European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Newby Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 26th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, it is very late and I shall be brief. My noble friend Lady Deech is absolutely right: we can be very proud of the children’s legislation we have in this country. The Children Act 1989 is an outstanding Act for children. We are good at many things: we have great lawyers, great scientists and great soldiers in this country. Unfortunately, we do not do so well at implementing the law. I am particularly concerned here about children’s rights. Let me quickly give some examples.

I have talked to families with a disabled child trying to get access to early years education for their child. They get turned away again and again because the setting does not have the right equipment or staff to deal with them. Look at what is happening in the family courts. They are being overwhelmed by children being taken into care. Year on year, the number of children taken into care increases. Lord Justice Munby, the President of the Family Division, recently said that that is accelerating and that the family courts cannot deal with it. The All-Party Parliamentary Group has looked carefully at why that is over the past two years. It is because there just are not the resources in local authorities to support vulnerable families to stop their children being taken into care.

It is very interesting for me to read Article 24 on the rights of the child:

“Every child shall have the right to maintain on a regular basis a personal relationship and direct contact with both his or her parents, unless that is contrary to his or her interests”.


That right is being compromised day by day in this country. Children are being removed from their families because those families have not had the support they needed to make a go of looking after their child.

This is very difficult and the Government have very difficult choices to make, but if you talk to social workers and academics, you find that this right is being compromised day by day. I know that the Conservative Party, in particular, is concerned to see that families are strong and integrated. I am sure that the Minister will tell me on this article that there are already strong protections in British legislation to ensure that the best interests of the child are maintained and their families are supported to prevent this happening. What is happening on the ground, however, is that because social workers wish to safeguard the children, and because the threshold of access to a social worker is so high, they are getting to see the family when it is in crisis, when things have got to a terrible pass and they think that the interest of the child lies in removing the child from this terrible situation.

If we applied this principle properly, we would be intervening earlier to support those families. We see great examples of that. For instance, the family drug and alcohol court, which is expanding across the country, is supporting parents to get them off drugs and alcohol so that they can keep their children.

A number of important protections for children are laid out here: access to education and so on. I will have a look at the Joint Committee on Human Rights report to see what is exempted here. There is lots of good legislation for children in this country, but when I look at what goes on on the continent in terms of security of tenure in housing or quality of professional care for vulnerable children, I fear that so often they do so much better. My prejudice is that we need this sort of thing.

I worry about the elective dictatorship. We get small groups of very wise and intelligent people leading this country from the way we work constitutionally, and the breadth of experience, the people who get left behind, those just managing families, get forgotten about in the drive to do one or other very good thing which eclipses every other consideration. Being as explicit as one can about the rights of children and the protection for families can be very helpful. We will come back to this, and I look forward to debating it further, but on that specific article, I should be grateful for reassurance as to how it will be protected in future.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, I know how concerned he is about the rights of children, but I wondered whether he had read the joint submission from the Children’s Rights Alliance for England and Together (Scottish Alliance for Children’s Rights), which argues forcefully and at length, with many details, and gives many examples of why they wish to have the fundamental charter retained. Why does he disagree with them and wishes it not to be?

[The Earl of Listowel]

I am sorry; it is late. I would like in principle to retain the charter. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is not part of British law, and the charter has been a means of channelling the principles of the UNCRC into British law. We need that. The minimum age of criminal responsibility in this country is 10 years old; we can lock up children of 10 years of age. Even in Turkey—with respect to Turkey—it is 16, and 14 around the continent. We are really harsh with our children and we need such protections.