Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th January 2017 Lords Chamber

Of course, we cannot resolve the issue of the refugee status of resettled Syrian refugees through the Bill. This amendment does, however, provide an opportunity to address one of the problems it causes, as well as help those on other resettlement schemes and young asylum seekers who have been given permission to remain. We are talking about a particularly vulnerable group of young people. Would it not be a wonderful thing if we could open up to them the whole world of higher education in this country? I hope very much that the Minister will take this away, discuss it with colleagues in the Home Office and DfID and respond more positively than the Higher Education Minister did when it was debated in the Commons.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, it is my privilege to have added my name to this amendment. My favourite Christmas card of the past year came from a refugee from Burundi. Last summer, when I visited Burundi, I accessed the rector of the university that she had had to flee and arranged for her qualifications from that university to be released and forwarded to her in this country so that she could commence university, which she will do in September this year. It was a huge relief to her because without that piece of paper she would have had to return and undertake A-levels. In her Christmas card she not only thanked me, but said that it was being able to access higher education straightaway that made her feel welcome and wanted, and that we believed in integrating her into our country.

Amendment 443, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, would allow all refugees resettled to the UK, including the Syrian refugees being resettled at present, as well as those young people who have made applications for asylum who are granted a form of leave other than refugee status, to access student finance and home fees. It is an important amendment because it addresses one element of how we as a country treat people to whom we have said we will offer protection. Currently, individuals with refugee status can access student finance and qualify for home fee status from the moment they are awarded their protection. However, those with a slightly different status—that of humanitarian protection —are treated differently. Those with humanitarian protection have to be able to show at the start of the academic year that they have been ordinarily resident for at least three years to be able to receive financial support. This is the case despite people granted humanitarian protection having been found to be at real risk of suffering if they were to return to their country of origin. This includes risk of the death penalty, unlawful killing and torture.

The group most impacted by this are the Syrian refugees currently being resettled under the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme, as these refugees are granted humanitarian protection rather than refugee status. The result of this is that a young Syrian refugee who arrived in the UK would not qualify for student finance until the start of the academic year in 2020. The only exception to this, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, pointed out, is in Scotland.

I currently serve on the inquiry of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Refugees looking at the experience of refugees once they are settled in their status. We have heard from many witnesses, including refugees themselves, that there are several barriers to successful integration, and one of the most often cited is access to education. Amendment 443 would remove at least one of the barriers.

Subsection (2)(a) of the proposed new clause would ensure that all resettled refugees, no matter what status they were given or where in the UK they were placed, could access student support immediately. Subsection (2)(b) would make student finance available for those who were granted humanitarian protection after making an application for asylum. For people granted humanitarian protection after applying for asylum, their future is clearly in the United Kingdom, so they should be allowed to access university education in order to build their lives here and to be able fully to contribute to society.

Subsection (2)(b) would also provide access to student finance and home fee status to people who had applied for asylum and then been granted another form of immigration leave. Again, the Government have accepted that the immediate future of such individuals is in the UK and so they should be given every opportunity to contribute and develop, yet they face significant hurdles in doing so. This is because, in 2012, the Government changed the rules so that potential university students in this situation could no longer access student finance and would be reclassified as international students, meaning that they would face much higher fees.

The Supreme Court found these rules discriminatory and, as a result, a new criterion of “long residence” was introduced. However, young people who have gone through the asylum process, including those children who arrive as unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, are unlikely to meet the long residency criteria and so will have to watch their school peers go off to university, leaving them behind.

This amendment is not about creating special circumstances for refugees and other people who have arrived in the UK seeking asylum. Instead, it is about removing the existing barriers that prevent young people who came to the UK seeking protection and who are capable of attending university fulfilling their potential and gaining the skills and knowledge that will then allow them to participate fully in, and contribute to, the United Kingdom. I hope that the Minister will offer some support and agreement for the amendment, because it would help refugees feel more welcome.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, am glad to have my name on the amendment. Appreciation and tribute should be offered to those universities which of their own initiative are doing what they can to meet the challenge in the current situation, but that is obviously not adequate.

In the long debates on this Bill, we have constantly returned to the argument about the quality and tradition of our universities. It is really rather sad to see universities with that quality and tradition caught up in such an oppressive and negative administrative policy.

I relate this to another amendment which we shall discuss quite soon, about security and terrorism. In the awful problems relating to security which we face, a key issue is the battle for the minds of the young. We want young people to have good education which helps them to form a more responsible and enlightened view about society and their role within it.

The potential students to whom we refer have been through the most dreadful experiences. It is important to keep reminding ourselves of that: they have been through harrowing experiences, and very seldom is it their fault. We have to look at the situation as they see it, and how they talk of it with their friends and contemporaries. They see it as oppressive and negative. It is not helping to build stability and peace in the world. If we take security and peace in the world seriously, we should want to do everything we can to meet this challenge and to enable potential students to have the advantage of education. I very much hope that the Minister will take on board the seriousness of this issue and try to meet it in some way in his response.

I sometimes worry already about the anecdotal evidence that I hear about how negative attitudes are beginning to build up across the world, and not just in the places from where those potential students come. I worry about how far the United Kingdom is really the sort of place in which they want to come and study, whether it really is the warm, welcoming society which it has traditionally been. There is too much evidence of a culture of “no”, of rejection, unless there is an exception. This amendment would help to meet that situation and I hope that the Minister will find an opportunity to say something positive in response.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 23rd January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support the comments made by the noble Lords, Lord Norton and Lord Kerslake. I preface my contribution to this debate by reiterating my concerns about the Government’s proposals to make it easier for alternative providers to award degrees and subsequently to achieve university title. I have not been reassured by any of the Minister’s explanations or by the detailed letters he has so courteously sent us during our debates over the last two weeks. The Government want to further diversify the sector. Yes, we need to reach potential students with different offerings and different types of courses, and in parts of the country that are poorly served. Of course, I support that, but not at the risk of selling these students a pig a poke.

There are enough examples from the States in particular which should give us pause for thought. There is one very familiar name, which I will not mention, but the closure of one of the largest for-profit providers, Corinthian Colleges, has left 16,000 students without certificates or degrees. The risk that the same could happen here does not seem even to be acknowledged by the Government. The Government’s commitment to diversifying the sector will be undermined by introducing this additional risk for students, because the loss of reputation will send a very negative ripple across the whole sector and abroad.

