Children and Young Persons Bill [Lords]

Public Bill Committee, 24 June 2008.

Greg Pope (Labour, Hyndburn)

Good morning. I would like to begin with a few announcements. Some Members have beaten me to this—Members may remove their jackets during Committee sittings. It is warm in here. I remind Members to switch mobile phones, pagers, BlackBerrys and so forth off, or to silent. I remind the Committee that there is a money resolution in connection with the Bill, copies of which are available in the room. I also remind Members that adequate notice should be given of amendments. As a general rule, I and my fellow Chairman do not intend to call starred amendments.

The Committee will be first asked to consider the programme motion on the amendment paper, the debate on which is limited to half an hour. We will then proceed to a motion to report written evidence, which I hope can be taken formally. If the Committee agrees to the programme motion, we will begin scrutiny immediately.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

I beg to move,

That—

(1) the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 10.30 a.m. on Tuesday 24th June) meet,

(a) at 4.00 p.m. on Tuesday 24th June;

(b) at 9.00 a.m. on Thursday 26th June;

(c) at 10.30 a.m. and 4.00 p.m. on Tuesday 1st July; and

(d) at 9.00 a.m. and 1.00 p.m. on Thursday 3rd July;

(2) the proceedings shall be taken in the following order: Clauses 1 to 9; Schedule 1; Clauses 10 to 39; Schedule 2; Clauses 40 to 42; Schedule 3; Clauses 43 to 45; new Clauses; new Schedules; remaining proceedings on the Bill;

(3) the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 5.00 p.m. on Thursday 3rd July.

It is a genuine pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr. Pope, following an encouraging Second Reading which reflected the widespread commitment on both sides of the House to the issues in the Bill.

I understand that there was accord in the usual channels regarding the programme motion. I draw hon. Members’ attention to the fact that we will not be sitting on Thursday afternoon of this week. We were only too happy to agree to that, to accommodate the needs of Members of the Opposition. With those brief pleasantries, and in this perhaps not typical Wimbledon weather, I thank you, Mr. Pope, for allowing us to remove our jackets.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I welcome you, Mr. Pope. I do not think that I have served under your chairmanship. I am sure that you will be exceedingly fair and accommodating. I am particularly pleased that the Minister is leading for the Government. He and I are veterans of these things, going back to the Adoption and Children Act 2002 and other legislation.

I am particularly pleased to be joined on the Opposition Benches by an ace team of veterans. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight was on Committee considering the Children Act 2004 with me, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove who will be joining us later—she sent her apologies—was on the Childcare Act 2006. There is also a debut Committee performance by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich, after his excellent maiden speech in the debate on the Bill last week. He brings to the Committee a wealth of experience from many years on the family court circuit in the north of England. He also has great experience of fostering in his own family. I am sure that he will end up teaching all of us a thing or two.

I endorse the Minister’s comments on the excellent Second Reading, and point out that this is a pretty uncontentious Bill. It was amended for the good in the Lords, and we seek to support it as much as possible and to speed its enactment. There are areas where we want to add detail, and we want to tighten up some of the good intentions, which I think all members of the Committee will agree with. It will be a constructive debate and dialogue.

The way in which the amendments have been ordered means that there is an awful lot of activity at the back end. There are not that many amendments, and they are mostly probing or technical ones, but there are no fewer than 32 new clauses. There are almost as many new clauses as amendments. Things that might have been seen as amendments have been turned into new clauses on a whole host of subjects, including independent reviewing officers, advocacy, residential placements and some of their terms of scrutiny, and teachers and governors having responsibilities in schools. There are also some new clauses that we have tabled. One is on having a welfare checklist, which we would like to see at the heart of the Bill.

We would also like to see proposals on the role of a chief social worker. We might have debated that at the beginning, during our considerations of the first six clauses, but in your wisdom, Mr. Pope, you have decided that we should come back to that new clause later.

We are keen to move through the early clauses as speedily and constructively as possible, because new clauses have been tabled by not only the Opposition, but the Liberal Democrats and some Government Back Benchers, and we are keen to leave sufficient time to debate those fully nearer the end of our proceedings. On that basis, we are happy with the programme motion. However, rather than having only an hour during the final sitting to debate 20 new clauses, it would be nice to pace ourselves accordingly and give them the proper debating time that they merit.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

This is the first time that I have served under your chairmanship, Mr. Pope, and it is a pleasure. I am pleased that the Minister is leading for the Government, as we have met before in other Committees. I would also like to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion, because not only does he bring valuable experience of schools, which relates to an important aspect of the Bill, but we feel that there should be some Welsh input from the opposition parties, as most of the Bill will apply to Wales. I am looking forward to the Committee’s proceedings and hope that they meet my expectations, because we are primarily in agreement that we need to do much better for vulnerable children. Having the opportunity to make a positive contribution to young peoples’ lives is a privilege, so I hope that all of our debates will be in that spirit.

We made a number of points on Second Reading that we want to take forward and in relation to which we want to have more detailed debate. Many of our concerns require clarification and pushing further. On Second Reading, I said that so much is dealt with in guidance and regulation that Committee is the only chance for us to get in there and ensure that the guidance and regulations will be implemented. Implementation will be the key to all of this. We can have all of our grand words, but unless we get it right and get the messages out to the wider world, we will not make the difference that I am sure we all wish to achieve.

Greg Pope (Labour, Hyndburn)

Copies of any memoranda that the Committee receives will be made available in the Committee Room, although none have been received so far.

Clause 1

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

It would be remiss of me not to mention the array of talent that I have with me on this side of the Committee, including my right hon. Friend the Minister for Children, Young People and Families, who has a tremendous amount of experience in these matters and, indeed, was greatly involved with the genesis of the Bill through the “Care Matters” White Paper that was published last June. There is also a wealth of experience behind me, including my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester, who I am sure will do all that he can to help us achieve the Opposition’s strictures on debating the Bill in full and going through all of the new clauses.

In the past, Opposition Members have criticised the Government for their handling of what have sometimes been called—by myself included—“Wallace and Gromit” Bills, because the track is laid as the Committee proceeds. With this number of new clauses, perhaps the Opposition could be accused of something similar, but all of these are serious and important matters that need to be debated in full. With the aid of all members of the Committee, I am sure that we will be able to do that.

Members of the Committee will know that the Bill is based on the “Care Matters” White Paper, which was published last June, and the care implementation plan. By way of introduction to clause 1, perhaps I might indulge you, Mr. Pope, by setting out the context of the Bill and talking about Part 1, which includes clauses 1 to 6, because of the intricate way in which those clauses are interrelated. I think that that would be relevant to this clause stand part debate.

The Bill and White Paper are structured around four key principles. The first is ensuring good parenting from every person involved in these children’s lives. The second is giving young children a voice in the decisions that affect their future. The third is ensuring stability and continuity and the fourth is raising the aspirations of children in care. Part 1 will enable us to pilot social work practices. It will allow local authorities to delegate some of their social service functions to more autonomous practices that will be charged with putting the principles into practice.

We are all aware of the many problems faced by looked-after children. We have heard of cases of children seeing as many as 30 different social workers and going through nine or 10 care placements within a few years. We cannot expect young people to set out on the path to success that we are all aiming for if they are living from one month to the next and are reluctant to make ties, whether to social workers, schools or foster carers, lest they be broken. That experience of care often comes on top of horrific experiences such as abuse and neglect. The outcomes for looked-after children are far too poor.

The White Paper sets out action that we will take on a number of fronts. One of those is to test whether the social work practices introduced under part 1 provide the right framework and deliver significant improvements for children and young people in care. I will set out how the clauses in part 1 fit together because they are intimately connected. That will give a broader view of what we are trying to achieve.

Clause 1 provides that local authorities can delegate their social service functions relating to looked-after children and care leavers to social work practices, referred to in the Bill as

“providers of social work services”.

The thinking behind that is to give social workers a sense of ownership and control over their work. That should stimulate greater innovation and support better relationships with children. Social work practices might be a good thing for social work as well as for our most vulnerable children. That is why we are committed to giving local authorities, which are dedicated to providing improved outcomes for their children in care, the opportunity to try this new approach.

As provided for in the later clauses, we intend to run a set of tightly-controlled pilots for evaluation purposes, lasting initially for two years. Those pilot arrangements are likely to continue in place while the decision is made whether to roll out the model more widely. My Department will select the local authorities that will pilot social work practices and will assist with the set-up and operation of the pilots in partnership with the sector. Crucially, that will include the Local Government Association and the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, which is already closely engaged. Together, we will develop tools for the pilots, including a model contract, a payment structure and a proactive contract-management approach to support effective operation.

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

Is my hon. Friend aware that the Children’s Rights Alliance for England is concerned about the possible loss of human rights protection for children in and leaving care because of contracted-out services? Is it his view that the architecture of the Bill preserves their human rights protections or is it within his contemplation that they will lose them under the pilots?

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

It is our view that they will keep their human rights protections under the Bill. We will explore that in more detail as we consider the Bill further, but in our view there is no reason why their human rights should not be protected. We consider that social work practices will be a functional public authority. Arrangements with providers of social work services under the clause will be fundamentally different from the arrangements in the case of YL v. Birmingham city council, which is the source of the concerns. In that case, the majority of the House of Lords concluded that a private care home was not exercising functions of a public nature. That is the source of the concerns. In reaching that conclusion their Lordships lay great emphasis laid great emphasis on the fact that a private care home was not exercising any delegated statutory functions. In other words, there was no duty on the local authority to provide care and accommodation to Mrs. YL under section 21 of the National Assistance Act 1948. The authority’s statutory duty was to arrange for the provision of care and accommodation, and that duty had not been contracted out or delegated to the care home. However, the functions subject to arrangements under the clause will be functions of the local authority itself. Primary and secondary legislation imposes those functions, so their discharge, by social work practice providers, will be funded by the local authority. For those reasons, we strongly consider it to be absolutely clear that providers of social work practice will be discharging functions of a public nature. I hope that that reassures my hon. Friend.

Other clauses in this part of the Bill provide context. Clause 2 restricts the functions that the local authority can delegate to social work practices. Those restrictions are important to ensure quality and focus in the services offered. In particular, the independent reviewing officer role will remain with the local authority: the IRO will have an important role to play in the social work practice model, as it is a mechanism whereby the local authority can quality assure the social work service provider in relation to individual cases.

Clause 3 confirms that the local authority can be accountable for the acts and omissions of a social work practice. I am sure that we will come on to that in more detail, as we go through the clauses.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

Will the social work practices engage in preventive and family support work, as well as taking responsibility for the child once it has been taken into care?

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

No. The intention is that social work practices will deal with children in care. The type of children whom we anticipate, and the report anticipated, will be looked after by social work practices are those who are in care and who may be likely to remain in care for a long time, because they are the ones most affected by the problems that we have identified of instability and change, including in the number of social workers that they face during their time in care.

Clause 4 provides for regulation of social work practices. It requires those who run SWPs to be registered with Her Majesty’s chief inspector of education, children’s services and skills and subject to regular inspection. It will also enable us to issue national minimum standards for social work practices and to make regulations under the Care Standards Act 2000 in respect of social work practices, as we have done in relation to other establishments and agencies covered by that Act.

