My Lords, I will try not to detain the House for much longer on this Bill, but Amendment 117 in my name and those of the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, does no damage whatever to the Government’s wish to progress the establishment of a new social work regulator in the way now proposed with the new government amendments. Instead, it gives the Government the chance to review progress after a decent interval and in the light of experience and, as I will come to briefly in a moment, likely changes in the regulation of other health and care regulators.
In essence, the amendment would impose a pause after five years of all the changes in the amended Part 2 of the Bill and the associated schedule and regulations made under these provisions, unless the Government have met three relatively modest conditions. The first would be an independent review of the effectiveness of the changes that includes consultation with the social work profession and relevant interests. The second would be to lay the review’s report before Parliament, together with the Secretary of State’s response. The third would allow the Secretary of State to make such changes to Part 2 as she thinks appropriate, having full regard to the findings of the review.
As I have said already, I welcome the way the Government have responded to the many concerns about Part 2. I regret that the Government were unwilling to go a little further and keep the governance of the new regulator under the Privy Council Office, as is the case with the current social work regulator and all the health and care regulators. However, that disappointment is not the main reason for the amendment, which the clerks helpfully framed.
Behind the amendment are two main concerns. First, the history of social work regulation has not been a happy one, as everyone knows only too well. The introduction of a new regulator has itself not had a very orderly birth. A review after a few years would seem a sensible precaution, given the history of this area. Secondly and perhaps more importantly is my concern, shared by the Professional Standards Authority, that a high proportion of social workers to be the concern of the new regulator do not work in children’s social care, whose problems have driven the reform in the Bill. These other social workers work in adult social care and mental health, where their main working relationships are usually with adults and the NHS and nothing whatever to do with the DfE.
There is a totally different change agenda going on for these adult social work staff that is bound up with the integration of the NHS and adult social care under the Department of Health’s oversight, plus integrating better mental and physical healthcare. These are the
agendas that one half of the social care workforce are engaged with. Until the Bill came along, the regulation of all social workers had been under the same governance and oversight as all the other health and care professions. All these professions were on the cusp—and still are—of further regulatory reform following a Law Commission report. That programme of reform is still on track for public consultation and new legislation, quite possibly in this Parliament. It is quite possible that these changes would have implications for the new social work regulator, Social Work England. In its evidence and briefing for this debate, the PSA has expressed its concerns about whether there will be proper alignment between further regulatory reform of all these other health and care professions, and the work done by the new Social Work England regulator.
In these circumstances, it would seem wise to prepare for a pause and review within about five years to see how things are going with the new social work regulator and with this wider regulatory reform agenda for the health and care professions, with whom social workers’ future is, in many regards, deeply embedded.
That is what my amendment would do. It would not stop the Education Secretary pressing on with the changes in the Bill, but it would ensure that, across Whitehall, social workers were not lost sight of in the wider health and care professions regulatory reform agenda.
I hope that the Minister will see this as a constructive amendment and that he and his colleagues will consider it sympathetically and perhaps discuss it further with me and others who are interested in this area—and possibly the PSA as well—before Third Reading. I beg to move.