Schools: Funding
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for repeating the Statement. I remind the House that my wife is an education consultant to the Education and Training Foundation.
As recently as Tuesday, Ministers said they remained committed to the original timescale. What has changed in the past 48 hours? Was it a dawning realisation of the funding problem currently facing our schools? I noted that the Minister said that no local authority will see a reduction in its 2016-17 funding to schools next year. But we have a growing number of pupils and a growing teacher shortage, and the Minister will know that schools are already struggling to cope with the effect of the 5% funding cut because of the increase in national insurance and teacher pension contributions that schools have had to pay.
As part of this approach to fair funding, can we see a reappraisal of the funding of schools in their entirety? As the Minister’s department is also having higher education and further education transferred to it, can he also say whether the further education budget will be protected next year, having been decimated by the BIS department over the last two years? Finally, I am sure we all agree with fair funding but I have noticed that when it came to police areas, the fire service and the NHS, fair funding has meant greater funding in Conservative constituencies. Would the Minister care to tell me what fair funding will mean for schools?
Lord Nash
The Secretary of State’s overriding consideration is to ensure that the reform is right and has the benefits of proper consultation. The change is too important to rush and, personally, I think her decision shows a great strength of mind. She has considered the matter carefully and decided that we do not want to put schools through the uncertainty, when they come back in September, of not knowing what their budget is to be for 2017-18. That conclusion shows great sensitivity for the issues facing our schools and teachers. As for the point about whether there will be any political bias in our considerations, I can assure the noble Lord that there will not be.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts(9 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, many noble Lords have already spoken about many of the issues surrounding these proposals, and I want to focus on the key one of independence, to which all speakers so far have referred. I thought it would be worth while reading the policy statement issued in June about regulating social workers. It was quite revealing because it demonstrated that there was uncertainty at the heart of government about which road to take—whether the regulator should be independent or closer to government. Paragraph 48 says:
“In considering what form the new regulator should take we have considered whether a new fully independent regulator should be established”,
and the next paragraph goes on to discuss the pros and cons. One argument against it is:
“The establishment of a wholly independent body would inevitably take significant time as leadership and infrastructure are built from scratch and would, we think, be more expensive than the alternatives”.
The decision about the independence of the regulation of a profession as important as social work, which from time to time has the duty of challenging the state, should be based on more than simply time and expense.
The statement, in further paragraphs about the body’s establishment, continues:
“Government is proposing to establish an executive agency”,
which it says will be distinct. Further, it says that:
“Government recognises that professional regulation for many other professionals is organised on a more independent footing”,
and therefore propose that it,
“should be kept under review”.
To me, that says loud and clear that the Government are undecided. On the one hand, they know that it ought to be independent; but on the other, they want to bring it closer to government. The danger is that we will end up with social work being seen as politicised according to the colour of the Government who are in control. That is a very dangerous path to take. I urge the Government to look through the arguments that were made in their own policy statement and to come down on the side of independence rather than cost and expense.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I very much welcome the briefing that we received from Ministers last week on the questions we are debating. I was also impressed with the vision set out by the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and his ministerial colleagues about the need to achieve a high level of social work, with a heavy emphasis on improving practice. So there is no disagreement with us on the aims that the Government have set out. I applaud them, as they are absolutely right to focus on the quality of social work practice. Our concern is the form that these aims take in the Bill. Not only will it not do the job but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley have suggested, it will detract from the real effort that needs to be put into encouraging, supporting and helping social workers to improve what they do.
Noble Baronesses have already raised the Education Select Committee report. What is striking is its reference to a vacancy rate of “17% of the workforce”, while the Government’s own figures,
“conceded that there were retention concerns, with the average career in social work lasting less than eight years, compared to 16 for a nurse and 25 for a doctor”.
This is not the time to be messing around with regulation when it is working in a perfectly satisfactory way at the moment.
There are five concerns about the way that the Bill has been drafted. First, we still do not understand why, within two years, there has been a complete reversal of government policy. Why has there been that reversal? I have yet to hear one proper explanation for why that has happened. Secondly, why was there no proper consultation or discussion with anyone in the field about the changes? Thirdly, why is regulation being confused with improvement? The fourth issue, which is ultimately the most important, is why the Government are setting themselves up as the regulator of a profession, while the fifth is parliamentary. It is about the use of regulations in this Bill, rather than the proper use of primary legislation.
On the reversal of policy, the Care Standards Act 2000 established the General Social Care Council while, in parallel, a College of Social Work was established. I think that none of us would say that those organisations always covered themselves with glory, but, towards the end of its life, it was quite clear that, under its last leadership, the General Social Care Council was pulling its act together. There is no doubt about that at all. I opposed the transfer of social work regulation from that body to the HCPC for the very reasons that the Government now use to justify the change in policy. Paragraph 38 of the policy statement says:
“The system that the HCPC operates is designed to maintain appropriate minimum standards of public safety and initial education, rather than raising standards”.
Of course—that is what the HCPC exists to do. The Government were told that when we debated it. They ignored it and went ahead with this proposal. So why this sudden reversal of policy?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
Then why on earth did the Government abolish the GSCC and transfer it to the HCPC when we said at the time that this would happen and had a vote on it? Why do it? We have had no explanation of the change. It was not five or 10 years ago but two years ago.
Lord Nash
I will come to that. In its totality of standards, there is very little which is focused on or particularly salient to social work education. The current regulatory model also does not focus on setting professional standards for post-qualification practice. This sets social work at odds with other professions, such as nursing and midwifery, and the current model sets requirements around continuous professional development which are generic and applicable to all the professions that the HCPC regulates. We believe there is clear scope for improvement, and I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, agrees.
Lord Nash
We will obviously bring in people from the sector, work with them in the establishment, consult them and make sure that we have appropriate professionals to run it.
However, the moves here to what noble Lords feel is greater government involvement are not wholly unprecedented. It is certainly true that regulation for many other professions is organised on a more independent footing. However, it is also true that it is not unprecedented for government to play a closer role in supporting the improvement of the quality of a professional workforce, such as in the case of teaching through the National College for Teaching and Leadership. It is also worth noting that the regulatory arrangements for social work in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all involve a formal relationship with central government, as, of course, did arrangements in respect of the previous regulator, the GSCC.
The regulator will have a clear focus on protecting the health and well-being of the public and promoting greater confidence in the social work profession. It will do this specifically through developing an approach that focuses on practice excellence and on raising standards from initial education through to post-qualification specialism.
The regulator’s key functions will include publishing new professional standards aligning with the chief social workers’ knowledge and skills statements and setting new, tougher standards for initial qualification. It will also institute a more robust mechanism of testing whether courses meet them and aim to re-accredit providers by 2020. It will also focus on professional standards post-qualification by, for example, setting professional standards for specialist child and family and adult practitioners and accrediting those who achieve them. This will include overseeing the proposed new assessment and accreditation system for child and family social workers. The regulator will set new standards for continuous professional development specific to social work, maintain a single register of social workers and oversee a robust and transparent fitness-to-practise hearings system.
I hope that noble Lords will recognise the scale of our ambition here and agree that these functions will provide for a comprehensive, bespoke regulatory regime. Government, through the structure of an executive agency, will be able to bring its full resources to enable effective and rapid delivery, as I have already said.
I say clearly that the Government recognise that the regulatory framework needs to have operational independence. The exercise of its functions will be fair and transparent. I know that we are due to debate later the need for an improvement agency, and our debates will, no doubt, consider the appropriate role of regulation in raising standards. I will say more on these matters then, if I may. However, let me be clear now that what we propose is a regulatory body which will be focused on the delivery of core regulatory functions. It will not act as an improvement agency, nor will it seek to undertake the functions of a professional or representative body. We make no apology for the fact that in exercising these functions it will be charged with setting and improving standards.
I appreciate that the objective of ensuring public safety through regulation is important, and it will remain so. However, we do not see a clear distinction between public safety and standards. Social work is all about the safety of the most vulnerable in society, and only the highest standards of practice should be acceptable. As I mentioned earlier, the Government have made a public commitment to keep the regulatory arrangements for social workers under review. We will consult the sector after three years to take stock of whether the current arrangements are still fit for purpose. Specifically, we will consider whether the regulation of the profession can then be put on a more independent footing. I intend to bring forward amendments to the Bill to give these commitments statutory force. I hope this will provide some reassurance.
I would also like to touch briefly on the cost. Noble Lords will be rightly interested in the cost of establishing a new regulator, and specifically in whether this will be borne by social workers themselves. I reassure noble Lords that the set-up costs for the new agency will be met by the Government, and we will provide details in the autumn. While social workers will continue to pay a registration fee, we have no plans to raise it. Of course, if fee increases are contemplated in the future, they would be subject to consultation with the sector and registrants at the appropriate time.
I shall now speak to Amendment 135B, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, and supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, on the creation of a new independent regulator for the social work profession in England, the general social work council. First, I warmly welcome the recognition that a new regulator is needed. I note that the intention behind this amendment is to create a new social work-specific regulator. I believe that the regulator we intend to set up will meet this test. It will be bespoke to the profession and, more importantly, it will be created in partnership with the profession.
I also note the range of functions envisaged for the regulator. Again, I hope that I can reassure the Committee that the powers we propose in the Bill and the functions that we propose the new regulator will exercise will deliver the important regulatory functions that noble Lords have specified. While I welcome the intentions of this amendment, I do not agree that establishing a fully independent regulator is the best approach for the profession at this time. I am not seeking to rehearse all the arguments already made nor to set out again the constraints in the current framework. I have addressed these already and would like here to address two further points.
I recognise that concerns have been raised about an executive agency being subject to the political priorities of government at the expense of a professional evidential base. There have also been concerns about Ministers being involved in decisions about the fitness to practise of individual social workers. I say clearly that the Government are committed to promoting evidence-based, professionally-led practice. This is borne out by the reform programmes that we have supported to date. For example, the knowledge and skills statements published by both chief social workers provide, for the first time, clear and concise statements of what social workers need to know. Our investment in teaching partnerships is also bringing employers and educators together. Regulatory reform will allow us to embed this.
The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, raised the question of consultation. As I already said in answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, we are committed to working closely with the sector to develop the details of these proposals. We intend to establish an expert working group to ensure that our proposals build on what has gone before and that the development of the regulator is managed in partnership with the sector.
I can also assure the Committee that the Government will put in place transparent and robust governance arrangements. We are clear that these can be achieved through the agency model. In summary, the agency’s formal governance and accountability arrangements will be set out in a published framework document which will bring absolute transparency and accountability to how the agency is run and decisions are made. The agency’s processes and systems will be governed by a set of regulations scrutinised and approved by Parliament. They will also be subject to wide-ranging consultation with the sector and other interested parties. The Secretary of State will be required to consult on any changes to the regulations and standards as a matter of course. In order to ensure that the new standards for social workers have their full confidence, they will be developed in partnership with the sector. The chief social workers will also be closely involved by lending their expertise and knowledge. These standards will also be subject to full consultation with the sector.
Decisions affecting individuals, such as fitness-to-practise outcomes, will be taken by experts on behalf of the regulator. So, too, will decisions about the accreditation of education and training programmes—another key function of a professional regulator. We are clear that these decisions will be taken at arms’ length from Ministers.
We have also specifically given the Secretary of State the flexibility to provide in regulations for the appointment of a wide range of expert advisers and committees. This will ensure that the agency has the sectoral expertise and knowledge required to exercise its functions effectively. Alongside this, we have been in conversation with the Professional Standards Authority about how it might undertake an advisory role in respect of the new regulator’s functions, particularly in respect of fitness-to-practise arrangements. We will continue to work with the Professional Standards Authority to ensure that we draw on its vital experience and expertise as we further develop the governance and accountability arrangements for the agency.
Before closing, I would like to address Clause 20, which allows the Secretary of State to make regulations to enable the regulation of social workers in England. These regulations will, of course, govern the operations of the new agency. We have published indicative regulations. I hope your Lordships have found them useful and are reassured about our intentions. I recognise the questions raised about the Bill’s reliance on secondary legislation. I hope your Lordships will recognise that there is significant precedent for the approach that we have taken.
We have been mindful of work on regulatory reform undertaken by the Law Commission in 2014 which emphasised the need for flexibility—
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I just point out to the noble Lord that the Government have essentially rejected the Law Commission’s work, so he can hardly pray it in aid. He will know that at the ministerial meeting held last week the noble Lord, Lord Prior, made it abundantly clear that the Government were not proceeding with the report. I think it is a little bit much to pray in aid a report which the Government have decisively said they are not going to go ahead with.
Lord Nash
As I said earlier, the recent report by the DPRRC agreed that it was not inappropriate for the Government to place the regulation of social workers in subordinate legislation, despite the width of powers being conferred. In respect of our ambition to establish a bespoke regulator of social workers, we believe that delegated legislation remains the most appropriate vehicle for a number of reasons. These include the level of operational detail in the establishment and transfer of regulatory arrangements, the need to regularly review matters such as professional standards, and the mechanics of operating a professional register, all of which, in our view, point to the need to make appropriate use of secondary legislation.