Clause 5 is important because it provides that the local authority power to contract with providers of social work services in clause 1 is a social services function for the purposes of the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970. That means that the Secretary of State will be able to issue statutory guidance and give directions to the local authority about the use of the power.

Clause 6 is critical to our work on social work practices. It provides the context for clause 1 by allowing the social work practices set up under clause 1 to be piloted. The model’s operation needs to be tested before we can judge whether it will deliver significantly better outcomes for looked-after children, which is why genuine pilots are needed. We will ensure that they are proper trials so that comparisons can be made on a like-for-like basis. We need to support the set up of pilots, but it is not in the interests of looked-after children for us to prop up the pilots artificially, so that they can only succeed and not fail. We would be failing looked-after children if we did that.

We want to make rational decisions based on the pilots. We want to be innovative and do things in the true spirit of social work—a dedication to social progress and to being bold and ambitious for our looked-after children, which, after all, is the purpose of the Bill. We must be prepared to try out new ideas such as social work practices. On that basis, I commend clause 1 to the Committee.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

Perhaps I can ask for your indulgence, Mr. Pope, given that in the first six clauses, amendments have been tabled only to clause 6. If I speak in general terms about these clauses, as the Minister did, we will be able to speed through part 1. I will identify some of the problems that social work practices aim to tackle, and then I have a list of questions about the detail for the Minister.

We agree in principle with the setting up and piloting of social work practices, so we want to engage constructively. Clause 1 gives local authorities the power to enter into arrangements to contract out their services and responsibilities. As I understand it, the arrangements will be similar to the way that GPs operate in GP practices or barristers in chambers in taking on work. We agree in principle because we desperately need to innovate.

Last year, the Conservative party set up commission on social work, which I chaired. We produced a worthwhile report, which was well received. It dealt with a wide panoply of problems that face the social worker profession, starting with the fact that social workers are simply not valued in the eyes of the public and particularly in the eyes of the tabloid press. The standing of social workers is worryingly low, yet they should be regarded as the fourth emergency service. They are as essential to the maintenance of a vulnerable child and his or her family as teachers, doctors, health professionals and others, but they are not regarded on an equal footing. We support anything in principle that could contribute to raising the game of social workers and raising the perception of social workers.

Too often, social workers are seen as surrogate child snatchers. Too often, the first contact that a vulnerable family has with a social worker is the knock on the door to initiate care proceedings. Many of us would like to see social workers instead working constructively and preventively with vulnerable families at an early stage, doing everything possible to keep families together, rather than adding to the 61,000 children in care.

We must remember that the majority of children in the care system are returned to their families within a year. It is therefore particularly important that the social worker—preferably the same one throughout—establishes and maintains good relations with the child, who may have to go into care temporarily, and with the family to whom, hopefully, the child will return.

We welcome anything that will provide innovation and an antidote to the demotivation felt by many social workers. In parts of London and other inner-city areas vacancy rates for social workers are as high as 20 per cent. As our commission reported, many social workers complain about the excessive bureaucracy, which means that too many of them spend too much time in front of computer screens and filling in forms, rather than in front of children and families trying to sort out problems at the sharp end. They complain that they are too often reactive rather than proactive, and that they are demonised in the press.

An interesting report was produced by the children’s rights director in July 2006, which was all about the comments of children in the care system about social workers and the social work system. We should never forget to focus on the views of the children. The report outlined the sorts of problems that social worker practices will have to deal with. Typical comments were that a child’s social worker had moved them on when they were just settling down in a placement; that children should not have had to stop all contact with their birth families or have been split up from their friends; that social workers should not ignore the views and feelings of young children; that social workers kept changing; that social workers who were leaving were not good at passing information on to whoever took on the child; and that it was important that children got on with their social worker.

We must remember that young people in the care system have very little say on who their social worker is. That is an important consideration for social work practices. All those challenges are faced by social workers now, when they are attached to local authorities, in dealing with children in the care system. The problems will not go away just because we have a new structure of social work practices. Those practices are now being piloted.

I recently met a group of children from the care system in Warwickshire, who came down with the cabinet member for children’s services there. Warwickshire has been piloting a pledge and has set up a board of children in the care system, so that they can give their views. They have come up with some good things. Some of their observations were that social workers were not good at returning their calls, that social workers should turn up to appointments on time and take an interest in what children do and say. They also said that social workers need to keep promises, that children need to see more of their social workers, and that social workers should get to know the children, perhaps by taking them out rather than staying in the house asking questions. Those are all challenges that social work practices will have to deal with.

A report was issued just last week by Ofsted on the views of parents of children in the care system on how the children were looked after, and more importantly on how they were being kept in touch in with them. As I said, the majority of those children will go back to their birth family or members of their extended family after a short spell in care. More than a quarter of parents said that they had not seen their child’s care plan, and some did not even know what a care plan was. A quarter did not know whether the council planned for their child to return home. What sort of a relationship is that, if parents do not know if there is a prospect of their child coming back home and what the family have to do to recreate a stable environment for the child to come back to? The report also showed that 44 per cent. of parents did not have a say in their child’s care plan, and 38 per cent. did not agree to the plan. Fifty nine per cent. of parents said that there had been no support from the local council to help to prevent their children from going into care in the first place. More than three quarters of parents said that they got no or not enough council support, including help with the child being returned to them.

There are serious problems facing both children in the care system and the families whence they come, and social workers. There are the usual problems of high staff turnover, staff being reactive not proactive, too much bureaucracy, money and staff flowing away from the front line, social workers being deprived of their autonomy, children coming into contact with too many social workers—there is a lack of continuity—and children not seeing their social workers often enough. Those are the problems facing social workers working for local authorities now. If we are to pilot a new form of social work practice, we need to be convinced that those new set-ups will acknowledge those problems and will be able to deal with them head-on and come up with solutions. At the moment that does not happen often.

Andrew Turner (Conservative, Isle of Wight)

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the problems is cost? The cost may be different for those employed social workers to those in secondary accommodation. Can he explain how that will affect the composition?

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

My hon. Friend makes a good point. One of the questions I wish to ask the Minister is about how the finances will work out. It is important not to look at a charge or a social work practice in isolation. We must look at the overall cost of the child’s experience and the overall effect on all social work practices and social work departments within local authorities. We do not want Peter to rob Paul, and we do not want to see knock-on effects on other children. We do not want to see something beneficial happening for a child in a short intensive burst because there is extra finance available, only for that child then to slip back into some of the problems they experienced before. It is important we take an holistic approach and consider the social worker profession and practices and practitioners within local authorities.

The bottom line must be the outcomes for children. I am concerned primarily with that, as I am sure that all of us in the Committee are. The structures are secondary to achieving the right results for children in the care system—the most vulnerable children of all—who are the subject of this welcome Bill.

I have sat in family courts, and my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich has made a profession in cases and I am sure will have seen this first hand. The last time, I sat in on several cases and had lunch and talked with the judge afterwards. He said that in every case that had come before him that morning, the social worker present was not the one who had started the case when he had first heard it weeks or months before. Interestingly, in almost every case in the court that I went to, the social worker was Australian and was actually a very good social worker. Many of them come over here, and we are grateful that they do, because there are many gaps in the profession, as we know. However in many cases, unfortunately, they are not going to be around for a long time. That lack of continuity is deeply worrying in an area where, above all, we need continuity and stability for vulnerable children and their families. Will social work practices provide greater continuity than the stressed and under pressure social work departments of local authorities do now?

There are big disparities within the system and between different local authorities. That is one of my biggest concerns. For example, if one looks at the records, one can find authorities where children have had had three or more placements within the previous 12 months. Three or more placements represents enormous upheaval for a vulnerable child who, in many cases, has come from unsettled and threatening backgrounds. Why is there such an enormous disparity between different authorities?

The latest figures that I have been able to get out of the Minister’s Department show that as of March 2007 in Cornwall, 23.5 per cent. of children had had three or more placements in the previous 12 months—almost a quarter had experienced the considerable turmoil of going into different foster parents, or residential or other care in the preceding 12 months. How can being moved that often contribute to reconstructing a degree of stability, such as being able to stay at the same school and with the same group of friends? I do not know why the turnover in placements was considerable in Cornwall in particular—it may have been an exceptional year. In Stoke-on-Trent the figure was 19.1 per cent. One imagines that the problem may be more severe in inner cities where there are difficulties recruiting social workers, but, in contrast, the figure for the London borough of Barnet was just 5.4 per cent. There will always be divergence between local authorities—they deal with different demographics and different challenges—but that is an enormous range of experiences.

One of the biggest challenges that the Government face is how to get greater conformity in achievement and, preferably, get nearer to the Barnet level of 5.4 per cent. Barnet has an excellent children’s services department: it invested in its children’s services and social workers five or six years ago and is now harvesting the benefits. Can the Minister assure me that social work practices will go some way to decreasing the enormous divergence of experience in those and the other statistics relating to the achievements and outcomes of looked-after children? Will the Minister target some of the worst or some of the best local authorities in that range as part of the nine pilots? I do not think that the prospective pilots have been named yet.

There are many other examples of good practice; I and other hon. Members mentioned some on Second Reading last week, so I will not go over that again. My point is that social work practices will not be the universal panacea to the problems of instability among the social work profession. We need to innovate and encourage the many voluntary organisations—NCH do a lot of preventive family support, which I mentioned last week and Community Service Volunteers do a fantastic volunteer social worker programme.

The Government tasked Professor Le Grand to chair the social care practices working group, which was established by the then Department of Education and Skills in November 2006. An eminent group of men and women served on that group, including Alistair Pettigrew, who was the director of children’s social care in Lewisham and a member of the Conservative party commission on social work, Lynne Berry, who was the chief executive of the General Social Care Council and has also made a contribution to our commission, and Paul Fallon, who was the head of children’s services in Barnet and to whom I am sure much of the credit is due for the excellent figures that I have just mentioned.

The social care practices working group recommended the preferred model of a professional partnership grouping of between six and 10 partners, the majority of whom should be social workers, and the clauses suggest that the Government have adopted that model. Interestingly, the group recommended that the payment arrangements would allow a fixed baseline amount to be paid to the social work practice by the local authority and that a bonus unit based should be based on the outcome that the social work practice achieves, presumably measured through the outcomes for the children. Again, further detail on how that will work would be useful, as they things come back to the financing of the practices, as my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight mentioned.

Clause 1 leaves the details of the commissioning arrangements to regulations, which we do not yet have. As so often happens in Public Bill Committees, we are grasping in the dark for what the regulations that will bring these provisions into force will look like.

I am grateful for your indulgence, Mr. Pope, while I was trying to set the scene. I think that that is important, but members of the Committee can be assured that I will not repeat the process for the remaining clauses. However, I have a few additional questions for the Minister. We want assurances that the pilots will be meaningful and not just be set up so that they can report and move seamlessly into being the norm across the country. I will be delighted if they are successful and have much to offer, but they are controversial and a number of concerns have been raised by professionals, local government and authorities about the knock-on effect that the pilots might have on existing local authority-led social work departments.

