Health and Care Bill

Debate between Lord Farmer and Baroness Tyler of Enfield

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Thursday 3rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

I support and very much welcome government Amendments 36, 157 and 185 in response to the powerful debates in Committee on children’s health, safeguarding, data-sharing and particularly the case for a unique identifier for children, on which I put forward an amendment in Committee. I thank the Minister for engaging so fully and positively on these issues and for the various meetings which led to these amendments being tabled. It is also very welcome that Amendment 36 includes children in the Bill, which so many of us have argued for.

On the unique identifier as a means of identifying children in touch with multiple services, aiding safeguarding and promoting joined-up support, I strongly support the government amendment to lay a report before Parliament on information sharing and on a single unique identifier for children. That is a real step forward, and it is clear that the Government acknowledge that there are serious and distinct challenges with sharing relevant information across not just children and social care sectors but others too, including schools and the police.

There is always more to do, so I will never be 100% satisfied and I note that the amendment as tabled does not actually commit the Government to any specific timed action beyond publishing the report. Therefore, it was good to hear the further assurances that the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, gave at the Dispatch Box. I think I heard him say clearly and unequivocally that the Government are committed to developing plans not just to look at the case for but to adopt a single unique identifier for children. I think I also heard a commitment to developing a set of cross-government proposals for implementing that, and then, I hope, acting on the findings of this report within a defined timescale. If the Minister could reiterate those commitments, I would be extremely grateful. I would also welcome a commitment to involving those organisations representing children and young people, who have been so much a part of our discussions and debates, as part of the production of that Bill.

I support Amendment 59 from the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, which I signed, requiring NHS England to assess annually how well each ICB is doing in meeting the needs of children and young people; it provides much-needed accountability and transparency, particularly in relation to the new and crucial safeguarding responsibilities that ICBs are taking on. I welcome the statutory guidance, which I know the Government intend to produce, on having a children’s lead on the board of every ICB. That is really important.

I support the suite of amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Farmer. I will leave him to set out the case for them, but I agree that family hubs play a really important role in improving early intervention services, helping integration and data sharing among public services and involving the voluntary sector. Importantly, and germane to this Bill, that includes children’s health services, which are often better delivered in community settings with other family support services. I particularly support Amendment 75, which calls for each local authority to provide a family hub. That is central to a national rollout of family hubs. which I would like to see at the very core of a national strategy on child vulnerability.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, for her support; it is very much appreciated. She has been a doughty warrior accompanying us along this path for many years.

I will speak to my Amendments 64, 66, 68 and 75 and I thank the Minister for the meetings I have had with him and the Bill team to hear his concerns, particularly around being overprescriptive.

Amendment 64 simply replaces “may” with “must” and thereby requires integrated care partnership strategies to lay out how health-related services can be more closely integrated with health and social care. In Committee, I said that “may” made that aspect of integration voluntaristic, and I would be grateful if the Minister could explain why, as I am genuinely mystified, the ICP is at present only invited to do that.

Amendment 66 has been revised after the discussions mentioned earlier. I propose adding new subsection (5A) to Clause 116ZB to specifically invite ICPs to consider how family help services, including those accessed through family hubs, could be more closely integrated with arrangements for the provision of health services and social care services in that area. I avoid using “must” in that case, because it could place an overly prescriptive requirement on ICPs. I also avoid mandating the use of family hubs. They are simply mentioned as an important potential access point.

I recognise and applaud the many ways that the Government have improved the Bill with respect to children’s health. However, I explained in Committee that many children’s health needs are psychosocial: they need practical, not just medical, solutions and addressing them needs a whole-family approach. That is also particularly important when parents experience drug and alcohol problems, which can affect their children almost or as much as the parents themselves.

Early family help commissioned by local authorities therefore needs to be integrated with health as well as many other departments of government. Family hubs are mentioned in my amendment, not prescriptively but as the model that could enable that to happen. In Committee, I described how DWP’s Reducing Parental Conflict programme, DLUHC’s Supporting Families and the MOJ’s private family law pilots all looked to family hubs as an access point for those who need this support. The Bill could and should help to make that model proliferate to benefit families. As it operates according to principles, not an overly prescribed framework, it can be tailored to local need, including by drawing in the bespoke work of the local voluntary and community sector. Historically and currently, health services have had a poor track record in integrating with local government and wider partners. The Children’s Centre movement frequently lamented the lack of engagement with health. The opportunity the Bill provides to avoid that pattern being repeated should not be missed.

My Amendment 66 gives meaning to the phrase “family help” and points towards an amended Schedule 2 to the Children Act 1989 to explain what is meant by “family hubs”. In Committee, I explained that

“services which improve children’s lives through supporting the family unit and strengthening family relationships to enable children to thrive and keep families together”

is the independent care review’s working definition of “family help”. This is not a concept to be set in concrete in the lead reviewer’s final report, but simply one that is qualitatively different from “family support” in local authority usage. The latter leans towards late-stage statutory child protection, which ideally prevents children entering care and is far from the early help so many parents need.

Finally, my Amendment 75 necessarily changes how the Children Act 1989 refers to family help infrastructure to reflect more closely the way it has developed. It has also been adjusted since Committee to avoid mandating local authorities to provide family hubs, which would have significant cost implications, ultimately for the Treasury. As a result of my amendment, new Schedule 2(9) to the Children Act would state:

“Every local authority shall provide such family hubs as they consider appropriate with regard to local needs in relation to children and families within their area.”


“Family hubs” means an access point where children, their parents, relatives and carers can access advice, guidance, counselling or paediatric health services as well as occupational, social, cultural or recreational activities. This removes the anachronistic reference to and description of “family centres”. These were never consistently implemented in the way probably envisaged by the draftsmen of the 1989 Act, although children’s centres did emerge to fulfil many of their purposes in response to research on the importance of children’s early years.

To address the Minister’s concerns that putting family hubs into legislation would introduce unhelpful rigidity and prescription, I end by making an analogy with the Supporting Families programme. This does have a legislative underpinning, but the early troubled families programme from which it evolved provided principles for a tried, tested and consistent way of working, illustrated these with case studies and supported local authorities to develop their own bespoke approaches to that way of working. The DfE is taking a similar non-prescriptive approach in its family hubs framework, which emphasises principles—namely, access, connection and relationships—and avoids determining how local authorities implement these. Just as the Supporting Families programme has developed but is still recognisably the same way of working launched as “troubled families” 10 years ago, I and others anticipate the same continuous improvement trajectory for the family hubs model or way of working.

Family hubs are now official government policy, backed by a £130 million commitment, a major evaluation programme and decades of supportive research. The model is not prescriptive but enabling and supported by many local authorities and those designing health systems. I would be grateful, in conclusion, if the Minister would explain, after these assurances, why this important social infrastructure, the fruit of 30 years of reform, which builds on and extends Labour’s legacy of Sure Start centres, has no place in the Bill.