Children and Young Persons

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I declare two interests: first, that in the register; and secondly, given that these regulations go back to 2002, I think that, for the entire time, I was either the shadow Children’s Minister or the Children’s Minister and responsible for making some of these regulations. I am doubly interested in them today.

I am not going to vote against these regulations, but this is the opportunity for some serious questions to be answered. It is unfortunate that, these regulations having been laid before Parliament on 23 April, they came into effect on 24 April. Normal conventions about the 21-day rule simply did not happen, and this is the first time that this House has had the opportunity to scrutinise what are very important regulations.

There are serious question marks, as the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) mentioned, about the consultation that went into this. The Children’s Commissioner was not consulted, and she has made further comments today to say that she has serious concerns about this. The British Association of Social Workers was not consulted. The Association of Directors of Children’s Services was not consulted. The Local Government Association was not consulted. Apparently not even Ofsted was consulted before these regulations became a fait accompli.

There is also the question mark about why the regulations were—

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

rose—

[Tim Loughton]

I will not give way because we are short of time. I am sure the hon. Lady will get in later.

There are also question marks about why we had to do this in England but apparently similar moves have not been planned in Scotland or Wales. The Minister might want to comment on that. It would be useful to know what input went into these regulations and why they were chosen to be relaxed or extended in the way they were.

I am not against emergency legislation in these unprecedented circumstances. We are absolutely going to have to adapt across the board; we have become used to that. But this is a particularly sensitive area of policy dealing with some of our most vulnerable children, who are not in a position to provide the challenge and scrutiny that would be readily available in other areas. We have heard, through the commencement of the Domestic Abuse Bill, that there has been a spike in domestic abuse. We have heard from the NSPCC and others about an increase in reporting of suspected child abuse. It is when children are more vulnerable that we need to make sure that the checks and balances are absolutely there and working. There are also the fears about the impact of county lines gangs using the pandemic as a recruitment tool.

So across a whole range of areas, we should be concerned that the service is there to do what it desperately needs to do, particularly at this time. If we look through these regulations, we see that too often the phrases “as soon as is reasonably practicable” and “best endeavours” come up, covering a multitude of sins.

I just want to know the thinking behind the introduction of these regulations. Was it because we were expecting a high incidence of social worker absences? We have had seven weeks of these regulations in practice, so the Minister might be able to give us some examples of what has happened over that time. We need to know how the Government are monitoring this. Was it a capacity issue that led to the regulations? What are the current vacancy rates? Was it a reprioritisation issue, and if so, on the basis of what risk assessment? What has the reprioritisation of those social worker resources, and so on, actually gone to? As a result of what has happened, how many new child vulnerability hotspots are springing up, particularly for the 85% of vulnerable children who have not been in school, as the Chairman of the Education Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), has pointed out? That was a really useful way of putting them on the radar; teachers were often the early warning sign that something was going wrong at home on a safeguarding issue. They could then pass that information on to social workers and others.

I want to touch briefly on the 10 areas. First, on section 28 and the regulations about visits—which I think I overhauled back in 2010—these are now to take place “as soon as is reasonably practicable”. I am not going to delude myself that it all was working perfectly before. The purpose of the Munro review reforms, which were brought in from 2010, was to get away from some of the arbitrary timescales and from being ruled just by a rulebook, rather than by the expertise of experienced and well trained social workers as well. With only a small number of children in school, those social worker visits are even more important, so if they are not happening practically, why not? Is this a resource issue? Are they happening virtually, and are those virtual visits effective? How are social workers teaming up with teachers trying to teach remotely, with the police and with others to ensure that they are monitoring those children in households with a safeguarding question mark particularly closely?

Secondly, the six-monthly independent review of childcare is important, but that is usually down to the independent reviewing officers. What are the IROs actually doing at the moment? Why can they not carry on as before? Thirdly, I am particularly concerned about adoption panels. Adoption was one of the big campaigns of the coalition Government, and I am proud of my part in getting adoptions up to a peak of 5,360 in 2015. However, adoptions went back down again last year and we are now back down almost to the levels before we started the overhaul of adoption regulations, at around 3,500, so we need more adopters to come forward. We need more children to be adopted. Who is doing that important work in the absence of adoption panels? If social workers are too busy doing things elsewhere, or if there are not enough of them because of the pandemic, who is approving those adopters to come forward? Does the Minister fear that we are going to see a further big decrease in the amount of adoptions happening? How many prospective adopters are coming forward but are unable to be processed and trained? Who is doing the training to ensure that they can take on those really important roles as adoptive parents?

The same goes for fostering panels. It is likely that we will see a big surge in people coming forward to offer foster placements, given the likely job losses that will come out of the pandemic. That is a fact of life in recessions. We need to ensure that local authorities are up and running and able to take on those foster placements and to train people and assess them properly to ensure that they are suitable to take on those children who desperately need a home.

Another area I am really concerned about is the dropping of senior officer approval for out-of-care placement. This has been a scandal for too many years. Over half of children are placed out of their area, against all the regulations. It makes it so much more difficult to look at their progress when we have to monitor them from afar, and they are often placed in cheap property in coastal resorts, particularly on the Kent coast. That has been a case in point. It is really important that when a child is placed out of area, it is as a result of proper scrutiny and a decision made at director level. That is a reform that I brought in. I am really concerned about who is now going to be responsible for that.

Skipping through a few of the other points, senior officer approval for the really important fostering for adoption placements has also been dropped.

I am also concerned about the dropping of Ofsted inspection frequencies, and in any case it seems as though Ofsted will not be doing any inspections until next year. That is really worrying. We need Ofsted inspections for new listings—new care homes—where we desperately need that capacity. We need to prioritise them looking at homes that are deemed to require improvement or that are inadequate to make sure they are not continuing to offer a poor service or that they have improved and therefore can take on more children again. We need to do that because we have serious capacity problem.

I understand the suspicion of others that this is a back-door measure to complete the work from the 2016 Bill. I led a delegation of very experienced noble Lords to see the then Secretary of State, Justine Greening—it was a large part of the reason the regulations were dropped, I am glad to say—so I do not want them reintroduced through this route, and I would like to hear it from the Minister that the measures are only temporary and will not be extended beyond September other than in exceptional circumstances. I would like her to show how they are being monitored where that is actually not required at the moment.

I repeat my invitation to the Minister. The all-party group on children, which I chair, is meeting the children’s charities and others in July to assess how children are faring during the coronavirus pandemic, and it would be great if she could come and give an account of why the regulations are still required and how they are impacting on children. I understand why they were necessary; I do not understand why they were introduced in the way they were. We would all understand better if we had an account of the experience during the seven weeks they have been in operation and some guarantees that the welfare of some of our most vulnerable children is not being compromised and will not be compromised for a week longer than it needs to under the current conditions.

[Several hon. Members rose—]