The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 89, 90 and 90A which seek to amend Clause 8. Before I do so it may be helpful if I take a moment to set out the intention behind Clause 8. It seeks to improve decision-making about child placements and to improve the information that is put before courts in care proceedings. It is about making sure that children’s long term-needs are at the forefront of decision-makers’ minds when significant decisions are made about where the child should live. Under current legislation, when deciding whether to make a care order, courts must consider the local authority’s long-term plan for the upbringing of a child. Clause 8 asks courts, when doing this, to consider the individual needs of the child now and, crucially, in the future, particularly in the light of any abuse or neglect they have experienced, and to consider how well the proposed care placement will meet those needs. The intention is to ensure that children receive placements which will meet their needs throughout their childhood.
I turn to Amendment 89, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Watson of Invergowrie and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. Every child deserves a loving and stable family. For those children who cannot live with their birth parents, it is vital that we find them permanent new homes as quickly as possible. Often, the best place will be with kinship carers or foster carers, and that is why we remain committed to improving those routes to permanence. The Government are pro adoption because it is a strong, permanent option for many children which provides them with the support and care they need throughout their lives. However, we also support other forms of permanence. Indeed, the Bill includes measures to improve educational support for children who leave care through a special guardianship order or child arrangements order, and the clause we are discussing will improve decision-making for all permanent options, which I think we would all agree is a good thing.
I recognise the intention behind the amendment, which is to ensure that all placement orders are given equal consideration. However, the amendment would duplicate wording that is already set out elsewhere, in the Children Act 1989. Section 22C of the 1989 Act and accompanying statutory guidance sets out clearly how looked-after children are to be accommodated by local authorities. This includes placements with family members, foster placements and placements in children’s homes. We have no evidence that local authorities and courts are not clear about what placement options they need to consider during care proceedings, so the amendment would add nothing to the current legislation.
Amendment 90, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, proposes additional wording for Clause 8 to ensure that courts take into account the wishes and feelings of the child when deciding whether to make a care order. I am sure that no one questions the need for the child’s voice to be heard by the court charged with making important decisions about them. It is absolutely crucial that a child’s wishes and feelings should play a significant role in any decision-making about their upbringing. However, I want to reassure the noble Baroness and others that this principle is already captured in existing legislation.
On the point raised by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, Section 22F of the 1989 Act states that in making any decision in relation to the child, the local authority should give due consideration to the child’s wishes and feelings, having regard to that child’s age and understanding.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
I apologise to the Minister, but that is in Part 3 of the Bill, which deals with the accommodation of children who are not children in care. The point about the amendment is that this provision should be included where the parent is also the local authority. The local authority has parental responsibility under Part 4, which it does not have under Part 3, when it is looking at the care plan. Authorities do not look back at Part 3 when dealing with Part 4. I suggest to the Minister that he is not being entirely legally accurate about this.
Lord Nash
In view of that suggestion, I will not attempt even to get to that ball, let alone try to hit it back over the net. I will have the appropriate conversations and write to the noble and learned Baroness. We will certainly get our minds clear on this point.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady King, for Amendment 90A, which seeks to place a specific duty on local authorities and NHS mental health services to support the needs identified in children’s care plans. Where children are in the care of a local authority, as the corporate parent it is under a specific duty to both assess and meet all their support needs. The Department for Education and the Department of Health have issued joint statutory guidance on the planning, commissioning and delivery of health services for looked-after children. It aims to ensure that these children have access to any physical or mental healthcare they may need. Statutory guidance is issued by law so both local authorities and health authorities must follow it unless there is a good reason not to do so.
We are also working with the Department of Health and NHS England to develop a mental health care pathway for looked-after and formerly looked-after children. The expert working group on the mental health of looked-after and adopted children will look at the needs of parents and what interventions can be applied to improve outcomes for the whole family. This would include adopted children. All clinical commissioning groups have had to set out how they will implement the CAMHS review, Future in Mind, and improve support for adoptive children. Given the reassurances and the undertaking to discuss some of the points further, and given that the intentions behind these amendments are already largely captured in legislation, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, will withdraw his amendment and the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady King, will not press theirs.
