My Lords, we have heard some very powerful arguments in favour of strengthening the process of appointment and the independence of the commissioner. I am not going to rehearse all the arguments that have been put very ably by my noble friend Lady Massey and everybody in the Committee. Now that we are several years on and there has been a review of the role of the Children’s Commissioner, it is right that we take this opportunity to see how that role can be strengthened. It is the right time to do this based on our experience and the outcomes of that review. I support the amendments in this group in general and will speak to Amendments 255A, 258, 259 and 261 in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Jones.
Amendments 258, 259 and 261 reflect other amendments in this group, by stipulating the involvement of various parliamentarians and requiring the Secretary of State to consider their views on the process and the detail of appointments, or to have their consent to
appoint. All those issues reflect the concern of the committee to make sure that there is a wide involvement of different groups, so that we get it right.
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Therefore, I will focus particularly on Amendment 255A, which is slightly different and deals with the other important dimension here, which is accountability. It would enshrine in law an accountability not to government but to Parliament, through instituting an annual public hearing by the Joint Committee on Human Rights on the Children’s Commissioner, on how he or she had been exercising his or her duties and functions. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, that one would not want the commissioner to have to speak to a plethora of committees. However, for the reasons he identified—namely, the scope of the remit of the Children’s Commissioner, which covers a wide range of factors that can affect children’s lives: health, education, the criminal justice system, the immigration laws, and so on—the Joint Committee on Human Rights might be the right place to examine that whole range of issues, in so far as she has looked at them in the previous year. I think that any Children’s Commissioner would welcome that. Certainly, the current one is not against that proposal. I am interested to hear the Minister’s views on this.
Since some of our amendments were tabled, the Minister has issued two notes: one on the appointment process and one on the impact of the Bill on the framework agreement. The note on the appointment goes some way to identifying the detail of the process, and the involvement of various groups, including children and young people. However, can the Minister deal with the point that envisages that where the Select Committee recommends that the Secretary of State’s preferred candidate should not be appointed, the Secretary of State would be obliged to take account of the committee’s view but not be bound by it? There is a further possible step: in those circumstances it would be right for the Secretary of State to have to explain publicly, and in writing, the reasons why he was not acting in accordance with the views of the Select Committee.
Secondly, on the impact of the Bill on the framework agreement, I echo the point made by my noble friend Lady Lister about why we do not have the framework agreement in front of us, so that we can actually look at the detail, rather than a document about a possible framework agreement. There are two points that I ask the Minister to clarify. In paragraph 3, the note says that,
“the Commissioner will continue to be a corporation sole, remaining personally accountable for all the Office of the Children’s Commissioner’s activities and its public money”.
It does not clarify who the Government think the commissioner is accountable to, on a personal basis. Can Ministers give us their views?
In paragraph 5, it is envisaged that the commissioner will be required to produce an annual report for Parliament, but not where and by whom that annual report will be considered. I refer the Minister to our Amendment 255A, which proposes that the report be the basis of an annual hearing by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Can the Minister say whether he shares that view?
My final point about these two notes, and in support of a number of the amendments, is that they are just notes: they do not, as far as I know, have any status. It may be that the Government will adhere to these notes, but they do not have to, and no future Government would be bound by them. They have no status, which is an argument for the Government accepting at least some of the amendments we are considering today, so that some of the requirements that the notes say the Government will implement, in part at least, are included in the Bill.