My Lords, my name is on this amendment, which is probably bad news for the Minister, and I support what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said. I want to add a couple of points on setting up a new unit by coming back to the issue of the Department of Health and adult social workers. It needs to be a unit which would deal with both groups of social workers, which means it needs some machinery that represents the interests of both the Department of Health and the Department for Education. I still see no really convincing evidence that it has been thought through in terms of those departments working together on something to benefit the range of social workers—those who work with children and those who work with adults. If we were to go down this path, there would have to be an agency or unit. I do not think one would mind what it is but it would have to be a convincing agency that looked across the spectrum of social work with children and adults.
I also want to pick up on some of the Minister’s comments in the discussion on my Amendment 135B. At the end of the day, if the Minister has all this money and wants to get on quickly—he said that he had the money and wants to get on speedily with the job of improving social work—then I would say, having been a Minister in government, that the fastest way to do that, as some of us have done, is to set up some kind of grouping across the piece. It would include the types of social workers for adults and children, and all the outside interests. The Minister could almost do that before the autumn and before we come to this on Report. At a later stage, that could be turned into an executive agency if he wanted to do that. There is nothing to prevent the Government putting in place very quickly indeed something of the kind that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, suggested if they have the money and the capability. If they have those then they should do it; they do not even have to ask Parliament.
If the Government want to improve some of the training requirements for social workers, they could also have a conversation with the HCPC, which will be looking at education in September. It has committed to that as part of its work programme. I am sure that
any regulator in this area would always listen to a government department or the Government of the day and consider the evidence for change.
If the Minister is really in a hurry and wants to take people with him, why does he not use what is available now, get on and have a discussion with the HCPC and set up a unit jointly with the Department of Health to do as much improving and make as many changes as he wants? Why are we all being subjected to, and spending some of the best years of our lives discussing, the shambles that is Part 2 of this Bill? It is a sad waste of parliamentary time and I do not think that it is terribly good for the profession, which is being subjected to a lot of uncertainty when it needs more confidence and more certainty. I hope that, even at this late stage, the Minister can see that there are some merits in the approaches of the two amendments.