Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Lucy Powell

Tuesday 10th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The Government have put forward a comprehensive package of support, as we heard from the Secretary of State, for both individuals and businesses. The self-employed income support scheme has also been extended. The support package is not only about the welfare system, which has had an additional £9 billion put into it to help people, but about the bounce back loans, the tax deferrals and the rental support, which are all important parts of it, as well as mortgage holidays and other business support grants through local government.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Today’s unemployment figures are a sobering reminder of the scale and pace of the economic crisis now upon us. It is becoming increasingly clear that, despite the Government’s initial early action, their slowness and constant indecision are making the jobs crisis worse. Will they now get ahead of the curve, as France, Germany and Spain have done, not only to protect our key industries such as aerospace and automotive, but to bring forward an ambitious plan for their green renewal at a scale and pace to match the crisis? As we are seeing at Rolls-Royce and elsewhere, once decent jobs go, they are gone for good; and communities across the north and midlands can ill afford to lose them.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The hon. Lady makes an important point about the labour market statistics released this morning. The Government are committed to helping the most vulnerable, as was demonstrated with the £2 billion kickstart scheme for young people, who have in many ways been heavily impacted by the challenge of covid. She will see from this Government a green industrial strategy. As the Secretary of State has already set out—judge us by what we do—36% of the world’s offshore energy is produced by this country, and we will go much further.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Lucy Powell

Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

4. What recent discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Transport on the potential benefits of High Speed 2 to businesses in the north.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Nadhim Zahawi)]

The independent Oakervee review will advise the Government on High Speed 2, including potential business benefits and how it should proceed. The hon. Lady will understand that I would not want to prejudice those findings.

[Lucy Powell]

I thank the Minister for that reply, but six regional heads of the CBI say that High Speed 2 should be built in full and the Northern Powerhouse Partnership recently published its excellent independent review saying the same, arguing that only HS2 can really rebalance our economy. Will the Secretary of State, as the business representative at the Cabinet table, advocate for business in the north?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The hon. Lady mentions the CBI. Both the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, and the Mayor of Birmingham, Andy Street, who sits on the panel conducting the review, have said it is important that we kick the tyres on value for money, but it is also important to make such representations to ensure that the committee gets a full view of the business benefits of HS2.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Lucy Powell

Monday 29th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I do, indeed, agree with my right hon. Friend. Between 2016 and 2020, we are spending almost £500 million on a range of music and creative arts programmes.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Further to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), does the Minister not accept that the emphasis on testing only English and maths—not just in primary school, but throughout—is having a detrimental effect on experiential learning, project learning and creating people with a lust for learning, not those who can just regurgitate facts?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

No teacher or school leader would disagree about the lust for learning and making learning fun, but testing is the building block that allows us to make the investment and have the focus necessary to produce the extraordinary results that we are producing for children and families up and down the country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Lucy Powell

Monday 10th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to my predecessor for that question. I think I will leave it to the Daily Mail to decide what it does. Suffice it to say that the number of non-domestic providers has remained stable.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am sure the Minister can guess what I am going to ask about.

Among early years provision, the jewel in the crown for social mobility is our maintained nursery schools. The Minister will know from the conversations that we had before the summer that the supplementary funding that they receive from the Government is due to run out before the comprehensive spending review, so does he have an update for the House on what he and the Treasury are doing to ensure that our maintained nursery schools have a secure future beyond next year?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. Maintained nurseries offer a valuable service to communities such as hers and others around the country, and we are conscious of the value that they provide. Both I and the Secretary of State have visited a number of them. Decisions about the future funding of maintained provision will be taken at the spending review, but I repeat that it would be premature for local authorities to make decisions about the future of their maintained nurseries before seeing the spending review outcomes.

