Children and Social Work Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Debate between Marion Fellows and Stella Creasy

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th December 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Stella Creasy]

I support the core principles of the amendments that Labour Members have tabled this morning, and I recognise that some Government Members do share those principles; the difference is in how we achieve those outcomes. Let me be clear about the aspirations that I think we all share. They are, as I have already said: to treat all children in care as we would treat our own children, to do so in a fair and equitable manner, and to do so in a way that is possible to implement. The difference is in recognising how we get implementation right.

As the shadow Minister has said, it is the difference between having a minimum standard—a base below which we will allow nobody to fall—and recognising that there may be variation at a local level. The treatment of particular groups of care leavers, particularly young asylum seekers, is important, as is the recognition that there is a particular challenge when it comes to care leavers and financial management. It is right that we should seek to address those three core principles in a Bill such as this.

The amendments proposing a basic minimum standard are not intended to be restrictive; they are intended to help our young people know their rights. When dealing with care leavers in our casework, I think that we all recognise young people struggling to understand what will happen to them next. A national minimum standard is about being able to answer that question with certainty, without necessarily saying that the outcomes will therefore be the same universally, but recognising that there will be a basic standard and a basic principle about how we treat these young people. That does not mean that things cannot be personalised; it simply means that we can all be confident that every young vulnerable person is helped. As I have said before, just because someone turns 18 does not stop them being vulnerable; it simply means that they are moving into a new phase in their life. We must address that.

If the Minister is not minded to accept the amendments, he must tell us how he can have confidence that, across the country, those young children who we accept responsibility for through corporate parenting will get those services. I say that because I think that all of us have seen in our surgeries the consequences when there is not that support.

The shadow Minister talked about special educational needs. I think that all of us have dealt with cases of parents trying to argue for their children to have the rights that they should have. Even if there is a statement to that effect, it provides a basic standard for what that child should get. It does not mean that there is not then further work to be done about how things are enacted, but it does mean that the parents can be confident about what the child will receive. We are talking about the same principle here. It is about recognising that these young people need to know what will happen next. Having a national minimum standard would mean that we in this place could be confident that these policies will be implemented on the ground to a level that all of us would want as a starting point for those children.

On the second principle, particularly with regard to children who are asylum seekers, the discussion is a complicated and sensitive one to have in the UK right now. Other amendments, especially those that I have tabled—I am pleased that my hon. Friend the shadow Minister also has two—deal with how we would treat young children, the guidance and the principles to do with basic rights in the UN convention on the rights of the child. Those amendments continue in the same spirit, recognising that when we stand up as a country to support those young people, that support must be consistent with how we treat every young person.

That is the right thing to do morally, and legally internationally. I worry for the Minister—I am interested to hear his take on this—because if he has not included young asylum seekers in the principle, what are the legal ramifications, given that we treat them similarly under the age of 18? What might such a child have seen? Today we are having an emergency debate on Syria, where children will have seen horrors in their lifetime that many of us cannot even begin to contemplate.

How do such children end up here? One of the questions all of us have is about safe and legal routes. When children do end up here, however, and we take responsibility for them, in our hearts are we suggesting that at the age of 18 we stop caring about what happens to their outcomes? If we do not stop caring, we have to recognise that at the age of 18 they again need our help, just as we recognise that children born in the UK who come from troubled backgrounds might need our help past the age of 18. If children are to be excluded from the very provisions that we would like to see apply to other children we recognise as vulnerable, I ask Government Members to think about why they feel it is okay to discriminate on the basis of nationality—in essence, that is what excluding young refugees from the amendment will do.

The third issue is debt. Young people in care are disproportionately more likely to be in debt. Again, all of us recognise the myriad reasons for that, but the outcome is the same: a group of young people in our society for whom we have taken corporate responsibility have a particular problem, and one of the consequent problems manifests itself in how they deal with our benefits system. The amendments are designed to address that. All of us can see at first hand in our constituencies and when we deal with such children that they might not have backgrounds that give them the best understanding of budgeting. The hon. Member for a Scottish constituency, the name of which has completely slipped my mind—

[Marion Fellows]

Motherwell and Wishaw.

[Stella Creasy]

It was on the tip of my tongue. The hon. Lady put it very well when she argued that our benefits system, especially when dealing with young people, is designed on the principle that even if they do not live at home, they probably have a home relationship on which they are able to draw; that they can draw not only on financial support, but on support to be able to budget and to manage at that point in life when we start to get our own rent and bills. That group of young people do not have such support as a background, so we have to make specific arrangements for them. That is what the amendment would do.

As I said to the hon. Member for North Dorset, in places we do not do that, which costs us more as a result, so again I ask the Minister to do something, even if not in this legislation. I completely take the point of the other hon. Gentleman for—I am doing terribly this morning at remembering constituency names—