Lord Warner
Will the Minister clarify the position of social enterprise companies which often have to make a surplus or a profit, depending on where you come from? The Minister and I have been having a flourishing series of exchanges through Written Questions and Answers on what happens when Ofsted regards children’s services as inadequate. The outgoing Prime Minister seems to think that two strikes and you are out is a good idea. I have been asking the Minister for a lot of information about the cost of setting up these trusts, which are quite considerable, and what the Government’s policy on this is. The Government’s policy, most recently exemplified in relation to Birmingham, seems to be that where there are two inadequate reports from Ofsted the local authority could well be required to put its services into what is sometimes called a voluntary trust. On further, closer inspection, a voluntary trust can also be a social enterprise company, and social enterprise companies need to generate surpluses or profits in order to invest in continuing improvements in the services they are running. Since Ofsted has said that one-quarter of children’s social care services are inadequate, will the Minister clarify where this agenda is going? Does it mean that in five or six years’ time we will see a very large number of local authorities’ children’s social care services placed under contract with a number of bodies separate from the local authority, with the local authority still held accountable? Those separate entities, I understand from the Answers I have been receiving, could include all social care services, including child protection. Where are the Government taking this agenda? Have they thought through their position on surpluses or profits from the kinds of organisations that would be under contract with local authorities in which Ofsted determined that social services were inadequate?
Lord Nash
My Lords, I spoke to this issue at Second Reading. It is an important question to clarify, and I am very grateful to noble Lords for the chance to return to it so that I can be crystal clear. We are not seeking in this Bill to revisit the established position on profit-making. That is not our intention. There has, of course, been a mixed market in children’s social care for many years, and local authority children’s services regularly work with private and third sector organisations—for example in the provision of foster care and residential care. The Children and Young Persons Act 2008 allowed local authorities to take this relationship further by contracting with these partners for the full discharge of their functions relating to looked-after children and young people.
Noble Lords will remember debating regulations in 2014 to widen the range of functions that a local authority could delegate in this manner to cover other children’s social care functions, notably child protection. The Children and Young Persons Act 2008 (Relevant Care Functions) (England) Regulations 2014 explicitly ruled out profit-making from this wider set of functions. Nothing is more important than the safety and well-being of children, and we are committed to supporting professionals in finding new and more effective approaches to improving outcomes for the vulnerable young people in their care. In recent years that has involved promoting new models of delivery, but we have absolutely no intention of revisiting the position on profit-making settled by Parliament two years ago. I reassure noble Lords that any change to the 2014 regulations would need to be by the affirmative route.
As the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, we will revisit the innovation clauses next week, but I will say again now that we have no intention of using Clause 15 to allow the existing position to be circumvented. In our conversations with local authorities, there has been no discussion of using Clause 15 to allow profit-making. This is not what we are seeking to do with that clause. I think noble Lords were reassured when we showed them the examples of innovations and they understood a bit more what this was all about. I hope that further examples will help clarify the position.
The noble Lord, Lord Warner, referred to the depressing situation in Birmingham. He slightly lost me on the concept of profit, because obviously organisations such as charities or local authorities are often trying to generate a surplus in order to reinvest. I do not think it is very helpful in this debate to wander into that, but I hope that when we give further examples of how the clause on innovation will be used, noble Lords will be reassured.
Lord Warner
Can I challenge the Minister on this? I would agree that there is a world of difference when it comes to a private company, which is perhaps going to make profits to distribute to its shareholders. That is one set of circumstances, but we then start to move down a series of alternatives. I cited the example of a social enterprise company, which is a body corporate and is entitled to make surpluses. They are not called profits, but it is taking income out of the local authority and building a surplus in an organisation which is not a public body. That must have some effect on the extent to which the resources devoted by the local authority to that social enterprise are available for services in any one given year. How big can those surpluses get before they have an impact on the volume of services that can be delivered? The Minister is trying to brush this away. I am not trying to score points, but the noble Lord, Lord Watson, has raised an important issue. You cannot just say that these are not distributed-profit companies—these companies can build up surpluses which could have an impact on the revenue that is available in any one financial year for the provision of services.
