My Lords, I am delighted to be starting the Report stage of the Children and Families Bill. I know that we are all hoping to make significant progress through the Bill this afternoon and evening, but before I speak to my first amendment, I hope noble Lords will allow me to share a few words of thanks.
We had some very good debates in Committee over 12 days and I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who contributed to those debates and to those who came to the many meetings we had during Committee and since on specific issues. I found the debates and those meetings extremely helpful, and I have tried hard on those relatively few matters where we do not have a consensus really to understand both sides of the argument. I am grateful for the patience and expertise of all noble Lords who have taken time to talk to me and I have shared those discussions with my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and my honourable friend the Minister for Children and Families—noble Lords will realise, I am sure, that they have been supporting me on a learning curve which has been, at times, almost vertical.
I am also grateful to noble Lords for tolerating the large volume of paper that I and the Bill team have been sending your way. Some people have been kind enough to say that our meetings and correspondence have been helpful, and I very much hope that has truly been the case. We have now shared improved indicative statutory guidance on adoption, sibling contact for children in care, care leavers’ access to records and support for care leavers aged between 21 and 24 who are not in education, training or employment. We have also shared information on new regulations and guidance on support for trafficked children. Copies of that information are in the Printed Paper Office if noble Lords do not already have them. Some of the guidance addresses issues that we will continue to discuss today; in other areas, I am pleased that we have been able already to make progress towards addressing the issues that your Lordships have raised.
A number of noble Lords were kind enough to join me in a discussion with our new chief social worker, Isabelle Trowler. Isabelle was inspirational in her account of the reforms she is helping the Government to drive to improve the confidence, professional skills and quality of social workers. Achieving that will do more than any primary or secondary legislation or statutory guidance can do on its own to secure the step change we all want to see in support for our most vulnerable children.
There are also some issues on which we have been persuaded that legislation is the answer. Noble Lords will see further evidence of this when I table amendments to Part 3 of the Bill later this week. If we proceed at pace tonight, we will be able to speak about the Government’s commitment to use this Bill to legislate on “staying put” arrangements for care leavers in foster care.
Returning to the matter in hand, however, let me thank my noble friend Lady Hamwee and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, for helping me to understand the initially confusing issue of access to intermediary services for the descendants of adopted people. There was one debate in Committee in which I felt we were operating in two completely parallel universes and there was also a moment in the debate when I felt there was an anomaly which could not possibly be as simple and straightforward as was being proposed. However, on investigation afterwards and following an extremely helpful meeting with my noble friend Lady Hamwee, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and a number of people who are experts in the field, it became clear that there was an anomaly that we needed to rectify. I am therefore delighted to be putting forward an amendment today that addresses this.
Under the current law as it applies to adoptions that took place before 30 December 2005, both the adopted person and the adopted person’s birth relatives are able to make use of an intermediary service to facilitate contact between them, but the children of the adopted person are not able to do so. My noble friend Lady Hamwee and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, have set out very clearly that this anomaly leaves a number of people in the dark about their family history. The proposed new clause will correct this anomaly. It will enable regulations to be
made that will extend access to intermediary services to those who have a prescribed relationship with the adopted person. I should be clear that the reason that the proposed new clause does not apply to adoptions that took place after 30December 2005 is because information about these adoptions is held and accessible under a different legal framework, which does not distinguish between descendants and other relatives.
Noble Lords may wonder why the wording of the new clause refers to “persons with a prescribed relationship” rather than “descendants”. Were we to put “descendants” on the face of the Bill, we believe that the extended access would be limited to children and grandchildren of the adopted person. While it is our intention that the regulations will, at a minimum, include the children and grandchildren of the adopted person, we also wish to consult on whether it is appropriate for others, such as spouses and siblings of the adopted person, to be able to access the same services.
With the help of my noble friend Lady Hamwee, the Government have explored the implications of this reform with the Law Commission and the British Association for Adoption and Fostering and are confident that this new clause will close the current gap in the law. I hope that your Lordships agree that this amendment is necessary and I urge noble Lords to accept it. I thank again my noble friend Lady Hamwee and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, for bringing this important matter to our attention. I am very glad to be able to rectify the problem. I beg to move.
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