Students are at the heart of the Bill, yet it is students who will suffer if private providers that are going to be given the benefit of the doubt with probationary DAPs cannot deliver, or go under. A recent QAA report highlighted the importance of new entrants working closely with existing providers through the well-established validation procedures. On the whole, these validation arrangements have worked very well and we have not been offered any convincing evidence to the contrary. Indeed, my noble friend Lady Cohen, whose university has successfully gone through this process, said that it worked well and that they learned a lot from it. Of course, if the Bill can improve these validation relationships for the benefit of students, so much the better.

I can understand that potential entrants to the market are frustrated that they have to prove themselves against strict criteria. But it is surely far better for students, and probably in the long term for the providers themselves, that there are high standards for entry which minimise the risk of institutional failure. Why do we need to fast-track? It is not as if we are desperately short of universities. There are around 130 well-established institutions; nor are we short of alternative providers. Nobody seems to know the exact figure, although I hope the Bill’s provisions on registration will correct that. The DfE thinks that there are about 400 which receive some sort of taxpayer funding. A much smaller number has been awarded degree-awarding powers. So far these providers have made a limited contribution to diversity. They are focused largely on law, business and finance, and BPP, we were told, is going into nursing. They are mostly in London and the south-east, rather than in the so-called cold spots, where provision is limited or non-existent. That is scarcely surprising as they need to be in the more lucrative markets to satisfy shareholders of the business’s viability. I do not see that that is changing, even if these new arrangements are introduced.

Finally, who really benefits from probationary DAPs? It is not students, who are essentially paying to be guinea pigs for a new provider; but possibly not even new providers, who may find the label “probationary” more of a challenge when recruiting students and staff than they might as new institutions with robust validation arrangements. I urge the Government to think extremely carefully about this. In doing that I support Amendments 251, 252 and 259.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, my friend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth is unable to be in his place this evening, but in his place I bring before your Lordships Amendment 268A. I endorse all the general comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, about the Cathedrals Group of universities. While I am not armed with the expertise, his amendments appear to make sense for the particular purpose.

I am sure that almost all noble Lords in the Committee are aware that the Archbishop of Canterbury has possessed the power to confer degrees since the Ecclesiastical Licences Act 1533. Certainly the landscape of higher education has changed in the almost 500 years since then, when the only other English degree-awarding institutions were Oxford and Cambridge. The Higher Education and Research Bill that we are rightly considering so carefully is very welcome in recognising that changing landscape and legislating to ensure that the sector continues to evolve as successfully as it has done so far.

Amendment 268A deals with a particular corner of that landscape and it may help to indicate briefly how this power is exercised. Lambeth degrees, as they are often informally called, are now issued in one of two distinct ways. The first is following examination or thesis, under the direction of the Archbishop’s Examination in Theology, usually referred to as the AET. Since 2007, the AET has been offered as an MPhil research degree, with the opportunity to extend to a PhD. These research courses are offered at a level that meets QAA requirements but at a reasonable cost and with user-friendly access. Although allocated research supervisors will be fully qualified to offer guidance and criticism, the emphasis is on individual research, requiring a high level of self-motivation and commitment to study. Students on the AET have access to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator and although, as one document rather charmingly puts it,

“the Archbishop is not a university”,

this provision is included within the current HEFCE register.

Children: Local Authority Care

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

We are looking at this. We have an expert working group co-chaired by Peter Fonagy and Alison O’Sullivan, which is looking at the current arrangements. Sir Martin Narey has also reported so, yes, we will certainly look at this.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

Does the Minister agree that children’s social workers do a fantastically good job, but one of the difficulties they face is their sheer workload, which means that their monitoring of children in care is not as adequate as it is should be?

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree that social workers have this challenge. It is one of the reasons why we are looking at bringing in the ability to innovate to have more flexible arrangements. We are doing a great deal of work with the chief social worker to improve the arrangements for social workers and their training.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, children’s social care services are some of the most important functions of local authorities and, of course, councils should be able to work with local partners to secure some elements of children’s well-being while retaining overall leadership and accountability for commissioning and delivery. But because of the mandatory duties, the majority of the experience and expertise in undertaking safeguarding work remains with councils. The complex and difficult tasks in child protection do not readily attract commercial or not-for-profit providers, and it is crucial that we do not create a situation where the easy or profitable aspects of children’s services are cherry-picked, leaving councils with an unmanageable portfolio of the really difficult services.

We had a briefing from the LGA, which believes that the introduction of a perceived profit motive into decisions about our most vulnerable children and young people risks undermining public confidence in this hugely challenging work. I agree with the association. It is significant that it has briefed us, because this work is difficult and costly, so it would have been easy for the LGA to leave things as they are and not encourage us to support an amendment that seeks to put this in the Bill. It is an indication of how seriously the LGA is taking this matter.

As we have heard, in 2014 the Government consulted on draft regulations which significantly extended the children’s services functions that could be outsourced. The responses at the time overwhelmingly disagreed with the regulations. The Association of Directors of Children’s Services pointed out that a local authority’s duty of care is not delegable, although of course its functions are. It felt that services designed to keep children safe should not be predicated on a profit motive. There is far too much temptation to cut corners where there is a profit motive, especially when budgets are tight and the funding of the contract is very challenging, which often happens. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has just said, such decisions should only ever be based on the best interests of the child.

The Minister told us in the meeting we had before the Committee began that the Government are not minded to remove the current ban on for-profit organisations but, unfortunately, that ban is only in regulations, which we all know are not difficult to remove by negative resolution. That is why I support this amendment to put the matter into primary legislation, because it is far too important to put it at risk.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I was pleased to add my name to this amendment and I support the arguments that have been put by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. I want to add that this is about the best interests of the child, and children are the only ones who should profit from anything here. However, I add another concern. When we come to debate Clause 15, and the possibility of exemptions, I am slightly concerned that, if this measure is not in the Bill, such exemptions might be used as a way of circumventing the issue around profit and not for profit. I lend my support to this amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

99: Before Clause 11, insert the following new Clause—
“Data collection
The Secretary of State shall examine, and within 6 months of the passing of this Act, report to Parliament on the options for implementing the World Health Organisation’s recommendation in the European Report on Preventing Child Maltreatment (2013) regarding the collection of reliable and valid data on socioeconomic factors underlying child maltreatment.”

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, in moving this amendment I should explain that I speak on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, who has done the bulk of the work on this amendment. She is unable to be present today and sends her apologies.

