Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Meston Excerpts

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 40 and flag—similarly to my noble friend Lady Evans—a pragmatic timing issue, which I have previously mentioned in your Lordships’ House.

Clause 3 is not a political matter. It is a well-intentioned response, as the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, outlined, to the tragic cases of Arthur and Star that led to the MacAlister review. I would be grateful, as would the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, to know whether these changes will in fact solve the problem highlighted in those two cases that led to the review.

Of course, any new Government will bring in operational and structural changes, and I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, that local authorities are dealing with the integrated care board situations at the moment and of course are preparing for perhaps the biggest local government reorganisation since that of Ted Heath.

In terms of timing, I ask the Minister why it is necessary at the moment to do the structural changes to child protection arrangements when the local authorities are dealing with other changes at the time. Many local authorities, even in times of very restricted finance, have shown that they have prioritised children’s social care, and overall, England’s local authorities are on an improvement journey, in that the “good” and “outstanding” Ofsted inspections are increasing.

Why not wait to do any further structural changes until the new devolution arrangements and local authority boundaries are in place and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, stated, when there is more evidence that such organisational changes in Clause 3 will improve matters, rather than inadvertently potentially making matters worse?

I also agree with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, in relation to the culture that might be changed here. If the family help teams do not see that child protection is part of their role, it risks the cultural embedding that has been happening over decades that is similar to a school, where what you need to embed is that safeguarding is everybody’s responsibility. You might then end up with them thinking, “It’s not my responsibility”: it is kind of like the blue light service over there, which is the child protection team. We could lose inadvertently. No one is deliberately trying to make our child protection arrangements less effective, but I do worry about the cultural loss of everybody seeing it as their responsibility, in the family help team and through into the social workers. So I ask the Minister: why not wait until you have done your local government reorganisation and do this afterwards, or maybe do it at the same time, because for the staff this is an awful lot of change in various departments of our local authorities?

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 36 and 40 and respectfully agree with almost everything that has been said so far.

Amendment 40 concerns cases which cross local authority borders, which can present practical problems and sometimes jurisdictional problems. Families, both parents and children, move around and do not conveniently live together at the same time in the same local authority area. Sometimes, as has been suggested, they move to avoid attention, and there needs to be clarification of how and by whom these situations are to be dealt with.

Amendment 36 seems to be more fundamental. There are, of course, existing established arrangements focusing on children in need. Since at least the Children Act 1989, these can involve child protection conferences and child protection plans, which identify risks and assign responsibilities and expectations. It is perhaps not surprising that there are now operational concerns about the new clauses—in particular, whether they will unnecessarily duplicate or even disrupt workable and working existing arrangements.

In particular, we need to know whether the new teams provided for in these clauses will require the introduction of new personnel in a way that will deprive the family of the continuity and familiarity established by the original social work team. It takes time for a social worker to build a relationship with a child and family, and that should not be jeopardised. Changes bewilder the children and frustrate the parents. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, referred to consistency and ownership. Those are not just clichés, they are important and should, wherever possible, be preserved.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, we have not got any amendments in this group, but I will make a few observations. First, it is really important we get this right and we have the opportunity to do so between Committee and Report.

I have personal experience of multi-agency working in terms of child protection—not a great deal, but a few cases. The thing that nobody has mentioned is that, when a member of staff has left the job or moved to another authority, the whole process grinds to a halt; the new person who is busy looking at the case files is not able to benefit from the knowledge that has been gained. It is often very disruptive.

Often in Committee, somebody will get up and make a point that you have never really thought about. When the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, had finished, I thought, “Absolutely right”. But I had not thought about the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, and he is absolutely right: in terms of police involvement, there can be a real conflict. It just proved to me, yet again, the importance of sharing these ideas so that we get a result which is actually workable.

It is interesting that the Children’s Commissioner suggests a

“threshold for assessment and support”

to bring greater consistency. This also picks up on the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, raised about resources—that it is important that we get the resources absolutely right.

I was interested in the point about sharing practice with those practitioners—that they do not come with their own particular viewpoint but have that training and expertise to share and listen. Cross-border working can be very difficult indeed and can sometimes cause real issues as well, but, if we listen to each other, we can get this right.

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A feedback loop of this kind could be helpful in the care system. I know one person who complained to the police about 15 years ago because she suspected that a local Asian restaurant was the scene for the abuse of young white girls. She was told by the police that, if she persisted, they might want to accuse her of racism. I hope and believe that such attitudes are behind us, but the need for better information sharing and knowing where to complain when you see problems is a very important part of improving social care.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I make just one point about the proposed new sections to be added by Clause 4 to the 2004 Act, as probed by these amendments. They would introduce an all-important duty to share information and, it should be noted, a discretion to withhold information. It is important to appreciate that, as drafted, the duty to share and the discretion not to share depend only, as I read it, on the subjective views of the person holding the information as to the relevance of that information to safeguarding or welfare and as to the potential detriment of disclosure. Those are crucial factors, but I question whether what happens or does not happen should depend solely on the subjective views of the information holder, which is what appears to be in the new section. I suggest it should be an objective test: if the information is relevant, it should be disclosed; if disclosure would be more detrimental to the child than non-disclosure, it should not be disclosed. Those decisions should not necessarily depend on what the individual information holder considers appropriate. Surely, the holder should be expected to apply an objective test when considering what is best for a vulnerable child.