In closing, I reiterate that reforms are needed as quickly as possible. I believe that our approach can ensure a new system of regulation for social workers—designed in partnership with the profession—which is transparent and has the flexibility to meet the needs of this vital profession both now and in the future.
I hope that the safeguards and governance arrangements that I have set out, the commitment to wide-ranging consultation with the sector and a clear point of review will provide the necessary reassurance that the proposed model of regulation is fit for purpose. In view of this, I hope that the noble Lord will be able to withdraw his amendment and agree that these clauses should stand part of the Bill.
“Social Work Improvement Agency
(1) There shall be a body corporate to be known as the Social Work Improvement Agency (referred to in this Act as “the Agency”), which shall have the functions conferred on it by or under this Act or any other enactment.(2) It shall be the duty of the Agency to promote in relation to England—(a) high professional standards for social workers;(b) high ethical standards for social workers;(c) high standards in the training of social workers; and(d) continuing professional training and development for social workers.(3) The Agency shall, in the exercise of its functions, act—(a) in accordance with any directions given to it by the appropriate Minister; and(b) under the general guidance of the appropriate Minister.(4) Regulations made by statutory instrument may provide for the appointment and financing of the Board of the Agency and for the appointment of staff to the Agency.(5) Regulations made under this section are subject to the affirmative procedure.”
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I do not intend to repeat the arguments of the previous debate, but I will pick up two things that are relevant to improvement. First, on my noble friend’s point about integration, those of us who are mainly health orientated find it quite extraordinary that at a time when health and social care are increasingly being integrated, adult social care regulation is being taken away from a health and care regulatory function and being put under the auspices of the Secretary of State for Education, who clearly has no remit or interest in adult social care.
It is well known that the Department of Health opposed the changes. As happens in the machinery of government, in the end it was forced to give way, but this is clearly a department that knows very little about the world outside education, that makes policy on the hoof and that has made a quick decision to legislate. This is clearly a cut and paste job given to parliamentary counsel at very short notice. We have here the makings of a complete shambles, which we know will end up in tears if allowed to go ahead. Everyone on this side of the House—we have huge experience in this area—knows that this is a shambles, a debacle in the making.
The more I hear the Minister, the more I agree with him on the issue of improving standards. There is no disagreement on the broad principles, it is simply that his department has confused regulation with improvement. It keeps insisting that they can be done together. The noble Lord, Lord Nash, said that the Professional Standards Authority has expertise and experience, and, of course, it does. I take him back to the evidence we received a few days ago about the importance of separating the roles of regulation and improvement. He said that the role of the investigative agency was to set and improve standards. What the PSA says is:
“Regulators are responsible for protecting the public by setting and upholding standards of conduct and competence, controlling entry to the profession and taking action in response to concerns about conduct or competence”.
On professional development and improvement, it says:
“Professional bodies, such as Colleges, are generally responsible for improvements to education, training, professional practice and continuing professional development”.
The Minister is consistently talking about the latter responsibilities, not about regulation. I have a low-cost solution, which is to focus on the improvement agenda, which we are all behind. I take his point about what happened in the past. I understand the tensions there between a statutory improvement agency and the role of BASW.
I thought that the Education Select Committee’s report was helpful in this regard. It set out what it believed should be the functions of a new professional social work body and said that it should:
“Be a ‘broad church’ that represents a diverse workforce of social workers in a range of settings … Provide high profile leadership and a national voice for the profession which explains what social work is and what social workers do … Make the profession an attractive choice by building a professional identity and culture … Defining the continuing professional development and post-qualifying pathway for all social work … Promote practice excellence … Shape and influence national and local policy and … Build good working relationships with the Government”.
It is a remarkably good report and I cannot disagree with it.
The report then says:
“We recommend that the Government facilitate the development of a professional body for social work, working in partnership with … (BASW), other social worker representatives and the wider sector”.
That seems perfectly sensible. Why do the Government not just do that? We would support it. I have no problems with the Secretary of State having oversight of such a body, so all that the Government need to do is to say that they will leave regulation to the HCPC and get on with the vital job of leadership and improvement. The Minister would have our support and he would not disrupt the profession with these really ludicrous proposals to take a low-cost, well-functioning regulatory system away from the HCPC, which his Government and that department put in place only three or four years ago. I beg to move.
Lord Warner
My Lords, my name is on this amendment, which is probably bad news for the Minister, and I support what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said. I want to add a couple of points on setting up a new unit by coming back to the issue of the Department of Health and adult social workers. It needs to be a unit which would deal with both groups of social workers, which means it needs some machinery that represents the interests of both the Department of Health and the Department for Education. I still see no really convincing evidence that it has been thought through in terms of those departments working together on something to benefit the range of social workers—those who work with children and those who work with adults. If we were to go down this path, there would have to be an agency or unit. I do not think one would mind what it is but it would have to be a convincing agency that looked across the spectrum of social work with children and adults.
I also want to pick up on some of the Minister’s comments in the discussion on my Amendment 135B. At the end of the day, if the Minister has all this money and wants to get on quickly—he said that he had the money and wants to get on speedily with the job of improving social work—then I would say, having been a Minister in government, that the fastest way to do that, as some of us have done, is to set up some kind of grouping across the piece. It would include the types of social workers for adults and children, and all the outside interests. The Minister could almost do that before the autumn and before we come to this on Report. At a later stage, that could be turned into an executive agency if he wanted to do that. There is nothing to prevent the Government putting in place very quickly indeed something of the kind that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, suggested if they have the money and the capability. If they have those then they should do it; they do not even have to ask Parliament.
If the Government want to improve some of the training requirements for social workers, they could also have a conversation with the HCPC, which will be looking at education in September. It has committed to that as part of its work programme. I am sure that any regulator in this area would always listen to a government department or the Government of the day and consider the evidence for change.
If the Minister is really in a hurry and wants to take people with him, why does he not use what is available now, get on and have a discussion with the HCPC and set up a unit jointly with the Department of Health to do as much improving and make as many changes as he wants? Why are we all being subjected to, and spending some of the best years of our lives discussing, the shambles that is Part 2 of this Bill? It is a sad waste of parliamentary time and I do not think that it is terribly good for the profession, which is being subjected to a lot of uncertainty when it needs more confidence and more certainty. I hope that, even at this late stage, the Minister can see that there are some merits in the approaches of the two amendments.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
That was a very interesting comment. I just do not get it. The noble Lord, Lord Nash, says that the Government do not want to blur the functions between the role of the regulator and the role of the improver, but then he talked about the work of the regulator in raising standards and he also talked about the regulator taking responsibility for continuing professional development. I am afraid that that is a direct blurring of the two roles. That is the problem we have. My impression from the debate is that we may need to focus on the first group, because the Government are clearly determined to have a separate regulator for all social workers. It is a pity, but if that is the case, then the emphasis must be on preventing the Secretary of State having any direct connection with regulation and on raising some very important issues around how such a regulator should be established.
I draw noble Lords’ attention to Schedule 1 to the care Act 2000, which sets out very clearly how you can set up an independent regulator. It sets out the appointment of a chair and members, and for the life of me I do not understand why the Government could not produce a Schedule 1 within a couple of weeks—it is all very straightforward. It would establish independence, which is clearly essential and which your Lordships will, I believe, insist upon on Report, and set up an independent regulator, because the Government are clearly determined to do it. I have a big problem, because what they really want is improvement—CPD. We all agree with that but it cannot be done by a regulator. Regulators are there to drum people out of business if they do things which lead to unsafe practice. That is what they are there for; they cannot do the agenda that the Government seem to want them to do. It is a completely different world. However, this has been a good debate and I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, noble Lords will be reassured to hear that I do not intend to speak to every clause; I just want to raise points on three of them.
The first concerns Clause 22 and the question of fees, and I do not want to repeat what has been said. Obviously, setting up a separate regulator will be more expensive than regulation continuing under the HCPC. I think that the implication of what the noble Lord, Lord Nash, said was that it will be done without increasing fees for social workers. However, is there not a general rule in government about regulators having to be self-financing? We have dealt with various orders on increased fees in relation to health regulators because of the requirement on those regulatory bodies to break even, so is the Minister right in saying that fees will not have to increase? There may be some legislative provision to cover this. Is there not a requirement that a regulator can start with a subsidy from a central government department but, in the end, it has to consume its own smoke? I suspect that the noble Lord will not be able to respond immediately but, on Report, we would like a much more explicit statement about what will happen to fees in the future.
My second point relates to a question about offences raised by the Constitution Committee in relation to Clause 34. The committee says:
“The Clauses to which the offences will relate—Clauses 22 and 23—contain little detail on the face of the Bill but will themselves need to be defined and implemented by regulations … From a constitutional point of view, the creation of criminal offences, whether or not punishable by imprisonment, should be subject to proper and full parliamentary scrutiny. The House may wish carefully to consider how it can appropriately scrutinise the creation of criminal offences which are not only themselves undefined but which will relate to other legislative provisions that are also still to be delineated”.
I can imagine that if this Bill ever got to the attention of our legal experts in the House, they would express very great concern about the use of what are basically Henry VIII powers to create new offences. I do not think that it is good enough for this change to be brought about just through regulations.
Thirdly, I want to refer to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which says:
“Clause 35(3) allows social worker regulations to include provisions which themselves would confer a further power to make, confirm or approve subordinate legislation. It says nothing explicitly about the person or persons on whom subordinate legislation making powers may be conferred, or about the matters to which the subordinate legislation might relate. We assume the intention is that the subordinate legislation making powers may be conferred on the regulator or a Minister of the Crown, and that they can relate to any matter dealt with in Chapter 1 of Part 2”.
It goes on to say:
“We were disappointed”—
House of Lords committees express angst by expressing disappointment—
“that the Department failed to provide any explanation for including the subordinate legislation making power in clause 35(3), particularly given its breadth, the lack of any explicit constraints on how it might be used and the absence of any requirement for Parliamentary scrutiny”.
I know that the Government have now responded to the Delegated Powers Select Committee but can the noble Lord place on the record their response to this? Obviously, it raises a question about whether this is an appropriate use of secondary legislation.
Baroness Walmsley
I share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, particularly his first point about the fees from social workers. Those of us who speak to the health portfolio will know well that we have had concerns expressed to us, particularly by people who run small care homes, about the CQC fees being increased very considerably recently. The reason for that is the Government’s policy that regulators should be self-funding, which is an example of exactly the policy that the noble Lord has just queried. The question that he asked is: does this apply to the new regulator proposed by the Government for social work? If it does, then reassurances that fees will not rise are perhaps a little disingenuous.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
We are having only one debate. Is the noble Lord going to write?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for reminding me of the CQC. I am afraid my memory is going. We debated it only about four weeks ago. The Care Quality Commission hiked fees up hugely because the Government essentially said, “We are not going to sub you any more”. They prayed in aid previous legislation and the general rule about government and how regulatory bodies have to be funded. That is why it is obviously an important question.
I take note of the Minister’s response on Clause 34, which was very helpful. I understand the point he is making on Clause 35(3). Autonomy in relation to rule-making powers is a point well taken, but the Law Commission report on which the policy is based was concerned with regulated bodies that were independent of government and under the auspices of the Privy Council. That is the difference. It is why, in the end, it is essential to have this new regulator as an independent body established properly in statute by primary legislation. This has been a short but useful exchange.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts(9 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I have just picked up the debate we had in Grand Committee on 6 July, when the noble Lord, Lord Warner, raised the issue of legal and medical privilege. Then the noble Lord said he did not think that anything needed to be added to the Bill, although he recognised that guidance would need to be given to the panel in respect of the information it requests.
I assume that there will now be a considerable time between Committee and Report. I understand that this is a very complex matter. The question of the independence of the judiciary is clearly paramount; equally, my noble friend has made an important point about the need for the panels to obtain relevant information. So, rather than a quick letter, I hope that the Minister will agree to consider this important matter in some depth.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, that was an interesting contribution by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. I particularly wish to pick up the issue of challenge. Whether or not it is right for local authorities to be members of these bodies is one thing, but I have no doubt that the issue of challenge is a very important one. I would like to hear from the Minister about how we ensure that that takes place.
First, on the issue of bringing these together in areas larger than one single local authority, like the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, I consider that if this is a sensible approach to deal with some of the current boundary issues, that is fine. However, if there were an underlying view within the department that we had too many and it wanted them to be reduced in large numbers—central government departments often believe that—then I would worry. Ideally, we want one local authority to be seen to be responsible, rather than a number of them. The whole argument for bringing in these new arrangements, particularly in relation to Amendment 113, is to streamline the process so that there is much clearer accountability. I hope that we are not going to lose that straightforward accountability because we think we need to make it much easier for chief constables to be able to discharge their responsibility.