Amendment 99 would require the Secretary of State to report to Parliament within six months of Royal Assent on ways of implementing the World Health Organization’s recommendation in the European Report on Preventing Child Maltreatment regarding improved data collection for monitoring and evaluation. The recommendation points to the,

“urgent need for reliable and valid data”,

on, among other things, “socioeconomic factors”, reflecting the earlier statement in the report that:

“Child maltreatment is linked to variations in socioeconomic means”.

The aim of the noble Baroness and me in tabling this amendment is to encourage the Minister to set out the Government’s position on the relationship between socioeconomic inequalities and child neglect and abuse, and then to commit to exploring how the Government might collect the data called for by the WHO—and more recently, in 2015, in a Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly report to the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development, which recommended that member states,

“collect anonymised data on the care population in member States”,

which is disaggregated by a number of factors, including socioeconomic background. The amendment deliberately allows plenty of time, because we know that working out the best way in which to collect such data is not a straightforward matter. Here we would both like to thank Professors Paul Bywaters and Brid Featherstone for their help with the amendment.

At Second Reading, the noble Baroness quoted from a recent Joseph Rowntree Foundation/Nuffield Foundation evidence review on the relationship between poverty, child abuse and neglect, by Professor Bywaters and colleagues. One of the points it made was that,

“poverty often slides out of focus in policy and practice”.

I am afraid it slid out of focus in the Minister’s response to the debate at Second Reading, so we want to bring it back into focus now. The noble Baroness urged the Minister then to undertake to look into the failure of the official statistics to tell us anything about the socioeconomic circumstances of looked-after children’s parents. He did not respond at the time, so we are giving him the opportunity to do so today.

The JRF evidence review is the best source of evidence currently available. Drawing on the data sources available, it found a “strong association”, forming a clear gradient, between families’ socioeconomic circumstances and child abuse and neglect:

“The greater the economic hardship, the greater the likelihood and severity of CAN”.

The report stresses that this is not a question of individual blame, but rather a question of public policy and of socioeconomic inequality. Parents living in poverty all too often already feel judged and shamed, and this simply adds to the pressures they face. Over the decades, study after study has shown how poverty can undermine parental capacity so that the very survival strategies parents, especially mothers, adopt to get by can so deplete their mental and physical resources that they are unable to be the parents that they want to be.

The context of the WHO’s recommendation is a strong emphasis on prevention, a theme that runs through many of the contributions to Second Reading and indeed our debates in Committee. It argues that:

“In view of the emerging evidence on the scale of maltreatment, its recurrent and chronic nature and the fact that there is good evidence to support preventive approaches, there is a need to focus on prevention … Maltreatment of children instils a sense of moral outrage, but it is important to go beyond this reaction to address the problem through a public health, science-informed approach”.

It suggests that “prevention programmes”, such as parenting support, which focus on the social, economic, cultural and biological determinants of child maltreatment are “cost-effective” and that more “‘upstream’ activities” that focus on, among other things,

“deprivation, social and gender inequalities … are worthwhile investments in the long term”.

But to target such programmes effectively, we need reliable scientific evidence about the socioeconomic conditions in which at-risk children are being raised—data about their parents’ circumstances. At present, official data tell us nothing about their parents’ circumstances, as if children grow up as isolated units.

On reading the JRF/Nuffield evidence review, I was struck by the fact that the authors had to rely on area-based analysis, smaller-scale studies and professional experience, together with data from other countries. They were confident of their broad conclusions about the relationship between socioeconomic circumstances and poverty, and child abuse and neglect,

“despite the major limitations in the evidence from the UK”.

But because the relationship,

“has been almost entirely unresearched in the recent past in the UK”,

they were unable to draw,

“detailed conclusions about the extent to which poverty is a factor in the occurrence and prevalence of CAN in the UK”.

This is not good enough, and the first step must be to see what can be done to collect and publish, on a regular basis, official data that will facilitate informed evidence-based policy-making. Furthermore, it appears to me that this amendment is entirely in line with the intentions of the Government’s life chances strategy, in which there is an intentional recognition that there are key factors which affect the life chances of a child. This research into the linkage between maltreatment and socioeconomic factors surely fits squarely into that intention. Hence the aim of this amendment is to further enhance the base on which the life chances strategy is built.

The amendment does not require the production of any particular set of statistics, because of the complex question of how this can best be done. It simply requires the Secretary of State to look into the question and report back to Parliament. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and I cannot see how the Minister could possibly object to that. I hope therefore he is willing to accept this amendment or to make a commitment that embodies the spirit of it. I beg to move.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

I shall add a couple of words to the excellent introduction by the right reverend Prelate. His argument about the need to collect statistics to look at the relationship between poverty, child abuse and neglect is very persuasive. The Minister will know that local authorities have now been given responsibility for public health. Each local authority employs a director of public health and the practice—I think it may be a requirement—is for the director of public health to produce an annual report on, essentially, the health statistics of the people living in the local authority area identifying the problem areas and weak spots to drive the public health policy of the local authority. It strikes me that to poverty, child abuse and neglect, you can add health and well-being. One practical way through might be to add to the responsibilities of the director of public heath a duty to produce consistent, uniform statistics throughout the country. It would also mean that the local authority response would not be in relation to just one sector but would be a more general response. I suspect that if one were to look at the statistics in relation to health outcomes, one would find that many of the families to which the right reverend Prelate referred would also be affected by those health issues. A holistic response is probably required here.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for raising this important issue. High-quality data are crucial at both national and local level. They can inform the development of government policy, help us to understand how the system is working, help us to support and challenge local areas and facilitate local learning. At local level, high-quality data can ensure that children’s needs are identified early, resources are targeted appropriately, services are commissioned effectively, risk is managed well and the right support is put in place for children and their families. I assure noble Lords that we are looking at ways in which we can improve the quality of the data we collect.

Noble Lords may be aware that following Professor Eileen Munro’s 2011 review of child protection in England, the Government produced a children’s safeguarding performance information framework to help professionals get the most out of the range of data available nationally and locally. We are also taking steps to improve the national children in need census data collection. For example, last year, for the first time, we published factors identified by social workers in assessments of children, exactly the sort of issue raised by the World Health Organization’s report. Indeed, the World Health Organization suggested that a cost-effective way of implementing its recommendations would be to include key questions in existing or planned surveys. The Department for Education will shortly be running its first children’s services omnibus survey. This biannual survey will allow us to gather a range of useful information from local authorities. The questionnaire is still in development, but we intend to ask local areas about how they analyse demands for services locally, which should include using socioeconomic factors. We know that many local areas are making great strides in their data analytic capabilities. Noble Lords may be interested to look at the Association of Directors of Children’s Services’ Pillars & Foundations report.