Will the Minister tell us how the pilots will be evaluated, so that they will not just be nodded through, and will he confirm that that evaluation will assess the knock-on effects on the local authorities and the actual outcomes for the children involved, so that we do not risk simply creaming off some of the best social workers from local authority departments to join the social work practices? If the pilots are successful, they should also have a positive knock-on effect for social workers by attracting more people into the profession and improving standards of social workers overall.

The hon. Member for Stafford rightly mentioned the human rights dimension, because the Bill does not say that social work practices, as providers of services, will be functional public authorities, which I think is the technical term that the Human Rights Act uses. That was left hanging in the air after the debate in the Lords, so further details from the Minister would be welcome.

On the level of qualifications held by the social workers who are likely to work within the practices, one presumes that they will be registered social workers who are regulated by the General Social Care Council, but who will register and inspect those practices during the pilot period? They will, of course, be dealing with real children, because this is not just a dummy pilot in a dummy cockpit somewhere. The pilots will have real social workers dealing with children in the care system who have real problems and challenges. Clearly, they must be monitored and regulated in the same way that we would expect social workers to be when working directly for the local authority. Does the Minister know where the pilots are likely to be? He does not necessarily need to list the nine or so recommended pilots, but does he anticipate that the range of areas will give a cross-section of different experiences?

Finally, Unison has some grave concerns. I am not pleading the case for Unison, but it made some relevant points in the brief that we received. It questioned whether social work practices would lack the leverage to facilitate access to other local authority services for looked-after children. That is a fair point. Dealing with vulnerable children desperately needs an holistic approach. A social worker must deal with the local school and the local education authority, and with the housing department of the local authority if accommodation is involved. Can the Minister assure us that social worker practices will have the authority and standing to have that sort of relationship with colleagues, even though those colleagues will be at arm’s length, as they will be within the local authority?

Unison is also concerned that the proposals will fragment the child’s journey through the care system and work against continuity. If the proposals are to be successful, they must address that and social work practices must provide greater continuity than there is now. Unison also refers to the fact that the Government have issued a prospectus canvassing interest from local authorities. Perhaps the Minister could update us on how expressions of interest are going and how advanced that process is.

In principle, we warmly welcome the proposals set out in clauses 1 to 6 and the innovation that they represent. We hope that the move will be successful, but we need to be convinced of how it will be successful and how that success will be judged. We need to be assured that a proper holistic evaluation of the pilot will take place. We will have more to say about the timing of that under clause 6. I am sure that the Minister will reply to some of our concerns. Most importantly, professionals who are expected to transfer to these practices and those who will work alongside them must feel reassured rather than threatened by these controversial, but potentially exciting, provisions of the Bill.

Greg Pope (Labour, Hyndburn)

Order. Before we go any further, I must say that not for the first time in my inauspicious career as a Chairman of Committees I have been too lax. I can see that hon. Members want to point out that clause 1 is related to clauses 2 to 5. It is reasonable to refer to that in passing, but in future we will have more tightly drawn clause stand part debates.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I intend to be fairly brief so that I do not repeat what has already been said. I may stray over all six clauses because then those will be over and done with, but I promise not to make the same points again.

We must remember throughout this process to focus on the individual child. We all get dragged into using generic terms such as looked-after children for those who will be in the system for a long time, but we must think about individual children and what they have told us over and over again about the strengths and weaknesses of their relationships with their social workers. It is important to appreciate that there are many strong relationships, but a number children do not feel that they have been supported sufficiently. Their views on this matter are all-important.

As I said on Second Reading, I have some reservations about social work practices. I want to achieve the very best for our children so I do not have any reservations about the pilots. They will help us to see whether we can improve the relationships between children and their social workers. As has been said, the key to that is a stable, highly qualified work force that is responsive to the needs of children. That needs working on across the board.

I agree that it is important to look at local authorities and social work practices together to ensure that we achieve an overall gain. It is important that this is not a zero-sum game in which we lose in one respect as we gain in another, hence my earlier intervention on the Minister. Social work practices will be very focused on one objective. It is an important objective, but we must be assured that the important preventive work and family support work is being provided by highly qualified social workers.

The evaluations will be key in the pilots. Will the Minister consider having independent annual evaluations in the same way as for academies? Social work practices could be just as important as academies in giving a different approach. The evaluations should be independent and the outcomes should be looked at by a multi-disciplinary group of stakeholders. It is important that social work practices are keyed in to all of the other services and the multi-disciplinary approach that is worked towards in “Every Child Matters”. It would be dreadful to achieve in one dimension while things slip through the net in another.

It is also important to not focus just on piloting social work practices. I am sure that there will be many innovations within local authorities. We should be looking at those to ensure that we are spreading good practice. My colleague in the other place, Baroness Sharp, mentioned that the Children’s Workforce Development Council is currently seeking bids to trial new arrangements for social workers in 18 local authorities. Those trials will remodel social work teams to improve the recruitment and retention of social workers and other social care staff. They will aim to increase early intervention work and tackle bureaucracy. We need lots of innovative practice and we always need to be evaluating.

Social care practices are in the Bill so they have a high profile, but we should evaluate them fully before extending the pilots. Most importantly, we should look at the outcomes for all the services dealing with looked-after children. We want the pilots to proceed, but we are asking for a more holistic approach that will look at the whole system in this area.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

I will attempt to respect your infallibility, Mr. Pope. However, I think that it would be appropriate to respond to the debate that we have had. We will then have to be very tight in our debates on the following clauses.

Hon. Members have raised a number of questions on the pilots of social work practices. I welcome the tone of those questions in supporting the need to innovate and try out new ideas where we know that the system has not been serving vulnerable children as well as it should have been. We have a moral obligation to try out good ideas when they come forward. That is what we are doing in part 1 and in clause 1 in particular.

I will deal first with the points raised by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham. The Government recognise the need to support social workers in doing their difficult and important jobs. We were pleased that the commission that he chaired on behalf of his political party supported many of the Government’s commitments, innovations and approaches in this area. The Government is investing over £73 million in “The Children’s Plan: Building brighter futures”. We published the document earlier this year; I have a copy with me, and members of the Committee are welcome to one. The aim of that plan is to tackle recruitment and retention and improve capacity and morale over the next three years in the social care work force, including piloting newly qualified social worker status. It will also look at workloads and at the bureaucracy surrounding social workers, which are key issues, particularly against the background of high vacancy rates and turnover in some areas.

For that reason the Department has commissioned the Children’s Workforce Development Council to pilot—as the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole mentioned—other approaches with local authorities, to remodel the delivery of social work and understand how best to configure roles, capacity and support, with the aim of improving the outcomes for and the experiences of vulnerable children, young people and families.

Therefore, it is not just about this pilot; there is a broader agenda as the hon. Lady rightly pointed out. Local authorities involved in those pilots are testing a wide range of approaches, including consideration of the roles of admin staff in social work teams, and the roles of social workers in multi-agency teams, as well as the newly qualified social worker pilots, which will provide managed case-loads for new social workers in their first year’s employment in children’s settings. I have a copy of the information on the Children’s Workforce Development Council pilot programmes, which gives an additional flavour to our discussion about the piloting of social work practices. Those pilots are in the Bill because we have to legislate in order for them to be carried out, not because we seek to feature them or put them above the other pilots and innovations in this area.

The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham also mentioned the registration of social workers. Clause 2 will require the local authority functions being discharged by a social work practice to be discharged by or under the supervision of registered social workers. There was also a query on how the pilots would be regulated and scrutinised. Many people will pay close attention to the work of social work practices in the pilot phase. As part of the contract management process, the local authority will keep a close eye on the outcomes delivered by the practices, and the independent reviewing officer will review and challenge—that is the key point—their work in relation to the individual children they serve. Ofsted will take a broader look as part of the new inspection arrangements for local areas, which include programmed inspections focusing on the quality of services for looked-after children. In addition, we expect that there will be regular scrutiny of the standards of practice in social work practices, to support national monitoring and evaluation of the social work practice model.

The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham also asked whether social work practices will provide greater continuity of outcome. Our aim is to find out whether they can. We believe that they have the potential to bring greater continuity and stability for looked-after children, and that there is sufficient evidence to legislate in this way. However, we are not pre-judging that, because we need to ensure that the pilot is genuine. That is why we are testing the model as outlined in the clauses.

In relation to finances and the overall effect of social work practices, which hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Isle of Wight, mentioned, it is absolutely clear that we must look at social work practices on a level playing field. There is no point making this the sort of pilot that is set up to succeed. We want to set up genuine pilots that will be independently evaluated. The funding that we are providing, £2 million per annum for the six to nine pilots across the country, is intended only to support the initial set-up costs.

Local authorities receive £5 billion a year from the Government, of which approximately £300 million is “Care Matters” implementation plan funding. Of that, roughly £6 million will be available for social work pilots over their period. In many ways, they will be no more generously funded than the other pilots that have been referred to, such as the Children’s Workforce Development Council pilots, which the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole mentioned. There is a level playing field.

On a point that hon. Members are concerned about, we will ensure that the impact on wider services and other children is an integrated part of the evaluation of the pilots. We want to judge them not in isolation from the rest of the social work world but in the context of any potential impact or knock-on effects. As the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said, if they are successful and work for social workers as well as the young people with whom they deal, there is long-term potential for them to act as a magnet to attract people into the profession.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

One comment that is often made by young people is that they want potential 24-hour-a-day contact. Although that might sound demanding, as a parent one is used to receiving phone calls at all times of the day. Does the Minister feel that social work practices will be able to give something extra to get closer to that parental contact? Will there be in the contracts reasons for somebody to be on tap for a longer period?

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

The hon. Lady makes a valuable point. We have already found in some of the expressions of interest from third sector organisations that are interested in running social work practices that they feel they will be able to be more flexible, providing not a nine-to-five service but one that is available longer. In one case, I believe that it was to be until 10pm, with special payments available for people who were called out during later hours. That is perhaps a more personal and individual service than there might be from the emergency team in a local authority. There is potential for the out-of-hours service that she refers to in the social work practice model. Again, that is only potential, and we will we not prejudge whether that will happen in practice. We shall ensure that the wider impact of the practices is taken into account in the evaluation.

The funding of social work practices will be set out in their contract with the local authority, which will be crucial. Like any other contact, it will set out the services to be provided, the standards to which they will be provided and the payments that the local authority will make. Crucially, as the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said, an element of the contract will be outcomes-based. It is important that we ensure that social work practices have the incentive to improve.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

I hear what the Minister says, but in many cases social workers are unable to perform their statutory duties, whether health assessments or statutory visits, purely because of the weight of bureaucracy hanging over them. I spoke to a social worker only a few weeks ago who told me that the laptop that used to be on the left of her desk is now in the middle, because she spends most of her time on it. What assurances can the Minister give that social workers will be involved in not only the evaluation but the practice of the pilot scheme, and that they will be given the freedom and authority to get on with their job rather than be faced with the same bureaucracy as current social workers?