My second point is this. I have no objection to the formulation of safeguarding partners and their ability to invite any other relevant agencies that they consider appropriate. I took the point made by the noble Baroness in an earlier debate about the boards of probation officers. However, I ask the Minister: when those are set up, could his department actually monitor who the safeguarding partners designate as relevant agencies so that we can at least keep track nationally of what is happening? If we found that the probation services were not really part of any of these bodies at local level, I would begin to worry.
Thirdly, I have a question on Amendment 119, which mentions guidance. Will the Minister explain the status of that guidance—is it advisory or is it statutory?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, as we are in Committee I say to the Minister that the latest report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has miraculously reached me and that it comments on his Amendments 113 and 115. It refers to two instances where the committee considers that the delegated power conferred in the amendments is inappropriate. I do not expect him to respond today, clearly, but I hope that between now and Report he will give that some attention.
Lord Nash
We are considering that report and we will respond in due course. On the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, about national government departments modelling effective collaboration, we are indeed taking considerable steps to work together effectively, in particular with the Home Office and the Department of Health. In view of what I have said, I hope noble Lords will support the amendment.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)
My Lords, I have a question about these clauses, which are generally welcome. The more information we have about child death comprehensively, the easier it will be to take any necessary action. As I read the clauses, however, although I may have missed something, I cannot see what the review partners will be required to publish. Subsection (4) in new Clause 16M of the Children Act 2004 in Amendment 121 says they must,
“prepare and publish a report on … what”,
the partners,
“have done as a result of the arrangements … and how effective the arrangements”—
which I take to be partnership—“have been”. However, I can see nothing in here about the kind of analysis that the Minister was just referring to—the kinds of deaths that have occurred, for what purposes, the demographic and other characteristics of the children and so on. Could she enlighten us about what will be required in terms of general access to the information that has been collected here?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I would like to add another point. Here we are talking about child death review partners, and in the previous debate we were talking about safeguarding partners. I wonder if this is a concept that might be used with regard to the earlier part of the Bill relating to corporate parenting. The Minister will know that we had amendments to Clauses 1 and 2 around corporate parenting, the argument being that in order to discharge corporate parenting roles properly the local authority needs the support of core partners in the local area, including the health service and other agencies. I think we have all agreed that nothing should be done to dissipate the role of the corporate parent by, if you like, detracting from the local authority’s responsibility. However, I wonder if the concept of safeguarding partners and death review partners is an approach that we might consider. I realise that this is not the point to discuss corporate parenting, but it is an interesting concept that we might think about when we return to the subject.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I thank noble Lords for their interventions. Perhaps I can take away the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, the child death review partners will be required to publish information on what more local authorities and CCGs can do to prevent deaths, including analysis and data. I am happy to come back to her with some further information following this discussion.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am no expert in this area, but I still have not got hold of an example of what the provision is that stops innovation taking place. Is it about reporting and bureaucracy, or is it to do with an actual statutory responsibility? I am unclear about that. The Minister must be aware that, at this rate, he has no chance of getting this through the House of Lords as it stands. It is a question of what he wants to convince the Committee and then the House at some point. Is it about allowing local authorities to do the right thing with fewer bureaucratic controls, or is it saying that one can actually stand down part of the core legislation? That is what I am unclear about.
Lord Nash
I heard the noble Lord the first time. I have not got very far but if I am allowed to continue I shall get to it. This power is about creating a safe mechanism to test new ways of working to improve outcomes for children. It creates a controlled, time-limited space to test new ideas. It is not about eroding children’s rights or removing the basic duties of local authorities to safeguard children. The power is not about questioning the fundamentals of what local authorities need to do, but about exploring how things could be done better.
I will try some more illustrations. I do not suppose they will get me very far but since I have more to say, perhaps people could bear with me. I shall illustrate this point with two examples. First, it is felt that on some occasions applying the full gamut of care-leaver regulations associated with children on remand, who automatically become looked-after when in custody, is not always the best option for those children. Local authorities are interested in developing a service that better responds to their needs, informed by the young person, which, where a local authority can make a professional decision, would ensure better and informed choices without an unwanted service automatically being triggered by legislation. A real-life example of that was given to us by one of our partner in practice local authorities. In this instance, the young person was returning to live with their grandmother. Applying the burdens and processes associated with looked-after children placements unnecessarily overcomplicated matters for both the authority and, most importantly, the young person and their family.
Secondly, as I highlighted at Second Reading, there is a widespread view that adoption and fostering panels do not always add value, and can often delay the process of approving prospective carers. These panels are only advisory, with the ultimate decision resting with the local authority. Local authorities explain that they think they could get to the same decision quicker without the panel in some circumstances. The freedom likely to be requested would be to remove the requirement always to have the panel in place for all cases, and for the agency decision-maker, who currently makes the decision, to continue to exercise their professional judgment. In straightforward cases, the decision would be made quicker to allow the best solution to be progressed faster so that children get the support they need. I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said about the concerns that Coram has in this respect, and we will be very happy to talk to Coram about its concerns in some detail.
I will speak to other examples as I go through my response to the amendments. In turn, the department will look to evaluate the use of the power so that we understand the impact, where there is a case for permanent changes to the legislative framework—changes that would of course come back for further scrutiny to this House.
I turn to Amendment 129, clarifying the purpose of this power to innovate. I agree that a focus on improved outcomes for children and young people is key. However, the drafting of the clauses already makes clear that the power is focused on outcomes for children and young people. Clause 15(1) refers to children’s social care legislation. The Children Act 1989 and its associated legislation is designed with the outcomes for children and young people at its core. By referencing children’s social care legislation explicitly, it is clear that the clause is directed at outcomes for children and young people.
On Amendments 130 and 131, I agree that the Bill should not lead to any changes that adversely affect the rights of children or lead to the withdrawal of support or services that they depend on. The whole point of these clauses is to allow local authorities to do things better. We do not propose to put an independent review panel in place. However, there will be a variety of safeguards in place to ensure that the power is not misused and that all applications are subject to very robust consideration before they are approved.
In particular, I draw noble Lords’ attention to the requirements both on the local authority to consult its safeguarding partners and relevant agencies and on the Secretary of State to consult Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills and the Children’s Commissioner. Of course, representing the views of children and young people is a key part of the Children’s Commissioner’s role, and Ofsted will also need to consider its functions of promoting the best interests of children when consulted on the use of the power. It is also important to note that any changes to primary legislation will be debated in both Houses, which in many ways constitutes the independent reviewing process that these amendments seek. In answer to the point on consultation with children in care and their representatives made by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, I agree that the voice of the child should be recognised when requested freedoms are being considered.
While I am not proposing to accept the amendment, I would like to provide reassurance that children are at the core of this provision. In most cases, we would expect local authorities to have consulted children affected by any change and in fact many of the possible changes that local authorities have discussed with us originate from requests from children, as I have already said. For example, in the case of independent reviewing officers, children have fed back to our partner in practice authorities that they do not like additional people who they do not know to be present at their case reviews discussing intimate information. More specifically, in the case of North Yorkshire, just over 400 children and young people are looked after. The vast majority are very settled and achieving well. Older young people in this position tell the authority that they find regular formal reviews unsettling and that they would like to be treated like their non-looked-after peers. There is then a much smaller number, on average 20, who are not currently settled and require regular in-depth reviews. This is one area in which a request for use of the power to innovate may well be made to make more effective use of the experienced cohort of independent officers.
The noble Lord, Lord Watson, talked about the risk assessment of exemptions. I agree that it is vital that we consider this carefully before any exemptions are agreed. We will need to do that, looking at the merits of each application from the local authority, when bringing forward regulations under Clause 15. Noble Lords may know that in responding to the DPRRC report I committed to bring forward an amendment to ensure that all regulations will be accompanied by a report setting out anticipated benefits and the protections to be put in place by local authorities to mitigate risks. That, combined with the other safeguards that we have in place, means that risk will be assessed and managed.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, raised a point about how local authorities would be chosen. I would expect any local authority that wants to apply for an exemption to demonstrate strong leadership and either strong performance or a clear trajectory of improvement consistent with the approach that it wants to test. Ultimately, the Secretary of State will not take forward any requests if she has concerns about the local authority’s ability to implement the change safely or to learn from the testing and share its insights with the wider sector. That is why I anticipate that the first application will be from our partner in practice authorities—a group of 11 of the best-performing children’s services in the country.
The noble Lord, Lord Warner, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, raised points about Professor Eileen Munro and what she wanted. She said:
“I welcome the introduction of the power to innovate set out in the Children and Social Work Bill. This is a critical part of the journey set out in my independent review of child protection towards a child welfare system that reflects the complexity and diversity of children’s needs”.
I am delighted that so many noble Lords have referred to excellent examples of innovation by various local authorities, but of course just because some innovation is taking place without changes to legislation does not mean that others will be able to innovate without making such changes. Of the examples that we have been discussing with local authorities, all need exemptions from secondary and in some cases primary legislation. I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, setting out what primary and secondary legislation blockages are in place before Report.
To answer the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, there are no limits to what can be requested; the Secretary of State is concerned about the impact on children, and if she thinks it is appropriate, it will proceed.
However, in view of noble Lords’ concerns and suspicions about our motivation, the best way forward—in addition to writing to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, and sharing that letter with all Peers—is to have what I suggested. I hope that all noble Lords who are interested will come to a meeting with a number of local authorities and individuals where they can explain in detail why they need this power, and noble Lords who feel that they can achieve the same objective without using it can talk about that. We can have a detailed, granular discussion about specific examples, rather than a high-level discussion, which is always, in my view, rather dangerous. I commit to organising that, and I hope that all noble Lords will attend.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down— I thank him for his response—is not the requirement really to have a meeting with parliamentary counsel to see how Clause 15(2) can be redrafted in such a way that it is clear that the kind of change that the noble Lord wishes to make is essentially small-scale and minor? The problem is that, although he has made that commitment from the Dispatch Box, none the less, this is such a huge power. It is not the issues, it is the way it is drafted. Surely there must be a different way to draft a power that allows for certain discretion in the circumstances he describes without seeming to exempt the whole of social care legislation. I suggest that parliamentary counsel might have a role to play.
Lord Nash
I think it would be much better to make that analysis when we have had the sort of meeting I am talking about and we have more visibility on particular examples.
Amendment 121A, tabled by the noble Earl, deals with support and safeguards where the power is used. I briefly return to my previous point that the power is about creating a controlled mechanism for testing, strengthening and improving the current system. It is not about removing basic rights that are essential to improving outcomes.
I give another example to illustrate the use of the power. Local authorities tell us that a carer who is either a family member or friend is often thought to be the best placement option for a child in care, but the requirement that they become an approved foster carer after a 16-week grace period can be difficult to achieve, especially where family and friends have no real desire to be local authority-approved foster carers generally. We discussed in Committee last week the important role that grandparents can play. This is exactly the sort of area where use of the power could make better use of the strengths they bring.
Exemption from this requirement could mean local authorities being able to place a child with the person to whom they have the greatest attachment. There could still be an option for the carer to become an approved foster carer if they wish, but the exemption would give flexibility for the carer and a better chance of achieving the most suitable option for the child being selected.
Returning to the amendment, requiring a local authority to reinstate existing processes and procedures upon individual request would considerably weaken a local authority’s ability to assess the effect of the power. As outlined in my example above, however, there is nothing to stop a local authority offering this level of service if it was in the best interest of the child. Let me reassure noble Lords that exemptions will be granted only for a time-limited period because the local authority and the Secretary of State are persuaded the new approach holds out the likelihood that the child or children can be better served in a different way.
In order to test and evaluate exemptions properly, I feel it is right that local authorities should not be subject to an infinite range of requirements in respect of different children, but can use their professional judgment in response to the child’s request. I remind noble Lords that if regulations made under the power are not found to have had the desired effect, they can be revoked swiftly using the negative resolution procedure. In addition, authorities are and will be subject to the usual Ofsted inspections and will be monitored via the department to evaluate and create an evidence base of what works.
I recognise that Amendment 131B reflects the recommendations of the DPRRC. I am happy to say that in my response to the Committee last week I signalled my intention to make amendments to achieve the same effect. In view of that, I hope that the noble Lord will feel reassured enough not to press his amendment at this time and will support our amendment at Report.