Lord Nash
I will reflect further on what the noble Lord has said. What we are trying to do in these situations is make sure that where services have been provided badly—in the case we are talking about, they clearly were—they are provided better by alternative suppliers. I will reflect further on the point he makes and come back to him on it, but in view of the reassurance I have given to noble Lords that we have no intention of revisiting our position on this, I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am very glad to wind up for the Opposition and speak in this short debate. As the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said, there are sound reasons why out-of-area placements may occur, but they present real challenges, not least the inconsistency of approach between different local authorities and this particular problem about a multiagency response.
The noble Earl raised the issue of vulnerability to trafficking, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, brought unaccompanied asylum seekers into consideration. I have already referred to my own concerns about the role of the National Health Service. We know that mental health services, especially child and adolescent mental health services, are inadequate and that many disturbed young people are being sent a long way from home.
The Minister in a previous debate referred to an agreement, or work, between his department and the Department of Health in establishing the care pathway. That is to be welcomed, but I would like to hear more about how he is going to make it grip when it comes to children who are being placed out of area and a long way from their homes. Has the Minister’s department had an opportunity to see how the Welsh protocol is working in Wales and whether there would be an opportunity to build on the good practice that has been developed there?
Lord Nash
I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for this amendment and for raising the very important issue of children being placed at a distance from their home authority.
I recognise that the amendment seeks to improve safeguards and access to services for children placed outside their home authority. I reassure your Lordships that there are already significant safeguards in place that ensure children are placed out of area only when it is in their best interests and, importantly, that appropriate agencies are notified. Most crucially in relation to this amendment, local authorities are already required to notify the host local authority and health services when making out-of-area placements under Regulation 13 of the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010. This also requires the host local authority to be given a copy of their assessment of needs and care plan. Much of the information this amendment seeks to have included in out-of-area placement notifications is already legislated for, because the care plan already contains it or it is in statutory guidance. We have issued guidance that contains a model notification for out-of-area placements to help guide authorities, which includes the key information about the child. Personal education plans should identify any statement of educational needs or any education, health and care plan. Placement plans must include details of how welfare will be promoted and safeguarded.
I note noble Lords’ desire to ensure the police are made aware of children placed in their area and given their care plans so that they can help support these vulnerable children. We have already amended the regulations so the police can access the addresses of children’s homes in their area, enabling them to form positive relationships with children’s homes and to be more aware of children placed from other areas. I again sympathise with the intent behind providing the police with children’s care plans, but these plans contain deeply personal information, and children in care have, as part of previous government consultations, expressed concern about police access to less sensitive information. Children absolutely need to be protected, but this must be balanced with protecting their privacy.
We shall consider the Wales protocol and how it could be helpful to local authorities in England. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, raised the point of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children being placed out of area. They will be looked-after children under the Children Act, and so will be subject to the existing duties placed on local authorities in that Act and under the care planning regulations. The local authority must therefore give notification when a child is placed out of area. In view of the strong safeguards and notification requirements already in place regarding out-of-area placements, I hope that the noble Earl will feel reassured enough to withdraw the amendment.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham for adding his name to this amendment and to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, for his support. I am also grateful to the Minister for his careful reply, which I will examine with care but to a large extent find reassuring. It is good to be reminded of the important steps the Government have taken in recent years to protect children placed out of their local authority area better. He refers to the fact that there is now a duty for police forces to be told of the whereabouts of children’s homes in their area, which is an important step forward.
However, as I think the Minister appreciates, there is still considerable concern about the numbers of children being placed outside their own local authority’s care. In March 2015, 37% were placed outside their local authority. Clearly, these are more vulnerable children, and it might be helpful to look at some examples of good practice to reinforce the improvements the Government have made so far. For instance, the Children’s Society has an example from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority which the Government might wish to look at, and I will send the Minister information on that. I am grateful to him for agreeing to look at the Wales protocol and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady King, for raising the issue of adopters being exempt from the policy that child tax credit and the child element of universal credit will be limited to two children from April next year, and for her moving speech. I assure her that, in relation to her expectation of me, the feeling is entirely mutual. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Warner, for their comments.
