UK Parliament / Open data

Children and Families Bill

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for taking up most of the remaining debating time in reading out the list of the remaining new clauses and amendments in the group. It is unfortunate that we have a large group of new clauses and amendments here, covering a very wide variety of important subjects to do with personal, social and health education, foster care continuing support, young carers, care leaver assistants, birth registration, adoption and so on, and yet we are left with barely an hour, particularly for Back Benchers who have not had the opportunity in Committee to point out things that we think are missing from the Bill or things that could be improved. On Second Reading we were time-limited in our contributions, too. I have taken a lot of time in making that point, but it needed to be put on the record.

I will speak as quickly as possible to the nine amendments and new clauses that I have tabled. In doing so, I want to signify my sympathy with new clause 4, tabled by the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), on continuing support for foster children, which is important. I know there are various problems with the way in which the amendment has been fashioned. I support new clause 22, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), on birth registration improvements. I have a good deal of sympathy, as I said on Second Reading, with improvements to the Bill to assist young carers, particularly new clause 5.

5pm

New clause 3, the lead amendment in the group, is the one I want to speak least about; in the circumstances, I will limit my comments. It relates to the performance regulations, which need to be brought into the 21st century. We did considerable work on that within the Department for Education. They are 50 years out of date. We only had to look at the “Britain’s Got Talent” finals and heats the other day to see that a number of child performers are now taking part in such talent shows. We need to be absolutely assured that children are able to perform—strut their stuff, demonstrate their talents—in a safe way that is appropriate to their growing-up stage, and are not being pushed into it.

In the new clause I have set out in some detail the amendments that need to be made to the regulations, which were drafted in the 1960s. That is the result of a lot of work, done by members of the working group that I reassembled under Sarah Thane, who produced an excellent report at the tail end of the previous Government. Importantly, my new clause 3 also gives a practical and usable definition of “performance”, which the primary legislation fails to do, and really needs to do. I commend it to the Government. Although the consultation seemed to prove inconclusive, there is a clear wish to make sure that child performance regulations are brought up to date. The revelations about Jimmy Savile have only made that more urgent.

New clause 11 is about ensuring the sufficiency of accommodation for children in care. This should be happening already under section 22 of the Children Act 1989, but it is not. Under that Act, we should be prioritising locally sourced accommodation for children in care. A number of working parties were set up last July, in my time in the Department for Education, to look at how we can improve the system. There is a real

problem when 4,890 looked-after children are housed in children’s homes, 50% of which are concentrated in just three regions: the north-west, the west midlands and the south-east. Some 44% of children in those children’s homes are placed out of their placing area, 28% of them more than 20 miles away from it. The figure for all looked-after children is 12%. Little wonder that so many children—a disproportionate number—run away or go missing from many of these children’s residential homes.

We need to take the opportunity of this legislation to make sure that we have much more robust guidance and instruction for local authorities about placing children much closer to where they come from, if that is possible without affecting their welfare—closer to anchor links with extended family members or friends—and making it possible for them to stay at the same school. It is crazy that we are spending more than £1 billion on placing 9% of the in-care population in children’s residential homes. That is from a total budget of just over £3 billion.

New clause 11 would beef up the regulations for placing authorities. If they do not have economies of scale, they should look to federate with neighbouring authorities, so that they can set up or buy places closer to home—much more smart commissioning is required—rather than spot-purchasing, which makes for costly placements that are often not of the best. Too often, the placements end up in completely inappropriate areas, often in cheaper, coastal properties—my constituency of Worthing is subject to this—where there are serious concerns about the safety of the environment in which children have been placed.

At the beginning of my remarks, I should have declared my interest as set out in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests; I have done so with regard to all my amendments in this group, for safety’s sake.

New clause 12 introduces a sufficiency duty for early help services. This is not a new proposal; it was recommendation 10 in Eileen Munro’s excellent report of 2011. I have structured the new clause to mirror the sufficiency duty for children in care that I have just mentioned. In her recommendation, Eileen Munro said:

“The Government should place a duty on local authorities and statutory partners to secure the sufficient provision of local early help services for children, young people and families.”

The authorities and partners should

“specify the range of professional help available to local children, young people and families…specify how they will identify children who are suffering or likely to suffer…set out the local resourcing of the early help services”

and

“lead to the identification of the early help that is needed by a particular child”.

