My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Low, for introducing his amendments, to which we have added our names. I speak in support of the amendments and of other noble Lords who have spoken in the debate.
We are all in our own way trying to address one of the fundamental concerns about the impact of Part 3 of the Bill. As a number of noble Lords have said, of course we welcome the principle of a published local offer—it has been widely welcomed by many in the sector—but our concern is what the local offer will mean in practice and what certainty of provision will underpin it. Like many other noble Lords, we feel that there is an urgent need to clarify this to avoid it becoming a wish list of the unobtainable.
In essence, there should be a legal duty on local authorities to provide what is set out in the local offer. As the noble Lord, Lord Low, made clear in moving the amendment, the solution could be relatively simple. Subsection (1) currently states that the local authority must publish information about the provision which it “expects to be available”; our amendment would simply switch that from “expects to be” to “is”. As I say, it is a simple solution. However, it is important because making that change will give those people who are trying to operate in this sector, under these rules, the reassurance that they need.
The document is intended to give parents, children and young people clear information about the local services and support available to them. Of course we welcome giving parents more information, but clarity and accountability are key to this information being effective. The local offer should be a document on which parents can rely and for which the local authority can be held accountable. However, how can we ensure accountability when the statement is one of expectation and ambition?
We also want to ensure minimum standards for the local offer, irrespective of where people live. We will return to that issue in a later debate today.
When this was discussed in the Commons the Minister said that the word “expects” reflects ambition rather than weakness. He said that the local offer will make it clear how parents and young people can complain or appeal if they are unhappy with any of the provisions set out in it so that the matter can be taken up with the service provider concerned. This seems a strange way to go about it. Why rely on an effective appeals system when we should be getting the provision right in the first place? This is particularly so when you consider how difficult it is for people to bring forward an appeal. You need to look only at the recent SEND tribunal statistics to realise some of the difficulties that are being experienced in this regard.
In addition, there is a worrying reliance on the detail of the arrangements to be prescribed in regulation and in the code of practice, which again makes it difficult to challenge. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that the draft code of practice repeats the get-out clause for local authorities of publishing what they expect to be available. So there is a flaw in the argument about where the information should be held and accessed.
As my noble friend Lady Wilkins said, there is an understandable concern across the sector that at a time of considerable pressure on local authority budgets, with children’s services already being cut back, parents will have no control over the services in the local offer being withdrawn in the future.
I have listened carefully to the issues around personal budgets raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and I have a great deal of sympathy with the points that she raises. Our Amendment 180, which we will debate later in the Bill, will tackle these issues in a different way. We are trying to ensure that, rather than rushing into a new regime of personal budgets, with
the potential difficulties that the noble Baroness identified, we take time to learn from the pathfinder experience before implementing that section of the Bill. We have to get this right.
We think these amendments are essential to making the local offer a meaningful, substantial service that would genuinely be welcomed by service users. I hope that the Minister will be prepared to reconsider his position on this basis.
5 pm