Finally, I turn to Amendment 132 and the interaction between this power and the corporate parenting principles. There are numerous broad, overarching duties on local authorities in children’s social care legislation in different Acts of Parliament. The corporate parenting principles are an example of such an overarching duty. Our conversations with local authorities have not been focused on these overarching duties. They want to focus on how they could change the way of working to allow their children’s social care staff to focus more on children and families themselves, not on changing their overall objectives. Specifically to exclude an overarching duty such as corporate parenting would beg the question as to why it had been singled out. Excluding some but not others could give rise to the same question. Equally, excluding all overarching duties from the many pieces of primary legislation in the area of children’s social care would make the clause unnecessarily complex.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts(9 years, 7 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
“(i) the child to live with any parent of the child’s or a person with parental responsibility for the child;(ii) long-term foster care, with a connected person, existing foster carer or other person;(iii) adoption, with an existing foster carer, foster to adopt or other person;(iv) long-term care not within sub-paragraph (i), (ii) or (iii);”
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
Clause 8 extends the definition of permanence provisions as it appears in the Children Act 1989 so courts will also be required to consider provisions in the plan that set out the impact on the child concerned of any harm they have suffered or are likely to have suffered, their current and future needs and the ways in which the long-term plan for the child’s upbringing would meet all those current and future needs. This is an important provision and one that we are very glad to see within the Bill.
My Amendment 89 wants to encourage the Government to take this a little further by extending the circumstances under which permanence provisions will operate to embrace long-term foster care. There are two reasons for seeking to do this: first, to ensure that we have legal clarity—I will be interested to hear the noble Lord’s response on that—and secondly, to avoid some options, particularly adoption, being seen as more important than others in the hierarchy of care. This is particularly important in relation to long-term foster care.
My understanding is that a legal framework is already in place to allow this to happen. Since amendments to the permanence provisions were made in the Children and Families Act 2014, a legal definition for long-term foster care has been introduced. The Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010 have been amended to introduce a new definition of a long-term foster care placement, and set out the conditions that must be met. This step rightly strengthens the importance of foster care as a permanence option for children and young people in care. As the Government have therefore placed long-term foster care on a legal footing, the opportunity should be taken in this legislation to make a link. I remind the Government that The Children Act 1989 guidance and regulations Volume 2: care planning, placement and case review of June 2015 includes reference to the range of options for permanence and could be used as a basis on which to amend subsection (3B) of the Children Act to reflect the range of options for permanence that already exist in law, all of which can deliver good outcomes for individual children.
Since three-quarters of looked-after children are fostered, surely any change to improve the outcomes for children in care needs to concentrate on those children as well as children who may be adopted. I beg to move.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, I have Amendment 90 in this group, which adds,
“the child’s wishes and feelings”,
to the list of matters that must be included in the local authority Section 31A plan. This is the plan that must be in place before a court can consider whether to make a care order.
There are many issues on which the child may have particular wishes and feelings, such as who is to foster them, where they are to live and what contact they are to have with members of their family and others. The inclusion of the child’s wishes and feelings is vital and should be uncontroversial. The court is required under the welfare checklist to have regard to the ascertainable wishes and feelings of the child concerned, considered in the light of his or her age and understanding. Therefore, placing local authorities under a similar duty will ensure that family judges have access to the information they need to determine what is in the child’s best interests. Local authorities are subject to comparable duties when undertaking child protection inquiries, assessing need and making decisions about a child they are looking after or proposing to look after. Independent reviewing officers are required to ensure that a child who is subject to a care order has been informed—again, in accordance with his or her age or understanding—of the steps he or she can take to challenge the order.
It makes no sense to arrange for children to be assisted in challenging their care order without any parallel requirement that they be encouraged to express their wishes and feelings prior to such an order being made. It is like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. That is the basis of my argument for Amendment 90.
Baroness Walmsley
I am grateful to the Minister, and I am particularly grateful to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, for her legal advice. I wonder whether we can sort this matter out. Perhaps the Minister can review the issue we have just discussed, and if he is still convinced that we do not need this amendment he can give us chapter and verse about exactly why that is. As far as I can tell, it is needed to make sure that we do not waste the court’s time. If the court gets the information from the local authority about the child’s wishes and feelings, it does not have to get it itself. We all want to save the court time. Perhaps the Minister could undertake to do that.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
That was a very helpful intervention from the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and I am grateful to the Minister for setting out the intention of this clause which—I am sure I speak for all noble Lords—we very much support. The noble Lord clearly believes that current legislation covers the substance of the points raised, though that is subject to further clarification. Clearly we will have time between now and Report to consider this further.
There are also issues relating to practice. I understand what the Minister said about him, his department and Ministers being pro-adoption, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, equally made the point that it is right to encourage adoption. However, as my noble friend Lord Warner said, there is a risk of a hierarchy of options in which long-term foster care cannot always be supported in the way it should be. I worry that when this gets down to the level of children’s services there is a risk of perverse behaviour because of a belief that adoption is always to be preferred to foster care. I would particularly welcome further clarification and reassurance on that area.
On the issue of the child’s wishes and feelings, again, I am sure we will sort out the legal position. What has come from the debate is that in the experience of some of the courts, local authorities do not always seem to have found out the child’s feelings or wishes or to have taken proper account of them. Even if the legal position is okay—and obviously there are some concerns about that—some practice within children’s services needs to be improved.
Finally, my noble friend Lady King raised NHS mental health services. We will have further debate on this because we will be debating an amendment that looks at the problem of children covered by this legislation being sent for out-of-area placements. This is a horrendous problem, particularly for adolescents with mental health issues. Sometimes those young people can find themselves being sent to places 100 or 150 miles away. The NHS has some strong responsibilities here, which at the moment it is not discharging. I listened with great interest to what the Minister said about the work between his department and the Department of Health on care pathways. It is to be welcomed, but it is in the context of long-term consistent failure within the NHS in relation to mental health services for young people. Again, I hope we will have a further opportunity to debate that. This has been an excellent debate, and I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
“Legal aid for parents whose children are in voluntary accommodation and are to be placed in foster for adoption placement
After regulation 5(1)(e) of the Civil Legal Aid (Financial Resources and Payment for Services) Regulations 2013, insert—“(ea) family help (lower) in any matter described in paragraph 1(1)(b) (care, supervision and protection of children) or paragraph 1(1)(i) (placement orders, recovery orders or adoption orders) of Part 1 of Schedule 1 to the Act to the extent that the matter concerns a placement to be made or contemplated to be made under section 22C(9B)(c) of the Children Act 1989 (placement with a local authority foster parent who has been approved as a prospective adopter), where the child is being accommodated under section 20 of that Act, and the individual to whom the family help (lower) may be provided is—(i) the parent of a child, or the person with parental responsibility for a child within the meaning of the Children Act 1989 in respect of whom a local authority has given notice of a placement or contemplated placement under section 22C(9B)(c) of that Act; or(ii) in the case of an unborn child in respect of whom a local authority has given notice of a placement or contemplated placement under section 22C(9B)(c) of the Children Act 1989, the person who, following the birth of the child—(aa) will be the parent of the child; and(bb) will have parental responsibility for the child within the meaning of the Children Act 1989;”.”
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, this amendment was previously in the name of my noble friend Lady Armstrong. Understandably, she is very much engaged in giving responses to the Chilcot commission today, so I move this on her behalf.
My understanding is that Section 20 of the Children Act 1989 provides the machinery by which a child can be received into the care of a local authority with the consent of a parent. However, parents do not have the right to free legal advice and representation prior to agreeing to the voluntary accommodation of their child unless the local authority has initiated or is planning care proceedings. It has been put to my noble friend that, without such independent legal advice, there is concern as to whether parents actually are giving informed consent. Obviously, this is particularly worrying in respect of younger parents who have lost their children to the care system and may lack other established sources of support, including advice. Our debate on Monday, particularly about children who have been in care and are themselves young parents, is particularly apposite to that issue.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
Amendment 91A seeks to amend the Civil Legal Aid Regulations 2013 to provide parents with free legal advice when their children are voluntarily accommodated under Section 20 of the Children Act 1989 and the local authority wishes to put them in a foster for adoption placement. I understand the concern that parents need to have access to information and advice before they agree to their child being accommodated. The law is clear that a local authority cannot accommodate a child under Section 20 without the consent of a parent. The local authority must provide advice and information to parents to ensure that they fully understand the arrangements and give their informed consent. In addition, any parent can remove the child from the care of the local authority at any time. If individuals satisfy a means and merits test, they may be eligible for some funding for civil legal services, including initial advice about the nature of voluntary agreements. If the local authority later decides that a child should not return home and the best option would be to pursue adoption, the usual court process must be followed. It remains the case that a child cannot be placed for adoption unless the birth parents give their consent, or the court has made a placement order. That means that the court must consider the birth parent’s view before deciding that the adoption placement order is necessary. When a local authority informs a parent of the intention to initiate an application for an adoption placement order, they will become eligible for civil legal services, free of any means test, in the usual way.
I hope this explanation means that the noble Lord will agree to withdraw the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her response and to the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for her support. I thought the Minister was pretty encouraging, but clearly this depends on the local authority doing the right thing in ensuring that informed consent truly means informed consent, that the parents in the situations that she described have access to independent advice, and that that advice actually is independent. Clearly, there seems to be a gap between the legal guidance given to local authorities and the reality. I am sure that my noble friend Lady Armstrong will wish to consider that issue in due course, but I thank the Minister for her response. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I added my name to this amendment, and entirely agree with what my noble friend has said so far. I endorse his proposal that the Wales protocol should be adopted in England as well. The number of people they put on the informed list under that protocol is interesting, as it means that most people who are likely to need to know, such as the police, health services and the director of social services, are included.
This reminded me of something that happened when I was Chief Inspector of Prisons, when the chief inspectors of constabulary, the courts services, education, probation and social services were collectively worried about the lack of information flowing around the system. We published a thematic review of what each of our particular responsibilities needed of the others, what was readily available, what was obtainable only with difficulty and what was not obtainable. We presented this to our respective Ministers, who were interested, but the tragedy was that it fell on stony ground because no one Minister was responsible for cross-governmental working to ensure that all this information was shared by those who needed it.
To the categories mentioned by my noble friend, I would just add that of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, who are frequently moved from their port or airport of entry to local authorities all over the country in order to share the burden. We need to know where they are and what is happening to them, so the information mentioned in this amendment needs to be shared by many others—not just the directors of social services but immigration authorities and others covered in the Wales protocol. I recommend that, which is why I support my noble friend’s amendment.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am very glad to wind up for the Opposition and speak in this short debate. As the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said, there are sound reasons why out-of-area placements may occur, but they present real challenges, not least the inconsistency of approach between different local authorities and this particular problem about a multiagency response.
The noble Earl raised the issue of vulnerability to trafficking, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, brought unaccompanied asylum seekers into consideration. I have already referred to my own concerns about the role of the National Health Service. We know that mental health services, especially child and adolescent mental health services, are inadequate and that many disturbed young people are being sent a long way from home.
The Minister in a previous debate referred to an agreement, or work, between his department and the Department of Health in establishing the care pathway. That is to be welcomed, but I would like to hear more about how he is going to make it grip when it comes to children who are being placed out of area and a long way from their homes. Has the Minister’s department had an opportunity to see how the Welsh protocol is working in Wales and whether there would be an opportunity to build on the good practice that has been developed there?
Lord Nash
I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for this amendment and for raising the very important issue of children being placed at a distance from their home authority.
I recognise that the amendment seeks to improve safeguards and access to services for children placed outside their home authority. I reassure your Lordships that there are already significant safeguards in place that ensure children are placed out of area only when it is in their best interests and, importantly, that appropriate agencies are notified. Most crucially in relation to this amendment, local authorities are already required to notify the host local authority and health services when making out-of-area placements under Regulation 13 of the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010. This also requires the host local authority to be given a copy of their assessment of needs and care plan. Much of the information this amendment seeks to have included in out-of-area placement notifications is already legislated for, because the care plan already contains it or it is in statutory guidance. We have issued guidance that contains a model notification for out-of-area placements to help guide authorities, which includes the key information about the child. Personal education plans should identify any statement of educational needs or any education, health and care plan. Placement plans must include details of how welfare will be promoted and safeguarded.
I note noble Lords’ desire to ensure the police are made aware of children placed in their area and given their care plans so that they can help support these vulnerable children. We have already amended the regulations so the police can access the addresses of children’s homes in their area, enabling them to form positive relationships with children’s homes and to be more aware of children placed from other areas. I again sympathise with the intent behind providing the police with children’s care plans, but these plans contain deeply personal information, and children in care have, as part of previous government consultations, expressed concern about police access to less sensitive information. Children absolutely need to be protected, but this must be balanced with protecting their privacy.
We shall consider the Wales protocol and how it could be helpful to local authorities in England. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, raised the point of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children being placed out of area. They will be looked-after children under the Children Act, and so will be subject to the existing duties placed on local authorities in that Act and under the care planning regulations. The local authority must therefore give notification when a child is placed out of area. In view of the strong safeguards and notification requirements already in place regarding out-of-area placements, I hope that the noble Earl will feel reassured enough to withdraw the amendment.
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.
