My Lords, for a number of reasons, I support my noble friends in their Amendment 13 and on clause stand part, failing the amendment—or something—getting through. I think that this is an excellent Bill in many ways, and I am very proud of it and welcome it. It would be a pity if it were spoilt by one particular little bit that, if implemented, would result in complete chaos in the system.
If new Section 3A(3)(c) were implemented, there would be complete chaos in the system and increased delays in the time that it took for a child to be adopted, because the voluntary sector simply does not
have the capacity to take up the other 80%, and could not do so in the foreseeable future either. The Government are going too far too fast, particularly in the light of the changes that are currently being made in the adoption system. I would put a caveat next to that comment, because I think that we all believe that an extra month taken to find the “forever family” for a child waiting on the adoption list is a month too long. We do not want to increase delays; indeed, we want to shorten the period as much as possible, while at the same time getting it right. In the light of the fact that so many changes are taking place—local authorities are working together and the Government have already put changes in place—the clause as it stands should not be implemented until those changes have been allowed a reasonable amount of time to bed in. Subsections (3)(b) and (c) need to be taken out.
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I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, that if an individual local authority is really failing, the powers are already there to move those duties to someone else who can do it better in the interests of the children. So I am not sure why we need subsection (3)(a) either, so long as there was some way for local authorities, first, to know what was expected of them and, secondly, to be able to review in some way—it could be a judicial review; I take the point made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss—if they believed that the decision was wrong. In natural justice, you have to have some sort of appeal process. However, the idea of the Secretary of State implementing subsection (3)(b) in a large way—and subsection (3)(c) at all—fills me with horror, because children would suffer.