Children and Families Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

I have personal and family experience and experience in local and central Government of the matters covered by the first three parts of the Bill.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), the shadow Secretary of State, on his speech and its emphasis on the overall approach that must be adopted to invest in the well-being of young people and families from the very earliest years.

The Minister’s personal commitment and grasp of the issues are obvious and welcome, and I wish him well in taking the Bill through the House. I advise him not to take the advice of the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) and get himself moved to the Ministry of Justice, as I am sure the Secretary of State for Education will give him the support needed to do the job.

The welcome streamlining and speeding up of adoption, with safeguards, under part 1 is very welcome, but as a number of Members have said in interventions, we should not forget the critical role of families, including grandparents, and of intensive fostering, which is often forgotten. When she was the social services chair in Birmingham, Edwina Currie came to Sheffield while I was social services chair there to see what we were doing with intensive fostering. Our approach comes in waves, and then it goes away again. A lot of money can be wasted if we avoid doing the obvious of getting people with expertise and supporting them in doing their job.

On part 2 and the subject of family justice, I have a slight disagreement with some of my colleagues. I do not normally speak about this, because it is too raw and sensitive. Although I am not saying that they should not speak, if they have not had experience of the family court and the family justice system they should be wary of taking a view. It is a nightmare and it is almost impossible for those who do not have large sums of money to deploy.

I welcome the Government’s emphasis on Norgrove 1, as David Norgrove and his colleagues did an excellent job. It was rational that Norgrove 1 should be the way forward. The child arrangements orders and emphasis on mediation, even if it does not work perfectly, are the right way to proceed and I advise people to listen to Mr Justice Ernest Ryder on these issues, as he has enormous experience and a great deal of wisdom to offer.

I have both personal and family experience of the issues covered by part 3. Let me pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), who, like me, has had experience of special needs, and emphasise the importance of ensuring that those with disabilities and special needs do not end up being separated out. We should build on our experience of the education, health and care plans and early assessment. Back in the 1970s, Sheffield and Coventry received Government funding from the social services and health Departments to experiment with these questions and those who are worried about the obligations or otherwise of the health service should consider whether joint funding arrangements might be needed in some places. Barbara Castle invented that approach and it was a good thing. Our approach often goes in waves and we often come back to things that we have abolished. Such an approach would have a lot to offer, but would be accessible only when all services were prepared to collaborate and work together so that the money could be drawn down to meet the plans.

There is no point in having a local offer, the information or the signposting, although that is crucial, there is no point in having the code, although I welcome the Minister’s commitment to making that available in Committee and for consultation, and there is no point in letting families believe that an offer of entitlement is on the table unless it is funded and the rights are applicable and accessible without the need to go to court. We need to work together.

Let me say a word about the welcome commitment to nought-to-25 provision. My experience of residential school started at the age of four, and although I would not recommend that, over the years I have been won over to a strong belief in the principle of integration. As with other provisions in the Bill, we must ensure that the child’s needs are paramount. We need a system that works within a local authority area, collaborates across local authority boundaries and uses a degree of regional planning—if I can use that term, as it is not fashionable any more—to provide real options and choices and, when necessary, a national perspective. That is particularly true in post-16 provision when residential care and support is needed. Above all, the emphasis should be not just on education and skills but on skills for life that enable people to live independently on equal terms and to be self-reliant. That takes more for some people than simply going, as I did when I left residential schooling, to the local college of technology.

We need an approach that means that the colleges which will be called section 41 colleges know that they have secure funding. I do not understand why the Skills Funding Agency cannot be used for that purpose, rather than relying on a lottery of very expensive care from local authorities, as I said at a recent reception. I also said that funding for prisoners was greater than that for which we were asking for post-16 residential provision, and that in terms of location, food and discipline, my school was a bit like prison sometimes. One young man who was at the reception to support college principals waggishly suggested that it was the same in the school he went to—I do not think he had a very good welcome after that. It is not the same; things have moved on. We live in an entirely different environment, thank goodness, and we have the necessary collaboration.

For once, on most of the issues, we have genuine commitment on both sides of the House, but we shall achieve what we seek only if there is collaboration across all services. I shall give just one example. If child and adolescent mental health services are not adequately funded, and there is not support from both health and local government, we will end up spending far more down the line, both in terms of mental health services and the Prison Service, than if we get it right. Together, we can do the job better—and I am sure we will—than if we knock bells out of each other individually.