Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

I must advise the Committee—rather unusually—that, if this amendment is agreed to, I shall be unable to call Amendments 2 to 28A for reasons of pre-emption.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

I will speak to Amendments 6, 8, 11, 12, 13, 15, 19 and 20. I do not disagree at all with the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. Indeed, I welcome the fact that she has spelled out a lot of the responsibilities on local authorities which were not present in the original Clause 1.

Before speaking to my amendments I would like to place on record that my request at Second Reading that Committee should be delayed so that we had the opportunity to prepare properly for it, rather than trying to complete all the procedures during the Recess, was not honoured. It has been a nightmare trying to get things done without the expert briefings that we are normally accustomed to, as well as meetings with Ministers, and trying to deal entirely by email with the Public Bill Office. I sincerely hope that the usual channels will note this and that in future we shall not be expected to come so ill-prepared into such an important bit of legislation.

My concerns about these amendments are not to do with the corporate parenting principles but are all built around the word “must” in Clause 1. As my noble friend Lord Bichard would have said, if he had been here, the whole point of setting out corporate parenting principles explicitly is to make those responsibilities explicit and leave those most affected in no doubt as to what their responsibilities are. My concern about Clause 1 as currently represented is that words such as “have regard to” can equally be “disregard”—and we do not want any of these principles disregarded. Therefore, I hope very much that the Government will consider altering the words rather than waiting until Report before having a vote. That applies to Amendment 6. Amendments 8, 11, 12, 13 and 15 remove the word “to”, which again makes the language if anything more robust rather than leaving anything to disregard.

I would also like at this stage to introduce the problems faced by children in the criminal justice system. My noble friend Lord Laming produced a masterly report called In Care, Out of Trouble, which I referred to at Second Reading. The duty on local authorities and their responsibilities must include the children in the criminal justice system. My noble friend in his report points out that one of the problems of not having clear instructions to local authorities is that you have inconsistency. For example, it is laid down that a child who is going to be placed after release should have that location confirmed to them at least 10 days before release—but all too frequently that information does not reach the child until the day of release, which makes it impossible to plan for a child’s engagement with education, employment or other services.

Therefore, I am calling for an acceptance that corporate principles are laid out and that the language should be robust, so that there is absolutely no doubt in the mind of local authorities as to where their responsibilities lie.

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As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, explained, there is sometimes the difficulty of getting the child to know what the position was in time for the child to act. That difficulty should certainly be avoided at all costs. But it is difficult to place a responsibility on the local authority to reduce the criminalisation if it does not mean something like that. So I would be glad to know more about exactly how it might be expressed. Otherwise, a good number of these amendments are for consideration as part of the proper basis for corporate parenting.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, for raising that point because it informs what I was going to say about Amendment 9. I was going to explain what I meant, and that is the amendment on which to do it.

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with much of what has been said so far. I am looking at the end product—the child who will one day grow up to be a parent. We need to demonstrate all the skills necessary for that child to understand what parenting means. Perhaps all of us should become corporate parents as a way of making sure that, when young people grow up, they understand what parenting is. Many young people who go through sexual abuse and grooming misinterpret what love, understanding, nurturing and caring are about. So when we read every detail in these amendments, we should do everything possible to make sure that we get it right for the children because the end product is that one day they will become parents and grandparents.

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Moved by

[Lord Ramsbotham]

2: Clause 1, page 1, line 7, after “England” insert “and its relevant partners”

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[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, Amendment 2 is a probing amendment. After all the things that have been said about laying out too many details on what the responsibilities on local authorities are, I am conscious that by raising the question of relevant authorities I am also raising the spectre of spelling out what those relevant authorities may be. I am aware of the danger of being accused of teaching my grandmother to suck eggs but I plead that, in research carried out recently, it was discovered that only 17% of the community commissioning groups in this country realised that they had a responsibility for funding healthcare support for probation. Therefore, it is worthwhile considering whether the Bill should not include, at least in general terms, the partners whom the local authorities will need to consult and work with if they are going to achieve the aims set out in the corporate parenting list.

Who are they? They are children’s social care, mental health and health services commissioning bodies, the education services, the police and the criminal justice agencies. The purpose of my probing amendment is to find out how the Government intend to ensure the co-operation of other departments and agencies in the delivery of services for looked-after children. We look out at a silo-ridden world and one thing that has been pointed out in report after report on children’s services is the lack of consistency between local authorities, which therefore introduces a postcode lottery—which we cannot do. The aim of the Bill is to establish consistency and therefore I hope that, in spelling out the relevant partners in more detail, it may be possible to ensure that consistency by helping local authorities to set up a tick list, if you like, of who they ought to consult in looking after these children. I beg to move.

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[Lord Warner]

That certainly was not what he said.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. Many issues have come up during the course of the debate, not least those raised by the noble Lord, Lord Warner. I suspect that this subject will reoccur on Report and I hope very much that, unlike the period in the lead-up to Committee, it will be possible to have meetings with the Minister and his officials to discuss it. I suspect that at least the Local Government Association and local authorities will wish to be consulted on what actually appears in the Bill. So in the hope that that may happen—

[Lord Nash]

I am very happy to hold a meeting.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

I am most grateful to the Minister. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Ramsbotham]

9: Clause 1, page 1, line 10, after “interests,” insert “prevent the unnecessary criminalisation,”

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, this is where I can offer an explanation to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, about what I am seeking in terms of prevention. The report of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, was by no means the first to raise these concerns. What I am aiming at is not protection for children who commit serious offences, but protection for children in care whose minor offences would not attract police attention if they had been committed in a normal parental home. There is nothing new about this issue; it was the subject of a thematic inspection in 2012 by Ofsted and the Inspectorate of Probation, and was examined by the Justice Committee in another place in the same year. It was also the subject of a report by the Department for Education in 2013. Moreover, the National Police Chiefs Council identified this as a major problem and stated that every effort should be made to avoid the unnecessary criminalisation of children in care by making sure that the criminal justice system is not used for resolving issues that would ordinarily come under the umbrella of parenting.

