say that that evidence must not be provided. That cannot be right. If that order got to the Supreme Court it would be struck down, but there is a problem with the appellate process and a real challenge with all these things.
Clause 7(2), perhaps the most important part of the Bill, is to prevent cover-ups. Most substantial cover-ups involve people being threatened or pressed to prevent them from complaining to regulators. That clearly happened with Hillsborough and the Savile paedophile network, where children were punished for complaining. Although details of what sort of offence should be involved needs to be left for consideration in Committee, this absolutely key change is needed. The USA already has in its criminal code elements that protect complainants from the prosecution apparatus.
On “Matters relating to court proceedings”, clause 8(1) deals with the problem that the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) faced. The judiciary do at times make use of defamation law, which is entirely right, but people should not face criminal proceedings for making truthful statements about the operation of the legal system.
Clause 8(2) deals with the imprisonment of people in secret for contempt—quite a few people are in prison for contempt. The Official Solicitor is supposed to protect their interests, but nothing much seems to happen. I wrote to him and asked him, “What do you do about people who are in prison for contempt?” and he did not tell me anything—he just said, “I suppose we’re supposed to do something.”
Deborah Paul, a London mother, was imprisoned earlier this year. Those who are aware of her case believe that it was an oppressive act. There is no formal report. Although in theory the step of imprisonment is supposed to happen in open court, in practice, a court flashes into public session in the blink of an eye and goes back in camera—it might as well not bother. Clause 8(2) would protect contemnors from oppressive imprisonment and the abuse of power by the court.
Clause 8(3) would assist in dealing with cover-ups. For people to challenge public authorities, they need particularly deep pockets. The problem is the uncertainty about what costs they face paying if they lose the application. The court has developed through the common law protection in limited circumstances. A more general application of a pre-emptive costs order would allow people to challenge bodies such as the GMC or local authorities about wrongly given planning permission without having to bet the farm. I would wish for an element of one-way cost-shifting for judicial review, but in the interests of compromise and so that progress is made, I have suggested a smaller shift towards the power of the individual against the state.
Clause 9 is on the activities of the Official Solicitor. As it stands, the Official Solicitor is accountable merely to secret court proceedings. I know of a number of cases in which people have wrongly had their mental capacity removed—they are then submitted to the decisions of the Official Solicitor. RP v. UK—I made an application to the European Court of Human Rights to assist RP and her brother—demonstrates how cataclysmic a wrongful removal of mental capacity can be. RP’s GP and a second expert have indicated that she had mental capacity and was not too stupid to instruct a solicitor, but the system—all the way through—wrongly treated her as somebody who did not have mental capacity.
In order to appeal, a party needs a transcript of the judgment. However, that is often far too difficult to obtain—I am having problems with a constituency case in that respect. The official recording is frequently lost. The simple solution to the problem would be to allow people to take their own recordings, so that they can produce their own transcript.
On clause 11—“Right to assert litigation capacity”—when somebody has been deemed too stupid to instruct a solicitor and has normally had the Official Solicitor appointed as a litigation friend, it is almost impossible to get a solicitor to act to challenge such an appointment. The clause would make it clear that someone can challenge the appointment of a litigation friend. The proposal in RP v. UK that the Official Solicitor should be asked to review the appointment did not work in the case of Lee Gilliland, a gentleman in Bristol who had his mental capacity removed because he did not trust public authorities. He found himself evicted without notice, because the Official Solicitor did not tell him he was about to be evicted.
I would happily accept in Committee that clause 12 —“Ambit of reasonableness and capacity”—is too advanced and progressive for the English system, but it is worth considering. It would make the lives of those who have limited capacity much better. It is based on a clause from a province of Canada that tries to limit the controls exercised on people who are deemed not to have capacity. I am particularly concerned about the imprisonment of people using mental capacity. The deprivation of liberty safeguards are clearly inadequate in that they are overwhelmingly subject to conflicts of interest. I remain concerned about a constituent who was, in my view, wrongly imprisoned using that mechanism in order to prevent the investigation of a crime. However, the issue needs detailed consideration in Committee.
John Hemming
Whether it is convenient or not, the fact that the tape recording is lost does not help the process.
