Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what meetings Ministers in his Department have had on the outsourcing of local authority children's services since May 2010.

Through its Children's Social Care Innovation Programme the Government is supporting local authorities to take new approaches to maximise the capacity and skills brought to bear in improving services for the most vulnerable children. Part of that work involves giving local authorities greater freedom to test new delivery models and harness external ideas and expertise by allowing them to delegate children's social care functions to external providers.

Ministers have regular internal and external meetings to discuss this policy in particular and approaches to delivering children's social care more widely.