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to the Committee and, once again, to the House, and I thank him for his intervention. He is right in the sense that one of the purposes of the social work practices is to create a setting in which a group of professionals can work together outwith the bureaucratic structures that they might face working within a large social services department of a local authority, where there may be 400 or more employees. The hon. Gentleman referred to a GP’s practice as an analogy and that may be appropriate. Working as a team of professionals, with the ability to employ their own admin staff to help with the natural bureaucracy of running any small operation, they would be free to engage more directly in their social work with children.

In evaluating the pilots, we will see whether social workers will be freed from the bureaucracy of line management and of working in a large organisation to be able to run with the ball a little more, with clear direction set out by the contract and by the management of the social work practice. It will be for the local authority to decide whether to engage a social work practice and to negotiate a costed contract, bearing in mind its internal costs and budgets.

We are supporting local authorities to improve the recruitment and retention of social workers through learning from good practice such as that in Barnet, which the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham mentioned. If we could reproduce the “Barnet formula”—to coin a phrase—across the country, we would all think that we had successfully implemented the care matters implementation plan. I acknowledge the progress that has been made in Barnet.

I mentioned the newly qualified social worker status programme, which will be targeted, early on, in those areas where there are recruitment difficulties—London and the west midlands—and will use a major marketing campaign for social workers. Obviously, we are looking at the recruitment and retention of social workers. Social work practices are only one remodelling approach; approaches have been mentioned.

Andrew Turner (Conservative, Isle of Wight)

Would the hon. Gentleman see the new operation describing how people are released from the local authority by freedom or where they have an equivalent list of responsibilities, but are a different body?

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

I think that I understand what the hon. Gentleman is driving at. Basically, the social work practice will be working to a contract agreed with the local authority, which, in effect, is delegating services that it would otherwise provide directly. The social work practice will have the freedom to operate as an organisation within the contract, which draws up the services that it is expected to deliver. On that basis I will sit down.

Greg Pope (Labour, Hyndburn)

I think that it is safe to say after that debate that if I were a referee at a Euro 2008, I would be on my way home for not giving out enough yellow cards.

Clause 2

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

Bearing in mind what we have just debated, I will be reasonably brief. Cause 2 restricts the functions that local authorities can delegate to social work practices. Those restrictions are important to ensuring quality and focus in the services offered. The first restriction will ensure that the independent reviewing officer role will remain with the local authorities. The independent review officer will have an extremely important role to play under the social work practice model, as they are the mechanism by which the local authority will be able to quality assure the work of the provider of social work services in relation to individual children. In that context, the independent review officer will attend care-planning reviews, as now, to monitor progress and make decisions about changes as necessary. In undertaking that role, the independent review officer will build up an important bank of knowledge about the effectiveness of the social work practice, including its strengths and weaknesses, how well it works with other agencies and the quality of its relationships with children. Consistent with the IRO role, that information should then be fed back to senior managers regularly, whether as part of wider contract management meetings or by some other means. That information flow will be absolutely crucial to enabling the local authority to hold the social work practice to account meaningfully.

The second restriction will ensure that social work practices cannot carry out the local authority’s functions as an adoption agency unless the practice itself is already a registered adoption agency. That is because we want to ensure that children who are likely to remain in care long term are the focus of social work practices, and those are the children who seem to suffer most from the problems with the current system that we and other members of the Committee have identified. Social work practices will be of most use when they develop innovative and effective strategies for working with that group of children that can be transferred to the local authority context and implemented across the country. Indeed, the processes for preparing for adoption are obviously different.

The third restriction that will apply to the provider of social work services will be any restrictions applicable to the local authority by reference to its area, such as restrictions on out-of-area placements. That is intended to ensure consistency of treatment, despite the fact that the functions will have been delegated between children with a social work practice and those who remain in the care of the local authority directly. Finally, the clause will require local authorities to be satisfied that the functions it is to delegate to a provider of social work practices will be discharged by or under the supervision of registered social workers, as we have mentioned.

Clause 3

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

Clause 3 is extremely important for ensuring a strong framework of accountability for the work of providers of social work services. It is important to be clear that under the social work practice model the local authority will remain the corporate parent for looked-after children and the local authority will remain accountable for what happens to them. Local authorities will use the children and young person’s plan to set out their priorities for local children, including looked-after children, and inform the commissioning of a social work practice.

The local authority’s director of children’s services will have oversight of the operation of the social work practice, just as they would in relation to other local children’s services delivered directly by the local authority. In that respect, the contract between the local authority and the social work practice will be absolutely crucial. It is through that contract that the local authority will set out the outcomes that the social work practices must deliver and the framework within which they must work, including requirements for multi-agency working and other issues relevant to the delivery of local authority services.

Once the contract is agreed, there must be rigorous, frequent and engaged contract management, as there is no question of the local authority tacking its foot off the accelerator simply because of its contract with the social work practice. We envisage a relationship of partnership between the local authority and the social work practice, involving regular meetings to spot potential problems early and agree steps to put them right. The close management of the social work practice will be important in the light of the local authority remaining the corporate parent and retaining responsibility for the discharge of its functions. As I explained earlier, the IRO will be another key mechanism for ensuring that.

Clause 3 confirms that the local authority will be accountable for the acts and omissions of the social work practice, without removing the accountability of the practice itself. That is vital for ensuring the proper protection of children and families supported by providers of social work services. The local authority must remain responsible for the discharge of its functions in relation to looked-after children, even if it delegates some of those functions to a social work practice. As I have said, that means that it will be accountable to the service, provided that it remains the corporate parent of the children it looks after, so children and their families can have the reassurance of knowing that that claim could be pursued against the local authority directly if things go wrong. Local authorities will require a comprehensive contract and proactive contract management.

That does not mean that the social work practice will escape liability for its actions and failures. Its work will be sensitive, the decisions it makes will be critical and we want to ensure that it is directly accountable to the children and families it serves. Although clause 3(1) ensures that the local authority is accountable for the acts and omissions of the social work practice, clause 3(2)(c) confirms that claims may be brought against the practice in the usual way if things go wrong.

Concerns were raised by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham and my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford about the human rights implications. I confirm what I said in response to those interventions. Social work practices will be liable for their acts and omissions under the Human Rights Act 1998. Social work practices will discharge public functions and our view is that they will automatically come under the definition of “public authority” in section 6(3)(b) of the Human Rights Act. We take that view because the functions are imposed by legislation on the local authority and the discharge of those functions will be paid for by the local authority out of public funds.

Clause 4

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

Clause 4 provides for the regulation of social work practices. It will require social work practices to be registered with Her Majesty’s chief inspector of education, children’s services and skills and they will be subject to regular inspections. The clause will also enable us to issue national minimum standards for social work practices and make regulations under the Care Standards Act 2000, as we have for other establishments.

We do not intend to bring the clause into force immediately. The pilot period in clause 6 will end when clause 4 is brought into force after there has been an evaluation of the pilots and a decision has been made to roll the model out more widely or five years after Royal Assent, whichever is sooner. We do not think it appropriate for social work practices to be regulated under the 2000 Act during the pilot phase because to introduce a new regulatory system for such a small number of pilots would be unduly burdensome and bureaucratic. Nevertheless, we will have the range of mechanisms that I set out earlier to monitor the work of social care practices and assure their quality.

Social work practices will be within the scope of the annual assessments by the inspectorates, including the chief inspector, from 2009 through the new comprehensive care assessment and through programmed inspections of services for children in care. Moreover, they will have to ensure that their functions are carried out under the supervision of social workers who are registered with the GSCC.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

Will the Minister say what would happen in the scenario of a social worker who was working for one of the pilots being struck off during the pilot period? Would it differ from what would happen if they were working for the local authority? What additional inspection safeguards would be triggered for such a social worker practice, given that it would not be subject to the GSCC?

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

My understanding is that such a social worker would not be able to work for the social work practice any longer. I will correct myself if that is wrong. If there were wider implications of that scenario for the social work practice, ultimately there would be provision for the Government to take action centrally. Long before that, the local authority would have the ability to terminate the contract if events were serious enough. If there was systematic failure in a social work practice, I would expect the contract to be terminated at quite an early stage.

At local authority level, there will be proactive contract management by the local authority with input and support from the Department and those acting on its behalf, including Government office staff. That might involve participation in the commissioning process and attendance at contract management meetings. They will give general advice and guidance on commissioning and contract management issues. That will be complemented by the individual case reviews by the independent reviewing officer.

Finally, there will be an independent evaluation of the social work practice model, which we mentioned earlier, which will gather and report on performance measuring it against a range of indicators at regular intervals. Until we have evaluated the operation of the pilots, we will not know whether the practice model will be extended beyond the pilot phase and local authorities, but if it is to be continued to be used, the services should become regulated under the Care Standards Act to ensure high standards of practice from providers of social work services in the long term, in the same way as any other establishment or agency is regulated under that Act.

Andrew Turner (Conservative, Isle of Wight)

How will providers be released from the pilot? Will they be obliged to work together, or will some be released and others not?

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

If the independent evaluation finds that the model as a whole has something to offer more broadly, the Government can switch on the ability of any local authority to decide to contract out to a social work practice. The local authority will make that decision—there will be no centrally determined or directed, top-down Government directive ordering local authorities to use this model. The provision will be available beyond the pilot areas to any local authority that feels that it is an appropriate model for them. The evaluation will consider, therefore, not whether an individual social work practice has been successful, but whether the model itself has something to offer to the system.

Clause 5

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

Very briefly, clause 5 provides that the local authority power to contract with providers of social work services, under clause 1, is a social services function for the purposes of the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970. That means that the Secretary of State can issue guidance and directions to the local authority about the use of the power. That is important, because the social work practice model is as yet untested, and we will need to put in place mechanisms to ensure effective operation. For example, we are likely to issue guidance on what must be done prior to a contract to verify the quality of the provider, what the contract must include and which children will benefit most from the social work practice approach.

Clause 6

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I beg to move amendment No. 1, in clause 6, page 5, line 17, leave out ‘five’ and insert ‘three’.

Greg Pope (Labour, Hyndburn)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 2, in clause 6, page 5, line 18, leave out ‘passed’ and insert ‘comes into force’.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

Now we have some real amendments—well, they are probing amendments, rather than real ones, so I shall not detain the Committee too long. We have had a good debate on the concept of social work practice already, but I am concerned about getting on with it. Amendment No. 1 would reduce, therefore, the duration of the pilots from five to three years, and amendment No. 2 deals with a technicality that the Minister will probably say is not required. In the working party report, which Professor Le Grand chaired, the time recommended for pilots was at least two years. The recommendation stated:

“The Group’s view is that pilots would need to run for at least two years, if not longer, to provide a sufficiently robust assessment. Also, the Group proposes that there should be nine pilots to provide a robust assessment”.

I am concerned that it will take too long. Why should it take at least five years to assess whether the pilots have worked? Would it not be possible to speed things up by having an assessment after three years? Those three years may turn out not to be long enough—all sorts of reasons for extending the period might be raised during the development of the schemes—in which case there is nothing to stop the Government asking for more time. It could probably be done by regulation. However, I to do not want to see the pilots eventually being set up and running for at least five years, with a further period of assessment being required, further queries bring thrown up and further legislation being required in order to give force to the status of these social worker practices.

