My Lords, first, I want to put Amendment 29 in context. I see it as part of a package relating to Clause 1. In our previous debate on Clause 1, there was a large measure of agreement that the corporate parenting principles needed to be kept tightly drawn and manageable in length. There was also a sense, however, that some important aspects, such as mental health, needed to be specifically incorporated into those principles. We also discussed at some length the importance of requiring the co-operation of other key partners in supporting the corporate parent in living up to those principles. I am sure that on this latter issue we will come back with amendments on Report to place a clear duty on key partner agencies and services to co-operate with the responsible local authority corporate parent.
I wish to raise a point on this, on which the Minister left me, and possibly other Members of the Committee, rather confused. Let me seek clarification from the Minister on what he said about other agencies co-operating with local authorities on the delivery of services linked to the corporate parenting principles. At one point he suggested that this was covered in Clause 10. As I said then, it is not. Then there was some suggestion that what was meant was Section 10 of the Children Act 1989. With a great deal of help from the Library, to which I give thanks, I have checked: it is not there in the 1989
Act. Then I asked the Library to show me the current version of the 1989 Act, as amended subsequently. It is not in the amended version of Section 10. I am struggling to find it elsewhere in any of the legislation. My request to the Minister, therefore, is that he write to me and other Members of the Committee as soon as possible—certainly well before Report—citing the text of the legislation that requires other agencies, and which of those agencies, to co-operate with the responsible local authority in delivering corporate parenting principles. Without that legislative clarity, I am sure many of us will want to press an appropriate amendment on this issue on Report.
I now return to my Amendment 29, which is linked to this issue. Alongside the corporate parenting principles and the co-operation and involvement of other relevant agencies, a third important element is, I suggest, required to make it all work in practice for the young people concerned. That is an obligation to help those young people get the services they need, which is where Amendment 29 comes in.
The amendment does two things. First, it requires the local authority corporate parent to ensure that all the relevant services are aware of the needs of children and young people in care or leaving care. We know that many of these services, some of which were cited in our previous discussion, are not aware of the special needs of those in care or leaving care. History suggests that we should strengthen the obligation on local authorities to bring home to the other agencies the special needs of those for whom they are corporate parents. Because of the unfortunate timetabling of the Bill, I had little time to prepare the amendment. I know that some services have been omitted from it, but this can easily be rectified.
The second part of the amendment places an obligation on the corporate parent to make sure the children and young people for whom it is responsible know about the services available to help them make their way in the world. It also obliges the corporate parent to help these young people secure those services. I regard this second aspect as very important indeed. Public services can be very complex; they can be very siloed—as was said in our last discussion—and pretty inaccessible. Many of us, as experienced and knowledgeable adults, often struggle to penetrate public sector bureaucracies, so why should we expect these young people to do it without help? It is not good enough to await young people coming forward and asking for help, which they often do not even know about. I recognise that I may not have got the wording quite right and this amendment would need to be aligned with the other amendments to Clause 1 that I have mentioned. However, I hope the Minister will see merit in this amendment and will be willing to make an amendment of this kind to the Bill and possibly discuss it with some of us beforehand. I beg to move.