In part 3, clauses 13 and 14 aim to reduce fuel bills by being more efficient. When I visited the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, I was impressed by the efforts of Parliament in the 18th century to encourage the development of advanced timekeeping technology in the Longitude Act 1714. That was an early demonstration that Parliament can, through statute, achieve positive outcomes in the development of technology. As someone whose academic qualifications are in science—my first degree is an MA from Magdalen college, Oxford, but I specialised in atomic, nuclear and theoretical physics—I sometimes feel that the physical laws are treated as insufficiently important in the public sphere. I take the view that the laws of physics will always trump the laws of economics, and do not understand a reality in which that is not true.
Two key laws are relevant to energy policy—one is the law of conservation of energy, which is also known as the first law of thermodynamics, and the other is the second law of thermodynamics. The first law says that we cannot get any more energy out of a system than we put in. If we take the chemical energy in a hydrocarbon such as methane, ethane or propane, and oxidise or burn it, no more energy can come out than goes in. We can get a mixture of energy out. We could get a physical force such as torsion to provide motive force, or electricity plus heat, or just heat—and, of course, any residual chemical energy.
Of the second law, Lord Kelvin says:
“It is impossible, by means of inanimate material agency, to derive mechanical effect from any portion of matter by cooling it below the temperature of the coldest of the surrounding objects.”
That means that there is a limit to how much work, such as torsion, can be obtained by burning a fossil fuel or other hydrocarbon. The rest of the energy goes as heat. Interestingly, the maximum efficiency of an ideal heat engine—the Carnot cycle—is calculated as the ratio of temperatures in degrees Kelvin.
The combined-cycle gas turbines that we use for a lot of electricity generation manage an efficiency of 55% in generating electricity and 45% in producing heat by having two heat engines running in series. Attempts are made to make use of the waste energy from power generation by combined heat and power schemes by circulating hot water. Clause 13 develops a strategy for smaller-scale combined heat and power schemes, so that more like 90% to 95% of the chemical energy in the gas can be effectively used, rather than the current maximum, which is more like 50%, particularly when transmission losses are taken into account.
The Bill also involves passive flue gas, which is another step in converting more of the chemical energy into heat for warming water rather than its going out into the air. Clearly, therefore, if we get almost twice as much useful energy from the energy source, over time, we would reduce energy bills by around half, which is a good outcome for families and fuel justice. The economic models that have been issued show that there is no cost to the public purse. If implemented properly, the measure would simply achieve a result. The aggregate cut of energy bills from the use of passive flue gas would work out at about £1 billion a year for the whole country, which is a substantial saving for families and an improvement in fuel justice. All those measures are cost-effective for the consumer and the taxpayer.
However, it is important that a critical mass is created so that the market can make appropriate investments in technology. If we manage to halve energy bills and reduce the winter heating bill, we would reduce fuel poverty. The mechanism improves fuel justice for families.
Stephen Barclay
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point on using energy more efficiently rather than simply producing more of it, but the Liberal Democrats are pushing hard for some of the most costly forms of renewable energy production. Does he support a greater subsidy for better energy usage as opposed to such a large subsidy for production?
Mr Speaker
Order. May I just say to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) that his dilation on these matters so far has been dazzling? We are all seeking to come to terms with the intellectual ferocity that he has deployed. In responding to that intervention, I hope he will not stray too far away from the core of his most interesting Bill.
John Hemming
I thank my hon. Friend for that helpful intervention. This issue will clearly need detailed discussion in Committee.
Stephen Barclay
I share the desire of the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) to reach code level 6 and think that it is good to have such an aspiration, but the cost would either fall on those who require affordable housing—the hon. Gentleman’s party speaks frequently on the need for more affordable housing, a view which I share—or be met through diverting subsidy. I accept that the Bill does not require any subsidy, but surely an aspiration to meet code level 6 would lead us to take the view that we might need to reapply the subsidy from one area to another. Perhaps that should happen.
John Hemming
That might be a debate for Committee. These are all issues of important detail, but the nub of the Bill is not to look for further public subsidy but to focus on how we can reduce people’s energy bills without it.
Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
I want to make three points. First, I shall draw attention to a particularly troubling constituency case relating to a grandparent’s access to his grandson—an issue that the Bill speaks to in part, but I would like further clarification on the subject. Secondly, I want to address the point that arose in exchanges with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) about accountability and the multi-agency approach, and points raised in the last exchange about the introduction of new champions; I want to ask whether, for all the benefits involved, that would not add a further layer of complexity and confusion. I shall seek clarification from him on that in his closing remarks.