I am very glad that the noble Baroness, Lady King, mentioned the experience of my colleague, Minister Timpson. I put on record the achievements of his mother, who sadly died relatively recently, in fostering over 80 children. I am very happy to be stalked by her; I think that I would probably prefer that than to be stalked by the noble Lord, Lord Warner—no offence. I am very interested in the point that she makes about the income background of people who foster and adopt. I would be delighted to meet, discuss and understand the issues further. I know that Minister Timpson has been having discussions with the DWP—it is that department’s responsibility. But, of course, I would be happy to discuss this further and take it up with the DWP. I hope that against that background the noble Baroness feels able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness King of Bow
I am sincerely moved by all my colleagues who came in behind me. It means so much to me, and I thank them. I am very grateful to the Minister for his sympathetic response. I feel a duty to explain to some of my colleagues that in October I shall be taking leave of absence from this House. I would not for a second want anyone to say, “Where the hell did she disappear to?” after this discussion. Without a shadow of a doubt, this will be brought back again; I shall table it again at Report. I hope that my friends—all of you are my friends at this moment—will be able to maintain the argument, as I feel so passionately that it is important. The argument is about the illogicality of it, which I am sure that the Government do not intend. The important point made by so many is about the cost; it is so much more expensive for us to have the state taking the role that those low-income foster families are willing to take when they adopt. On the basis that the Minister has been very responsive, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I shall add a couple of words to the excellent introduction by the right reverend Prelate. His argument about the need to collect statistics to look at the relationship between poverty, child abuse and neglect is very persuasive. The Minister will know that local authorities have now been given responsibility for public health. Each local authority employs a director of public health and the practice—I think it may be a requirement—is for the director of public health to produce an annual report on, essentially, the health statistics of the people living in the local authority area identifying the problem areas and weak spots to drive the public health policy of the local authority. It strikes me that to poverty, child abuse and neglect, you can add health and well-being. One practical way through might be to add to the responsibilities of the director of public heath a duty to produce consistent, uniform statistics throughout the country. It would also mean that the local authority response would not be in relation to just one sector but would be a more general response. I suspect that if one were to look at the statistics in relation to health outcomes, one would find that many of the families to which the right reverend Prelate referred would also be affected by those health issues. A holistic response is probably required here.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for raising this important issue. High-quality data are crucial at both national and local level. They can inform the development of government policy, help us to understand how the system is working, help us to support and challenge local areas and facilitate local learning. At local level, high-quality data can ensure that children’s needs are identified early, resources are targeted appropriately, services are commissioned effectively, risk is managed well and the right support is put in place for children and their families. I assure noble Lords that we are looking at ways in which we can improve the quality of the data we collect.
Noble Lords may be aware that following Professor Eileen Munro’s 2011 review of child protection in England, the Government produced a children’s safeguarding performance information framework to help professionals get the most out of the range of data available nationally and locally. We are also taking steps to improve the national children in need census data collection. For example, last year, for the first time, we published factors identified by social workers in assessments of children, exactly the sort of issue raised by the World Health Organization’s report. Indeed, the World Health Organization suggested that a cost-effective way of implementing its recommendations would be to include key questions in existing or planned surveys. The Department for Education will shortly be running its first children’s services omnibus survey. This biannual survey will allow us to gather a range of useful information from local authorities. The questionnaire is still in development, but we intend to ask local areas about how they analyse demands for services locally, which should include using socioeconomic factors. We know that many local areas are making great strides in their data analytic capabilities. Noble Lords may be interested to look at the Association of Directors of Children’s Services’ Pillars & Foundations report.