We continue to work across government to align collections, better join up different collections and make use of technological advances to collect data in real time. However, we do not believe that requiring the Secretary of State to produce a report on ways to implement the World Health Organization’s recommendation in the European report on preventing child maltreatment is necessary. We have lots of work planned in this area and already in train. I hope that noble Lords are assured that the Government recognise the importance of effective data collection and are striving to make improvements in this area. I will pass on to colleagues in the Department of Health the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about a more holistic approach, but in the light of what I have said, I hope the right reverend Prelate will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response, and I have no doubt that my colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, will examine minutely what he has said; I shall certainly look at it as well. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for his comments and for the Minister’s agreement to take the issue away and report it elsewhere. At this point, I am content to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 99 withdrawn.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I have great sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said. We all work with local authorities that have extraordinary constraints on finances. However, I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, because it can make things easier rather than more difficult. I need to support it as it relates to what I said both at Second Reading and previously in Committee about the two things that are important.

First, any amendments must be tightly drawn. I am really concerned about the next batch of amendments because they could add considerably to local authorities’ responsibilities. Many people agreed that if you are a director of children’s services, you do not want to have to wade through yet more legislation. We are looking for less legislation but legislation that is clearer and more tightly drawn, to be freed up to get on with the job of looking after children.

The other important item is that we make clear that this is the responsibility of wider services. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, acknowledged that his was not a comprehensive list of those people who could do more to benefit these young people. I know that some of the amendments may be out of the frame. Some of the issues I raised last time in relation to financial services need more refinement. However, if we had these two things—tightly drawn legislation and a wider range of services with the responsibility—it would not add to the responsibilities of local authorities but streamline their work and ensure that others took their part. I declare an interest as a vice-president of the LGA.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I also support this amendment. I apologise for not being here for day one but at Second Reading I explained that I would not be able to be present last week. At Second Reading, there were a number of clauses—this is one of them—where I was concerned that the work of independent fostering agencies, adoption agencies and the voluntary sector as a whole, which provides increasing support to children in care and leaving care, was hardly noticed. We need to keep on top of that. We should not restrict its growth but we should ensure that it is joined up with what is required of statutory authorities and that quality remains high. In supporting the amendment, I hope consideration will be given to that area of work as well in any future redrafting.

[The Earl of Listowel]

Very briefly, I recognise the concerns expressed by the noble Baroness. So much money might be saved if the right agencies worked with local authorities. It is hugely expensive to keep a child in a children’s home. If that child could be kept in a foster placement because there was adequate early intervention from health, for instance, the local authority could save a lot of money. There is room for negotiation—perhaps health could pay half the cost and the local authority could pay half the cost of an intervention, or there could be some other variation. But it could save local authorities huge amounts of money if the right intervention was made and the right agency worked in partnership with them.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I am sure the Grand Committee is very grateful to the noble Baroness for tabling these important amendments and bringing this issue back to us. I pay tribute to her and her colleagues for introducing the teenage pregnancy strategy while they were in government. After many years, it brought down the level of teenage pregnancies. It is not equivalent to that of the continent but at least it is moving in that direction. It has been a most important success.

Listening to the noble Baroness, I was reminded of a 24 year-old woman who, some time ago, attended the all-party parliamentary group for young people. The group was discussing mental health and she bewailed the fact that she had not been able to access mental health services. She had two young children whom she was really struggling with. I very much welcomed the earlier amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, to extend mental health support to the age of 25. At the APPG the 24 year-old bewailed the fact that, even if that was changed, she would be too old to benefit from it by the time it came into effect.

Last year the Maternal Mental Health Alliance launched a very important report into perinatal mental health, identifying the extent of perinatal mental health issues and the cost to the nation of failing to meet them. This group of young women is particularly at risk of perinatal mental health issues. The charity Best Beginnings does much work in this area and published a video that looked at a young woman as she was suffering from postnatal depression. It covered her experience of having a poor relationship with her mother because of her boyfriend, who did not understand her situation, and a GP who just did not have time to talk to her. She suffered a gradual spiral into depression and lost any patience with her children. She was not a young woman in care but one could easily see the same situation arising for such a person. She desperately needed help but she did not know how to ask for it. I hope that the amendments will make us think more about what we can do to reach out to these young women and ensure that they get the right help.

There is increasing support for women during pregnancy. The Government have invested more in perinatal mental health, and in particular there are models of what I call “caseload midwifery”—one-to-one midwifery, where the midwife makes a relationship with the parents early in the pregnancy, maintains that relationship and ideally is there at the birth. That model of service could be very helpful to these young mothers.

There has been a lot of recent research into neurodevelopment. Some of it has looked at the neurodevelopmental plasticity of infants, and it has been found that adolescents go through a further major neurodevelopmental change. There is also evidence that women show some plasticity in their neurodevelopment in childbirth because of the powerful relationship with their infant. However, there is a great risk that becoming a mother at an early stage will be too much of an experience for some women to manage. Their early experiences in infancy may prevent them being able to mother their children adequately, but there is also the opportunity for it to be a key turning point in their lives, where they learn to love and be loved for the first time. We need to be there for them as far as we can to make sure that that is the outcome—that it is a turning point in their lives and a positive experience for them and their child. Therefore, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for moving her amendment and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I feel that I could already write the Minister’s response by saying that of course these needs are already met in Clause 3(5)(a) or (b), as the subsection refers to meeting “his or her needs”. However, when, year after year, report after report notes that these needs are not dealt with, surely we reach the point where they need to be specified—hence I support the noble Baroness’s amendments. The needs of these young parents have so consistently not been adequately met that we now need to specify them so that they are.

I would also comment that, on occasions, young men may also find becoming a parent a positive turning point. There is a need to support young men who are looked after and become parents who recognise that they have now come to a point of responsibility and they would like to step up to it. They also need support. I invite the Minister’s comments on that.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I, too, support Amendments 61A and 71A in particular and draw the Minister’s attention to a Select Committee report produced by your Lordships’ House on post-legislative scrutiny of adoption legislation. Somewhere in the Department for Education archives, there will no doubt be copies of that report and the oral evidence given to the committee. The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, was on it, and, I think, the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong.