Thirdly, in the wake of recent hearings held by the Public Accounts Committee, I want to look at points relating to the cost of living and lower fuel bills, a particularly pertinent issue in the fens and North East Cambridgeshire, the constituency that I have the privilege of representing, where there is a long tradition of independence. As a result of that independence, many local parents do not take up, for their children, the free school meals to which those children are entitled; that has an impact on our schools’ funding. There is the same issue of independence in the elderly community with regard to fuel. Fuel poverty is an acute issue in many rural villages in the fens. The Bill covers that issue, and I shall touch on it.
On the first point relating to grandparents’ access, I think we would all accept that the role of grandparents in society has changed greatly. I want to highlight the case of a constituent. His daughter split from the father of her child. The father is known to have a number of difficulties. The daughter moved away to live near the grandfather. As she was a single mother, with a grandfather very nearby, the grandfather became a quasi-parent—the quasi-father. He had a huge amount of access to his grandson. Very tragically, his daughter died so the relationship of the grandfather to his grandson became even more acute but, because of the limited rights that he had as grandfather, the child has now moved to a different part of the country. The grandfather does not have rights of access, yet the unsuitability of the father is such that the child is currently subject to a child protection plan. For many months a lack of improvement in the care has been noted by protection officers but despite this, very little seems to happen. At a recent court hearing the failure of two expert witnesses to turn up meant that the case was delayed further.
With each month that passes, not only is the grandson playing truant from school, not only are other problems arising because of the unsuitability of the father to care for the child, but the relationship between grandfather and grandson, which was once so strong, is becoming frayed because the grandfather cannot get permission for the grandson to spend time with him. Getting a passport so that he could take his grandson on holiday proved a real ordeal because the father, who was not engaging, had to sign the passport.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley is right to draw attention to the need to reflect in his Bill the fact that the role of grandparents has changed from previous generations, but there is a lack of clarity—perhaps the hon. Gentleman intends to address that in Committee —about how the Bill would work in the real-life case that I draw to his attention, where the mother who was the primary carer has died. The case is not one in which, with parents still in place, the question arises whether the grandparent should have more or less access, but is one where he is the more suitable prime carer of the child than the father, who is known to the family courts and who has experienced difficulties, and where the inappropriateness of that care is reflected in the child’s truancy from school and other measurable metrics.
John Hemming
One aspect that I may not have emphasised sufficiently was that one difficulty of relying too much on court proceedings rather than a family group conference is that they create an adversarial environment, which a family group conference is less likely to do. Although it does not provide a complete solution to the case that the hon. Gentleman presents as an example, if the issues could be discussed in a family group conference rather than in adversarial proceedings, it might be possible not to create a greater rift among the parties involved, which makes it harder to achieve some form of compromise.
The family group conference approach starts out by looking at what are essentially therapeutic decisions—what is best of for the child, which is not so much a traditional legal adversarial decision as an attempt to answer the question, “How do we best achieve a positive outcome for the child in the circumstances?” If that fails, the case has to go to court. Recognising article 8 rights for grandparents in that context is helpful. The Bill tries to get issues resolved outside court first so that fewer cases end up going to court.
Stephen Barclay
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that clarification and I agree with that intention. One of the impediments to speedy resolution of such cases is the length of time it takes to prepare court papers, with frequent delays in the court process such as the one I mentioned. I endorse the hon. Gentleman’s desire for resolution outside court. On almost all legal issues, I suspect that few hon. Members across the House would demur from that as an aspiration.
John Hemming
One of the difficulties with contact proceedings is that if things are not working, an application to court is initiated. I accept that the Government are looking towards mediation, but a family group conference, trying to get people together, is an environment in which mediation can occur. One has to look at the system and the entire process—what initiates something and what are the likely outcomes. We have tended to pick little bits in isolation, rather than look at a flowchart of the whole system. The family group conference should be where it starts, not where it goes after an application has been made to court. At that point, in a sense, it is too late.
Stephen Barclay
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that further clarification and I fully support his intention. My question is whether that fits with human behaviour. Throughout all arms of Government we often see policy put forward with the very best of intentions, but it clashes with logic or behaviour at an individual level. If, at that conciliatory meeting, all the players were coming to the table with the best interests of the child at heart, of course one would expect that approach to work and I am sympathetic to it, but how does it work where the father has previously been estranged and is known to have difficulties, yet the bar to removing the child from that father and placing him with the grandparent is so high, because social services see that as such a retrograde step? There can be all the nice conversations in the world; the question is whether we shift the bar at which the child is moved.
