Adoption: Adoption Legislation Committee Reports

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Eccles]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to come immediately after our splendid chairman. Age before beauty, of course, as one of the lonely men on the committee, my goodness, it was a pleasure to serve under our chairman and to have such a riveting and exciting time studying a very difficult subject.

I will not follow in any detailed way what has been done, what the law is and what is now proposed. I would like to speculate a little on the relationship between Government and local government, and all the other agencies that are involved in the very complicated matter of care and permanent placements.

Clauses 1 to 3 of the Bill all do things that are entirely relevant to what we studied. There is a new duty, a change in the rules about how you look at matching on grounds of ethnicity, and in Clause 3 there is the headmaster’s stick behind the curtain, which is the possibility of directions. I have to admit to a personal dislike of any clause that has directions in it as there is no parliamentary procedure for appealing against the decision of a Secretary of State.

However, that may be—let us hope that Clause 3 never needs to be used—when thinking about these complex matters we need to remember quite a number of things. A lot of very expert people are involved in these complicated matters: not least, of course, the courts. Views about child psychology and the best interests of the child are a moving target. I was an economist at one time and, as noble Lords will know, no two economists agree. I am not sure that any two child psychiatrists entirely agree either. There is a very wide intellectual background to these matters and of course there are wide differences on the ground.

The demographics of Bradford are not the same as those of north Yorkshire and Hackney is very different from Southall. The divergences of circumstances on the ground—between local authorities and between individual circumstances—are enormous. As the chairman has already said, we found—and the evidence completely supported this—that the behaviour within the existing system is much more important than the probably helpful tweaks that can be given to it in legislation. This issue of the behaviour within the existing system will stay with us. That is why I am very interested in how the Government approach their relationships with local authorities in a matter such as this.

Of course the financial relationship does not help. The fact that local authorities are responsible for such a small part of their own funding does not help at all. I do not want to draw parallels with the governance of the eurozone and the monetary problems that arise from that, but there are parallels. If you split these responsibilities in a quite draconian way, it does not help and it contributes to the public not turning out in very large numbers in local government elections and coming to think of their elected representatives as delegates—a very non-Burkean position. Centralisation makes the question of the postcode lottery more difficult. Dealing with children in care in Kent will remain a very different matter from dealing with children in care in Northumberland or—again—Hackney.

In pursuing these difficult judgments about whether a child should be taken into care, and how quickly a decision should be made about the best possible placement, when to go to court and so on, we need throughout the system—in the department, in local authorities, among elected members and in social services departments—confidence, professional certainty and an acceptance that now and again the judgments that are reached in pursuit of minimising delay will have risks to them, and occasionally will turn out not to be as successful as we would have hoped.

The Government’s initial response to our December and March efforts was pretty general. I have read it carefully and I am not filled with certainty that everybody in the system knows how to handle these matters in the best possible way. I suppose that that is inevitable. Therefore, the question becomes whether the difficulties are properly recognised, and whether there is a dialogue about them and an acceptance that we have to get on with thinking about this very carefully, even if we are somewhat uncertain about the right answer. Otherwise, uncertainty will have to be rationalised out and so will become indifference and certainly delay. Therefore the central issue is how the Government intend, in their relationship with local authorities, to impart a degree of confidence that will lead to a degree of certainty and a willingness to make decisions in a timely fashion. That goes right through all the people involved in the system, including the adoption agencies and all the other people who contribute to the very important wish of all of us to see a greater number of successful adoptions.

The challenge is to ensure that when John Humphrys gets into a dialogue on a problem that has arisen—and problems will arise—everybody in the system, when they are interviewed, can say, “We thought this through together, we are all in it together and not one of us is trying to make sure that somebody else carries the blame”.