Among those who gave oral evidence was a remarkable judge, Nicholas Crichton, from one of the London family courts. He was so fed up with a procession of the same young women coming before the family court and having their children taken away. The women would reappear 12, 15 or 18 months later and would continue through their 20s with the same judges in the same court taking away their children and putting them into care. He got so fed up with that that he found some charitable funding to produce some support for the young mothers to whom it was happening because he was trying to stop this escalator of producing more children to be taken into local authority care.

That judge was doing the job that we could argue is the responsibility of the local authority because the great majority of these young women had been in care. We had a bizarre situation where an energetic and innovative judge was trying to do the job of a local authority that was not able to provide these kinds of services to young women who had been in care and who had repeat pregnancies. I would ask the Minister to look at that before he rejects fully these amendments, because there is a lot to be said, in the public interest as well as the interests of these young women, for moving down this path.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, this is an important probing amendment. I now understand why it is in this grouping and not in the other groupings, and I apologise to whoever is responsible for that. As the British Association of Social Workers rightly said, it will be important to clarify what qualifications and capabilities will be required for the new personal advisers. Throughout our Committee discussions, we have shown how important personal advisers are and will be, in terms of speech and language and literacy, financial matters, and in putting the pathways plan together. It also is important that these are the right people for that and currently, there is no prescribed professional or occupational qualification determining which person should carry out the personal adviser’s function for any individual care leaver. There are suggestions of what a PA should normally possess. They should,

“be working towards a professional qualification … good practice …for the young person to maintain the same PA from the age of 16”,

et cetera. Presumably, the current personal advisers are DBS-compliant. If they are not, why not? I would have thought that was something that happened straightaway. They are working in a very intimate situation with young and vulnerable children, so if that is not the case, we need to know that straightaway. If it is the case, we need to look at the other suggestions that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has made. We also need to ensure that the line management of personal advisers is not something that is just put on paper and does not happen but that somebody line-manages those personal advisers and sees them on a regular basis. There is another issue—that if we are not careful, sometimes young people who are emotionally vulnerable can make allegations against personal advisers, and that personal adviser is in a very difficult situation. If an allegation is made against a teacher, at least the teacher is in a setting where there are people around who can support and advise, whereas a personal adviser is acting entirely on their own. As well as any register and making sure that correct procedures have been gone through, there also has to be proper and effective line management of personal advisers.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I rise to express not dissimilar concerns to the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth. I firmly support the tenor of what is proposed, but at the same time I go back to Second Reading when the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, raised the question of foster carers. Some foster carers will rail against the professionalisation of advice. If we believe that there needs to be flexibility in the range of personal advisers, we need to beware of the Bill being so constraining that we lose that flexibility. They have to be securely and safely recruited and vetted, and we must ensure that there is ongoing support. The concern just expressed about the vulnerability of an individual personal adviser also needs to be heeded. I wanted to place on record a concern that this is something that must still be wrestled with. We have not got to the bottom of the right answer yet, either with what is in the Bill or in the guidance. This will be another example of where the guidance needs to be seen before Third Reading.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I very much appreciated the 1992 report of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, Choosing with Care. I have referred to it many times during my career in this House. I find it extremely helpful and illuminating, and in visiting children’s homes, I know how helpful they have found it. There is even something called the Warner interview in which they are instructed to look back over the CV of the applicant to see if there are ever any gaps and probe the applicant on what they were doing in those gaps. It was very influential and important.

I also emphasise what noble Lords have said about the first line manager or supervisor. Recently at a conference, I heard from the chief executive of Frontline, which trains social workers. He produced evidence that where there was an excellent supervisor and manager, even in a poorly functioning local authority, newly qualified social workers could do well and be resilient. Dame Claire Tickell was commissioned to produce a White Paper for social work and she emphasised the need to train first line managers strongly. I welcome what the Minister has said so far about how he sees the Government helping to develop this personal adviser role. I hope that he will also look at their supervision and their first line managers and how those need to be developed.

Finally, on the issue of flexibility versus rigidity, there are strengths to both sides of the argument. I hope that we can find a marriage between the two. My concern is that there are huge burdens on local authorities’ resources at the moment, and unless one is very specific in terms of the personal adviser profession, we may find huge disparity in quality and that our young people may not get delivery of what they need. At the same time, there needs to be flexibility where someone knows that young person and they have a relationship. We want continuity of relationships and we want foster carers, teachers or friends to be supported to be able to deliver that. We want to allow that role to be given to the foster carer or whoever. This issue is complex. This is a helpful debate and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I am grateful that in the scheduling I find myself following the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, whose passion and commitment to those in care and care leavers is widely known.

In greeting the main thrust of this Bill in my comments on the gracious Speech, I welcomed the measures to strengthen adoption, and also said:

“We need to ensure that life chances for those in residential or foster care are as good as for all other children”.—[Official Report, 19/5/16; col. 41.]

A focus on long-term life outcomes is likely to lead to better decisions in placing children, including non-consensual adoption, but 75% of looked-after children are fostered, and it is no less important for them and for those in other forms of care that their long-term well-being outweighs any other considerations of economy or convenience. It is regrettable that the Bill has not addressed further issues of fostering and kinship care, as other noble Lords have already noted.

In my remarks, I want to comment on several areas. The first is corporate parenting. I warmly welcome the development of the seven principles of corporate parenting, which are wrapped up in a duty to be laid on local authorities. It is very good to hear that the voice of the child is to be heard. Making this happen effectively can be done, as organisations such as the Children’s Society and Participation Works demonstrate. I hope that their experience will be drawn on by local authorities and national government in rolling this out.

The Minister, in introducing the debate on the gracious Speech, spoke helpfully of,

“the state’s role as corporate parent to”,—[Official Report, 19/5/16; col. 30.]

looked-after children. I agree that this responsibility rests on the state and is exercised both at local level and also in the workings of government at national level. It will be helpful if, as the Bill goes through, it can be made explicit that central government departments, as well as local government, have a responsibility to follow these seven principles under the umbrella of corporate parenthood. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, made this point earlier. It is good to have a transparent local offer of care services from each authority. It would be good to have a consistent national offer, too. Will consideration be given to amending the Bill so that the corporate parenting principles apply to national as well as local government?

