Vulnerable Children

Lord Mackay of Clashfern Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, it is a responsibility to follow the noble Baroness. I hope that her temporary need for a special arrangement will soon pass, because I have had the greatest admiration for her over a long period in this House.

The commissioner’s report is extremely important, not so much for the numbers in it—although I was a mathematician in my early days—as for the range of vulnerability it discloses. It is very difficult to see exactly how this range of difficulty can be encompassed, and I believe that each of the vulnerability types referred to—there is a large number of them in the report—require individual treatment, for the most part.

As far as I am concerned, the principal starting point in any discussion of this kind is the Children Act 1989, which I believe provides a system for dealing with the perceived needs of children and, as is sadly necessary all too often, for taking children into the care of a local authority; there is a threshold for that. A number of the vulnerability types set out in the report can be dealt with under that particular method.

I strongly support what the noble Baroness said about the need for the service provided by the local authorities to be adequately funded and supported. I have seen the Local Government Association’s analysis to which she referred, in which the very grave funding shortfall is set out. I strongly support the view that that is one of the most important areas of government responsibility we have for the children of our nation. When I speak of “our nation” I have to think of the United Kingdom, but the report refers to England alone.

As I said, I do not regard the numbers as quite so important. There is a good deal of difficulty reconciling the various numbers, but I will concentrate for the time I have, which is not very long, on some of the types referred to. The mental health of the children is an extraordinary revelation so far as I am concerned. My schooldays are now a very long time past, but I do not remember in my junior or senior school—where all sorts of people and all levels of the community were represented—coming across anything like this mental health situation. I do not remember a single pupil in the classes I had having any kind of mental health problem.

This is a huge problem. What exactly is the reason for it? How does it come about? It is one thing to deal with it when it has come about, but what is the underlying cause of this very large rise in the mental ill-health of very young children? There are some trends for discussion in our present community that may have an effect on that. It is not for me to say—I am no expert in this area, but it is a very important one. I am glad that the Green Paper the Government have issued seeks to deal with this important aspect.

The next case the commissioner mentions is exclusion from school. It must be an absolutely awful thing for a child to be excluded from school with no proper provision for their education in that situation. These are undoubtedly children with some kind of problem. It is very difficult to know exactly what because there are various problems that may lead to this, but it is extremely serious.

Next is missing children. What is done about them? There are many missing children. What has happened to them? Where are they? What efforts are being made to find them? There is no suggestion that the actions of the children themselves have necessarily led to their being missing—they may have, but they may not. How is that dealt with?

The final important type I want to mention—there are all sorts of others—is children in gangs. I have said before that I believe the issue here is a lack of company, particularly parental company, at home. These children find a gang, a unit, in which they can have social intercourse, and it is the only route that happens to be open to them. All these issues need special attention. The commissioner has done a valuable job in bringing them to our attention.