“Post-removal counselling for parents and legal guardians
After section 19 of the Children Act 1989 insert—“19A Post-removal counselling for parents and legal guardiansWhere a child is permanently removed from the care of a birth parent or a child’s guardian further to the powers under section 31 of the Children Act 1989 (care and supervision orders), a local authority must, so far as is reasonably practicable, provide a counselling service and commission therapeutic support for the parent or guardian of the child, in order to help them to keep any future children.””
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, in the unavoidable absence of my noble friend Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, I shall move Amendment 99A, which is tabled in her name, on her behalf. The amendment has been drafted because there are concerns about the impact of the removal a child on the parents. Clearly the interests of the child must come first, but the removal of a child, whatever the challenges facing the parents and whatever the circumstances, is a momentous event, so it is right to consider what support should be given to the parents. It also makes sense because the parents may well go on to become parents again, and indeed sometimes again and again. Surely to give those children any chance at all, it makes sense to see whether an intervention being made post a child being taken into care might help any future children.
I know that, in the light of her experience, my noble friend feels that this is an important issue, and I hope that the Minister may be able to be sympathetic to looking at whether we can find a way of encouraging local authorities to do the right thing in this regard. I beg to move.
Lord Storey
My Lords, this is an important amendment that is worthy of serious consideration. There must be something worryingly and seriously wrong when mothers constantly have their babies removed from them. We have seen social services almost having to get care orders in place as the child is born, and it can happen three, four, five or six times. Obviously in all circumstances the interests of the child must be put first, but there also must be a realisation that something must be done to support the mother. Are there mental health or emotional issues at play? This constant removal of children safeguards those children, but it does not safeguard the mother. We need to try where possible to look at why this is happening.
This is an issue of which I do not have any experience and, indeed, I have not considered it. The amendment asks in a sensible and supportive way for us to look at therapeutic support and so on. There is also the cost aspect. If a child is taken away from its natural family and we as a society have not considered effective treatments that could reasonably be made available to keep the parent and child together, then surely as a society we are failing.
Lord Nash
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for moving the noble Baroness’s amendment. This is an important issue, and I am pleased that she has raised it. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Howarth and Lady Howe, for their comments. The Government believe that children are best looked after within their families, with their parents playing a full part in their lives, unless intervention in that family’s life is truly necessary and in the child’s best interests. Legislation reflects this, and local authorities have statutory functions to provide services that support children in need and their families. They also have a duty to return a looked-after child to their family unless this is against their best interests.
The noble Baroness is right to emphasise how important it is to support parents who have had children taken into care. They need the right support to allow them to be effective parents to any other children in their care and to any children they may have in the future. We share this commitment. Our statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children is clear that every assessment of need must be child-centred. The statutory guidance acknowledges that many of the services provided as part of the child in need or child protection plan need to support the parents to make sustained change. The plan that arises from this assessment should set out the expectations required of parents, detailing clear measurable actions and indicating the services they should engage with in order for their child to remain at home. If a child is removed, their parents should continue to receive help and support. If the parents go on to have further children Working Together to Safeguard Children is clear that the level and nature of any risk to the child needs to be identified at a prebirth assessment and appropriate help and support should be given to these parents to help them make a sustained change.
I am sure noble Lords will be interested in the Department for Education’s innovation programme’s support to the tune of £3 million for Pause’s project to support women who have experienced or are at risk of repeat removals of children from their care. The project aims to break this cycle and give women the opportunity to develop new skills and responses to help them create a more positive future. Changing practice like this provides a more effective means of ensuring that we attempt to break the cycle. We want to extend approaches such as Pause’s into new areas to break this intergenerational cycle of care. This is of particular importance to care leavers who go on to have children in their late teens that are at risk of being taken into care. Mandating local authorities to provide counselling or therapy may help some, but it will not be the answer to all the complex problems in this context. Given what I have said, I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I thank the noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate for their support. Clearly, this is an issue in relation to mothers, in particular, who have a number of children after one of their children has been taken into care. I was glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, raised the work of Pause. The Minister referred to the money that his department it giving to it. That is very good to hear. The Minister said he does not think mandation is the right avenue down which to go. Some noble Lords who have spoken agree with the Minister. I am sure my noble friend will wish to consider that between now and Report. The principles here are well recognised. We have the great work of Pause. We clearly have good practice in a number of local authority areas, and the question is how best to ensure that there is more consistency and uniformity throughout the country. Whether it is through mandation or just through spreading good practice is a matter for another debate. I thank the Minister for the tone in which he responded to this amendment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts(9 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, we have had a very interesting and informative debate on this subject. I do not wish to add anything because everything I might say has already largely been said. All I would say is that this is focused on the principle that I and others raised at Second Reading and earlier today: the fundamental importance of early intervention and prevention if we are to break the cycle of children going into care and the consequent implications for the rest of their lives, and for the costs on local authorities and the state. Everything we know points to the fact that a focus on funding for early intervention and prevention does more than address the issues once children and young people are in the care system. I very much welcome this informative debate and thoroughly support the amendments.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, this has been a persuasive debate. We have already had the evidence that my noble friend Lady Armstrong described from the social justice commission, which is all too depressingly clear on the plight of care leavers who become young carers. My noble friend Lady Massey referred to the Family Rights Group, which produced an excellent briefing detailing some of the challenges that young parents covered by these amendments have to face. I was particularly struck by the evidence that young parents often feel judged by their youth and background rather than their parenting abilities, and particularly that, where support has been provided to them, it has often been done in their capacity as young people leaving care and has rather ignored their roles as parents. This will be a very telling point when we come to the Minister’s arguments.
The amendments seem comprehensive. Amendment 61A would insert into the assessment of the needs of a former relevant child a reference to young parents, while Amendment 71A expands helpfully on the definition of young parents. Amendment 98AA would insert into the Bill a requirement for pathway plans to be provided for,
“looked after children and care leavers who are young parents”,
and Amendment 98AB would amend the Care Leavers (England) Regulations 2010 to incorporate support for young parents, so my noble friend has tabled a comprehensive package of amendments.
Rather like the right reverend prelate, the Minister may say that young parents are implicitly covered in the Bill. However, to come back to the point raised in the evidence we received from the Family Rights Group, is not one of the problems here that in these legislative terms care leavers are thought of as care leavers rather than as young parents? It seems that although the Minister may say that the provisions can be seen to apply to young parents, the fact is that sometimes there is a need to be explicit. There is sometimes an advantage in putting a specific requirement into the Bill. The point I put to the Ministers is that the case has been made today for such an explicit provision, and I am sure that we will need to return to this.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. Although I see the intention behind these amendments and the important issues that noble Lords have raised, we are not persuaded that they require prescription in primary legislation. I am reminded of the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, earlier today and in our previous session that we should not overburden the Bill with matters best addressed by other means, particularly guidance.
As we have discussed at length, local authorities will appoint a personal adviser to those care leavers who want one, up to their 25th birthday. This brings with it the responsibility for the corporate parent to assess a young person’s needs and to prepare a pathway plan. This means that a wider group of care leavers will have their needs identified and responded to for a longer period, including those needs linked to parenthood.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, this has been an excellent debate. The broad thrust of the Bill, in particular Part 1, has been welcomed by noble Lords. It is a sobering thought that the reason the Bill is needed is the continuing evidence about the poor life outcomes for so many looked-after children, although I think that we should recognise the strength of what the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said when he described some of the progress that has been made in recent years. The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, emphasised the positive outcome of preventive work if it is allowed to flourish. I see Part 1 as building on that progress and I am wholly supportive of it.
However, we are very much less supportive of the measures in Part 2 concerning the regulation of social workers. Of course no one should be complacent about the state of social work in this country, but whether the profession needs a complete upheaval in its regulated arrangements just four years after the previous one must be open to question. Moreover, those doubts are added to by the unsatisfactory nature of the skeletal provisions in Clauses 20 to 40. My noble friend Lady Pitkeathley asked the Minister whether he is really serious about taking this part of the Bill forward. I think that it is a substantive question that the Government will need to answer.
On corporate parenting, it is clear that the provisions are warmly welcomed, but the question is whether they should be extended. I take very much the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, about the distinction between the role of the local authority as the corporate parent and the roles of other agencies like health and central Government. It is clearly an important one. My noble friend Lady Hughes and the noble Baronesses, Lady Tyler and Lady Walmsley, talked succinctly about the impact on mental health outcomes of children in care, while the noble Lord, Lord McNally, referred to the need for full mental health assessments. How can we find some way of incorporating those wider responsibilities, and indeed the responsibilities of central government, within the Bill without undermining the clear accountability of the local authority as the corporate parent? I look forward to our discussions in Committee on this matter.
Other points were raised about the first part of Part 1. My noble friend Lady Massey and the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, asked about kinship care, while my noble friend Lord Wills asked about whistleblowing protection in relation to local government. My noble friend Lord Judd mentioned the issue of communication in relation to language difficulties to which I hope the noble Lord will be able to respond.
Clauses 4 to 8 are very important in relation to increasing the duties of local authorities to previously looked-after children. The question again is this: can the Government go further? My noble friend Lady Hughes asked in particular about the role of the virtual school head teacher and whether that can be extended to colleges. Again, I hope the Government will consider that. I also ask him about the local offer for care leavers. Does he consider that there should be some elements in statute to ensure that local offers do not vary in quality across the country? Picking up on the intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Storey, will the Minister clarify what qualifications and capabilities will be required for the new personal advisers? I also echo the plea from the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, for benchmarking figures so we can judge progress.
We now have government amendments on the child safeguarding review panels. We will consider those carefully, but will the Minister respond to my noble friend Lady Dean on the report of the Constitution Committee about submission of material subject to legal or medical privilege?
My noble friend Lord Watson has already spoken about our concerns with Clause 15 and on some of the risks of outsourcing. We also have a real worry that the introduction of a power to become exempt from statutory duties could be seen by local authorities as an opportunity to drop certain provisions at a time of great financial pressure. Can the Minister put my mind to rest?
We now come to Part 2. Like my noble friend Lady Massey, I admire social workers. Over the past 30 years they have been misunderstood, vilified and too often subject to a blame culture. This is not to defend poor practice—there have been far too many inquiries into far too many tragedies to do this—but it is a profession that needs support and encouragement. I like the statements that the Secretary of State for Education has made. The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, referred to one of them. I looked at her statement from January 2016, when she said she wants to set up plans,
“to transform children’s social work so that social workers get it right for vulnerable children and families”.
I completely agree with that aim. But my problem is she went on to say that she wants to set up a new body, created in conjunction with the Department of Health,
“charged with driving up standards in social work and raising the status of social workers”.
There has to be a serious question about the Government’s approach. We have seen a most extraordinary reversal of policy in a matter of six years. We had a stand-alone body: the General Social Care Council. I took legislation through to set it up, a long time ago in 2000. By the way, we set it up in primary legislation, with very few regulatory powers involved. It had a difficult start, but under its last leadership it had begun to make progress. But the Government decided to abolish it. In our debates on the abolition of the GSCC the Government defended that decision on the grounds that the arm’s-length body review that they had established found that the General Social Care Council, as an executive, non-departmental public body, was anomalous as it was the only professional regulator answerable directly to the Secretary of State for Health. So the GSCC was abolished and its function was transferred to the Health Professions Council, which was deemed to be satisfactorily at an arm’s-length distance from the Secretary of State for Health.
Four years on from the establishment of the HCPC as the social worker regulatory body—you could not make it up—we will now have a new body where there is no arm’s length at all: the Secretary of State will have his arm right up the back of this body, because he can be that body himself. Clause 21 makes it clear: the Secretary of State may appoint herself as the regulator. Even if the Secretary of State decides not to do that, through the power given in Clause 21 she can tell the regulator exactly what to do.
I had reservations about the HCPC taking over this role, but I have to admit it has done it very well indeed. In fact, as my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley said, it has done an outstanding job. Why is this being done? I know from listening to Ministers that they continually focus on the professional development and leadership of the profession. I get that. I agree with it. But that is not the role of regulation, which, as my noble friend said, is about public protection.
There is the issue of running costs: who is going to pay the huge extra cost this will bring? Is it going to be the Government or social workers? And what will happen to adult social care workers? There has been no discussion whatever, but they form a really important part of the workforce. We are stressing the necessary integration between health and social care. What on earth is the point of taking social workers out of an integrated health and social care regulator? I just do not understand it.
We have the very helpful comments of the House of Lords Constitution Committee, to which my noble friend Lady Dean and the noble Lord, Lord Lang, its chairman, have referred. Clearly the Bill is not going to get through your Lordships’ House with its current provisions, judging by the mood of the House. I have a suggestion to make to the noble Lord: why not withdraw Clauses 20 and 21, leave regulation with the Health and Care Professions Council, await the consultation on regulation being conducted at the moment by his honourable friend Mr Ben Gummer, and establish a royal college of social work, as suggested by the right reverend Prelate, which can concentrate on the issues that obviously concern Ministers, which are professional development and leadership? All he has to do is take away Clauses 20 and 21 and he can get on with the establishment of a college of social work.