I turn to care leavers. As I said in my comments on the gracious Speech, when the time comes to leave care it is often very traumatic. A move to provide care leavers with a personal adviser until they are 25 is therefore a very welcome proposal. Research by the Children’s Society has shown vividly that many care leavers are very vulnerable in the areas of housing, money and mental health. To subject care leavers to benefit sanctions on the present scale, which I understand is around 2,000 a year, is often counterproductive, as is the challenge of their having to pay council tax during the early years of adjustment to independent adult living. For most, positive strategies of personal support and financial education are much more likely to be effective than the heavy-handed use of sanctions. I wonder therefore if the Minister would give consideration to amendments that might exempt care leavers from council tax until they are 25.

While supporting this provision overall, I have a concern about the recruitment and training of the new advisers. Some extremely helpful thoughts have already been offered around this in our debate. We know that consistency and continuity are very important in any mentoring or advisory role. How will it be ensured that a care leaver does not in fact find themselves having a new adviser every year? How will consistency be guaranteed? The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, made an interesting point about foster parents being nominated as those advisers. That seems a very sensible suggestion. Perhaps the Minister might comment on the need for consistency and how it will be provided.

I have a question about “relevant persons” in Clause 2(6) and one or two other places. In Section 10 of the Children Act 2004, relevant persons appear to be largely statutory bodies, yet a lot of excellent support helping families so that children do not go into care, or on leaving do not return to care, actually comes from voluntary services. Take, for example, the excellent work of Safe Families for Children, which was started in the north-east but is now working in partnership with 20 local authorities across the country. In a recent message to neighbouring local authorities, the corporate director of one city council said:

“We’ve been live with Safe Families for Children around 10 months and it is going well. At the last count over 100 children have been supported by around 80 fully trained and vetted volunteers. Our analysis suggests that over a quarter of these children would have ended up in our care”,

which equates to,

“around a 10% reduction of flow into care”.

We must ensure that such suitable voluntary organisations and volunteers are included among relevant persons where their input would be significant in ensuring good support for care leavers. Whether this is around relevant persons or whether it could be incorporated in a covenant of care, which I understand the Minister will talk about, I would be interested to hear.

I have a brief point about children placed out of area. More looked-after children are now being placed out of area, and there is clear evidence that outcomes are less good for this group. Further measures could helpfully be included in the Bill to ensure that there is good multiagency oversight in relation to the risks and needs of all looked-after children in the area where they are living.

I turn to serious child safeguarding cases, covered by Clauses 11 to 14. Overall I welcome this new national structure for learning lessons from serious child safeguarding cases, as laid out in these clauses. However, I note that determining when a case is or is not complex or of national importance is much harder in practice than spelling it out in words on a page might suggest. I wonder whether in Clause 12(6) there might be a need for an additional clause that not only states the procedure for a review but includes a phrase such as “establish clear terms of reference for the review”. Experience has taught me that this matters a great deal.

I turn to Clause 15 on local innovation. We know that we cannot simply go on saying “This must never happen again” when things go wrong in the protection and care of children. Innovation is essential. In principle, Clauses 15 to 19 will open up opportunities for new approaches. But, like so many other noble Lords, I have a word of caution. First, it is never right to experiment on children. The basic assurance of safety and the priorities around safety, rights and well-being, which are enshrined particularly in the Children Act 1989, must be preserved, and both the degree of consultation and the level of parliamentary scrutiny of any arrangements for local exemptions must have regard to the seriousness of the risks involved. This may be especially important when new providers are coming into an emerging market of care provision.

Finally, I turn to Part 2 and social work. Social work has strong roots in faith communities and it is appropriate, given the continuing professionalisation of this work, that a dedicated structure of regulation is established. Heed should be paid to the anxieties that government control, if it descended into micro- management, could constrain rather than foster the development of a confident and competent social work service. I had an interesting conversation recently with a senior judge who suggested that to really raise the esteem of social work, a college or academy of social work—perhaps even a royal college or a royal academy —would be far better than the proposed government regulatory body. I wonder whether the Minister has considered this as an option.

Social workers by and large do a very tough job very well. They are often hampered far more by being asked to carry too large a case load than by any lack of training or competence. This is an area where blame can spring too readily to the lips of those in authority. Life chances for many children can be enhanced if a well-trained, well-resourced and not overstretched social work profession is there to help.

In conclusion, I reaffirm my overall welcome for the Bill. I must apologise in advance that, due to some existing and hard-to-move commitments, I may have to ask one of my colleagues to speak in Committee, although I shall try to be here for at least some of it. I add my concerns to those expressed already by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Earl Lord Listowel, about moving to Committee with only one formal day of Lords business between this debate and that one. Surely this is inadequate time for the proper consideration of all the matters that have already been raised in the debate. I look forward to the Minister’s responses to my questions, which are all intended to help to improve what I believe is an important Bill.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, the gracious Speech makes several commitments to improving life chances for the most disadvantaged. There is also a renewed commitment,

“to support the development of a Northern Powerhouse”.

It is in welcoming these that I shall make most of my remarks.

Children need the best possible start in life. They need to be loved and cared for above all else. Where this is best found in an adoptive family, seeing this established as well and as quickly as possible is important, so I welcome the proposed measures here and look forward to the details. For some, care ends up as the best loving option. We need to ensure that life chances for those in residential or foster care are as good as for all other children. When the time comes to leave care, it is often traumatic. A move to provide care leavers with a personal adviser until they are 25 is therefore a very welcome proposal.

With the passing of the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016, the focus for the rest of this Parliament will be on the implementation of these reforms, including the wider rollout of universal credit. I have always been a strong supporter of the aims behind universal credit: to simplify an overly complex system and to incentivise work. Work is usually the best route out of poverty. It also helps combat isolation and gives purpose and meaning to people’s lives.

Unfortunately, there is a real danger that recent changes to universal credit are undermining its original intent. Substantial reductions in the work allowance mean that the returns from working will be much lower than was anticipated when the scheme was first enacted in 2012. According to the Resolution Foundation’s recent report, universal credit will now, on balance, be less generous to low-income working families than the tax credit system it replaces. I hope that the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will take the opportunity to revisit this policy and look for ways to strengthen work incentives and support progression in work. This could be the difference between building on the early success of universal credit in boosting employment rates among claimants and sacrificing all the hard work that has gone into developing this programme for the sake of short-term savings to the Exchequer. I also look forward to seeing the Government’s White Paper on narrowing the disability employment gap.

The welfare system can and should be used to promote work and other virtuous behaviours that reduce the need for welfare in the long term. The Government’s new Help to Save scheme is a very good example of this, incentivising low-income working families to save and reducing the likelihood that they will get into problem debt. We strongly support this initiative, which complements the work we are doing in primary schools with Young Enterprise. We are grateful for the extra government funding for the LifeSavers programme.

