My Lords, I have also added my name to this amendment, and to Amendment 135C in the next group, which we will come to in a moment.
I really think the Government have some questions to answer. Why is this new regulator needed? The Minister might answer by saying that having its own regulator would add to the status of social work. That is a perfectly decent answer, but not one that is totally under the thumb of the Secretary of State. Perhaps the Minister could tell us what the cost of creating this new regulator would be. The NSPCC is concerned about the danger of it creating a two-tier system of
statutory and non-statutory social workers. I wonder if the noble Lord can answer that. What is the justification for putting regulation and improvement together? That question was very ably outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Warner. Why does this health and care profession have to be under the skirts of the Secretary of State? While I am about it, which Secretary of State are we talking about? The Bill does not say. Perhaps I should ask which woman it will be.
Many of us feel that if social workers were to become directly regulated by the Government, that would further weaken the trust—which is already fragile—between them and Whitehall. As the BASW said in the briefings we have all received, the Bill does nothing to address some of the real problems that affect social workers.
There is a real issue here because we have a significant shift of significant powers. It is a matter of principle. Why should social workers be the only profession in the health and care sector to be regulated by government? Nursing and medicine are not. They are public service professionals using their professional skills and judgment to make vital decisions about vulnerable members of the public. Bringing regulation under government control risks sending a demoralising set of signals to the sector. Loss of independence is likely to be seen as evidence that social work is really not up to it and needs a very close eye kept on it. That seems odd because it is at odds with what Ministers have been saying recently. They have been saying that social workers have been disempowered by command-and-control-type initiatives from central government and should be trusted to exercise their professional judgment and respected as professionals who undertake very complex work. Hear, hear! I agree with that. Why seek this government stranglehold now?