Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O’Neill of Bexley (Con)]

My Lords, as your Lordships will know from my register of interests, I am currently the leader of the London Borough of Bexley. That means I have an involvement with both the Local Government Association and London Councils. What my entry does not say that I am now the longest-serving leader of the London Borough of Bexley and that, before I was leader, I was the first cabinet member for children’s services in our borough.

Your Lordships might ask why that is important. Over that period, during which we were the first authority in London and only the second to Leeds in the country—as the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, will attest—to achieve two outstanding ILACS Ofsted inspections. We also have a very good reputation for our local schools, which include four grammar schools, and we take in many young people from neighbouring Labour boroughs whose parents aspire to a better education for their young people. In this contribution, I will focus my comments on the children’s social care aspects of the proposed Bill.

Over the years, I have had the absolute pleasure to work with some fantastic local authority officers, including some superb directors of children’s services, or deputy directors who have gone on to become directors. I will not name them, to save their blushes, but they will know who they are. These are the people we all trust to make the right decisions, on a daily basis, to keep our young people safe and keep families together, if possible—but, if that is not possible, to ensure that the children who come into our care are prepared for the future. They are statutorily responsible and, if anything goes wrong, they are often held to account for the decisions taken.

Over the last few weeks, I have had exchanges with a number of senior practitioners whom I respect, and they are really concerned about the consequences of some aspects of the Bill. I know my noble friend Lady Barran has had similar conversations. So, my contribution to this debate will probably be very different from many others, as I have first-hand experience of seeing for myself the passion these professionals have for our children in our borough, to keep them safe, as well as having aspirations that they become successful, independent young people. They also have to forecast and take ownership of budgets, often with little control of implications. I am sure that some Members will be interested to know that you can have a young person move into the borough for whom you need to find care that can cost as much as a room in the Savoy for a week.

The conversations we have had suggest that there are some good aspects to the Bill, some of which will reinforce the good practice already taking place in some areas, or plug some of the gaps in current legislation, but fundamentally support the principle of meeting children’s and families’ needs, as they emerge, at the earliest possible time. But there are some major concerns about other aspects of these proposals. I know that we will get to the detail when we get further into the amendments, but some of the main concerns are that some of the proposals are unfunded.

The Josh MacAlister review said that £2 billion was required to implement the reforms in his care review. There is currently £290 million, and that has been agreed for only one year. This shows just how far away we are from what is required and what has been given to local authorities. Most of this will have to be funded from already tight local authority budgets that have become even tighter as a result of the Government’s national insurance contribution increase. Mandating that all child protection functions be held within multiagency teams marks a major shift from the current practice. While the intent is to foster stronger collaboration and clearer accountability, professional bodies and academics have warned of a number of potential unintended consequences if the model is implemented without careful safeguards. One of those consequences is budgets and, of course, in addition to actually determining future funding for social care for both adults and children should be, there is real concern about cost shunting, especially given that there are already suggestions of cuts to safeguarding budgets by local police and health communities.

There have been 10 pathfinders, but, as has been said, the key findings from those pilots have not been published and, as you would expect, the word on the street is that there have been issues with those pathfinders. Surely the sensible thing is to share that information and consider the findings before agreeing this Bill.

The intention might be to have clearer decision-making, improved information sharing, and unified threshold application, but the unintended consequences could be: a dilution of professional expertise; confusion over legal accountability; weakened local authority leadership; loss of focus on early help and prevention; operational bottlenecks and inflexibility; undermining universal services’ safeguarding role; implementation disruption; inconsistent models; and legal and human rights risks.

I know I come at this from a different perspective from many—but not all—in this Chamber, but I know that none of us would want to see young people being put at risk from ill-thought-out legislation.

I am sure that many noble Lords—this has been referred to—saw the letter in the Times yesterday from Eileen Munro, a very respected person in the field. When such people say that they are concerned about some aspects of the Bill, they deserve to be listened to, and we need to respect what they have to say. I hope the Minister will do so.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to the proposed new clause and to support, in particular, subsections (1)(a) and (1)(c). As the noble Lord, Lord Meston, pointed out, it contains the key word “improve”. One of the purposes of a purpose clause is to set out very clearly for the courts how legislation should be applied and to what end it is achieved. It will be a matter of debate—I am sure the debate already happened at Second Reading—whether measures in here will improve things: that is a matter for debate. But if we have this, I hope that my noble friend Lady Barran will put it to a vote on Report, so that all the House in its conscience, when it is determining what parts of the legislation we retain, change or drop entirely, comes back to the central purpose: what is this doing to improve the outcomes for children?

I say to my noble friend Lord Balfe that the Title of the Bill should really be “Some Children’s Wellbeing”, because clearly it does address well-being for some children. I suppose I am sharing my frustration—not that I am challenging the guidance of the clerks, although we can have a debate about it—that the scope of the Bill is actually pretty narrow in considering how to improve the well-being of children. I would hope that proposed new subsection (1)(a) would allow us to consider further matters which are not addressed in this Bill about the well-being of all children, which we are here to consider.

I do not intend to make a Second Reading speech—far from it—but there are undoubtedly omissions in the Bill about things such as child maintenance, which would certainly contribute to powers that have already been passed by Parliament but have not yet been commenced by Governments. I say “Governments” deliberately because I am conscious that applies not just to this Government. Those powers could be commenced by adding a clause to this Bill, but it is not within its scope at the moment.