The reason for that is clear: preventive services do more to reduce abuse and neglect than reactive services. Co-ordination of services is important to reduce confusion, inefficiency and ineffectiveness in service provision.

We have an Early Intervention Foundation, but we do not have an early intervention grant any more, so it is all the more important that we go ahead as quickly as possible with Eileen Munro’s recommendation 10. It is two years since that recommendation was made. In their response to it, the Government said that they accepted all its principles. It is about time to get on with it, and the new clause would be a practical one in the

Bill to give a clear indication to local authorities that early help is an important part of caring for vulnerable children. It is a social gain and it will be a financial gain from avoiding the costs when those children get into trouble later on if they are not given the appropriate support and care that they need at an early stage.

New clause 13 is about serious case reviews. The Children Act 1989 introduced a local authority duty to investigate when a child who lives or is found in their area is suffering or is likely to suffer significant harm. The guidance produced in 1991 instructed area child protection committees to conduct investigations or part 8 reviews. They were beefed up into serious case reviews after the Laming inquiry and parts of the Children Act in 2004. Again, they were beefed up in the “working together” revisions in 2009, and in June 2010, the new Government required all future serious case reviews to be published in full, subject to various criteria and subject to anonymity and redaction. That was the right thing to do.

The problem, as I warned at the time, is that the Government and the Minister do not have the power to force local safeguarding children boards to commission those reports in the first place. They have the power to force them to publish them once produced, but not the power to commission them in the first place. I am afraid that the figures have borne out my concerns, because between June 2010 and November 2012, some 147 serious case reviews were initiated by local safeguarding children’s boards. In each of the previous two years, the number of serious case reviews was around 130 to 136, so we have effectively halved the number of serious case reviews. Alas, that is not because the number of serious incidents happening has halved. I fear there are still far too many unnecessary deaths and far too much child cruelty happening. But serious case reviews that should have been commissioned have not been.

I very much welcome the announcement last week of the setting up of a serious case review panel. I particularly welcome the inclusion of Nicholas Dann, head of international development at the Air Accidents Investigation Branch, which was an interesting analogy about how accidents/incidents happen and how we learn from them. But we need to disseminate best practice and the lessons of poor practice as well. That body should retain, monitor and approve a list of suitable authors, and make sure that their qualifications are sufficient that they can continue to be commissioned to author serious case reviews. That panel will have the power to challenge local safeguarding boards not initiating SCRs, but it does not have any statutory teeth, and this is the only opportunity we will have to give statutory teeth to the Secretary of State to be able to say, “You must commission a serious case review,” when there is an overwhelming case where an incident qualifies for one.

New clause 14 is a contentious one that I shall speak briefly on. It is traditional for any children’s Bill to have some opportunity to raise the issue of smacking, and I am amazed that no other amendments have been tabled on that subject. I am not suggesting any changes to smacking. I do not support any changes in the way that parents chastise their children, but there is a problem with madrassahs and other supplementary schools. It is a difficult problem that has been left on the back burner. It was addressed by Sir Roger Singleton when he produced a report for the last Government in

March 2010, entitled “Physical punishment: improving consistency and protection”. Sir Roger was quite clear in the report:

“I am wholly satisfied that the safeguarding protection in relation to physical punishment which children enjoy in full-time schools should be extended to all the other settings where they learn, play, worship and are cared for. A straightforward ban on the smacking of all children engaged in activities outside the context of the family will be easy to understand and send an unambiguous message of what is not permitted to those organisations and settings where doubt exists or latitude is sought.”

His recommendation was:

“The current ban on physical punishment in schools and other children’s settings should be extended to include any form of advice, guidance, teaching, training, instruction, worship, treatment or therapy and to any form of care or supervision which is carried out other than by a parent or member of the child’s own family or household.”

I know this issue is fraught with problems—I battled with it, together with the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), in our time at the Department for Education—but given the clear examples of abuse we have seen in some madrassahs, which have been revealed in television programmes and by investigative journalism, it should not continue to fester on the Secretary of State’s desk. New clause 14 is a probing amendment aimed at getting the subject back on the radar, because it has been more than three years since those clear recommendations were made and nothing has been done about them.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

564 cc250-3 

Session

2013-14

Chamber / Committee

House of Commons chamber
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