The Minister’s intention today to publish indicative draft clauses before Committee stage is very welcome indeed. I assume it will cover all regulations that are contained in the Bill. I would also like to ask him about the issue of timing. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and other noble Lords have expressed the concern that we go into recess tomorrow and on the first day we come back we are into Grand Committee. I understand that this has been negotiated through the usual channels but, on reflection and listening to the debate, I have some concerns about noble Lords’ ability to prepare properly before we come back. It is also quite likely that, when we come back, there will be an extensive government Statement on the outcome of the referendum, for which I suspect all noble Lords will wish to be present. I doubt that they would want to start Grand Committee at 3.30 pm. We on these Benches would be very happy to have further discussions about the timing of this if it would be helpful—although I recognise that there was agreement about it in the usual channels and I am not going to criticise the Minister at all for the way it has been scheduled.
Overall, there is much to commend in the Bill. We look forward to Committee stage for a constructive debate. Equally, I hope the Government will be able to reflect on many of the substantive points made.
Children: Drugs
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister has said that teachers are best placed to take this work forward and to use the resources available. The point being put to him is that those resources are simply not available. What are the Government going to do about it?
Education and Adoption Bill
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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The Deputy Speaker (Lord Brougham and Vaux) (Con)
I advise the House that, if Amendment 8B is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 8C to 9A inclusive, due to pre-emption.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendments 10, 11, 12 and 13 in this group, where we are essentially concerned with coasting and its definition. As we said in Grand Committee, we are particularly concerned to see that the definition of coasting is subject to appropriate parliamentary scrutiny and that parents are both kept fully informed and involved in what is happening if their school is defined as coasting. My amendments make it clear that regulations must be laid in order to define coasting and that the affirmative procedure must always be used.
I am, of course, grateful to the Minister for government Amendment 15B, which goes some way towards this by ensuring that the first use of regulations will be subject to the affirmative procedure. When the regulations are laid we will be looking particularly for assurances that all schools will be covered by the definition of coasting, including those which admit a large number of high-ability pupils.
We also discussed the issue of consultation with parents in Grand Committee. The Minister’s noble friend Lady Evans said that,
“once a school has been notified that it is coasting, we should trust the governing body to engage parents as they see fit”.—[Official Report, 5/11/15; col. GC 415.]
However, in the light of discussions, she then said that she would see whether the Schools Causing Concern guidance would be sufficiently strong to ensure that parents were aware that their child’s school had been identified as coasting.
I am grateful for government Amendment 20, but I have a couple of questions for the Minister. I ask him to accept that the wording of government Amendment 20 is around a duty to communicate information about plans to improve a school, not about consulting parents or taking account of what they say. Will the Minister explain why the Government have decided that the duty should be about only communicating information, rather than an actual consultation with parents? Can he also confirm that Amendment 20 applies only to maintained schools which are going to be converted into academies? As I read it, it applies only to forced academisation under Clause 7 and not to those institutions which receive a coasting notice or warning notice where it does not automatically follow that academisation would take place. Is there not a defect in the amendment since it does not cover all schools? He made it clear in Grand Committee that some schools identified as coasting then might well be issued with a warning notice, but enforced academisation might not follow because presumably they were improving in the light of receiving it. I still think that there is an issue in this around parents being consulted at that stage.
Will the Minister also explain the term “registered parent”? I am not an expert in education law, but reference is usually made to registered pupils and relevant associated adults as having parental responsibility, so what does “registered parent” mean? I had not realised that as parents we are registered parents, which I think has a sort of Orwellian ring about it.
We then come to Amendment 24, to which the noble Lord will refer, but perhaps I may put some questions to him about it because it is relevant to my own amendments. Again, I am grateful that we will now have in the Bill the fact that the academy agreements will ensure, as I understand it, that academies which are the cause of concern will be treated in the same way as maintained schools when it comes to issues around coasting. Overall, the amendment is very welcome, but I have three points that I should like to raise with the Minister.
First, my reading of the amendment is that it applies only to academy schools and alternative provision academies, but not to 16-to-19 academies, which I understand are not defined as schools and are not in the further education sector but are the bodies which sixth-form colleges have been invited to join in order to get VAT rebates. It is very welcome that an avenue has now been found for sixth-form colleges to get these rebates, so there is a question of why, on the face of it, 16-to-19 academies have been left out of this definition. Can the Minister also confirm that proposed new Section 2D will be used retrospectively to override private contracts between the Secretary of State and academy trusts for all contracts?
I want to raise again the issue of early academy agreements, because in a sense we have academies and we have agreements, and now we are to have legislation that applies to those agreements. My understanding is that on the relationship between early academy agreements and the role of articles of association, originally the articles had to be approved by the Secretary of State and formed annexe 1 of the funding agreement. I understand that the articles of association no longer have to be approved. The earliest ones enabled the Secretary of State to parachute directors on to the boards of academy trusts where the existing directors were not taking seriously a warning notice. Does this provision apply to the articles of association as well as the funding agreement in those cases?
Finally, I note that the last line of Amendment 24 refers to the Education and Adoption Act, as it will be, coming into force in 2015. With the best will in the world, the Bill will not receive Royal Assent by the end of this year.
I am grateful for the two amendments which have been brought forward by the Minister, but they are technically complex. He may well not be able to answer all my detailed questions today, so would he be prepared to let us come back to this at Third Reading so that we can have another debate on these issues? I would be grateful for that.
Lord Storey (LD)
I shall speak to Amendment 15. I preface my remarks by saying that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, that it should not all be about processes. There are thousands upon thousands of teachers out there working their socks off to provide for our future generations, many of them in very difficult circumstances.
I would not want us to leave this discussion just talking about the successes of academies. We have many successful maintained schools. The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, put it all one way. Although he complained about education in his native country of Scotland, he did not give a fair reflection of what is happening in England. As we know, more than 80% of council maintained schools are currently rated as good or outstanding by Ofsted. Councils perform above the national average in terms of progress made by pupils by three times compared with the largest academy chains.
When the Minister replies, will he put his mind to three issues about coasting? The first was rightly raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. The Bill gives power to future Secretaries of State to decide what may or may not constitute coasting. What will be the process for that? What consultation will be taken on that? We must be clear what is being said.
Secondly, it is not just about particular progress measures but the intake—the cohort—in a particular year. We must consider the number of children in a particular year or particular school for whom English is a second language; we must consider disadvantage. All those issues have a huge impact on the results that the school obtains. It might appear at first glance that it is coasting in terms of the strict definition as laid out in the Bill, but what is being achieved may paint a very different picture. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, is right: other issues in a school are hugely important for not just academic progress but the well-being of our society.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, first, I must apologise to the Minister: I referred to Amendment 20, as the noble Lord, Lord True, rightly pointed out. All I can say is that perhaps that has given the Minister advance notice of any issues that might be raised when we come to that group, but I apologise for misleading the House on that point.
Secondly, my noble friend Lady Hughes and the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, until he got into his view about academies and other schools, made the point that these debates on structures are rather tedious and sometimes detract from our overall concern about the outcome for individual pupils at our schools. I thought that the chief inspector, in his recent report, had it right when he said:
“Much of the education debate in recent years has revolved around school structure”.
He refers to academies as having,
“injected vigour and competition into the system. But as academies have become the norm, success or failure hasn’t automatically followed. The same can be said of those schools that have remained with local authorities”.
I appeal for some balance in our debate. I do not understand the argument that academisation is automatically the route to be followed, because the evidence is not there. Where is the evidence? It is a fact, is it not, just to take the recent DfE 2015 data, that recent key stage 2 improvement results show that improvement is significantly greater in primary schools that are not academies—that it is actually greater in maintained schools? This becomes a very sterile argument. We have been debating this Bill for many happy hours and I am still waiting for the Minister to say something positive about maintained schools. Surely the 133 local authority schools graded as outstanding since 1 January deserve some recognition.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I would like to speak to the group containing Amendments 8B, 9B, 10B, 15B and 24, tabled in my name, regarding coasting schools and academies, and Amendments 8A, 8C, 8D, 9, 9A, 10, 10A, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 15A regarding coasting schools, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Addington, Lord Watson, and Lord Hunt, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland.
First, on my most substantive amendment, Amendment 24 on academies, I am grateful for the support that the House has given this amendment. The vast majority of academies are performing well and the academies programme remains central to the Government’s commitment to secure excellent education everywhere. The programme is firmly based on an approach that freedom, combined with strong accountability, raises standards. We have been clear right from the start that we will tackle underperformance wherever it occurs, whether in a maintained school or in an academy. I recognise, however, that our formal powers in relation to failing and coasting schools vary depending on the age of an academy’s funding agreement. Indeed, the older the funding agreement is, the weaker the powers are—the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred to that variation. In some cases, that can restrict our ability to take action as strongly or swiftly as we would like. This is not acceptable. As the Secretary of State has said, and as a number of noble Lords have reiterated, a single day spent by a child in an underperforming school is a day too many.
Our amendment will ensure that we have the powers to hold all academies to account when they do not meet the high standards that we rightly expect and will create a more consistent framework for tackling underperformance across different types of schools. This is something that we have been considering for some time. We have listened to what noble Lords have said on the matter during the course of debate and have spoken to some of our leading sponsors. They—all of them charities, of course—tell us that they find the inconsistencies in the present system frustrating. The few cases of high-profile academy failure create a misleading picture of the excellent work being done by academies across the country. These cases have also allowed the myth to grow that the Government somehow favour academies and hold them to account less robustly than maintained schools. That is not the case, and I have in previous debates elaborated on how tough the regional schools commissioners have been, as my noble friend said, in rebrokering many cases.
This amendment will further strengthen the ability of regional schools commissioners to take action where academies underperform. When an academy’s performance meets one of two triggers in legislation—an inadequate Ofsted judgment or performance that falls within the coasting definition—and it cannot satisfy the regional schools commissioners that it has an adequate plan, as in the case of maintained schools, its funding agreement will be read as having, in effect, the same provisions around failing and coasting schools as are in our latest model funding agreement.
I hope that answers the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes. We have already changed our new model funding agreement so that the coasting definition applies to academies, and the latest funding agreement has for some time had the ability to intervene rapidly in failing and inadequate academies. Where a school is failing or has failed to come out of a coasting situation, we will now read all funding agreements as if they had that clause in them.
In practice, this will give regional schools commissioners consistent powers to move a failing academy swiftly to a new sponsor and to require a coasting academy to demonstrate that it can make sufficient improvement. Where an academy is coasting—as with a coasting maintained school—the academy will be given the opportunity to demonstrate that it can improve sufficiently. Where a coasting academy does not have a credible plan to improve sufficiently, this amendment ensures that further action can be taken by the regional schools commissioner. This could ultimately include terminating the funding agreement and bringing in a new sponsor if this is the best way to ensure rapid and sustained improvement.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, referred to the concept of a warning notice—I think she was referring to the warning notice in new Section 2B in my Amendment 24. She will be very familiar with the fact that academies operate through this contractual arrangement and the funding agreement. The termination warning notice in Amendment 24 is part of the process for terminating a coasting academy contract in those circumstances. The powers provided in this amendment take effect only when an academy is failing or meets the coasting definition. We will not interfere in the arrangements or freedoms of academies and free schools that are performing well. This approach reinforces the central principle of the academy programme: trusting heads to run their schools through freedom and autonomy, but at the same time holding them to account for the results their pupils achieve.
I hope the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Watson, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, whose amendments 8A, 8C, 8D, 9A, 10A and 13 all seek to apply the coasting definition to academies, are reassured that we take academy performance very seriously and intend to hold academies to account in the same way we do maintained schools. I therefore urge the noble Lords not to press their amendments.
Turning now to my other amendments regarding coasting—Amendments 8B, 9B, 10B and 15B—I listened closely to all the points raised during the informed and wide-ranging debate we had on Clause 1 in Grand Committee. I know there is widespread support in this House for tackling schools that are not fulfilling the potential of their pupils, and I am grateful for that support. We all want every child, regardless of their background, to have the opportunity to go to a good school and receive the highest-quality education they deserve. Noble Lords have raised some very helpful and relevant points regarding the detail set out in Clause 1. I have considered these points very carefully and have decided to lay a number of government amendments, which will, I believe, further strengthen the Bill and address many of the points Peers have raised.
Amendments 8B and 10B remove an element of subjectivity from the coasting definition that could be implied by the current wording of the Bill. The text currently states that a school will be eligible for intervention when it has been notified that the Secretary of State considers it to be coasting. We have been clear from the outset that we want schools to be certain about whether they have fallen below the coasting bar. That is why our proposed coasting definition is clear, transparent and data-based. To make sure that schools are in no doubt about this, we are proposing to revise the wording of Clause 1 to remove the reference to “considers”. This will also help ensure that schools are treated consistently across regions, as whether a school falls in scope will be down to data not someone’s judgment. I hope noble Lords will agree that the amendment will increase transparency and certainty for schools and remove any unnecessary and unintentional anxiety teachers and head teachers may feel about whether their school could be identified as coasting.
