Child Safeguarding Practice Review and Relevant Agency (England) Regulations 2018

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Wednesday 9th May 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the protection of children is perhaps one of the most important things that we should be doing. We welcome the safeguarding practice panel; if noble Lords do not mind me saying so, what an inspired choice Edward Timpson is as its chair. His work on the Children and Families Act was second to none.

I want to raise a particular issue that I hope the Minister will address: self-employed tutors. Unlike tutors employed by agencies, they are not legally obliged to apply for a Disclosure and Barring Service, or DBS, check. Accountants, vets, even traffic wardens are required to have such checks, despite the fact that their jobs do not involve regular access to children, yet private tutors who regularly work and are involved with children do not. In a Commons Oral Question, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education said:

“It is ultimately the responsibility of parents to assure themselves about the suitability of any private tutor they might choose to employ before they engage them, for example by seeking and checking references, and asking to see a copy of any Disclosure and Barring Service certificate”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/3/18; col. 12.]


As it stands, self-employed tutors cannot apply for a DBS check. Instead, they can apply for a subject access request, containing similar information, for a fee of £10, but they are not legally obliged to do so. I hope that the Minister will use this opportunity to deal with this rather strange anomaly. Either we insist that all tutors, whether self-employed or employed by an agency, have the correct requirements or, as a second-best option, they can apply for the certification, as suggested by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing these important regulations. We recognise the paramount importance of child safeguarding, which should never be compromised, no matter the circumstances. We further recognise—in doing so, we are confident that we reflect public opinion—the need for a revamp of the system of serious case reviews following a number of deeply disturbing cases in recent years, compounded by the often inept handling of reviews into how such crimes were allowed to occur.

Many of those concerns were articulated during the passage through your Lordships’ House of the Children and Social Work Act and I do not intend to revisit them. Revised regulations and a new system of reviews was necessary and, in clearly outlining the requirements for such reviews at both local and national levels, these regulations perform an important function—no less so the requirements being placed on the relevant agencies to ensure the kind of joined-up action that was often absent in the past.

That said, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this is another incursion by central government into what is properly a local government responsibility, yet more resources are being found to establish yet another ministerial body—or are there? Just what resources, in the form of new money, will be made available is less than transparent. Yesterday, when these regulations were considered in another place, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Nadhim Zahawi MP, said:

“The funding should be sufficient to cover all elements of the arrangements. We do not expect the new arrangements to cost more than existing structures”.—[Official Report, Commons, First Delegated Legislation Committee, 8/5/18; col. 5.]


That suggests that the Government do not treat this serious matter seriously enough to commit to additional resources, should they be necessary. The existing system was not performing adequately, hence these regulations. To suggest that this revamp, and the appointment of a new body, will not add to costs is surely not realistic.

We know that the former Children’s Minister, Edward Timpson—he of the shoe shop family—will chair the new Child Safeguarding Review Practice Panel. I echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that, with his record, he is a man in whom we have some confidence to carry out the task effectively. He will bring experience and authority to the post and we wish him well. However, he will be a busy man because he was also appointed last month as chair of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. He will receive £500 a day as chair of the panel, and his members, £400 plus expenses. Those rates do not sound unreasonable but if I have a concern, it is over the number of times that the panel will be required to meet and the number of panel members that it will require. I suggest that the cost remains an unknown, but perhaps the Minister can give us the Government’s thinking on this and how much, in rounded figures, it is expected to cost. As I said, it is not realistic to think that establishing a new body will not involve additional costs.

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[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I am most grateful to the noble Lords for their comments and questions on these regulations. I can address some of the points raised. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, raised an important point about the role of tutors and how they should be checked. I will write to him on that, as it is a technical matter.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, raised several other points and I will try to address those. In terms of funding, it is important that the local areas have the flexibility to fund the arrangements that they design. The safeguarding partners should agree the level of funding secured from each partner, which should be equitable and proportionate, and the contributions from each relevant agency to support the local safeguarding arrangements. The funding should be sufficient to cover all elements of the arrangements. Any requirements for the national panel will be funded from the centre. We do not predict that there will be additional costs because we are hopeful that this will remove a lot of the overlap that there is in the system at the moment.

I am pleased that there is strong cross-party support for the appointment of Edward Timpson. He is very experienced in this area, but I take note of the noble Lord’s point about him being overstretched. The exclusion inquiry that he is looking into at the moment is a relatively short inquiry and should be completed within a few months, so I do not think that there will be significant overlap.

On costs, the fees and expenses of the members and chairs will be published and will be in line with the rates paid to other, similar expert panels.

The panel member that the noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred to is from an academy trust. We would also consider someone from a local authority who has experience at senior level. Both the Chief Social Worker and Mark Gurrey will bring that as well to the team.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

I accept the local authority involvement regarding those named, but I was particularly talking about local authority education, because there has been some concern expressed that education has been left out of the loop, as it were, in terms of those involved. For education to be introduced only in the form of what appears to be a businessperson from an academy trust—I do not know her experience beyond that—without anyone from the maintained sector is a concern. Can the Minister answer the question that I posed earlier, that the figure of five on the panel is just the opening number and that it can be—and probably will need to be—increased?