John Hemming
That comes to the question of what is in the best interests of the child. The children’s services authority has decided in the circumstances that in its opinion it is in the best interests of the child for him to remain with his father, not with his grandfather. I tend to share the hon. Gentleman’s view that that seems a perverse decision. However, that decision of the children’s services authority is not subject to any intellectual scrutiny beyond the court hearing. To a very great extent, judges are trapped and have to accept the expert opinion provided to them. The hon. Gentleman may be aware of the Daubert procedure in America, where expert evidence is taken to an expert evidence appeal. I am not suggesting that here. What I am suggesting is that there should be a scrutiny process to look at such situations. What he describes is not unique. I am aware of other similar situations—
Stephen Barclay
I am most obliged, Mr Speaker, for your very courteous intervention on my behalf, and I am more than willing to take an intervention from such a senior colleague as my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh).
There are two issues that arise from the worthy intention of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley. First, as I understand it, it is the current position of the courts that the welfare of the child comes first, so proposing a new structure to achieve that aim raises the question whether that is not the existing position. Secondly, the hon. Gentleman seems to be suggesting, paradoxically, that we take an expert witness’s advice to the court, but we cannot trust that advice to be in the best interests of the child’s welfare so we need to put it to some other expert witness. Is that really what he is proposing?
John Hemming
I am not proposing in the Bill that there is, in effect, an experts appeal. I am proposing that we use the body of expert evidence and the process of peer review to improve the quality of expert evidence. The expert might find, having read the peer review of their evidence, that perhaps they should have given different evidence. The difficulty is that what is in the best interests of the child is not always that clear. We need a better review of what is in the best interests of the child, and such a review does not currently exist.
Stephen Barclay
I put it to the hon. Gentleman that the primary aim should be to improve the quality of the expert witness advice given in the first place, rather than putting it to a second expert witness, which potentially adds a layer of confusion.
Stephen Barclay
Indeed. But the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion means that we would spend more and more money on experts, even though he and I would agree that what we should be doing is spending our scarce resources on the primary focus, which is the interests of the child.
John Hemming
We already have academics in place doing research, but they are not given access to that particular material.
Stephen Barclay
I defer to the hon. Gentleman’s experience as an academic—he speaks with more authority on these matters than I do—but in my limited experience of discussions with academics I have found that, invariably, what one says is different from what another says. Again, I am not sure why the academic cannot be the expert witness in the first place. The point still stands that we need to ensure that the quality of advice from any expert witness is sound.
John Hemming
How do we improve the quality of expert witness advice without peer review?
Stephen Barclay
The hon. Gentleman goes to the nub of my argument. Many of these issues go back to that iconic and hugely emotive film, “Cathy Come Home”. Taking a child from its mother is something that no one wants to see. I think that the bar has been set so high because it is felt that it is not in the interests of a child to remove it from its natural parent, in this case an unsuitable father. The blood tie is considered so precious that breaking it requires such a high bar and very rarely happens. In my example we have a grandfather who, in essence, had day-to-day contact with his grandson, alongside his daughter, who was the primary carer. He was very closely involved in his grandson’s life. Following his daughter’s death, he would have been the more suitable custodian, in my uninformed view, but the so-called experts take the view that the estranged father, purely because he is the father, is the person the child must live with, even though he allows the child to play truant, even though the child is subject to care protection and even though the grandfather is an upstanding member of the community.
John Hemming
As things currently stand, the evidence provided by expert witnesses is not subject to any process of peer review, so over time, their expert evidence will never change.
Stephen Barclay
I hear what the hon. Gentleman says and will seek to make progress.
Stephen Barclay
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He appears to side with my analysis of the suitability of the grandparents. He makes a serious point, as a former practitioner, about the amount of time experts often have to come to these conclusions. To be fair, the engagement of some of these experts is often so limited that it is difficult.
That brings me to my second point—I want to make progress. It strikes me that in this hugely complex area—the complexity is signalled by the range and scope of the Bill—one of the difficulties is the lack of accountability. What concerns me about the measures the hon. Gentleman puts forward is that he seems to be adding a further layer of complexity by having champions who are in some way more independent. That is another layer.
John Hemming
The guardian ad litem is already a litigation friend. It is not a question of having a new body; it is a question of having one that is clearly independent of the previous proceeding.