We continue to work across government to align collections, better join up different collections and make use of technological advances to collect data in real time. However, we do not believe that requiring the Secretary of State to produce a report on ways to implement the World Health Organization’s recommendation in the European report on preventing child maltreatment is necessary. We have lots of work planned in this area and already in train. I hope that noble Lords are assured that the Government recognise the importance of effective data collection and are striving to make improvements in this area. I will pass on to colleagues in the Department of Health the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about a more holistic approach, but in the light of what I have said, I hope the right reverend Prelate will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
The Lord Bishop of Durham
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response, and I have no doubt that my colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, will examine minutely what he has said; I shall certainly look at it as well. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for his comments and for the Minister’s agreement to take the issue away and report it elsewhere. At this point, I am content to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, I very much support this amendment. We have already heard in previous debates about the danger of the repeat performance—women who have been in care becoming mothers and having a problem with children being taken away. It is a vitally important matter. My noble friend Lady Howarth mentioned Pause as one of the organisations offering practical help in this respect. It certainly could be called on. I hope that in this instance we will be able to get support from the Minister so that this can be looked at rather more seriously than, perhaps, in the past.
Lord Nash
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for moving the noble Baroness’s amendment. This is an important issue, and I am pleased that she has raised it. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Howarth and Lady Howe, for their comments. The Government believe that children are best looked after within their families, with their parents playing a full part in their lives, unless intervention in that family’s life is truly necessary and in the child’s best interests. Legislation reflects this, and local authorities have statutory functions to provide services that support children in need and their families. They also have a duty to return a looked-after child to their family unless this is against their best interests.
The noble Baroness is right to emphasise how important it is to support parents who have had children taken into care. They need the right support to allow them to be effective parents to any other children in their care and to any children they may have in the future. We share this commitment. Our statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children is clear that every assessment of need must be child-centred. The statutory guidance acknowledges that many of the services provided as part of the child in need or child protection plan need to support the parents to make sustained change. The plan that arises from this assessment should set out the expectations required of parents, detailing clear measurable actions and indicating the services they should engage with in order for their child to remain at home. If a child is removed, their parents should continue to receive help and support. If the parents go on to have further children Working Together to Safeguard Children is clear that the level and nature of any risk to the child needs to be identified at a prebirth assessment and appropriate help and support should be given to these parents to help them make a sustained change.
I am sure noble Lords will be interested in the Department for Education’s innovation programme’s support to the tune of £3 million for Pause’s project to support women who have experienced or are at risk of repeat removals of children from their care. The project aims to break this cycle and give women the opportunity to develop new skills and responses to help them create a more positive future. Changing practice like this provides a more effective means of ensuring that we attempt to break the cycle. We want to extend approaches such as Pause’s into new areas to break this intergenerational cycle of care. This is of particular importance to care leavers who go on to have children in their late teens that are at risk of being taken into care. Mandating local authorities to provide counselling or therapy may help some, but it will not be the answer to all the complex problems in this context. Given what I have said, I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I thank the noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate for their support. Clearly, this is an issue in relation to mothers, in particular, who have a number of children after one of their children has been taken into care. I was glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, raised the work of Pause. The Minister referred to the money that his department it giving to it. That is very good to hear. The Minister said he does not think mandation is the right avenue down which to go. Some noble Lords who have spoken agree with the Minister. I am sure my noble friend will wish to consider that between now and Report. The principles here are well recognised. We have the great work of Pause. We clearly have good practice in a number of local authority areas, and the question is how best to ensure that there is more consistency and uniformity throughout the country. Whether it is through mandation or just through spreading good practice is a matter for another debate. I thank the Minister for the tone in which he responded to this amendment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Nash
My Lords, Amendment 99B seeks to place a duty on local authorities to,
“put in place early intervention strategies to prevent children and young people in their area who are on the Troubled Families Programme going into care, which may include providing those children with specific support”.
We expect local authorities to have early intervention strategies to prevent children and young people going into care irrespective of whether those children are part of the troubled families programme. Our statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children 2015, is clear that providing early help is more effective in promoting the welfare of children than reacting later in their lives, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has said.
The existing legislation in Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 imposes a general duty on local authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in need in their area, and so far as is consistent with that duty, to promote the upbringing of children by their families. This is achieved by providing a range and level of services appropriate to those children’s needs. Services are provided to children and their families and should help families to make sustained change in their lives so that children are safe and can remain living with their parents. Such services can include accommodation, assistance in kind or cash.