However, we must not lose sight of the welfare system’s role in alleviating suffering in the short term. There is growing evidence that large numbers of people are falling through holes in the welfare safety net. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, at least 185,000 households in the UK are destitute at any given point in time, unable to afford even the basic essentials of life—food, clothing, housing and heating. It is estimated that 668,000 households experienced destitution at some point over the course of the last year—affecting around 1.3 million people, including more than 300,000 children. The routes into destitution are complex, but problems with the benefits system feature prominently in this and other studies. We need to take these findings seriously, by starting to measure levels of destitution and food insecurity more systematically. There is an urgent need to fill the gaps in the welfare system caused by delays and errors in administering benefits and the uneven access to crisis payments.

In the north-east, there is currently little evidence of any slow-down in the need for food banks. The holiday hunger programmes run last year through Communities Together Durham look like doubling this coming summer because of the need that exists in many of our communities. I recently spent eight days walking around Darlington and Stockton in the Tees Valley. These are areas in which levels of poverty are high. They are also potentially key players at the heart of any northern powerhouse. There are some encouraging signs in relation to manufacturing and employment, although there is much more work to be done to ensure that apprenticeships grow and turn into real long-term jobs. Concerns remain that any recovery is slow and fragile.

Alongside the manufacturing and service industries, there is immensely impressive work through a wide range of charities. Among those which stand out are the Daisy Chain Project’s work with autism; A Way Out’s work with sex workers and preventive work among young people; Mind with dementia support; Billingham Environmental Link Project with local gardens and community centres and Love Stockton, which involves 84 churches together offering a wide range of care and support to the very neediest. The One Darlington partnership awards evening was truly inspiring. All this work—whether business or voluntary—needs decent infrastructure and good local services. Local authorities have had their funding cut by 50% over the last few years. They are now stretched to the limit, arguably beyond it. Those are not their words but those of the businesses and charities that I met.

It is therefore not surprising that from all quarters I hear scepticism and concern about turning the rhetoric of a northern powerhouse into real significant development and growth. We face the ironic possibility that the cradle of the railway industry—the Stockton to Darlington line and the home of Hitachi’s excellent new train-making facility—provides the trains for new infrastructure developments but is excluded from benefiting any further by inadequate investment in railways in the north-east itself. Newcastle, Sunderland, Hartlepool and Stockton could all lose out because there is such an emphasis on the Leeds-Manchester-Liverpool axis that the far north, both east and west, is not properly included. If we are to have HS2, I suggest that we start building from Newcastle at the same time as we do from London.

I support having elected mayors for the north-east and Teesside, but they and the local authorities need adequate funding. The reforms to business rates do not work well for our local authorities. To be really significant in improving the life chances of children, young people, adults and the elderly in the north, the northern powerhouse must work for the whole of the north and must take seriously our region’s brilliance in manufacturing for the 21st century. We in the north-east are the leaders in the nation.

In conclusion, we need a vision of life chances which is bigger than that in the coming new measures. We need a vision which is about the fullness of life, where all are valued—a life marked out above all else by love, for which, of course, we cannot legislate.

Childcare Bill [HL]

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, in welcoming the general intent of this Bill, I wish to raise a number of concerns. It seems to me that there are already several common threads in what is being said. It may well be that they will be addressed—they will need to be—in the secondary legislation, but to be able fully to support the Bill I believe this House needs some assurances regarding these concerns. In raising them, I wish to point out that I have consulted some who are engaged in this work already, and also those for whom it is intended to be a benefit—parents and, indeed, grandparents.

The first concern is the 38-week period. I recognise this is the pattern already established and ties in neatly with schools being among the key providers, either directly or by others using their premises. However, most working parents have only four to six weeks’ holiday per year, so they need childcare provision for 46 to 48 weeks a year. They end up having to pay for eight to 10 weeks. Potentially, providers under the new arrangements might insist that it is 30 hours for the whole year. That would mean doubling the costs in school holiday periods for those working parents. That would certainly prove to be a financial difficulty. It would certainly mean that the extra help of the 30 hours in the 38 weeks is reduced by eight to 10 weeks’ worth. So I have two questions for the Minister. Will the regulations make it clear that providers offering childcare outside the 38 weeks will not be able to insist that parents take up 30 hours each week in those other weeks? Alternatively, can the Minister confirm that, as I think he indicated in his opening speech, parents will be allowed to spread their entitlement of 1,140 hours per year over either a 48 or even a 52-week period? If it is 48 weeks, it amounts to almost exactly 24 hours per week.

The second concern is the capacity for providing all these extra hours. Let me illustrate. A Baptist church in the East Midlands noted:

“Many providers are not in purpose built facilities and will have to consider that children may need a sleep due to being on site for more hours. We would also need to provide meals–possibly hot, and neither facility is necessarily available”.

It asked whether help would be given help to pay for new equipment to supply that sleeping and catering facility. On a different issue, a nursery in east London wrote:

“Our nursery is almost 100% funded children only accessing their 15 hours. There are 45 children in the morning and 45 in the afternoon. We are at capacity so currently can offer 90 children a place. If all the children qualified for 30 hours we could not increase capacity further so we would only be able to take 45 children instead of 90 therefore effectively halving the amount of places we have to offer to local children. Financially it would make no difference to us but for parents their choice will be reduced”.

The doubling of provision will create major issues of capacity. There is some time for those to be addressed, but this House needs assurance that serious thought has been given to how this doubling of capacity will be handled, remembering that many providers use church and community halls and that the hours they already have may be the maximum that the hall owners can offer. Some will simply not be able to extend to 30 hours in their current premises. Will they be helped to find and establish new premises, or will they have to close? If the latter, the diversity of types of provision available to parents at present will be in serious jeopardy, which will be a weakening of the policy, not a strengthening of it.

Thirdly, there is the financing of this increased provision. Here is a comment from a provider in east London boroughs:

“We have 5 nurseries generally in the PVI sector … the funding for 3 & 4 year olds is already not covering the cost and we rely on parents wanting/needing more than 15 hours who will pay an hourly rate that makes up the difference. In 3 out of 5 of the nurseries this doesn’t really happen and parents just take 15 hours free care. 30 hours a week free will really put a strain on our finances”.