On the basis that we could find out whether or not the schemes will be a success, the amendment would reduce the time specified from five years to three. It is a probing amendment, and if the Minister can give us good reasons for why five years has to be the absolute minimum, I shall be happy to take it as read. The purpose of the amendment is to put the Minister on the spot, to challenge the time scale and not the principle.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I note that my noble Friend Baroness Sharp moved similar amendments in the other place. When I read that debate, I was concerned about the second point being made—that things could drag on way beyond the five years. That point needs to be addressed this morning, which is why I partially support the amendment. My worry is that three years might not give enough time for a robust assessment, so I want to know how it can be extended if necessary. I share the fears that have been raised. I can see things dragging on for about ten years, which would be ridiculous. I therefore seek some assurance from the Minister.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

The first amendment seeks to limit the piloting to three years. The other seeks to ensure that the pilot period does not start until after the powers under clause 1 have been commenced. I acknowledge that the intention is to seek some reassurance that we will pilot the approach of social work practices in a timely fashion and seek further clarification on the timetable for the operation of the pilots.

The timetable for piloting social work practice was set out in some detail in the other place, in the debate referred to by the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole. However, I shall repeat it because it is important to understand the rationale behind the timetable and the five-year period.

Clause 6(2) allows for clause 1 to be brought into force by reference to a particular local authority or authorities in order to enable the selection of local authorities to pilot the social work practice model. Unless clause 4 is brought into effect within five years of Royal Assent, clauses 1 to 5 will cease to have effect. We therefore have five years to establish the pilots, allow them to run, make a thorough evaluation of them prior to deciding whether to roll out the power to make arrangements under clause 1 to all local authorities. Five years is a reasonable period to undertake that work. Reducing it to three years would compromise the effectiveness of the pilots and risk disrupting children’s lives by not allowing for the appropriate transition periods.

The subsequent timetable for the pilots is as follows. Subject to the successful passage of the Bill, we will move to identify local authorities to take place in the pilots. Those local authorities will begin commissioning social work practices in early 2009, subject to the Bill receiving Royal Assent—and subject to when it receives Royal Assent. Detailed contract negotiations will need to take place between the pilot local authorities and the social work practice providers, and practical arrangements for transferring cases will need to be put into place.

The aim is to have social work practices up and running, with full case loads, by autumn 2009, and that the pilots then run for two years until autumn 2011. During that period, evaluation evidence will be gathered. In the fourth year, 2011-12, the independent evaluation of the pilots will take place. We will ensure that the evaluation report is made public, and that there is a full and proper consultation before the model is made available to all authorities, if that is the desired option. The full evaluation report will obviously be placed in the Library of the House.

The fifth year is a necessary transition period, because if a decision is taken to make the social work practice model available to all local authorities, we will have to ensure that we get the regulatory regime for social work practices right. We will have to consult on that regime, and give the chief inspector time to prepare the inspection arrangements. Those local authorities that had run the pilots would need to commission social work practices for the post-pilot period, and would need time to do so. If the decision were to not make the model more widely available, the pilots would remain in place to allow a well managed and staged transition of staff and children back to the local authority over that year, to ensure minimum disruption to their lives. That is an essential part of ensuring that we support the lives of the children and young people in the pilot authorities, and it is vital to give sufficient time for that.

I hope that members of the Committee will see that while the pilots themselves will not last for the five-year period, we need five years to do all the things around the piloting, including set-up, evaluation, ensuring that we have the evidence base needed to take the right decisions for looked-after children, and consulting on the way forward before taking important decisions. It is also clear from the Bill that we will need to move promptly on Royal Assent. I hope that that goes some way towards explaining why the pilot in the Bill is set at five years.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

Has the Minister envisaged an extension to the pilot scheme—currently with nine local authorities—whereby if, after the first two-year period of more tightly controlled piloting, sufficient interest is shown by local authorities, which will undoubtedly have been exposed to the other pilot schemes by the nature of the cross boundaries between local authorities, they will be allowed to participate in the scheme during that five-year period?

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

It is not intended at this stage for there to be any more pilots than the ones that we will announce. As the hon. Gentleman says, if this model becomes immediately attractive and highly successful and is lauded universally, there may be a queue of local authorities desirous of taking it up at an early stage. However, the appropriate thing to do is what we have indicated, which is to set up the pilots that have been funded in the “Care Matters” implementation plan, and to properly and independently evaluate them before making them universally available to other local authorities. I hope that my remarks have explained why we need five years from the date that the Act is passed. On that basis, and given that I understand why the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham was probing for more detail, I hope that the amendment will be withdrawn.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I am grateful for the Minister’s helpful comments. It is clear that it is not just some five years hence and then perhaps some after that, but that the Government appear to have a clearer timetable, which is more rapid and concise than I had anticipated. That is to be welcomed.

When the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole rose to give reluctant support I thought that she was going to pitch for four years, and split the difference between three and five.

It is important that if we are to test the approach as a potential attractive new model, we should get on with it. The assessment part of the piloting timetable that the Government appear to have set is relatively small—not the full five years—and that is helpful. I am also encouraged by the Minister’s comments about proper independent evaluation and consultation in 2011-12 as an essential part of what happens and, looking forward to the regulatory regime, the need to construct an inspection regime. That clarification was helpful, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Kevin Brennan (Labour, Cardiff West)

We have had a fairly good kick around on clauses 1 to 6. Clause 6 is, as I said, crucial to our work on social work practices, because it enables us to test the model. In discussion of the amendments we have had the opportunity to set out in detail how we intend to do that.

Clause 7

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

I welcome the opportunity to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Pope. Having spent a lot of time, as my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary said, developing the White Paper, I also welcome the opportunity to be a member of the Committee, and to work with the other members to bring the measure to fruition.

Hon. Members will be aware that clause 7 was inserted into the Bill by Members in the other place, to add the Border and Immigration Agency to the list of agencies that are subject to section 11 of the Children Act 2004. The intention was obviously to extend to the agency the duty of safeguarding children. I hope that all hon. Members will acknowledge that safeguarding children has been and continues to be a top priority for the Government.

The Government have listened to the thoughtful and powerful arguments that have been made on this issue about whether those responsible for running the immigration system should have a legal duty to ensure that, consistent with the primary duty to secure our borders, they discharge their functions having regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children—the duty set out in section 11 of the Children Act 2004.

We welcome the considerable work already undertaken by the UK Border and Immigration Agency to implement a code of practice to protect children from harm while they are in the UK. I hope that hon. Members will acknowledge that the UKBA already has high standards of care compared with similar bodies, and has worked consistently with the Children’s Commissioner for England. However, we want to go further, learning from experience, in introducing the new code.

Having considered the arguments fully, the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families have agreed that aligning the UKBA with those agencies that are already subject to section 11 duty is the right thing to do for children and young people. All agencies working with children and young people should be able to consider how they can safeguard and promote the welfare of children. Now is the right time to introduce a section 11 duty as part of a reformed, streamlined immigration service, working to improve the United Kingdom’s security through stronger border protection, while also welcoming legitimate travellers and trade.

We have until now concentrated, rightly, on getting the infrastructure in place, focusing first and foremost on implementing the system. However, the establishment of UKBA now provides an opportunity to bring a stronger focus not just on the status of children and young people arriving in the UK, but on their safety and welfare.

It is important that we make the right legislative provision, to bind the UKBA effectively into a section 11 duty, while taking account of the agency’s particular distribution of legal functions, and its UK-wide remit. The current provision in the Bill does not address the proposed organisation of UKBA, nor does it encompass that range of its functions.

Today, the Government are giving a public commitment to pursue a section 11 duty for UKBA, but we intend to do so not in this Bill but in the forthcoming immigration Bill, which will be published in draft in July. The intention is that it will be introduced in the 2008-09 Session, and I therefore want to give Members notice of my intention to introduce an amendment on Report to remove clause 7 from the Children and Young Persons Bill. It is right that the duty affects the operation of UKBA not just in England and Wales but throughout the UK. It is also right that we take the necessary time and effort to work with colleagues to find a legislative solution that is accepted throughout the UK, works consistently in the interests of children and young people throughout the UK, and is consistent with, and obviously does not undermine, the integrity of our asylum and immigration system.

I hope that Members will accept the Government’s intentions and the commitment that I have given today, and will support the way in which we intend to proceed.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I am grateful for the Minister’s comments. She did give us slight prior notice of her intention, and that was helpful. I shall make some comments about why the principle behind clause 7 is important, and welcome, cautiously, what the Minister said.

Clause 7 was added to the Bill in the other House, when an amendment moved by my noble Friend Baroness Morris of Bolton received widespread support from all parts of the House and was passed by more than 50 votes. So, there is widespread support for its inclusion, and those of us who were around for the proceedings of the Children Act 2004 had a debate then about whether it should have been included on the list in what is now section 11 of the 2004 Act. Section 11 contains 13 different agencies on whom there has been placed a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, ranging from the obvious, such as children’s services authorities, to strategic health authorities, youth offending teams and so on. We had a lot of debate about which of those should have been added.

Four years on, this Bill represented the next opportunity to place a duty on the immigration services, and some would say that it has been four years too long, that we should not have to wait any longer and that we had hoped that it would go through in clause 7. However, having said that, I appreciate that clause 7 is technically deficient. The Minister alluded to the fact that the Border and Immigration Agency has become the UK Border Agency, and it cannot be covered because it is a UK-wide body that the Bill does not therefore deal with. There was a problem with the way in which clause 7, which was perfectly well intentioned, was fashioned in the other House. The problem needed to be dealt with, and clearly, those who supported the inclusion of the clause will need to see the detail that the Minister has promised to produce in draft with the Bill in July—before the summer recess, I hope. We are taking a deal on trust, but one is heartened by the Minister saying that it is the right thing to do and that she is intent on introducing the duty in principle.

Importantly, however, if the provision is to be effective, it must lead to a culture change in the immigration service. We are dealing with very vulnerable children who come to this country seeking asylum as refugees, and with trafficked children. This is a group—in some cases, unfortunately, a growing group—of very vulnerable children who desperately need all agencies with whom they come into contact, placed under a duty to safeguard and promote their welfare, to act in their best interests.

It would be useful to firm up the Minister’s commitment that a duty equal to the weight of that carried in section 11 of the 2004 Act would be introduced in the new legislation. As there are two Departments involved—the Home Office, with which the Minister has personal experience, and the Department of Children, Schools and Families—it might be useful to know which is to be the lead Department. In that way, children’s interests will not be swallowed up in the Home Office and the DCSF will have an ongoing role in monitoring how this duty pans out, as it has for the 13 other bodies already covered under the 2004 Act.

Given that the Bill to be produced before the recess is a draft Bill for the Queen’s Speech, we are looking at the actual Bill being published in December. We could be waiting at least another year for it to come into effect after the passing of the legislation. We could be looking at a delay of more than five years from the first opportunity to include the immigration authorities within the Bill in 2004.