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

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Lucy Powell

Tuesday 8th May 2018 General Committees

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I shall certainly take the hon. Lady’s point away. In terms of funding and non-participation, which hon. Members have mentioned several times, safeguarding partners and agencies must comply with the arrangements. Public bodies may be held to account if necessary through legislation, which allows the Secretary of State to take action, so there is a lever that applies in terms of compelling safeguarding partners and agencies.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister is being incredibly generous, and we are hammering a similar point, but can he say a little more about the lever that requires other agencies to come to the table? As has been alluded to, often the buck stops with the local authorities. They are the ones inspected and the ones with the statutory requirement. If other partners do not want to come to the table, how can we ensure that they do so and with some cash of their own?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I hope to address that in the remainder of my opening remarks, but the hon. Lady makes a very important point, and there is a statutory requirement on the safeguarding partners and agencies listed in the regulations to participate.

The agencies selected must have functions relating to children, and safeguarding partners should consult with relevant agencies as they set up their arrangements and, for clarity and transparency, include a list of those agencies in their published arrangements. That list can change over time, as considered appropriate locally. Duties apply only to agencies included in local arrangements; the list in the regulations is for the purpose of selection only. Safeguarding partners may also, by mutual agreement, work with other bodies or persons not included in the regulations, although they will not be bound by the same duties—I think the hon. Lady was referring to this—as those listed in the regulations.

The Government consulted on the regulations and the associated statutory guidance, “Working Together to Safeguard Children”, for around 10 weeks towards the end of last year. More than 700 written responses were received. Regional consultation events were also held, attracting some 450 people from a wide range of organisations. I very much welcome the contributions made and the valuable points raised. As indicated in the published Government response, consultees were largely positive about the proposals in the regulations and guidance. However, some changes in clarification were made to the regulations following the consultation, and rightly so in my view. We are in the process of reviewing the related statutory guidance, “Working Together to Safeguard Children”, taking into account comments made during the consultation.

As was set out in the Children and Social Work Act 2017 (Commencement No. 4 and Transitional and Saving Provisions) Regulations 2018, which were made on 18 April, the new arrangements are due to begin from 29 June 2018. On that date, the new panel will begin operations, and the transitional period from the current system of local safeguarding children’s boards and serious case reviews to the new multi-agency arrangements and local reviews will commence. Local areas will have 12 months to publish their new arrangements, including their selected relevant agencies, and a further three months to implement them. Subject to the successful passage of the regulations before the Committee, we intend to publish the final version of the statutory guidance within the next few weeks. That will support the new arrangements and complement these regulations. Public bodies that fail to comply with their obligations will be held to account in a variety of ways. That could include a letter from the relevant Department or, ultimately, the Secretary of State.

In conclusion, I am extremely grateful to the very wide range of people, including Members of this House, who have been involved in moving us towards this important stage in our ambition to improve the protection of children across the country. These reforms, of which these regulations are a critical part, will support stronger but more flexible joint working arrangements, as well as promoting better and more timely learning from reviews, both locally and nationally. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The regulations underpin the important safeguarding changes set out in the Children and Social Work Act 2017. The regulations are essential to drive the operation of the joint working arrangements. They will enable safeguarding departments to identify whom to work with to support the safeguarding of children in their area, and give force to those decisions.

The new Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel will be a high-profile, high-impact body, with powers independent of Government to drive improvements in the safeguarding of children. The new system of local and national child safeguarding practice reviews will enable the clear identification of any improvements that should be made to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. National reviews will be able to identify improvements on a national and local basis. The regulations support the proper functioning of those changes.

I am grateful to hon. Members for their comments and questions on the regulations. I will attempt to address them all in the few minutes remaining. The hon. Member for South Shields mentioned the possibility that the Secretary of State could override a panel’s decision. I assure her that that is not possible. The panel’s decisions are entirely its own.

A number of colleagues mentioned the independence of the new panel. The panel will ultimately be accountable to the Secretary of State, but how it will function is key to its independence. The panel will have sole responsibility for deciding which cases to review, the appointment of reviewers for national reviews, and the publication of such reviews. The Secretary of State will not have the power to direct the panel to initiate or publish reviews. The panel will be free to make recommendations on such matters relating to its areas of work, as it sees fit. Recommendations may be for the safeguarding of partners as well as for others, including Government and national or local bodies.