Amendment 9B provides the Secretary of State with the power to disapply the coasting clauses from certain type of schools. The Bill as it is currently drafted applies to all maintained schools, including schools which we have no intention of applying the definition to, such as maintained nursery schools. As our proposed definition is based on key stage 2 and key stage 4 results—assessments pupils take at the age of 11 and 16—it would not be possible or appropriate to use such an approach to identify coasting maintained nursery schools. They will continue to be held to account through the Ofsted inspection regime.
Special schools are also currently included in the scope of the clause, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, referred to this. Special schools should provide excellent education to their pupils, and we have high expectations for what children with special educational needs can achieve. However, it would be inappropriate and unfair to apply exactly the same expectations of pupil performance to these schools. We are consulting on whether and how we can develop a separate coasting definition for special schools. I am aware that this will not be easy but we are consulting on it. That consultation closes this Friday, and we expect to publish our response in the spring.
Baroness Morris of Yardley
Those figures are from November of this year, and the regional schools commissioners had already been in place. If demand is increased, the regional schools commissioners will be exceptionally overworked, and I am not as optimistic as the noble Baroness that they will solve the problem.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, surely the point is that the RSCs still cover a huge area. When we debated this matter in Grand Committee, we were told by the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, that there were 778 approved sponsors and about 20% were waiting to be matched with schools, but we were not told about the long delays. In our earlier debate we were told that a one-day delay would have a crucial impact on the lives of children, and I understood that argument. However, it appears that the great academisation process in itself induces months of delay in certain places and for certain schools.
I would be glad if the Minister would take away and consider the amendment between now and Third Reading. All it is saying is that there may be some circumstances where there is no suitable academy—and that is why it is taking so long—and a local authority or a maintained school might have a role to play. I would have thought that the Minister could give this a little consideration.
Lord Nash
My Lords, Amendments 15D and 25, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, both concern the identification of an academy sponsor to take responsibility for a maintained school that is eligible for intervention.
RSCs are already responsible for subjecting prospective sponsors and their trusts to thorough scrutiny—against robust, uniform criteria—of whether they have the expertise and capacity to bring about improvement in other schools and whether they are in the right place before they are approved to take on sponsored academies. These rigorous processes ensure that academy sponsors which RSCs can match with underperforming maintained schools have a strong track record in educational improvement and financial management, and that their trust has high-quality leadership and governance.
I appreciate the intention behind the noble Lord’s amendments, which is to ensure that RSCs have a complete picture of the performance and capacity of sponsors in their region to inform the decisions they make about matching a sponsor to an underperforming maintained school. However, RSCs already take a wealth of data and intelligence into account when making those decisions. Value added measures are only one factor that an RSC will take into account when deciding on an appropriate sponsor for a failing school. They will also consider the school’s ethos, the capacity of the sponsor and their geographical location. It would be absurd, for instance, to appoint a sponsor far away from the school just because it had a higher value added measure rather than another prospective sponsor which was more suitable geographically. Therefore, Amendment 15D, requiring the RSC to take account of value added performance and progress measures when identifying a sponsor for a failing maintained school, is restrictive and unnecessary.
The amendment also proposes that, where a sponsor of a high enough quality is not available, a failing school should be sponsored by a local authority-maintained school or, indeed, directly by a local authority. Proposing that local authorities or maintained schools should have a role in sponsoring academies completely undermines the point of our reforms. A core principle behind our academy programme is to free strong school leaders from unnecessary bureaucracy by ensuring a robust single line of accountability. If local authorities and maintained schools are able to sponsor, that just blurs this line of accountability, with it going back to local government as well as to the Secretary of State. That would be a very confusing picture for schools.
This Government’s ambition is for every school to have the opportunity to become an academy and, over time, for the role of local authorities in running schools to reduce. As more schools become academies and many local authorities have few maintained schools left, as is already the case for many, I hope that we will see members of local authority teams who are skilled at school improvement spinning out to set up their own MATs. That is certainly a development which we would welcome and which I anticipate will happen before too long.
It is also critical that failing schools become part of a multi-academy trust structure—something that it is not possible for a maintained school to join. Multi-academy trusts are the most rigorous, permanent, accountable, unified and efficient way of bringing about school improvement. The MAT structure of school-to-school support offers substantial advantages, including being in charge of one’s own destiny, substantial career enhancement opportunities, better retention of staff, opportunities for subject-specific teaching in primaries, enhanced CPD and leadership opportunities, a common school improvement strategy, the ability to recruit much higher-calibre finance people and greater economies of scale. I am delighted that the NGA and ASCL have concluded that the best model for academy governance is the MAT structure. I could not agree more.
For all the reasons that I have set out, I hope that the noble Lord appreciates that my approach is not to stop good schools or strong people within local authorities sponsoring academies. In fact, I would actively encourage more schools to convert and talented education experts within local authorities to set up their own multi-academy trusts. However, the MAT model will simply not work unless all schools in the MAT are academies or unless lines of accountability are clear. I hope that the noble Lord now appreciates why this amendment simply cannot work and that he will be convinced that he should withdraw it.
Education and Adoption Bill
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
“Scrutiny of education provision
(1) The Education and Inspections Act 2006 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 70C insert—
“70D Scrutiny of education provision
(1) This section applies where more than 10 per cent of schools in a local education authority area are eligible for intervention under section 60B as inserted by section 1 of the Education and Adoption Act 2015 (coasting schools).
(2) The relevant local authority may establish, under section 21(2) of the Local Government Act 2000 (overview and scrutiny committees), a committee of that authority to review and scrutinise matters relating to the provision of education in such schools in the authority’s area, and to make reports and recommendations on such matters in accordance with regulations under this section.
(3) Regulations shall make provision—
(a) as to the matters relating to the provision of education in such schools in the authority’s area which the committee may review and scrutinise;(b) as to matters relating to the provision of education in such schools in the authority’s area on which the committee may make reports and recommendations to local Academy sponsors;(c) as to information which local Academy sponsors must provide to the committee; and(d) requiring Regional Schools Commissioners to attend the committee to answer questions.””
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I suspect that the movers of the amendment have been rather taken by surprise by the speed with which the European Union Referendum Bill completed its Third Reading, which on past counts was rather unexpected. My congratulations to the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, on the speedy way in which she dispatched the business. I think it would be fair to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, to allow him to arrive.
This is clearly an amendment about the role of local authorities. Obviously the specific details are contained in the amendment, but I want to take this opportunity to ask the Minister whether he is able to say something more about the role of local authorities in education in the future, because that is very much contingent on the amendment before us. He knows that we have debated whether the Government’s real intention is for all schools in the maintained sector to become academies. The Minister has rather dissembled on that point, but he will know that it was very clear from what his right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer said only last week in the Autumn Statement that it is essentially the Government’s intention that at least all secondary schools should become academies. Mr Osborne said:
“Five years ago, 200 schools were academies: today, 5,000 schools are. Our goal is to complete this school revolution and help every secondary school become an academy. I can announce that we will let sixth-form colleges become academies, too, so that they no longer have to pay VAT. We will make local authorities running schools a thing of the past, which will help us save around £600 million on the education services grant”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/11/15; col. 713.]
As the amendment talks about local authorities, it is entirely reasonable for me to ask whether that is an enunciation of a new government policy. If it is, and my impression is that when the Chancellor makes a Statement in the other place it is an enunciation of policy, clearly it is the Government’s intention to take local authorities completely out of the schools sector.
The point that I put to the Minister is this: why are we going through the charade of this Bill when it is the clear intention of the Government to phase out maintained schools completely? Why are the Government not prepared to be open and honest about this? Why do they not come forward with the appropriate legislation? I would oppose that legislation, but let us at least have an honest debate. I know that we are on Report and I guess that I am pressing against the boundaries of what is allowed, but it is none the less a very interesting amendment.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, responding to the original remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I am glad that he used the word “dissembled” over the question of the future of the academy programme and local authorities. I think that it is a better word than “dishonest”, which he used in Committee. I have made it absolutely clear on a number of occasions that the default position for a coasting school is not to become an academy. However, the Prime Minister has been clear that our ambition is that, in time, every school will have the opportunity to become an academy. Given that ambition, it is right that we look at how we might reform the role of local authorities in education, although there is no intention of taking them out of education totally. Obviously their role in school improvement will reduce as regional schools commissioners take more responsibility.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I hear what the Minister says but what did the Chancellor mean by saying:
“We will make local authorities running schools a thing of the past”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/11/15; col. 1370.]?
What does that mean in relation to what the noble Lord has said? He may not like my use of the words “dissembling” or “dishonest” but I come back to the core point. Is it the Government’s intention that, willy-nilly, all schools will be academies, as the Chancellor said last week?
Lord Nash
Perhaps the noble Lord will let me finish. In a situation at some stage in the future where all schools were academies, obviously local authorities would not be running schools. However, we certainly anticipate them continuing to have a role in the sufficiency duty, admissions, SEN and safeguarding. Perhaps I may make it absolutely clear that it is not about making every school an academy overnight at the stroke of a pen. That is not what we are after at all; we are about organising schools so that through academies and the multi-academy trust programme many more of them can, by working with each other, take advantage of the benefit of economies of scale efficiencies and deliver career enhancement, better CPD and leadership development. Given that ambition, it is right that we look at how we form the role of local authorities, as we have discussed.
The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, referred to financial irregularities in academies. I think that we have covered this before but I re-emphasise that academies are subject to far greater financial scrutiny than local authority maintained schools. They have to publish annual accounts which are audited by third-party accountants, something local authority maintained schools do not have to do. They are subject to the scrutiny of the EFA and the Charity Commission, and they are also subject to company law. I do not wish to make comparisons—
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, I am a relative newcomer to your Lordships’ House, and just one of the features of the legislative process that has amazed me is that substantial changes can be made without there being any publicly stated budgetary provision. Therefore, here we are again today, legislating for an increase in the number of academy conversions without any stated provision for funding the changes.
Every school that seeks or is forced to become an academy is given a grant of £25,000, so if 1,000 schools are converted into academies, as the Minister stated in Committee, the Government will need to set aside £25 million. I accept that this is small change in the Government’s big budgetary process; nevertheless, £25 million can go a long way in other sectors of the education service.
This is just the upfront, visible funding. A report by the National Audit Office in November 2012, Managing the Expansion of the Academies Programme, stated that the additional cost of the academy programme to the Department for Education was £1 billion. The programme had by this stage involved just over 1,000 schools. Although there have been reductions in the costs of conversions since then, as reported by the NAO, there are undeniably costs in addition to the upfront £25,000 per school grant.
In response to the amendment tabled in Committee, the Minister said:
“I will be delighted to comment more on the DfE’s total settlement on Report”.—[Official Report, 17/11/15; col. GC 51.]
I look forward to hearing the specific details from the Minister. If no budget is identified, I, for one, will have to conclude that the funding is being top-sliced from other areas of the schools budget. If so, I will be very disappointed, because schools’ budgets are already being squeezed and further cuts would put some of them in considerable financial difficulty.
Therefore, the amendment is tabled with a purpose, which is to try to discover how much the Bill is going to cost the education sector and where the money is coming from. If, as I hope, the Minister is able to clarify all those points, I will indeed be very satisfied.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am sure that we will all be interested to hear from the noble Lord the answers to the noble Baroness’s questions, particularly his response to her suggestion that the money for the implementation of the education parts of the Bill will be top-sliced, presumably from money that would have gone through local authorities to maintained schools. I would be very interested to know the answer to that.
I am going to tempt fate by asking the Minister the same question again, referring to what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said about the education budget in the Autumn Statement and his announcement that all schools in the secondary sector will become academies. He said:
“We will make local authorities running schools a thing of the past, which will help us save around £600 million on the education services grant”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/11/15; col. 1370.]
I would like to know how on earth that £600 million is going to be saved. Does he think that the £600 million used by local authorities is simply a waste of money? All those central services provided by local authorities are to be destroyed but presumably most maintained schools think they are pretty helpful. I assume that, when they all become academies, the schools will be given some element of the budget to make up for the services they would have received from local authorities.
Understanding education finances these days is a conundrum but I certainly hope that the Minister will clarify what exactly his right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer meant by what he said last week. Perhaps the answer to the noble Baroness’s question is that the finances are going to come directly from the money that would have gone to local authorities, which may be what she meant by top-slicing.
Lord Nash
My Lords, Amendment 8, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, requires that the Bill cannot be commenced until a report on funding the costs of the academy conversions resulting from the Bill has been laid before Parliament.