Will the Minister assure us, insofar as she can be responsible for Government timetabling of Bills, that this will be seen as a priority? Can anything be done in the meantime in terms of clear guidance from her Department, or jointly with the Home Secretary—not backed up by statutory duty yet—so that the immigration authorities can at least prepare on the basis of a strong likelihood and a firm intention by the Government that a formal statutory duty will be placed upon them in the not-too-distant future?

I do not wish in any way to denigrate or undermine the important processes that currently happen within the immigration service, greatly under pressure as it is. We have to balance what is achievable and practical without placing the service under undue pressures, which might have knock-on effects.

We are dealing with perhaps the most vulnerable subsets of children and it is imperative that this is taken seriously and introduced unequivocally on an equal basis to the current section 11 arrangements. Everything possible must be done to speed up its introduction. Any comments from the Minister on that score would be greatly appreciated.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I congratulate the Minister for Children, Young People and Families because I am sure that there has been considerable dialogue between the two Departments. I welcome this as a step forward.

I agree with the Minister that the Government have made safeguarding children a top priority and I have been proud to be a Member of Parliament during that period. It has to be said, however, there has been a dual system of safeguarding: one for children who are UK citizens and then the others. Surely, every child matters and we should be putting the child first throughout, regardless of status?

I agree that we will need to see the detail before making detailed comments. I hope that all the organisations will be fully engaged—they come under the Refugee Children’s Consortium—in determining the details and the timetable. I, too, must express concern about the time that this has taken. I remember our discussions in the Committee that considered the 2004 Act when I joined forces with Hilton Dawson, the former Member for Lancaster and Wyre, on this issue, as the Minister will recall. I am sad that it has taken four years; nevertheless the fact that we have reached the right conclusion is welcome.

I am aware that a halfway house—“Better Outcomes”—has been discussed with the immigration authorities, and I wonder what can be done in the interim between making the momentous announcement today and the final implementation of the measures. Because there is a change in culture, we could be doing a lot more in the pathway to the legislation being passed. I, too, recognise that clause 7 was technically deficient, but my greatest regret is the time we waited, plus the long delay for the next immigration Bill. Overall, however, we are taking a step in the right direction.

Mark Williams (Liberal Democrat, Ceredigion)

In the spirit of the dialogue to which my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole referred between the DCSF and the Home Office, what discussions have taken place or will take place with the National Assembly Government in Wales, not least because we are in the vexed area of a reserved matter, which is delivered in a devolved context? That also applies to colleagues in Scotland.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

First, let me say how very much I welcome the responses from Opposition Members and their recognition that our intention is genuine. I am pleased that we can now move forward in the way that I outlined. I am also pleased that they acknowledged, as the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham intimated, the difficult tensions and dilemmas in maintaining effective immigration controls. No-one on this Committee is more acutely aware of those difficulties than I. It is important that our nation not attract organised traffickers shipping children across to England because it looks like being an easy place to stay for anyone who manages to get here. We must balance that with our desire to safeguard and protect children while they are here, although the majority will not end up with the right to remain here. Sometimes, that balance is genuinely difficult to strike.

We have moved forward. It is not that nothing has happened during the past four years. The BIA has a duty to protect children from harm and a code of practice has been developed to which the agency is now working, but as is often the case in politics, things have moved on, and it has become possible to take further steps because of a change in context. It is largely due to the effective way in which the Government have been able to reassure people about immigration control that we have a different context in which we can move forward and the immigration agency has moved forward. I am pleased that we have reached that point.

However, to answer another point raised by the hon. Gentleman, the right place to scrutinise the duty will be during consideration of the Bill that establishes and gives a legal constitution to a new UK-wide agency. The policy decisions about the constitutional form of the agency, what powers it will have and how those powers will relate to the powers that the Secretary of State will retain on immigration have not yet been finalised. The right place for hon. Members besides us to scrutinise the duty that we will introduce will be in the context of the Bill to set up the UKBA. However, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the duty will be equal and will establish parity in the obligations between the agencies that are now subject to the section 11 duty with a duty under the new legislation. In drafting the provision, colleagues and officials in the Home Office and my Department will, jointly, consult other organisations.

On the further delay and whether anything can be done in the mean time, which the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole asked about, it is important that we get the measure right. We are making a major commitment in establishing the UKBA, and as I have said, it is right to make this provision in the context of the Bill dealing with the UKBA and the relevant changes. However, we have the code of practice and the current duty and we want to ensure that we learn the lessons from the developments that they have already been brought about in terms of changing culture and practice in the agency dealing with immigration, and to build on those lessons as we move forward with the equivalent duty. Obviously, based on the commitment that I have given and in the context of current thinking, the setting up of the UKBA will take place in the knowledge that this statutory duty will be placed on it, and that will inform all the thinking and planning from this point onwards.

I hope that we can proceed in the way that I have outlined. I am not asking the hon. Members to disagree to the clause at this stage, but I will do so on Report.

Clause 8

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I beg to move amendment No. 3, in clause 8, page 6, line 4, after ‘England’, insert

‘and persons over 16 years of age but under 22 years of age who have received services under section 23C to 24D of the 1989 Act in the past five years.’.

This amendment is tabled in my name and that of the hon. Member for Upminster, our indefatigable Whip, who, I failed to mention earlier, cannot be with us today as she is busy whipping somebody else somewhere else. She will be bringing her qualities and great knowledge of this subject to us shortly.

This is a probing amendment—it is difficult to get something that is not a probing amendment in respect of parts of certain clauses, but we are trying. It is designed to tease out more about the arrangements whereby the Government clearly recognise the ongoing responsibilities to children who have come out of the care system and to tighten up the terms of the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000, which was welcome, although too many of our children leaving care still have a tough time. I am sure that the hon. Member for Stafford, who does such an excellent job chairing the parliamentary group on children in and leaving care, will have some comments to make.

The statistics remain alarming. Nearly half of all the young people in the care system will leave it at 16 or 17, compared with an average “flying the nest” age for children living with their families of 23 or 24. Those children are leaving the shelter of the care system—albeit it is still inadequate and some of the outcomes are still woefully poor—at a sensitive, fragile period in their lives. At 16 or 17 they may be leaving school, going through important exams or, hopefully, going on to higher education or training of some sort. They may face the problems of leaving the support mechanism that the care system has provided for many of them and getting appropriate housing and accommodation, let alone moving on to a job. I know that the Government recognise that and that the thrust of the 2000 Act was to achieve greater support after children leave the care system.

The amendment is intended to place the duty for promoting the well-being of children on those who have been responsible for them in the care system during the previous five years. We need to achieve greater flexibility. There is a black and white situation in respect of children in care in the UK: they are either in care or with a family. I mentioned earlier the number of children who come into the care system on a shorter-term basis and return to their families, but many children in care are completely cut off from family background and family members.

About 18 months ago, I visited Denmark with colleagues; we also went to Helsinki. There is much greater flexibility in the systems there. While in Denmark, we visited an impressive care home outside Copenhagen. Proportionately, many more children in the care system there are in residential homes. Adoption is virtually non-existent—only 20 children had been adopted in the previous year in Denmark. Although the Danes use fostering, they make far more use of residential children’s homes.

The particularly impressive children’s home that we visited housed children ranging from under 10—I think the youngest was 7 or 8—right up to 22, which is an enormous range of ages. They were looked after by fantastic pedagogue social workers from whom, as was said on Second Reading, we in this country have a lot to learn. Those social workers develop a great empathy with the children and are seen as friends and confidantes as well as being the children’s guardians. The children there are not encapsulated in a children’s home and cut off from the outside world. Each week, there is a dinner evening to which relatives are invited—perhaps the birth parents or other members of the extended family—to spend as normal a meal time as possible with the child or other residents of the children’s home. The children may spend weekends back at home or with an extended family member. There is a degree of flexibility.

If a child has to be taken out of the home environment, that need not be the be-all and end-all—the beginning of a slippery slope to permanent care proceedings being taken and that child going into long-term fostering or, ultimately, a long-term adoptive placement. We need greater flexibility in our system, which is why the amendment acknowledges, in the spirit of what the Government are trying to achieve in the Bill, that there should be an ongoing duty to promote the well-being of children who been involved in the care system over several years.

Life, particularly for vulnerable children who have endured traumatic conditions, is not a nice, smooth journey. There can be problems at school or in training that result in their failing to get the exam results or training qualifications that they need, so that, all of a sudden, they are faced with an uncertain future and crisis. Another typical problem is the housing that they have been given goes pear-shaped for some reason. Somebody who might have appeared confident at 16 or 17 when leaving the formal care system all of a sudden returns to a rather more chaotic lifestyle and needs support. They need to be able to go back to the social worker who was their support when they were fully in the care system, or to somebody at the local authority, in the housing department or whatever, with whom they can deal on an understanding basis.

The statistics show that within two years of leaving care, of the 6,000 young people who leave care in a year, 3,000 will be unemployed—half of them will not have a job and will lack the stability that might put them back on the road to having some degree of permanency and sustainability in their lifestyle. No fewer than 2,100 will be mothers or pregnant. The propensity of girls leaving the care system either to be mothers already or to become pregnant is deeply alarming. When we simply cast those young girls off without some ongoing monitoring by a social worker or somebody from the local health service, a sexual advice clinic or other agency, we fail them, even though we know they are, for various reasons, far more susceptible to becoming teenage mothers. The Minister has rightly highlighted teenage pregnancies as a major problem: we still have the highest level of teenage pregnancies in western Europe. Of those 6,000 people leaving care each year, 1,200 will be homeless.

These are deeply traumatic times and things do not all go smoothly, but it can be an erratic journey. What we are trying to achieve, which I am sure is what the Government are trying to achieve also—we are just trying to tease out some detail—is that there will be a flexible duty to promote the well-being of children in England after they have formally left the care system, until they are in a position to be able to stand on their own two feet, and that they have some sustainability and continuity in order to do that. That is the purpose of this probing amendment.

I am sure that the Minister will say, “No worries, it is all catered for elsewhere in the Bill,” and I would be delighted to take her at her word, but I would like an assurance that that is the intention behind the legislation. One criticism of the Bill is that it is full of good intentions. It is certainly going in the right direction, but in some areas it lacks the force to produce the delivery, which, as the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole said earlier, is crucial. What matters is not how many clauses we pass, how many new structures we set up, or how many people with shiny new titles and nice smart lapel badges we create, but the effect that they will have on the children who desperately need their support. That is what the amendment is trying to achieve.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I have a great deal of sympathy with everything that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham has just said. I am sure that all of us in this room have visited projects that have shown what can be done. I have had the privilege of visiting a “Make the Difference” project in Tower Hamlets. That was excellent for the young people who were participating, dropping in, meeting regularly, but it did not necessarily ensure that those who had dropped out at 16 would feel confident to drop back into the varying arrangements that are available for young people. This is an important issue. I am quite sure that there is good practice out there in particular local authorities, but the problem is how to spread that good practice and how to change the situation so that we do not end up with young people in custody, homeless and all the other very sad consequences that often befall looked-after children when, for one reason or another, they have left the care system. I would like to hear what the Minister has to say about whether there is more that we can do in legislation to give a bigger push to the spread of good practice.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

I am sure hon. Members are aware that the journey that we have been on over recent years, which culminated in the spirit within the children’s plan, has crystallised a process of developing a new way of working and looking at the needs of children and young people, putting them at the heart of everything that we are doing. What we want to do in the clause is to take the opportunity to reflect properly in statute the Secretary of State’s policy responsibilities for the well-being of all children in the country. Our intention in doing so is to demonstrate our long-term commitment to improving the lives of children and young people.

