Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and all other noble Lords know that I have great sympathy with these important amendments. The noble Baroness also knows that I am constrained because the Children’s Society has calculated that there would be a spending commitment of £3 million and, for the Conservative Party, that is an uncosted spending commitment—although I assure her that we would look at it. I had the privilege a few weeks ago of meeting four remarkable young people: Shareen, Charlotte, Daniel and Nadir. They were members of the children in care council from Warwickshire who came to the House. They looked around and we had lunch and thought of a suitable room to have a meeting with them in, so we took them to the shadow Cabinet room with my honourable friend Tim Loughton. We had a wonderful meeting. As you would expect, they were articulate children. We talked about certain aspects of the Bill and, when we came to independent advocacy, Daniel said that he had been pleased to have an advocate provided by Barnardo’s. There are just too many times when you are in meetings with professionals who are just talking at you and not really listening to what you had to say. This was a very articulate young man. There is a clear need for professional advocacy to, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said, empower the disempowered.