The working together guidance provides that local authorities and their partners should develop and publish local protocols for their assessment of children’s needs and how any social care assessment should be informed by other specialist assessments. The purpose of an assessment is to provide support for children and families to address their specific needs. Our troubled families programme, which has been very effective, is one such intervention that can support families to work together and with other agencies, including children’s social care, to help improve outcomes for children. Where levels of risk of harm remain high for children and their needs cannot be met from within their families, it is right that steps are taken for children to be taken into care. In other cases, intensive support combined with challenge may allow children to remain safely with their families. The recently published document, Putting Children First: Delivering our Vision for Excellent Children’s Social Care, highlights how the Government will work to effectively reduce the needs and risks for a specific group of,
“children right on the edge or just within social care”.
We will use our innovation programme to test and develop national understanding, and over time use the new What Works centre to bring together learning and spread best practice. In view of the existing duty in primary legislation to provide services and support for children who are in need, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel reassured enough to withdraw her amendment.
Lord Nash
My Lords, Amendments 100, 106 and 112 are technical amendments regarding the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. A separate amendment proposes the repeal of Sections 13 to 16 of the Children Act 2004 relating to local safeguarding children boards, and Amendment 100 will enable the new provisions relating to the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel to be sited correctly in the 2004 Act. Amendments 106 and 112 will ensure that the language in the clauses which cover the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel is consistent throughout the clauses. I beg to move.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
My Lords, I declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, which is particularly concerned that the national panel is too closely controlled by the Secretary of State. The association believes that that risks politicising the serious case review process. If reviewers are to identify the root cause of safeguarding failings, the association believes that they must be fully independent of government control to ensure that they are able to consider without undue influence whether changes are required at both the national and the local level. The association also believes that to ensure that reviews of national significance are able to pass comment on the impact of national policies without undue influence, they must be able to identify these root causes, again without undue political interference. I therefore support Amendments 101 and 102.
It is important to recognise that the Local Government Association, which wants to work with this process and take some of it forward, has these concerns. We are in this position as a result of having so little time to look at these amendments. The basic principles are probably ones with which we would all agree but there are some fundamental flaws in the way the process is being put together.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, for their amendments relating to the arrangements for the new child safeguarding practice review panel set out in Clause 11, and for the observations of the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Howarth.
Amendment 101 raises an important issue, which is that both Houses should have an opportunity to scrutinise regulations in secondary legislation where it is appropriate to do so. Noble Lords will be aware that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has issued its report on the clauses within the Bill. I hope that noble Lords can be reassured that while the DPRRC commented on other clauses, it raised no concerns about this one. The arrangements that will be made in respect of the establishment of the panel set out high-level matters that relate to the processes, arrangements and administration of the panel rather than matters of substance that the Houses would need to debate. This clause covers processes and arrangements. I will turn to the question of regulations in a later discussion on the functions of the panel. This clause provides for the making of arrangements that are necessary to enable the functioning of the panel which may include clarity around such matters as reporting and its day-to-day operation.
Amendment 102 seeks to involve the Education Select Committee in the appointment of the chair. I would expect the appointment of the chair to be subject to a full and open Cabinet Office public appointments process involving advertisements for the position, applications and formal interviewing. Panel members could also be subject to this process if that were deemed necessary. I would expect the number of panel members to be sufficient to enable the effective operation of the panel and for the chair to be able to draw on the expertise that he or she considers necessary for the right decisions to be made about individual cases. We would of course welcome any views that the Education Select Committee may have, but we do not believe that we should prescribe a pre-appointment hearing. In view of this, I hope that the noble Lord will feel sufficiently reassured to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
I thank the Minister for that response, predictable though it was. I take his point about someone who is appointed being subject to the full appointments process; that is understood. However, I feel that there is room for the affirmative resolution procedure that I mentioned earlier, but clearly that is not going to happen. I think also that it would have been appropriate to involve the Education Select Committee at least in the initial appointment of the first chair of the panel. However, no other Members of the Committee have insisted on this, so on that basis I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Warner
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 103 and 104. Amendment 103 seeks clarification from the Minister on the powers of the new child safeguarding practice review panel to require information in relation to its functions. In Clause 14 a,
“person or body to whom a request … is made must comply with the request”,
without, apparently, any exemption.
