Children’s Social Care Implementation Strategy (Public Services Committee Report)

Lord Bach Excerpts

Wednesday 20th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, it was a pleasure to serve on the committee, which was so well chaired by my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley. I agree with the committee’s conclusions and recommendations, particularly its comments relating to legal aid in kinship cases. Of course we welcome the extension of legal aid to prospective special guardians, but the concern was that many kinship carers would be unable to access it.

However, I want to talk about residential homes and their system, and emphasise, as our report does, the essential need for radical reform of residential homes. Alas, the Government’s proposals do not go anywhere near far enough. The issues facing residential homes are stark and, in my view, one of those hidden, rather British, deep scandals that are not talked about nearly enough, and are not acted on by the political class. What persuaded me that radical change is necessary was my five years as a police and crime commissioner. Indeed, I was on the way because of 25 years as a criminal law barrister, defending in the Crown Court countless young people who had been in residential care. As a police and crime commissioner, it was painfully obvious to me that vast amounts of precious police time were taken up dealing with offences, serious and not so serious, committed by those who were or had been in residential care, as the noble Lord, Lord Willis, mentioned a moment ago.

If it was not offences to deal with, then it was the constant issue of missing persons, regularly young girls picked up by bad men outside their homes and taken God knows where, to do God knows what, before being returned. Please do not misunderstand me: it is not the fault of the local authority, let alone the vast majority of staff in residential homes, all of whom perform as well as they are allowed to by the system—I pay tribute to all of them. It is the fault of an underfunded, underresourced, often ignored system that results too often in the most vulnerable children—many of whom are traumatised when very young—not receiving the care, protection and love they need and deserve. What chance do many of them really have?

A major part of the problem is that if any system should be solely in the public domain, it is surely a system that is responsible for bringing up, educating, housing and, indeed, parenting young people, who are our fellow citizens and future participants, we hope, in our society. However, I am afraid that we have seen fit to allow the profit motive—often a good thing in society—to play a leading part in this precious, vital and difficult area. One of our prime witnesses, John Pearce, a vice-president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, said this in paragraph 121 about regional proposals, but it applies to my point just as much:

“With about 80% of the residential care provision currently sitting with independent providers, many of which are backed by private equity, the suggestion that in the North East the 12 authorities coming together are going to have more influence over a substantial provider backed by a state investment fund than an individual local authority, and that that is going to change the dynamic, is flawed”.


That is an understatement. This area needs drastic, fundamental, urgent and radical reform so that, instead of the near conspiracy of silence that has existed, we can be proud of how we help our most vulnerable children. It is time to act.