When we talked to children, young people and their parents during the children’s plan consultation, they made clear the positive value that they place on the experience of childhood as a whole. They talked about developing play, social and emotional skills and talent, for example, and how our young people can make an important contribution, as well as enhancing opportunities and building foundations for their success.

For many years the Secretary of State has carried out activities for the benefit of children and is already required by the Education Act 1996 to promote their education. The significant developments in policy over recent years under this Government, through the Children Act 2004, the Every Child Matters agenda and, more recently, the establishment of the new Department for Children, Schools and Families, mean that we want the Secretary of State to be able to look more closely at the needs of the whole child, and a wide range of matters affecting children’s lives, their health and their happiness. This is in addition to the educational needs that obviously remain very important.

Therefore, our commitment to children’s well-being recognises these changes to the Secretary of State’s priorities for children and is in line with similar duties on local authorities and, indeed, on schools too. It also reflects the Secretary of State’s general policy responsibilities in a manner that complements—I will explain this point in a moment—the operational responsibilities of local children’s services and brings a consistent focus on children’s outcomes at every level in the system.

We have considered carefully how this new provision will impact on care leavers. First, all relevant children who are 16 or 17 are children for the purposes of this provision and the Secretary of State will have the same duties to promote their well-being as he does to all other children. We also recognise that the Secretary of State’s responsibilities clearly extend beyond children to include some groups of particularly vulnerable young adults, such as former relevant children—that is, care leavers who are over 18. Therefore I think it is right that this clause includes explicit reference to this particular group, that the Secretary of State takes powers to make provision for them, and that this arrangement mirrors that of local authorities. We have actually modelled this clause on the parallel provision—that is, section 10 of the Children’s Act 2004—under which local authorities are required to co-operate with local partners to improve the well-being of children in their area. The same definition of well-being is used in this clause too, reflecting the five Every Child Matters outcomes.

In the same way as section 10 of the 2004 Act, this clause draws a distinction between the Secretary of State’s duties to all children and his powers to develop policies that promote well-being for particular groups of young adults. The way in which that was done in the 2004 Act, and the way we are replicating that now, is formally to recognise that the state’s relationship with a group of young adults is necessarily different from that which the state has with children who are wholly dependent and who have specifically little or no legal autonomy. It is clearly appropriate to use terminology in a sense that more closely reflects the partnership, in that context, that the state needs to develop with these young people—to ensure that services are provided in a way that supports their growing independence and recognises their right to exercise choice in whether to engage with these services or not.

I agree with all of the points that Opposition Members have made about the need to ensure at the local authority level that there is continuity for those young people who need it and I think—to answer the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham’s question specifically—the formulation of this clause and the power for young people over the age of 18, achieves the intention that he wants to see. It enables the Secretary of State to take action but it respects the transition that young people are making to adulthood.

It also reflects the current distinction that we have formulated for local authorities in section 10 of the current legislation and, indeed, in executing that power, we know that there has been a tremendous development in the extent to which local authorities now keep in touch with young people over the age of 18. In that group, 90 per cent of young people are in touch with local authorities, and the outcomes for them, whilst we are not yet satisfied with them, are clearly developing.

I hope that hon. Members would accept that, in formulating the clause in this way, we are reflecting what we have already decided in relation to local authorities. It is not in any way to reflect a lesser importance of these young people, but rather also to respect their position in life, moving into adulthood and reflecting the way in which we have framed the operational responsibilities of local authorities. With that, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his amendment.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I am grateful for the Minister’s explanation. I thought that she was going to say, “This is a jolly good amendment, and we will accept it.” That would have been a turn-up for the books. However, we seem to be on the same lines.

My concern, however, is about striking a balance between recognising the particular vulnerabilities and requirements of 16, 17 and 18-year-olds coming out of the care system and respecting their transition into adulthood—as the Minister put it. Local authorities should not use that as an excuse by saying, “Well, we don’t need to trample on them.” As I have said, and given evidence on, those children are much more susceptible to greater problems than their rest of their cohort. I have some other figures on the health aspect: two thirds of all looked-after children were reported to have at least one physical health complaint, and 45 per cent. of those aged five to 17 were assessed as having at least one mental health disorder, compared with one in 10 of the child population overall. That is an enormous difference in vulnerability.

As we know, such problems, particularly mental illness, need to be addressed as early as possible, and there needs to be a continuum of care until somebody can stand on their own two feet. All too often, the child and adolescent mental health services—Cinderella services within the Cinderella service of the NHS—can be erratic and a postcode lottery. Certainly, if children in the care system are fortunate enough to access CAMHS—perhaps through being in a residential home where, as a result of the high fees charged, they buy in mental health services, because of the waiting list for, or lack of availability of, certain talking therapies locally—but then effectively enter the big wide world on their own, without support from the mental health services, we have a false economy. It will result only in that person being less able to stand on their own two feet during the transition into adulthood, as the Minister said.

My amendment was a probing one, and the Minister has made some favourable comments about how we are trying to achieve the same thing. However, this was a useful debate in emphasising that local authorities have a duty of care beyond what is in the Bill. Their duties do not become minimal when looked-after children leave the care system, and in may cases their role remains just as important for many years to come. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I beg to move amendment No. 4, in clause 8, page 6, line 15, leave out from ‘State’ to ‘in’ in line 16 and insert

‘must discharge functions under this section in a manner consistent with the objectives of safeguarding the welfare of children as set out’.

Greg Pope (Labour, Hyndburn)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 26, in clause 8, page 6, line 17, at end insert

‘and to the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.’.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

This is one of those annoying little amendments that usually centres on the use of the word “must”, of which we have many. However, this is a slight variation. The genesis of the amendment goes back to debate on the Children Bill 2004, when my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing), who was helping me on the Front Bench, tabled an amendment to clause 8. The amendment would have replaced a provision about functions being discharged having regard to the need to safeguard and promote the safeguard of children with

'in a manner consistent with the objective of safeguarding and promoting'

the welfare of children, which was rather punchier. “Having regard to” covers a multitude of sins. It does not necessarily mean that the agency that is bound to have regard to something has to do anything about it. It must only acknowledge that there may be a problem or that a service needs to be delivered. As long as it has regarded it, it does not need to follow it through. That terminology is too weak, and I fear that in too many cases it can be used as a get-out clause for not producing the goods.

The amendment is to clause 8(5), which contains the limp language that the Secretary of State,

“in discharging functions under this section, must have regard to the aspects of well-being mentioned”

in section 10 of the Children Act 2004. We want to replace that with much punchier terminology that means something, so that the Secretary of State

“must discharge functions under this section in a manner consistent with the objectives of safeguarding the welfare of children as set out”

in section 10(2)(a) to (e) of that Act. Those paragraphs contain the Every Child Matters imperatives of

“physical and mental health and emotional well-being; protection from harm and neglect; education, training and recreation; the contribution made by them to society”

and

“social and economic well-being.”

Section 10 of the Children Act is a much more positive promotion than clause 8. It states:

“The arrangements are to be made with a view to improving the well-being of children”

in relation to those various factors. We are trying to give the Secretary of State a bit more vim, stating that he must not just have regard to, but positively promote, the considerations in that section. I am therefore sure that the Minister will have no problem in saying that the amendment is worthwhile and constructive and will strengthen what the Bill is intended to do. I shall be surprised if she ducks that challenge.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I, too, look forward to the Minister’s response to that interesting presentation of the amendment, which seemed to make a lot of sense.

I wish to speak briefly to amendment No. 26. It will not be the first time that I have spoken to such an amendment to legislation on children. As with our previous debate, we might get there eventually. It is always interesting to note that the UK played a leading role in drafting the UN convention on the rights of the child, and that the previous Government were an early signatory of it.

In October, the UK’s implementation of the convention will be examined for the third time by the UN Committee on the Rights of Child. It is not enough to sign up, it is all about implementation. One of the committee’s 78 recommendations made in 2002 was that the UK should incorporate the convention into domestic law. Although the amendment would not give children new rights that could be tested in the courts, it would introduce a children’s rights proofing process that we have not so far incorporated into our policy development and legislation. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham and I were in a meeting about children’s rights not long ago, and a social worker said that one of the most important things that would make a social worker’s life clearer and promote the career would be working to a rights agenda. That was a telling comment, coming from somebody who actually works with children.

Of course, there are a number of articles of the convention, and I do not propose to mention many. However, I shall touch on article 12, which begins:

“States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child”.

I appreciate that the Government have made great moves forward in listening to children. Nevertheless, there are some issues in the Bill on which we think the child’s voice could be strengthened, in certain cases with the support of advocacy. The importance of having a guardian is another issue. A number of issues perpetually arise that would be tackled if we incorporated the convention into our legislation.

I would like to mention briefly that the UK still has a reservation on article 22 of the convention on the rights of the child, which relates to the protection of asylum-seeking children. I was quite heartened in January when the Government announced plans to re-examine that reservation. I would be interested to hear an update on that alongside the news that we have had this morning.

Many of the issues that we are raising through amendments would automatically come under consideration if we signed up to the UN convention. It is common sense that our children’s rights should be respected and that we should incorporate the convention into all legislation that touches on children’s issues. I commend amendment No. 26 to the Minister.

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

Mr. Pope, let me say that it is a great pleasure to serve on this Committee under your kindly but hawk-like, miss-nothing eye.

I will speak in favour of amendment No. 26. As the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole has said, this is not an amendment to incorporate the obligations under the UN convention on the rights of the child into UK law. In my view, that is a pity because I think that we should incorporate those rights. We have done some great work for children since 1997 with the target to eradicate child poverty, the “Every Child Matters” agenda, the “Quality Protects” programme for looked-after children, the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 and now the “Care Matters: Time for Change” White Paper.

With the children’s plan last year, I think that the time is right to incorporate the convention into our law. Instead, as the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said, the use of the language that the Secretary of State “must have regard to” is a backsliding and easy target for him to hit. I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends the Ministers do not think it very demanding to expect Ministers to have regard to the convention’s rights when carrying out their duty to promote the well-being of children in England. After all, all Ministers sign up to the ministerial code, which states that they have an overarching duty to obey the law, including our international obligations. The UK has signed the convention.

Do the Ministers think that the amendment is a sensible first step on the route to the wider acceptance of the rights in the UN convention? When we agreed clause 7, there was an encouraging sign that we would do better for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. We are going in the right direction, and this would be another step in that direction. If there is a clinching argument that my right hon. and hon. Friends the Ministers will accept, it is that the General Social Care Council, which was established by the Government to set standards for conduct and practice in social care, supports amendment No. 26 and thinks that it should be passed.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

I hope that no Opposition Member would ever accuse me of trying to duck issues. I share the spirit of what both amendments are trying to achieve. I hope I can convince hon. Members that the way in which we have formulated the well-being duty in clause 8 is intended to achieve the ambitions that they have set out.