The report of this House’s Constitution Committee published on 13 June pointed out that:
“This is a broad obligation … and could possibly include information of an incriminatory nature”.
As far as I can see, there is no explicit exemption for material that would ordinarily be the subject of either legal or medical privilege. I can see that a broad exemption of that kind could hamstring the panel in its difficult work. and I will say a bit more about that in relation to a particular case. However, I do not think that we should wait until a case of this kind arises and then find that we are not sure what the rules really are. That is why I support the Constitution Committee’s request for greater clarification.
To illustrate my concerns, let me cite a recent case that could be said to raise this issue if the new review panel were in existence. We have already mentioned today the recent case where Mrs Justice Hogg was criticised by a case review for her decision to take Ellie Butler away from her grandparents and return her to her parents where her father beat her to death 11 months later. My understanding—the Minister may be able to correct me if I have this wrong—is that the judiciary does not consider that the judge can be required to explain her actions to a review panel. In particular, this would make it difficult to consider the system implications of whether a judge should have been able to set aside the judgment of the local authority social workers who had been protecting Ellie and appoint new private social workers to make a different assessment of the protection she required, which sadly resulted in her being returned to her parents with catastrophic results.
This is a systems issue about how the judiciary works. I can see that that could involve incriminatory evidence. Let me reassure the Minister that I am not trying to discuss this case but I am using it to indicate that there may be confusion in the wording regarding the panel’s ability to request information when people may or may not conform for reasons of incrimination. I hope that the Minister can help us with this because we need greater clarity about whether there are any exemptions to a request for information by the panel and the nature of those exemptions.
Amendment 104 is an attempt to introduce time limits into the production of review panel reports. This panel will be considering serious systems matters which are referred to it. It is important that we complete these reviews quickly so that people can learn from mistakes. We do not want very long and drawn-out reviews that hold up learning. We need some kind of time limit here. I am not particularly wedded to the six-month time limit that I put in just to probe the issue, but it would be worth the department and the Minister considering the insertion of time limits for the work of these review panels. I beg to move.
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, I think there was some confusion over which of us was going to speak. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, who gave notice of her intention to oppose the Question that Clause 11 should stand part, is not present, so with the Minister’s permission I will speak to that element in the group.
There is a fundamental concern about the proposal in Clause 11. It does not have anything to do with the establishment of a national safeguarding review panel, which is appropriate, but what it contains and the way it is defined in the Bill are of concern because apparently it will remove local responsibility and accountability for the most serious of child abuse and harm incidents. The current situation is that local safeguarding children boards follow statutory guidance for conducting a serious case review. The LSCB itself is chaired by an independent expert and includes representatives from local NHS organisations, the local authority, probation, housing, the voluntary sector and so on.
Following a serious case of harm to a child, the LSCB must notify the national panel of independent experts and Ofsted. It will then appoint one or more reviewers to lead the serious case review. The lead reviewer must be independent of the LSCB and any other organisations which are involved in the case. The LSCB should also submit the names of the reviewers to the national panel of independent experts. The key factors in the existing process are that the chair is independent and formally agreed to by a national panel of independent experts and that, crucially, representations can be made in the same geographical area by individuals who were involved with the child and the family and thus have an understanding of the local context.
None of this is to deny the positive contribution that potentially can be made by establishing a national panel to improve national learning from these serious case reviews. What is unfortunate is that local knowledge and understanding may be lost and, worse still, that a national panel would take away local responsibility from those who are charged with safeguarding children. A national hearing can seem remote. It will lose the local context and therefore the nuances of understanding in these most complex of situations. It would be most helpful if the Minister would be willing to set up a meeting for those of us who are concerned about the implications of these proposals so that we can discuss these matters. It is not because we oppose them, but because we are concerned about how they will be implemented.