Reviews will focus on identifying any improvements that should be made to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, not on apportioning blame to individuals. The hon. Member for Wigan has spoken up passionately against the blame culture. Ensuring that we respect the independence of the panel is critical to its credibility and success. That will enable reviews of serious cases to lead to meaningful and enduring improvements to child safeguarding policy and practice across the country, which I know interests many colleagues.

The hon. Member for Stockton North was pressing for a better understanding of where the panel members come from and their expertise. Let me share that information with him. As I said, the panel will have the skills and experience to make sound judgments on complex situations that affect the lives of children. To ensure that the panel is independent, impartial and credible, members have not been appointed as representatives of their particular profession, employer or interest group. However, the experience and skills they bring in relation to safeguarding children or other areas will be vital to the panel’s success and credibility. To achieve that, it is made up of people who have direct experience of working to improve the life chances of children, which I think the hon. Member for Wigan mentioned. It includes individuals from local authorities, police and health.

Let me try to reassure the hon. Member for Stockton North by quoting some of the names of people who have joined the panel: Mark Gurrey, the chair of the South Gloucestershire improvement board, and the chair of the Devon and Wiltshire local safeguarding children boards; Professor Peter Sidebotham, associate professor in child health at Warwick Medical School and consultant paediatrician at South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust; Dr Susan Tranter, chief executive and accounting officer of Edmonton Academy Trust; Sarah Elliott, non-executive director at Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust and LSCB chair for Poole and Dorset; and Dale Simon, a qualified barrister and the former director of public accountability and inclusion at the Crown Prosecution Service.

I want to press the point that this process is about learning, not blame. Learning must be at the heart of all reviews, which should seek to prevent or reduce the risk of recurrence of similar incidents. Reviews should focus on identifying improvements to be made to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, not apportioning blame to individual practitioners or organisations. Other processes are in place to manage accountability issues. This process is not for that; it is about understanding how we can improve the system for those children.

[Lucy Powell]

I am sorry to delay the Committee. I appreciate what the Minister is saying by way of reassurance, but he will be aware that self-reflective practice is a particularly difficult and pertinent issue in the NHS at the moment, and there is an overlap with children’s social services. Given the recent case of the doctor who was dismissed for having engaged in self-reflective practice, will he give some reassurance to practitioners on the ground that such practice will be at the heart of the process and people should feel able to come forward and admit mistakes in the context of learning and reflecting, rather than it being an opportunity for them to be dismissed by the professional bodies?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The hon. Lady articulates that beautifully. She is absolutely right, and I want to drive this point home: the process is not about apportioning blame but about learning. Other structures are available to look at how people have behaved. People should be able to come forward in the knowledge that this is not about reports that apportion blame for their involvement in any case.

On involvement and the voice of children and families in reviews, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Wigan, Edward Timpson and his panel are thinking carefully about how to ensure they hear the voices and reflect on the experiences of children and families in the reviews. That requires careful consideration to ensure that their vital contribution is meaningful rather than tokenistic. The panel’s membership includes several people with specific expertise relating to children.

The shadow Minister mentioned fees for the panel. The fees will be published as soon as possible on gov.uk on the pages covering public appointments and will be in line with those covering similar appointments.

On how we share best practice and learning and how we ensure that lessons are shared and implemented—that is ultimately what the process is about—the panel includes a representative from the new What Works centre for children’s social care, and that person will be a full panel member with the added responsibility of acting as a bridge between the panel and the What Works centre. The centre will collate findings from reviews, identify themes and disseminate lessons about what works in children’s services. The panel will also benefit from the centre’s overview of what lessons are already being learned so that, when it comes to deciding whether a national review is necessary, the panel can consider what current learning exists and how that is being implemented.

The hon. Member for Stockton North is clearly concerned about participation. The duty to co-operate and participate in safeguarding arrangements, which is set out in statutory guidance, in “Working Together” and in legislation, is in place. It will be up to the inspectorate to monitor the way in which safeguarding partners participate in multi-agency arrangements. The levers are there to push for full participation.

I have taken up far too much of your valuable time, Mr Robertson. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Child Safeguarding Practice Review and Relevant Agency (England) Regulations 2018.