Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Bellingham]

107D: Clause 10, page 14, line 32, at end insert—
“(2A) Regional co-operation arrangements must include the local integrated care board in their development, delivery and governance.”Member’s explanatory statement
The amendment aims to highlight the need to include health agencies in the regional cooperation arrangements.

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, I open this important group of amendments on regional care co-operatives with my Amendment 107D.

We will hear later about the stresses and pressures on local authorities in relation to the cost of children’s homes. The establishment of regional care co-operatives was a key recommendation of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, carried out by the now honourable Member for Whitehaven and Workington, Josh MacAlister. I pay tribute to Mr MacAlister MP for his ground-breaking work on this review. He put a huge amount of effort into it and needs to be applauded for that.

I look forward to hearing about the amendments tabled by other noble Lords, who I am sure are keen to raise important issues relating to the RCCs. My amendment is very straightforward. It seeks to clarify the role of the independent care boards—ICBs—in the RCC arrangements. In my experience as an MP for a number of years, visiting many care homes and talking to many practitioners in this field, every child in residential care will almost certainly have significant mental health needs and, very often, physical health needs as well. The Minister will be aware of the serious concerns that have been expressed by a number of organisations that the reform of ICBs will lead to changes in the funding allocations for their safeguarding role. This could compromise and undermine their effectiveness. My amendment makes it crystal clear that ICBs must be included in the “development, delivery and governance” of the RCC arrangements.

The Minister, a very experienced former Cabinet Minister, will be aware of the concerns expressed by the National Network of Designated Healthcare Professionals—NNDHP—for children and NHS England regarding the health workforce’s ability to implement the relevant clauses in the Bill. In March, NHSE reported that

“all current caseload reviews suggest that child safeguarding expertise is already fully committed and at full capacity”.

I very much hope that the Minister will take that on board because these concerns have intensified following recent announcements. As well as the abolition of NHS England, ICBs will be required to reduce operating costs by 50%. Furthermore, all NHS providers are being asked to reduce corporate costs by the same percentage. I support that in principle, as I am sure everyone on these Benches does. We want to see an elimination of waste, more effective management, and efficiencies. I have a very simple question for the Minister. Surely safeguarding is a front-line service. It typically sits within the corporate services of most NHS provider trusts. Furthermore, the Minister will be aware that the model ICB blueprint asks ICBs to test and explore options to streamline and transfer some of their safeguarding activities away from the boards. So will these changes in accountability require secondary legislation in the future? Why, when this is such an important front-line service and competence, is it so often categorised as part of corporate services? It makes no sense to me.

I raise another point. We have been talking more about local authorities, particularly county councils and putting more responsibilities into their hands. Many of us find that to be a positive move. But there is a great deal of change going on in local government at the moment. The Minister will be aware, because I mentioned this the other day in a debate, that in Norfolk, for example, there is a debate going on about local government re-organisation. There is every possibility that we will go from the current county council and eight districts to one unitary, with Norfolk County Council carrying out all the competences across the districts, or maybe to two or three unitaries across Norfolk. That is the pattern in many other counties.

I suggest to the Minister that although reorganisation will make savings in the longer run and drive efficiencies and cost reductions, in the short term there will be a lot of disruption and dislocation, as well as redundancies of key staff. What measures will the Government take to make sure that these local authorities really can cope with the changes that are coming very quickly down the track, many of which are contained in the Bill? I put it to the Minister that because of these changes in the Bill, there may well be implications for staffing across the different safeguarding bodies.

I very much hope that the Minister will address these concerns and reassure the Committee and the NNDHP that there will be the capacity and funding for the ICBs to be full participants in the RCCs. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

As usual, my friend the noble and learned Baroness makes an important point about the application of the law in this particular case. I think, as she suggests, that legal accountability and responsibility remains with the authority placing the child, but that does not mean that, in practical terms, there should not be engagement, and I would have thought that that would have been good practice. I also think that it is important that there is clarity about where the responsibility stays. That goes for the care co-operatives as well.

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for the extremely comprehensive response that she has given the Committee; it lasted a while but she covered a lot of ground on a lot of amendments.

I certainly agree with what she had to say about the wider strategy of trying to fix the current placement market and, above all, making sure that the right home is in the right place for children around the country. She certainly gave me some comfort on the role of the RCCs and the way in which they are going to be able to help local authorities and work with them and take pressure off them. I am grateful that she mentioned that there is going to be work in progress to look at the consequences of the abolition of NHS England.

On the role of the ICBs, I should have been aware of Section 10 of the Children Act 2004, because I was on that Bill committee many years ago and I remember the clauses about multi-agency safeguarding and the other bodies that are involved in this process.

I am very grateful to the Minister. I am sure that colleagues here will look very carefully at what she said. If need be, I for one will want to discuss this further with her and will look carefully in more detail at her reply, and maybe come back to this on Report. In the meantime, I thank her and beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 107D withdrawn.