Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Wills Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, there are many reasons to be concerned by the content of the gracious Address this year but this Bill is not one of them. The Minister set out a compelling case for why it is necessary and important, and I join all noble Lords who have already spoken in welcoming its intention to improve the position of the most vulnerable young people in our society. I will focus my remarks on the parts of the Bill that concern looked-after children and care leavers. In doing so, I draw your Lordships’ attention to my entry in the register of interests.

The Bill’s intentions may be good but delivering on them will be more difficult. New standards for local authorities are an important start, but no more than that. The individual circumstances of each young person must be considered if real progress is to be made. It is significant whether a child is taken into care when they are three years old or 11 years old, and whether they are taken into care because their parents have died or because they have been abused or neglected. Devising the support that is needed will therefore require a high degree of personalisation to the individual, and public services have historically found this difficult to deliver. The instructive remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, on personal advisers, indicated the practical challenges of doing this. There is a lengthy, comprehensive and excellent document, Principles of Care, produced by the Who Cares? Trust, a leading charity in this field, which further demonstrates the extent of the challenges. I recommend it to all who have not yet read it.

Adequate data on outcomes will be crucial in devising effective strategies, and that is simply not there at the moment. For example, it is known that 5% of care leavers are in higher education at the age of 19, but we do not know how many of those go on to graduate; nor do we know how many care leavers enter higher education later in life. Yet these data are important if we are to assess the effectiveness of support for these young people. So I hope the Minister can reassure your Lordships’ House that renewed efforts will be made in this area—for example, by requiring local authorities to keep in touch with their care leavers until they are at least 25, so that better data can be compiled about their outcomes. While the aim of extending support to the age of 25 is very welcome and long overdue, as others have said, it must be adequately funded, and I hope that the Minister can reassure your Lordships about this.

In many areas, the Government could be more ambitious in their aims for children in care and care leavers. For example, as my noble friend Lady Hughes said, the Bill should not require a young person to request a personal adviser—rather, the onus should be on the local authority to provide one. All care leavers with a personal adviser should have a full needs assessment to ensure that they receive all the support they need. A young person may seek help from their local authority for a small problem, which can easily be resolved, but may also have more complex problems that only a full needs assessment will identify.

Innovation can be crucial to the improvement of public service delivery, but it should not be at the expense of appropriate safeguards for those it is designed to help. While I understand the Government’s intentions in promoting new ways of working, as currently drafted the Bill does not offer adequate protections for those young people against failures in innovation. I recognise what the Minister said in his opening remarks and very much welcome it, but I hope that he will look further at this and, for example, be prepared to introduce new protections, such as new scrutiny arrangements that are fully independent and transparent, as well as perhaps a duty on both the local authority and Secretary of State to consult children in care and care leavers when a local authority applies for an exemption from the requirements of social care legislation.

The Bill is missing an opportunity to introduce one crucial protection that could act as an insurance against innovation and service delivery failing the young people they are designed to help. When the Prime Minister announced at the end of last year new plans for the takeover of poorly performing children’s services, he highlighted that one of the “sharper triggers” for this,

“could include complaints from whistle-blowers”.

Quite so. But whistleblowers in local authorities still lack some crucial protections that could encourage them to make such public interest disclosures. For example, during the passage of the small business Bill and the Enterprise Bill, I repeatedly urged Ministers to extend whistleblowing protection towards job applicants—protection against the informal blacklisting of whistleblowers. The Government eventually recognised the need to do this, but only in respect of workers in the National Health Service. This was welcome and it has now been put on the statute book, but they so far refuse to implement such protections for anyone else. I hope the Minister will take that thought away and take this rare legislative opportunity to extend such whistleblowing protections to those working in local authorities in general and children’s services in particular. These protections and the encouragement they will give to whistleblowers could be critically important in delivering the Minister’s stated aim during the debate on the gracious Speech of promoting,

“more effective learning at national level from incidences of serious harm”.

I want to express my concerns, following others, about the Bill’s reliance on secondary legislation. It is easy to understand why Governments do this—I have been a Minister and, I am afraid, did it myself on several occasions—and everyone recognises the disruption to government business caused by the EU referendum. However, none of this is ever an excuse. As many noble Lords on all sides of the House have pointed out repeatedly in recent months, it denies Parliament the opportunity for proper scrutiny and the improvement of legislation. I support the remarks of my noble friend on the Front Bench and those of the noble Lord, Lord Lang, just now.

I am sure that the Minister will have noticed the good will towards this Bill from all sides of the House and a desire to work with the Government to ensure that this important Bill is as good as it possibly can be. He will have gathered from all the speeches preceding mine and the distinguished list of speakers following me that a great range of wisdom and experience is available to him in doing this, in this House. But your Lordships’ House can do this job only if the Government do their job by providing full details of legislation in a timely manner. I hope the Minister will make good on his commitment to put as much information as possible before your Lordships’ House so that this legislation can be adequately scrutinised and improved were necessary. Despite these caveats, I welcome the Bill and am sure that it will have a successful passage through the House.