The evidence produced by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, in his report about the importance of prevention through the operation of good parenting, whether corporate or natural, showed that the offending rate for looked-after children was six times higher than that for normal children, but that the rate of their movement into the criminal justice system was not inevitable, as was proved by some very good work undertaken in Surrey over four years which reduced the rate by 45%. That shows that it can be done through good joint working.

The Department for Education issued statutory guidance in 2015, which is generally sound, but the noble Lord, Lord Laming, has shown up once again that there is a lack of consistency—we come back to that vital word—in the way that the guidance is applied in local authorities up and down the country.

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[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, for these amendments —Amendment 9 regarding the unnecessary criminalisation of looked-after children and Amendments 14 and 28 concerning access to legal advice and representation for looked-after children. The first of the noble Lord’s amendments seeks to make it a requirement, linked to the principles, for local authorities and their relevant partners to prevent the unnecessary criminalisation of looked-after children. I understand why the amendment has been proposed and strongly agree that we must avoid children in care being unnecessarily criminalised. Local authorities should adopt a restorative approach wherever possible so that police intervention is viewed not as a first but a last resort. As noble Lords have said, children’s life chances can be badly affected by unnecessary involvement with the criminal justice system.

Existing guidance requires local authorities to have clear strategies in place to help protect and divert children from the justice system. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, in some areas the police, local authorities and children’s homes have worked very well together to ensure that restorative approaches are used wherever possible.

The framework of corporate parenting principles in the Bill already makes clear what it means for a local authority as a whole to act as a good parent. Good parents will not hesitate to safeguard their children from the risks of offending or involve the police unnecessarily. However, it is an important issue and we intend to cover it in the new statutory guidance that will underpin the principles. For instance, the guidance will stress the importance of co-operation and joint working between local authorities, the police, children’s homes and foster carers, and it will emphasise the importance of keeping a sense of proportion in relation to challenging behaviour.

The noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Warner, rightly raised a number of the very important issues highlighted by the Laming report. They will also be aware that Sir Martin Narey is currently carrying out a review of residential care which also looks at this issue in detail. In addition we have Charlie Taylor’s review of youth justice. All three of these reports and their findings will help and support us in developing guidance in this area and will give us a clear picture of other actions that we may need to take.

The noble Lord and the noble Baroness also proposed inserting a new corporate parenting principle to promote access to legal advice and representation for looked-after children. I agree that it is vital that we hear the voice of the child being cared for rather than simply treating them as part of an administrative process. Under the existing arrangements there are a number of adults who children in care can talk with and turn to. They include court-appointed guardians, their social worker and a named independent reviewing officer who will follow their case long term and can also advise the court.

Under the existing requirements, local authorities are required to make looked-after children aware of potential advocacy support to make representations or complaints, most significantly the advocacy services clause set out in Section 26A of the Children Act 1989, from which various pieces of guidance flow. An additional legislative clause is unlikely to impact further on either children’s or local authorities’ awareness. The associated statutory guidance will make clear that local authorities should consider how they can best listen to and hear from looked-after children and care leavers.

A number of noble Lords raised a range of issues relating to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. The majority of these children will continue to receive support under the Children Act 1989 if they have a legal right to remain. Once that right is exhausted, they then get accommodation, subsistence and other social care support under the Immigration Act until they leave the UK. The Department for Education has been working closely with the Home Office to ensure that children receive appropriate support. However, in the light of the detailed points raised by noble Lords raised today, I would be very happy to arrange a further meeting to find out what has been happening. Given the depth of our discussions today, that would be better than me attempting to respond, not very well, to their points today.

I hope that on that basis the noble Lord will be happy to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister, particularly for her closing remark because many noble Lords would welcome such a meeting. Although there has been mention of liaison between the Department for Education and the Home Office, it does not appear so in the legislation before us.

Once again I am very grateful to noble Lords who have spoken. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, was speaking, I was reminded of an inquiry I conducted into the unlawful killing of Jimmy Mubenga, an Angolan asylum seeker who died on an aircraft. One of the witnesses who came before us was the Immigration Services Commissioner. She told us that one of her problems was trying to get some form of control over the people who were allegedly advising asylum seekers on their legal rights. She was looking for a job, as it were. She is an official; she is there. It seems to me that if anyone is going to get a grip on this, she will do so as someone already in the system with a responsibility to the asylum seekers who might be involved.

I absolutely agree that something needs to be done to co-ordinate all these activities. How the prevention is going to be done is probably by picking up good practice from somewhere and applying it to other places. I mentioned the work that has been done in Surrey, but it is not alone. As the noble Lord, Lord Warner, knows, there are many good things going on in various parts of the country that could be adapted with advantage. However, I have another concern over the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. An extremely good report on this was produced by the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, which recommended that offenders should have their offending looked at at the age of 18 and that anything other than the most serious offence should be expunged so that they start with a clean slate. I have put forward a Private Member’s Bill and I hope to include that as priority number one.

I return to something the Minister said which gives me slight heebie-jeebies, which is that yet more statutory guidance is needed. I mentioned at Second Reading that there was concern over the number of Henry VIII clauses already in this Bill; we want to be very careful about adding yet more, not least in view of the remarks made previously by my noble and learned friend Lord Judge in the House. I hope that what comes out in the discussions that we will have between now and Report can lead to further consideration of these two very important issues and I look forward to taking part in them. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 9 withdrawn.