I already noted concerns about capital costs. There is an added concern about proper salaries. The same east London provider comments:

“Our Nurseries are all in London boroughs, we are trying so hard to get to a point where we can pay London living wage £9.15 ph to all our staff meaning an increase in all salaries to differentiate qualification etc but hourly funding rate of as little as £3.56 leaves little room for manoeuvre”.

While I recognise that this increased provision is already a major call on the public purse, the opportunity needs to be taken to ensure that staff are paid properly, ideally at the living wage.

On finances, we must note that the increase in provision may not be cost-free for the working parents. As one parent of twins in County Durham noted to me about the existing provision:

“Childcare costs are so expensive especially when having twins to pay for. This provision would take a lot of pressure off my in-laws who are currently doing the majority of the childcare, as we currently only get 15 free hours each child per week however we still have an invoice to pay at the end of the month to cover the shortfall and meals and we can’t afford to pay for more childcare”.

That mother notes that her husband is self-employed, so has intermittent income, and that they pay a shortfall cost for meal and other provisions. They are concerned that with 30 hours, that will increase.

Finally, I return to a concern I raised during our recent debate on the gracious Speech, which is of the impression increasingly often created that a parent choosing not to work but to raise their child themselves is somehow not doing the best for the nation or the child. Here is what a couple of providers of childcare—I stress that point—wrote to me for this debate:

“My concern about the new Child Care Bill is that we are going further down the road of putting pressure on parents and mothers in particular to be valued as economic units rather than having the most important role of parenting their children valued. I did take a break from employment when my children were young and I am very pleased I was in a position to do so although it was to mine and my family’s financial detriment; the value of it to my children’s well being cannot be measured”.

I had this from another provider:

“I remember speaking to you”—

that is, me—

“about the domination of the ‘childcare’ agenda and how mentioning ‘stay at home parenting’ was met with a brick wall. I am increasingly concerned about the promotion of childcare as it is giving the implicit and not so implicit message that it is better to put your child in childcare and go out to work than stay at home and look after your own children. I would far rather be advocating looking at why the cost of living is so high ie housing crisis etc. which forces people out to work. I’ve had parents ‘apologising’ about their desire to stay at home—as if it’s a sin. I really wonder what kind of society we will have in the next 20 or 30 years if this push for more childcare continues unabated. I feel like the 0-3 year olds in this nation should not be ‘robbed’ of the opportunity to be cared for by their own parents and more could be done to make this possible. They are vulnerable members of our society who seem to have no voice”.

This is perhaps the greatest concern that I have. The whole agenda seems to be about the adult first—their right to work, their economic well-being, rather than the child first. What is the best for the young child? They cannot speak for themselves in this debate. In conclusion, then, on behalf of the well-being of the children themselves, if we are going to make this increase in provision, which I am sure we will and indeed should, let us try to ensure that all the regulations that follow place the child at the centre, not the adults, whether those adults be the parents, the providers or the politicians.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, the stated intention of the Education and Adoption Bill is to,

“give all children the best possible start in life”.

Of course we all want this, so we must scrutinise carefully whether the proposals on adoption will produce it for children for whom adoption is the best route. Given that some of the most successful adoption agencies are small, localised ones, care will need to be taken in any move to regional agencies—which certainly has its strengths—so that the smaller agencies’ special skills and experience are not lost, particularly as they are often the most effective at placing and maintaining adoptions of the most hard-to-place children. Durham Family Welfare in my own area is a fine example.

Childcare, we all recognise, is vital to ensure the best start in life. For most children, the very best childcare in the early years is given by the child’s own parents. The bonding and trust that is built is vital to long-term well-being. Nothing replaces the love of parents in the healthy development of a child. The extension of childcare offered to 30 hours a week must not create the impression that both parents, or the single parent, must go out to work. There is no harder, more socially valuable or more important work given to those able to have a child than raising that child well.

For many, though, work will be wanted or necessary, so increased provision in childcare is welcome, provided that the quality of what is offered is high. This can happen only with properly trained staff paid at a decent rate. The living wage for childcare workers needs to come in soon. It will be important, too, that the wide range of provision available is not reduced by the 30-hour allowance. Much childcare is provided in premises such as church halls, where an extension of hours by this much may not be possible. We need to take care that some of the highest-quality provision does not get lost in the extension of hours. I also ask whether it is appropriate for extended provision to be free for those on higher wages, who are well able to afford their childcare.

I welcome the inclusion, in the full employment and welfare benefits Bill, of the troubled families programme. Its success in helping families and children in difficult circumstances has been impressive. Since the programme also appears to deliver savings to the public purse, the case for its continuation is strong. Indeed, I urge Her Majesty’s Government to adopt a similar joined-up, personalised approach to helping individuals with multiple and complex needs.

Some of the preparatory work has already been done. Simple Change for Troubled Lives, rather than troubled families, is a recent publication by Framework housing association. It offers a blueprint for a troubled lives strategy. I commend it to your Lordships as a document that can be read quite quickly and summarised in five key actions: first, the extension of the troubled families programme to at least 60,000 individuals with most complex needs who need intensive long-term assistance; secondly, to ensure that others with multiple and complex needs have full assessments under the Care Act; thirdly, to ensure that people with multiple and complex needs have suitable housing; fourthly, to engage them in structured activity, leading wherever possible to paid work; fifthly, to align the various activities of government in this area so that they complement, rather than conflict with, each other.

The coalition Government made firm commitments to improve the help offered to people with multiple and complex needs as recently as the 2014 Autumn Statement and the 2015 Budget. I hope and pray for a strategy to deliver.

I have to express concern that the best start in life for every child will not be best served by freezing child benefit and child tax credit for the poorest families, particularly those in low-income work. Therefore, I support the proposal from the Children’s Society and others that child benefit should be excluded from the benefit cap as it is intended to support the costs of raising the child; it is not simply income to the parents. I also fear the long-term impact of more children being moved into poverty through the benefits freeze. Child poverty has long-term impacts on the health and development of those children, creating long-term increased costs for the whole of society. There is a danger of achieving short-term gain but long-term cost.

Child poverty is not remedied simply by child benefit, of course, but it is one important brick in the wall alongside preventing family breakdown, good education, helping people into good, meaningful work and tackling debt and addiction issues, which are recognised as critical to eradicating poverty in which children are caught. We all want the best start in life for every child in our nation. There is much to scrutinise in the proposals in the gracious Speech that affect the lives of children. We need to be assured by the Government that their proposals will truly give the best start, when it appears on first reading that some may well do so while others may actually harm children.