As noble Lords may recall, this amendment was also tabled during Grand Committee, when I agreed to say more on the outcome of the spending review in relation to the Bill. I hope the noble Baroness will be delighted to hear that I can now do so. I am pleased to say that, following the Chancellor’s Statement last week, total spending on education will increase in cash terms in this spending review period from £60 billion in 2015-16 to nearly £65 billion in 2020. The exact budget for the academy programme will be finally determined following our internal business planning process, now that we know the exact spending review settlement. But I would like to reassure the House that the Department for Education’s overall settlement clearly recognises the potential costs of academy conversions as a result of this Bill and has been very much part of the detailed conversations we have had with HMT. I hope that the noble Baroness is pleased to hear that.
Education and Adoption Bill
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his helpful reply. I found it very reassuring in terms of my particular concern about sponsors. I think that he was saying that most sponsors will already have a track record, and they will be the ones who are being looked at.
Perhaps he could say what proportion is likely to be coming in new to the field, and answer this example. Let us say I ticked all the boxes to become a sponsor for an academy, and seemed to be a very good person to do the job, but I thought that schools were places for work, not play, and that school playtime should be quite short. What would be the process to enlighten me that that is not the case or to weed me out and keep me away from the academy? How much influence might I have? I am thinking here of the story of an academy, which may be apocryphal, that was built without playgrounds for some reason, as somebody believed strongly that that should be the case.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that 28% of five to 15 year-olds are either overweight or obese? Is that not the point that he wishes to stress on this issue?
The Earl of Listowel
I thank the noble Lord for saying that. That is a very important point which, with his health background, he would raise. I am simply trying to give an example of a possible candidate and how he might be processed by the system. But from what I heard from the Minister just now I am very much reassured that most of these academy sponsors will be experienced and will have a track record, and we can have confidence in them because of that.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
I have declared my interest as chair of Wandsworth Academies and Free Schools Commission. We interview every prospective sponsor. We look at their track record; we listen to what their aims and objectives are; and we listen to their views of education. We can then offer advice from the local authority to the department. I know that the department’s evaluation of every potential sponsor is very detailed. Of course, local authorities will no longer be asked to comment—so my little commission will disappear—but I know that the regional schools commissions will do an extremely thorough job before they hand over any school to a new sponsor. They will have looked carefully at every aspect of the sponsor: its aims, its objectives, its track record, its vision of education and its proposals for what it will do with a school and so on. We sometimes try a little too hard in this House to nail everything down in legislation instead of having more confidence in what professional people will do.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, like the noble Baroness, I see the noble Lord’s three amendments as being essentially about the quality and standards of the academy chains being considered to take over individual schools. As a matter of principle, it does not seem unreasonable to require that information be available to those who make decisions and to parents and teachers about the record of that academy chain. I take the point that one does not want to write everything into primary legislation and to instruct Ofsted in everything that it should do. On the other hand, one of the themes through our debates is whether maintained schools are being treated on a level playing field with academies. The suspicion arises because the Government seem to convey the view “Academies are good; maintained schools are bad”. That is why some of us want to see something in the legislation to ensure that academies are dealt with equally, and looking at the past performance of the chain seems to me to be particularly important.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
Clearly, the noble Baroness has given considerable reassurance to the Committee, but how does this all fit with procurement policy? The reason I ask that is because we know that the Cabinet Office has been leading very hard-driven, centralised procurement and there have been complaints that, despite the Cabinet Office also having a policy to encourage SMEs, those have been squeezed out by the prime contractors. I think that the Cabinet Office is reviewing that at the moment.
It struck me from what the noble Baroness was saying that although Ministers clearly recognise the role of the smaller voluntary agencies, particularly the specialist ones, one of the problems is that once you create regional entities, inevitably they adopt a bureaucratic process. I worry that the smaller agencies may find this very overbearing. I do not think this is a matter for statute but rather one of reassurance that the regional agencies understand that they cannot develop processes that make it almost impossible for these very small agencies, often with very limited infrastructure, to get agreement to be part of the new agencies in the future.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
We think that the VAAs should be involved in early conversations about regional adoption agency design. We will issue procurement guidance for projects shortly, so it is in our minds.
Finally, the noble Lords raise important points about the proportionate use of this power. It is important to emphasise that we are committed to supporting local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies to move to regional adoption agencies voluntarily in the first instance. These powers are only backstop powers to be used for the reluctant few.
As I have already said, we are delighted that the sector has already seized the opportunity to be involved. We have announced 14 regional adoption agency projects that we are working with this year, which, as I said, will involve more than two-thirds of all voluntary adoption agencies and local authorities. In the rare cases where the power is needed, decisions will be made following extensive discussions with all those involved or affected, including voluntary agencies. Prior to making a final decision, we will write to any relevant local authority formally requesting its views on the matter. I therefore reassure noble Lords that all those involved will have the chance to comment on the proposal before a final decision is taken.
I take this opportunity to mention the role of the national Adoption Leadership Board, which meets quarterly and has a remit to drive significant improvements in the performance of the adoption system in England, and which will also have an important role to play in shaping decisions and overseeing service development. This board has already been paramount in driving forward our reform programme, and that role will continue. The board is made up of the most senior officials from key organisations in the system, including representatives both from local authorities and voluntary organisations. The Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies, which represents all voluntary adoption agencies, is a key member. Board members have been appointed to represent their sector and to take responsibility for galvanising performance improvements within their respective areas. Involving the board in any decisions about regionalisation will therefore be vital. This is another indication of how we are trying to bring all parties together.
This is a practical and proportionate approach to ensuring that the powers are used appropriately and that all interested parties are involved in decision-making. In view of this, I hope that noble Lords will feel reassured enough not to press their amendments.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I shall speak also to my Amendment 34A. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, regrets not being present and would have liked to support these amendments—she spoke eloquently on these issues at Second Reading. Perhaps I may also say how good it is to see the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, in his place. When he was Education Minister many years ago taking through Parliament the Children (Leaving Care) Act, he listened to the concerns of noble Lords and extended protections for children.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I should just correct the noble Earl: for some reason, they would never let me near the Department for Education. I took the Children (Leaving Care) Act through as a Health Minister. Of course, I well recall our debates, because the noble Earl eloquently and consistently raised the issue of the poor outcomes of children in care, and we were concerned about the transition from care into adulthood and about making sure that there was still a duty on local authorities to support. We made some progress but, alas, the figures speak for themselves as regards the outcome for children in care. That is why this issue of mental health is so important.
The Earl of Listowel
I could not agree more. If we are reflecting for a moment on the past, Governments have invested a huge amount of money and resource into young people in care, and perhaps that money might have been better spent if more thought had been given to ensuring that mental health was fully integrated with all the educational support that is given to young people in care.
Amendment 32A extends the ability of the Secretary of State to allocate functions and includes the provision of child and adolescent mental health services for children in the adoption system as well as an assessment of their mental health needs. I suppose that the Secretary of State might say of a charity such as the Brent Centre for Young People, “They do a very good job—maybe they should do it more widely, and maybe a certain local authority needs them to give it help in this particular area”.
Amendment 34A ensures that the quantity and quality of mental health support provided for in the adoption system will be maintained or improved by these steps to ensure that there is a movement forward, not backward, in any changes made. The headline I put to your Lordships is that, while this is quite narrowly focused on children in the adoption system, I hope that the Minister might allow me to make a plea for improved mental health support for young people coming into care. In particular and most important, currently, children who come into care have a health assessment by a GP, which is welcome. I will expand on this later, but they really need a mental health specialist or perhaps a clinical psychologist to give them an assessment that is focused on their mental health. Following on from that assessment, they need the services that follow to help them meet the need to recover from the trauma that many of them will have. Therefore, that is the headline I put to your Lordships: an appropriate clinical professional at the very beginning, the services to follow up, then ongoing monitoring to ensure that those services are being provided, as well as of the mental health of the young people. That would make a huge difference.
I am most grateful for the many measures that the Government have taken to improve the adoption system, in particular with the assistance of my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss with regard to the adoption support fund. I look forward to hearing from the Minister how that will apply to this particular area, and on accelerating the adoption process so that children get to a loving family more swiftly than in the past.
There are challenges. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, 60% of children who come into care have experience of neglect or abuse, and 45% have a mental disorder in care as against 10% of the general population. Therefore it is not surprising that they will have often experienced trauma in their lives before arriving into care. Being taken into care—being taken from one’s family—is a traumatic process in itself; then there may be further trauma as regards shift of placements in care. Therefore, there is a huge mental health element to the work that needs to be done here as well as the educational attainment, which is being better grasped for.
It is very welcome that the Children’s Minister, Edward Timpson MP, is well aware of these issues. His father has written on the issues of attachment in the past and, of course, Mr Timpson has siblings who are adopted. He is very sympathetic and has been meeting with the NSPCC and young people who have left care recently to discuss these particular issues. I commend him for paying such attention to this area.
Lord Storey
My Lords, I will be brief. I know how important transparency and accountability are to the Minister. This amendment is to do with the cost of conversion to academies. If, as the Prime Minister says, by the end of this Parliament all schools will become academies, it will put an enormous burden on resources to make that happen. Will those resources be available from within the existing budget or will extra resources be needed? Can we be assured that any school that becomes an academy will get the same financial advantages as academies currently do or will there be a reduction in that provision? I beg to move.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, there were some pertinent questions in the noble Lord’s short introduction to his amendment. One might think that the Explanatory Notes to the Bill would provide some helpful information in that respect but I pay tribute to the drafting of officials in the Minister’s department because they elegantly provide no information whatever.
The Explanatory Notes acknowledge, as the Minister has done, that this policy is bound to lead to increased expenditure by the Minister’s department. They say:
“The cost of any additional intervention will be considered as part of the normal Budget and Spending Review process”.
We will know the outcome of that next week. I do not know when we are coming back on Report but I assume that by then the department will have worked out the consequences for its own spending programme over the next three years, and that we might get some reassurance that we will be given some more information on Report. In the expectation that the noble Lord receives no comfort this afternoon, perhaps he will bring this back on Report to probe a little more on it.
Lord Nash
My Lords, Amendment 35, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, seeks to require that the Bill cannot be commenced until a report on funding the costs of the academy conversions resulting from this legislation has been laid before Parliament.
In the light of the ongoing spending review it would be inappropriate for me to speculate on the future costs of academy conversions. As I am sure noble Lords will appreciate, the spending review will determine the Department for Education’s total settlement and it will be that which determines the final cost. I will be delighted to comment more on the DfE’s total settlement on Report, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, suggested.
Of course, while I cannot provide specific details of the future funding regime, the existing grant rates for schools converting to academy status are already publicly available and published on GOV.UK.
As the published guidance sets out, there are various types of grants available to schools becoming sponsored academies. There is a grant awarded to all schools prior to opening as an academy to cover costs such as staff recruitment, project management and legal costs. There are three flat-rate amounts for this, depending on the level of transformation the school requires. In the most serious cases of concern, sponsored academies may also receive a small capital grant to improve the school environment and indicate a fresh start for the school. Overall, in the academic year 2014-15, the department paid nearly £20 million to academy trusts in pre-opening grants. We are committed to ensuring that funding for academy conversions results in maximum value for money. Since the days before 2010, we have very substantially reduced the costs involved. Funding amounts are regularly reviewed to ensure that the grant levels are appropriate.
The purpose of the Bill is to ensure that, where a school has failed, there will be swift and decisive action to bring about improvements. We anticipate that this equates to up to 1,000 inadequate schools converting to academy status over the course of this Parliament. The exact number will vary depending on Ofsted judgments, but it is important to emphasise that this number represents a continuation of the trend we have seen over the past five years. When the previous Government came to power in 2010, there were 203 sponsored academies and now there are more than 1,500. Including converter academies, there are now more than 5,000 open academies overall.
I turn to the assertion made by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that the Prime Minister’s vision was that every school would become an academy during this Parliament. In fact, he did not say that he expected that to happen: he said that his vision was for every school to become an academy, but he did not put a timescale on it. As far as coasting schools are concerned, as we have already discussed, that is not a default option.
Alongside failing schools, the Bill also proposes that schools that have been notified that they meet a new coasting definition should become eligible for intervention. When we discussed coasting schools earlier in Committee, I went to some lengths to stress that regional schools commissioners will exercise discretion to decide whether and how to act in coasting schools, and that not all coasting schools will become academies. As noble Lords will be aware, we are currently consulting on our proposed coasting definition and no school will be identified as coasting until after the final 2016 performance data have been published. It is therefore impossible to predict, before the definition has been finalised and the tests have been set, exactly how many schools we expect to be labelled as coasting. We expect, however, to identify hundreds of schools which can be challenged and supported to improve.
In light of the assurances that I have given about the existing costs of conversion and the number of schools we anticipate will become sponsored academies, I hope that the House will agree that a report on the future costs of conversion is not necessary and I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.