Stephen Barclay
Again, the lawyers present should have a duty to the court. When I qualified as a solicitor it was my primary duty to—
Stephen Barclay
I feel that we are splitting hairs. What I am saying is that a multitude of professionals are engaged in the welfare of the child. Do they not have professional duties? Is the hon. Gentleman saying that they are compromised, or that he cannot trust that their vested interests will not get in the way of the interests of the child?
John Hemming
The evidence from the case of A and S v. Lancashire county council indicates that the independent reviewing officer was not sufficiently independent.
Stephen Barclay
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that clarification, because he makes my point. The point is that we do not address a failure by adding more complexity; we address it by fixing it. The issues that go wrong in life are almost invariably the result of over-complexity. There is a distinction between simple and simplistic. One of the difficulties we have in child protection is the whole range of people involved and the complexity of the different organisations involved. At any one time, one person might be on holiday, another might be off ill, someone sent an e-mail, someone else spoke to someone or did not visit the child, another person has too many cases to deal with and so did not engage properly, or the expert witness did not produce a report of sufficient quality. The point is that when it goes wrong no one is accountable.
A case that rightly drew great concern across the House was that involving the official, Sharon Shoesmith. I draw attention to the fact that the courts—I do not criticise them for this decision—gave Ms Shoesmith a significant payout. When I discussed the case with my constituents at the time, they expressed great frustration, because clearly there had been a huge failure and a child had been very badly let down, but they could not work out who had been accountable.
The hon. Gentleman’s proposal is extremely well intentioned and I share his objective—I hope that all Members do—but my concern is that it would add yet more complexity to an already complex structure.
John Hemming
My contention is that it would not add more complexity; it would merely ensure that we do not have to wait until a child is considered competent before their complaints can be heard by the court.
Stephen Barclay
Let me give a parallel example to illustrate my point better. The Public Accounts Committee had a hearing for the Care Quality Commission, the body set up by the previous Government to protect many of our most vulnerable—not those in child protection, but those in care homes. Yet for the first two years of its existence it did not carry out a single major investigation. Just one of its predecessor bodies carried out 15 such investigations in the preceding years. The commission even abolished its dedicated whistleblower line, so it passed its responsibilities to general staff, which is why the Winterbourne View case, which was flagged up by whistleblowers on more than one occasion, was missed. It took the BBC’s “Panorama” programme to bring that to light.
What I am driving at is that the answer to the difficulties we face is not the current fashion of having yet more multi-agency work and more partners getting involved and, when it goes wrong, everyone saying that it was not them or, as was suggested earlier, that someone has retired or moved on. That is not a new situation. Twice a week in the Public Accounts Committee we hear of vast sums of money wasted under various Governments, and almost invariably the official concerned has moved on. We have had three permanent secretaries of the Department for Transport since the last election. A former Chair of the PAC is present in the Chamber: my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh). I am sure he is very familiar with officials moving on—perhaps retiring—and therefore not being accountable. I support the worthy aims of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley, but his proposals add more complexity to the system, and I question whether that will aid accountability.
Lower fuel bills is a particularly pertinent issue in the fens, and especially the fen villages. I take on board fully Mr Speaker’s direction that it is not the purpose of our debate today to discuss the issue of subsidies, but the best way for us to address fuel poverty is to ensure we better utilise the energy that is being produced. That is why the green deal is particularly welcome.
I should put on record a concern, however. When I spoke last week to one of the green deal assessors in east Cambridgeshire—one of the districts covering my constituency—I was concerned to learn that he is still not in a position to carry out green deal assessments of local homes, and he does not think he will be in a position to do so until the new year because the software is still not in place.
It is laudable to seek to go to level 6 of the code for sustainable homes, but my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) drew the House’s attention to the current provision—level 3. The difficulty is that that cuts across human behaviour. We will not get to level 6 through wishful thinking; we will not get to level 6 because it is the right thing to do and it is a lovely, inspirational aim. We will get there by shifting behaviours. That will come either from expecting people to pay more for their homes—which they are not able to do—or through subsidy. Subsidy will require a shift, particularly in respect of turbines, which are decimating the fens. Bizarrely, the area has now become known as the “forest of the fens”. When the forest protests erupted over a previous Government policy, many electors wrote to me about saving the forest—which is somewhat ironic given that the fens has very few forests and is predominantly flat land.