My Lords, I very much welcome the briefing that we received from Ministers last week on the questions we are debating. I was also impressed with the vision set out by the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and his ministerial colleagues about the need to achieve a high level of social work, with a heavy emphasis on improving practice. So there is no disagreement with us on the aims that the Government have set out. I applaud them, as they are absolutely right to focus on the quality of social work practice. Our concern is the form that these aims take in the Bill. Not only will it not do the job but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley have suggested, it will detract from the real effort that needs to be put into encouraging, supporting and helping social workers to improve what they do.
Noble Baronesses have already raised the Education Select Committee report. What is striking is its reference to a vacancy rate of “17% of the workforce”, while the Government’s own figures,
“conceded that there were retention concerns, with the average career in social work lasting less than eight years, compared to 16 for a nurse and 25 for a doctor”.
This is not the time to be messing around with regulation when it is working in a perfectly satisfactory way at the moment.
There are five concerns about the way that the Bill has been drafted. First, we still do not understand why, within two years, there has been a complete reversal of government policy. Why has there been that reversal? I have yet to hear one proper explanation for why that has happened. Secondly, why was there no proper consultation or discussion with anyone in the field about the changes? Thirdly, why is regulation being confused with improvement? The fourth issue, which is ultimately the most important, is why the Government are setting themselves up as the regulator of a profession, while the fifth is parliamentary. It is about the use of regulations in this Bill, rather than the proper use of primary legislation.
On the reversal of policy, the Care Standards Act 2000 established the General Social Care Council while, in parallel, a College of Social Work was established. I think that none of us would say that those organisations always covered themselves with glory, but, towards the end of its life, it was quite clear that, under its last leadership, the General Social Care Council was pulling its act together. There is no doubt about that at all. I opposed the transfer of social work regulation from that body to the HCPC for the very reasons that the Government now use to justify the change in policy. Paragraph 38 of the policy statement says:
“The system that the HCPC operates is designed to maintain appropriate minimum standards of public safety and initial education, rather than raising standards”.
Of course—that is what the HCPC exists to do. The Government were told that when we debated it. They ignored it and went ahead with this proposal. So why this sudden reversal of policy?
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We move to the question of the college. The Government said when the plug was pulled—and it only gave up its life in September of last year, less than a year ago—that the college’s demise was due to it failing: it was not attracting enough registrations. Why, nine months later, are they essentially talking about re-establishing, in broad terms, what the college was there to do? They have not yet explained how on earth this new body can be viable if the College of Social Work was not viable nine months ago. The DfE has a reputation for being a department that is not much involved in Whitehall, but it seems to have no memory whatever of what it was seeking to do in this field going back not five or 10 but two or three years ago.
On consultation, I have just one question. The chief inspector of social work for children said at the meeting last week that there had been consultation. We have had a letter—which has already been quoted—under the auspices of the British Association of Social Workers, on behalf of other social work organisations, which says that this proposal was made,
“without any prior proper consultation or dialogue with the social work sector on the content of the Bill”.
What discussions did take place, or was it simply an informal phone call from the chief inspector telling BASW what was going to happen?
I move to the issue of why regulation is being confused with improvement. Last week, Ministers were talking about improvement, not regulation. We know that all around the world there is a generally accepted principle that regulation is separate from improvement. The reason is very simple: regulators in general are about maintaining public safety and they are punitive. A punitive body cannot be the same body to which people then open their doors as an improvement regime. It is very simple. Any of us who have been subject, certainly in the health service, to the tender mercies of regulators will know that we approach them very differently from the way in which we would open the door to an improvement agency. It is very different. Different people do the things that need to be done within those respective bodies.
If the noble Lord, Lord Prior, were here he would say, “Ah, but we have created NHS Improvement, which brings together an improvement agency with financial regulation”. But any insider knows that NHS Improvement is having the devil of a job to run this—it is having to run two different systems with different sets of staff and Chinese walls between them. That is the very reason you cannot bring improvement together with regulation. The PSA, an excellent body, formerly chaired by my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley, has made it very clear in the briefing we have had that there is a distinct difference, and a need to have a separation between regulatory and improvement activity. I know that this Government seem to have a problem with evidence and experts, preferring to rely on anecdotes as a way to make policy, but when you have an overarching regulator in the health and care field, surely you listen to it when it makes such a clear and unequivocal statement.
Of all the provisions in the Bill, the one I would most like to remove is the one that designates the Secretary of State as the regulator of social workers. Why should that be? First, it is a direct threat to the professional autonomy of a profession. In my view, that should always be resisted. Frankly, I am as concerned about the precedent it sets as I am for the social work profession. If the Government were proposing to take over the direct regulation of doctors we would not be in Grand Committee, we would be in the Chamber and the Government would find themselves up against the most tremendous opposition. We know that social workers do not have that kind of support; it is a vulnerable profession, so we are in Grand Committee and no more than 15 people are debating this issue. But the principle is exactly the same.
Why is it important that regulators should be independent of government when it comes to individual professions? I do not want to overstate or exaggerate, but I had a look at the work of the British Medical Journal in 2014, which had a very interesting article on the relationship between totalitarian regimes and the medical profession. This was backed up by a BMA publication going back to 1992. It was a question about why doctors participated in human rights abuses. The BMA concluded that one of the potential reasons
for it was the bureaucratisation of the medical role. Of course we do not have a totalitarian Government, but this principle that a Government could regulate doctors is so important that it would be resisted till the cows come home.
My argument is this. I do not think that social workers are any different from doctors. I think that if we were to pass this provision we would be creating an awesome precedent for the regulation of all professionals in the future. Of all the things in this Bill, the one thing I wish to remove is that. We surely must resist it.
I turn, finally, to the use of regulations. I have never seen such a Bill. It was clearly drafted in a hurry, but the use of regulations is wholly unacceptable. The Government claim that that is fine because all they are doing is essentially following the Section 60 process in relation to health regulators. First, however, the Section 60 orders were based in original primary legislation before social care was brought into the compass of this regulatory arrangement. Secondly, we have precedent. The 2000 Act of blessed memory created the General Social Care Council by primary legislation. I see nothing —no argument at all—to suggest that the Government cannot adopt the approach taken there: to set out the general principles in primary legislation, in addition to Schedule 1 to the Act, which set out the establishment of the body.
The Constitution Committee and the Delegated Powers Committee of your Lordships’ House have both said that the way in which the Government drafted this Bill in relation to Part 2 is wholly unacceptable. The Government have already responded to the Delegated Powers Committee. Remarkably—because I cannot remember when a Government have so ignored a recommendation from the Delegated Powers Committee —the Government have essentially said that they intend to plough on. The only concession they are giving, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said, is that in the long term, they might transfer regulation to a more independent body. That really will not do.
We have time between now and Report. I hope the Government will think again and start to open up a consultation with the sector. They even have time for a very quick White Paper to see how, if they are determined to have an independent regulator, it could be established in primary legislation as a wholly independent body. I hope the Government will recognise that there is extreme unhappiness about the approach they have taken.