My Lords, I listened to the Minister with increasing disbelief and I think that many Members sitting on this side of the Room did as well. I do not really know where to start, other than to say that I am totally unconvinced by his arguments. He and his department simply do not understand the difference between improvement and regulation, and I shall take up one or two points.
He said that fitness-to-practise decisions will be taken by experts on behalf of the regulator. That is what he said. But the regulator takes the decisions—that is why the regulator is set up. It is not some other set of experts but the regulator who takes the decision on fitness to practise, which effectively is often a decision to stop someone’s livelihood as a professional. That is why it is very important.
I found some of what the Minister said extraordinarily strange. He is asking us to take it on trust that there will be a set of consultation arrangements with the professions and all these interests if we just give him the powers in the Bill. That is the nub of what he is saying: “It will all be alright on the night because we are good guys and will consult people”. I might be more trusting of that if I had seen some evidence that the Minister and his department had consulted all these interests before coming forward with this Bill. In my view, one of the best predictors of future behaviour is past behaviour, and I do not see much sign that evidence has been put to the profession. There might
have been a chat between the chief social worker and a few trustees out there, but to many of us it does not look like much more than that.
I am astonished that the Department for Education, of its own mere motion, is taking responsibility for the regulation and improvement of social workers who work with adults. There is a major machinery-of-government issue and my starting point is to go to the Cabinet Secretary and ask whether proper processes have taken place within government between these two departments. From the evidence I have seen and heard so far, they have not.
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What the Minister may not realise is that we have a body called Health Education England which has powers, given by this Government, to look at the issue of social work training in relation to working with the NHS. The Minister may not realise what an important part of government policy the integration of adult social care with the NHS is and that work is going on in other bits of government to see whether, in the future, there might need to be people who can work across that adult social care and NHS border. Meanwhile, back at the ranch of DfE, all this is being dealt with by a set of officials who do not have any expertise, if I may say so, in adult social care. The Minister was totally unconvincing when he responded to some of our concerns about this.
I shall not go on any further, other than to say that I am not convinced at all by what the Minister has said, I will definitely be returning to this at Report and, on the present evidence, we will be tabling an amendment and pushing for a vote. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.