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[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in this group and strongly congratulate the Government on having picked up the concept of a unique child identifier. I was part of the group, with the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, when we did not get there on previous legislation, and we were told that one reason was that the Department for Education could not see how it could do that and link with health, so seeing the Department for Education involved is particularly cheering.

I will make a case quite strongly for the NHS number rather than anything else, partly because I think we need to learn lessons from other number systems. If we look just at hospital records, different hospitals have different numbers and then there is the NHS number, and that has resulted in all kinds of clinical muddles and potential errors. The other thing is that children move around. People do not stay in the same area all the time, and the NHS number moves with them. If they have one number and move to a new area and register with a GP, for example, and then go to register with a school, if there have been major concerns then eventually those case notes will come through and people will become aware.

Going back to my previous experience, sometimes we found that the families with the highest risk had multiple addresses, out of town and in different cities. The other advantage is that, although we have devolved healthcare systems, we have a unique NHS number so, if people move between Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England, that number will persist. That is not a central database; it is simply saying that the number is there.

Children’s names change and their “known as” also changes. They may be known as another name but the number, a little like their genetic make-up, is fixed, which is really helpful. It will also avoid problems of lots of children having the same name, which is when muddles happen. I am from Wales, and we have a lot of people called David Jones and David Evans, and quite a few called David Williams, let alone Siân and Ceri. They are great names but, if you are trying to differentiate between them, you have to be really careful.

The final reason why I think this is particularly important is about transition and children who have learning difficulties and neurodiversity. Transition is an extremely difficult time for children. In those late teens, hormones are kicking in all over the place and all kinds of things are happening. Their relationships with the people who have been their carers through childhood change, and they can be at particular risk during those times, particularly during puberty if they have real learning difficulties.

I really hope that the pilot with the NHS number continues. When the Minister responds, it will be very helpful to know what kinds of numbers are being evaluated in those pilot areas—I hope there are more than one—so that the studies are sufficiently powered to be valid. Where have the objections come from? Who has not complied with being engaged? There may be some education needed to remove any sense of threat, because it will make safeguarding easier for people who have responsibility for children.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I was not going to intervene but, after hearing my noble friend, I cannot help but recall having to deal with some of the children of a man who, on inquiry, had had 11 sons by 11 different women. Because he was the sort of man he was, he insisted that each of them had his name.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Speaking as a Smith, I can say that those of us with very popular names recognise the point made by both the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and the noble Lord, Lord Meston —although obviously not in quite the same way.

Before starting, I can tell the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, that there are no publicly available figures specifically detailing how many incorrect NHS numbers are issued annually. If there were, obviously I would have them at my fingertips. The Personal Demographics Service is responsible for managing and correcting NHS number issues, including duplicates, misassignments and demographic errors, but those numbers are not publicly available.

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[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, for her generous words.

These centres are really important for children who have come from extremely disturbed backgrounds. One thing that they need to be able to do is to have contact with the parent with whom it is not safe for them to be in custody in another area. As they grow up, if they do not have that contact, they can end up feeling resentful towards the state, and that the state separated them from the parent, rather than understanding what happened. I will not go into the various cases and stories, but there are certainly quite a lot to illustrate that issue.

The reason this amendment is important is that we know that there is a lack of basic safeguarding training in some contact centres; in others, it is at an extremely high standard. There is variability of practice around picking up and escalating concerns, and challenges are faced by the courts in identifying safe and affordable contact arrangements. As has already been alluded to, the harm panel report of 2020 highlighted that child contact centres have a role.

I could speak for a long time about them, but I will not. I hope that the amendment speaks for itself, and that we might be able to have some conversations beyond Committee and before Report about whether there is some way that the Government would like to incorporate in the legislation the principles behind this amendment, accepting that they may not like the wording as it is on the page at the moment.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I would like the Government to incorporate the wording of this amendment into the legislation—it seems admirable. I am asked by my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss to indicate her support for it as well. Accredited child contact centres are safe, neutral places providing for both supported contact and supervised contact arrangements—that is an important distinction. They allow children in separated families to see and enjoy contact with the non-resident parent and sometimes other family members.

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[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for her intervention and contribution. It was very interesting to hear the noble Lord, Lord Meston, say that a lot, if not all, of the contact centres are accredited. According to the NACCC website, there is DBS checking and there is provision in place. I take on board what the noble Baroness is saying, and that is why we are having this discussion—to get everyone’s views aired and come to an agreement.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, just to add to what has just been said, my understanding is that accreditation depends on the centre having been approved by the national association, and that accreditation lasts, I think, for three years.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

On a point of clarification, I can confirm to my noble friend that what we are asking for, and what we asked for in the earlier amendment, is proper training and management, so that in those cases—perhaps only one a year, but to me that is sufficiently important—of domestic abuse that present to a child contact centre, the volunteers will be properly trained and will be able to manage the situation. It is not a case of inspection and increasing fees; it is giving them the confidence so that they know how to deal with that situation.