I shall refer again to the review document which I think was published yesterday. Paragraph 118 on page 55 refers to Alan Wood on the role and functions of the local safeguarding children boards. He wants to set up a stronger statutory framework that will introduce greater accountability for the three key agencies involved in safeguarding children; namely local authorities, local police and the local health service. That is why I was willing to oppose the question that Clause 11 should stand part so that these issues can be explored further before we make a decision to move to a national safeguarding review panel for the most important and serious cases, thus eliminating local involvement, responsibility and accountability. I think that that is very important if we are to make progress in preventing, if possible, some of these serious incidents. But certainly we should get national learning from the local example.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has raised some important points and the name of my noble friend Lord Hunt is also on the clause stand part debate. We do not propose to do that just now; we think the broad principles can be transferred to the debate that we shall have on Monday on the next section or group. We shall say no more at this stage.
Lord Nash
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, for Amendment 103. This raises important issues, which I welcome the opportunity to discuss. My exchanges with my noble friend Lord Lang of Monkton and the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, at Second Reading followed the helpful report of the Select Committee on the Constitution. This report cogently raised the question of how the panel will handle information subject to legal or medical privilege. I explained at that time that the Bill does not prevent those whom the panel asks for information asserting legal or medical privilege, where applicable. The panel would need to consider any such assertion against the need for the information. This amendment would add a specific provision for the Secretary of State to include, in her arrangements for the panel, information about the panel’s powers to secure the submission of material, subject to legal or medical privilege. I agree that it will be important for the Secretary of State to specify clearly to the panel the considerations which it should bring to bear in respect of the information which it requests. I agree that this should include specific reference not only to the question of legal and medical privilege but also to the way in which it handles this information, once requested and received. This is particularly important in respect of the information which is included in final published reports. The panel will be expected to handle all the information it receives with due care. Much of the information which it gathers will be highly sensitive, including information which is privileged in the way the noble Lord has set out.
As far as the issues arising from the very sad case of Ellie Butler are concerned, the independence of the judiciary is a constitutional matter and enforcement provisions will not apply, although there is scope to appeal judges’ decisions. I do not believe, however, that it is essential to say anything more in the Bill. It will not add anything to the powers of the panel to request this information, which are clearly set out in Clause 14. In view of this, I hope the noble Lord will feel reassured enough to withdraw his amendment.
Clause 11 requires the Secretary of State to establish a child safeguarding practice review panel and is central to this discussion. I will speak at a little length on this topic and in doing so, I hope to address some of the concerns expressed by noble Lords during the Second Reading of the Bill. The Government first announced their intention to decentralise the serious case review process in December last year. The background to the decision to seek to legislate to introduce the panel was set out in response to Alan Woods’s review of local safeguarding children boards. Alan Woods suggested that the body which supports the centralised review process should be one that is independent of government and the key agencies and operates in a transparent and objective fashion. The intention is to establish the panel as an expert committee, defined by the Cabinet Office as a committee of independent specialists who are politically and operationally independent. The panel is clearly set up to make its own decisions. We have just discussed arrangements for the appointment of panel members.
The Secretary of State will also be responsible for removing members, if satisfied they are no longer able to fulfil their duties—for example, due to ill-health, or if they are adjudged to have behaved in a way incompatible with their role. The clause also makes provision for the Secretary of State to provide whatever assistance is required to enable the panel to carry out its functions, including staff, facilities or other assistance. The Secretary of State may also pay remuneration of expenses to the chair and members of the panel. This will be commensurate with the level of time and commitment required. The clause further provides that the Secretary of State may make further arrangements to support the functioning of the panel, including, for example, the production of an annual report. This will serve to enhance the transparency of proceedings and in addition—although this is not specified in the Bill—I am able to say that the panel will be free to offer advice to the Secretary of State on such matters as it sees fit, and to make any such advice public.
The establishment of a strong, independently-operating national panel is an essential component, along with the What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care, in taking forward the Government’s plans to develop a better understanding of the factors which give rise to serious cases, in order to inform policy and practice nationally, and to support local agencies in improving the quality of the services that they provide to vulnerable children and families.