It is important to remember that the definition of well-being in the Children Act 2004, which we are using as our basis, reflects the whole range of outcomes that we want for children. It includes their physical and mental health; their emotional well-being; their protection from harm and neglect; their education, training and recreational needs; their contribution to society and their social and economic well-being. Those are all vital factors in determining whether children have the enjoyable childhood that we want them to have as well as being prepared and supported so that they can succeed in later life.

Local authorities and schools already have a duty to promote the well-being of children as defined in these terms. In the clause, we are keen accurately to reflect the Secretary of State’s general policy responsibilities in a manner that complements the operational responsibilities of local children’s services and introduces a consistent focus on children’s outcomes at every level of the system.

The problem with amendment No. 4, as formulated, is that it would narrow the Secretary of State’s well-being duty to a focus on safeguarding alone and disregard the other key aspects of well-being. Of course, safeguarding is a top priority, and it was a key driver in “Every Child Matters”, but as I have just outlined, the outcomes that we want to see under “Every Child Matters” go beyond safeguarding into various other areas.

The clause is not phrased in weasel words. It says:

“It is the general duty of the Secretary of State to promote the well-being of children in England.”

What could be clearer? The hon. Gentleman has contributed positively to many pieces of legislation on children and other areas of policy, and he is experienced enough to know that the fact that subsection (5) uses the phrase “must have regard to” before pointing to the relevant sections of the Children Act means that the Secretary of State must exercise the specific duty in the clause in relation to sections 10(2)(a) to (e) of the Children Act. It is therefore a little unfair to suggest that the duty that we are trying to place on the Secretary of State to promote well-being falls short of our intention.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I am disappointed so far, but perhaps the Minister can tell me what weight she places on the phrase “have regard to”, as opposed to the phrase

“in a manner consistent with the objectives of safeguarding the welfare of children”,

which is in the amendment. Does she not acknowledge that the wording of amendment carries more punch and is stronger than “have regard to”, regardless of whether it refers to the duty in subsection (1)? The wording in the amendment is stronger. Local authorities have had problems with the interpretation of the phrase of “have regard to”.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s premise. In legal terms, “have regard to” is equivalent to what he has outlined. Indeed, Opposition Members argued not long ago for a section 11 duty on the Border and Immigration Agency, so they were apparently happy to accept that having “regard to” the need to safeguard children was a strong enough formulation to impose on that agency and all the agencies listed in section 11 of the 2004 Act. Opposition Members accepted that the wording was strong enough in that situation, so I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that using the same terminology here—as parliamentary counsel will—gives us a strong enough formulation of the duty, particularly in conjunction with subsection (1), which makes very clear what the duty is.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

For the avoidance of doubt, I should say that we argued for an amendment to the effect that the wording should not be “have regard to” for all the other agencies on the list, but the Government defeated us. We are just trying to be consistent in terms of what goes into the legislation; our current proposals do not signal any weakening of our intent with regard to the Border and Immigration Agency.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

I was not a member of the Committee that discussed the 2004 Act, but Opposition Members need to think whether the phrase “have regard to” has weakened the pursuit of the objectives before us by the agencies concerned, because I do not think that there is any evidence that it has. The wording in the clause is the normal way in which we express such obligations legally. Taken in conjunction with subsection (1), it makes clear what our intention is.

Greg Pope (Labour, Hyndburn)

I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing amendment No. 26, in clause 8, page 6, line 17, at end insert

‘and to the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.’.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

I had almost come to the end of my comments on amendment No. 4. I was explaining how it would narrow the well-being duty to a focus solely on safeguarding. We had an interchange about whether the phrase “having regard to” diluted the responsibilities under the duty. I shall clarify that for the Committee.

At the time, I did not have a copy of the Children Act 2004 with me, only a copy of the Children Act 1989, or I would have realised that subsection (5), in referring to sections 10(2)(a) to (e) of the 2004 Act, simply refers to the five elements of Every Child Matters, which I mentioned in my earlier remarks. That adds weight to my argument that the clause contains an unequivocal duty reflecting the five outcomes of Every Child Matters as enshrined in legislation.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

As the Minister will be aware, the welfare checklist in section 1(3) of the 1989 Act sets out not only the checklist but the “have regard to” aspect as well. As a way of coming to a position where we are both satisfied with the Bill’s approach, it might be helpful for the clause to say not only “have regard to” but, as in section 1(3) of the 1989 Act,

“have regard in particular to”.

That seems to marry the proposed legislation with the reasons why it is proposed under clause 8(5) in such stark terms as a responsibility and duty of the Secretary of State. It would not only be consistent with previous legislation, which contains a requirement to have regard in particular to a certain aspect; it would also satisfy Committee members from all parties in creating not only a duty but a particular duty for the Secretary of State.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

Without embarking on a lengthy examination of various Acts of Parliament relating to children, may I explain to the hon. Gentleman that as we are talking about well-being, the relevant piece of legislation is not the 1989 Act but the 2004 Act? Section 10 of that Act introduced a duty to co-operate to improve well-being. In that measure, “have regard to”, which we debated earlier, does not appear, so I am not quite sure what the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham was referring to when he seemed to remember proposing it during the course of debates on that Act.

The clause will simply put a duty on local authorities to promote well-being. Without going too far into the minutiae and risking your censure, Mr. Pope, I understand entirely what the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich said. I simply say again to him that in terms of a duty in respect of well-being, subsection (1) puts that duty unequivocally on the Secretary of State, not a local authority or local agency. Subsection (5) simply says that in executing that duty, the Secretary of State must have regard to the five elements of Every Child Matters, as listed in section 10(2) of the Children Act 2004. It is like a double lock; the Secretary of State has a unequivocal duty, and that duty must reflect the legislation as it applies to local authorities and other agencies with regard to the whole child—not merely their safeguarding, important thought that is, but also the other four aspects of the child’s well-being.

Andrew Turner (Conservative, Isle of Wight)

Clause 8(5) states that the Secretary of State

“must have regard to the aspects of well-being mentioned in section 10(2)(a)”.

That is not the same as discharging functions

“in a manner consistent with the objectives of safeguarding the welfare of children”.

It could be argued that the former is merely a guideline, with discretion on how to take note of it, while the latter is a clear direction on how such discharge functions should managed. Does the Minister not notice the difference?

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

We are turning words on a pinhead. I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s attempt to ensure that the Government are serious, and I respect his right to do so, but I refer him to subsection (1). As I said, it unequivocally states that it is the duty of the Secretary of State to

“promote the well-being of children in England.”

In doing so, he has to have regard to the way in which well-being has been defined by Members of this House in previous legislation. Together, those two give us an assurance on how it will be undertaken.

I believe that the record will show that, in introducing amendment No. 26, the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole said that we had not signed up to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Annette Brookeindicated dissent.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

I beg the hon. Lady’s pardon; I thought that someone had said that we were not signed up to it. She will know—indeed, she may have said so—that we have signed up to the UNCRC. It was ratified a long time ago, and the present Government do not demur from that international treaty. We therefore have an obligation under international law to ensure that the rights set out in the convention are given effect. However, the convention does not include an obligation to meet the rights in any particular way. It does not rely on provisions in domestic legislation, but the obligation exists entirely independently. I am sure that the hon. Lady will appreciate the fact that in practice UK law often goes further than the convention in describing children’s rights. The UNCRC rights are set out in very broad terms, whereas our legislation gives children specific rights on a range of issues.

We take the implementation of the UNCRC seriously, but since ratification and under Governments of different complexions our policy has always been that the convention should be implemented through a mix of legislative provisions and policy initiatives. Implementation of the convention rights comes about through Government and devolved Administration policy, taken as a whole.

We aim to meet our duties under the convention through the totality of our activities, rather than making reference to it in individual legislative provisions. That is the stance that we have taken. Since ratification, the Government have diligently pursued implementation of the UNCRC through a raft of measures, including the Children Act 1989 and subsequent provisions, the Children Act 2004, Every Child Matters and more recently the wealth of measures set out in the children’s plan. All those programmes are steadily improving the well-being outcomes for all children and thus the fuller realisation of their UNCRC rights.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

First, I assure the Minister that I did indeed say that the previous Government had signed up to the convention, so I gave credit where it was due. Is the Minister expecting a completely clean bill of health when the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child reports back on the evidence supplied by the Government and others, including the four children’s commissioners?

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

We will await the view of the UNCRC, but we have certainly made a strong case that the Government have progressively improved the position of children and young people in relation to all aspects of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and aim to continue to go further, so we will have to see the outcome of those different points of view as they are put to that committee.

Finally, the Secretary of State’s duty to promote the well-being of children clearly encompasses the principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and I think that the duty, just as it stands, creates an additional legislative vehicle by which the Secretary of State will carry out activities and bring forward policy and practice that will implement the convention. Therefore, what matters most is giving children that good experience of childhood and having a Government who progressively want to go further to promote the well-being of children, rather than conforming by referring to the convention in every single piece of legislation or going through the arduous process of incorporating it all together in one big piece of legislation, which would frankly be a completely fruitless task.

I am sure that the hon. Lady and I agree on the importance of the convention and our desire to give children and young people rights that go far beyond those of the convention, but I accept that we might disagree on how best to demonstrate that that is being done, particularly if she is arguing that references to the UNCRC are needed in every piece of legislation. The Government do not think that that is necessary, but we are none the less committed to those rights for our children and young people and will continue to be so. With those assurances, I hope that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham will withdraw his amendment.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I have somewhat lost the train of thought from where we started before lunch. Now that we are getting into the particulars of “having particular regard”, which I thought was a particularly ingenious suggestion by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich and one that showed the willingness of the Opposition to come to some accommodation with the Government to improve the Bill’s terminology. I am still not quite convinced how the Minister deems not replacing “having regard” with a clear positive duty to promote the well-being is just as adequate. However, we have had quite an interesting canter round the subject and should move on to something fresh. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

We have explored the Government’s intention in that regard and that Members, notwithstanding the previous debate, welcome the fact that a parallel duty to promote young people’s wider well-being has been added to the Secretary of State’s duty to promote the educational opportunities for them. One consequence on which we have not yet touched is the fact that the clause will enable the Secretary of State to enter into legal contracts to promote the well-being of children.

Helen Southworth (Labour, Warrington South)

I am pleased to serve on a Committee so ably chaired by one who is such a strong advocate of vulnerable children. I welcome the clause, because although the well-being of children and young people is by all means the responsibility of the Secretary of State, it is good to be part of a Committee that is making that so explicit. The clause refers to the Secretary of State’s powers to promote the well-being of

“persons under the age of 25 of a prescribed description.”

Will the Minister ensure that children and young people who have run away from home or been thrown away from home are given consideration under regulations in that respect, particularly in view of the excellent runaways action plan launched by the Department last week and the commitments that that will bring over the following months and possibly years to support children who run away?

Will the Minister take particular account of the “Stepping Up” report, which was produced by the Children’s Society for the Department? Following extensive consultation, that document identified the fact that some local authorities

“reported unwritten policies of refusing any accommodation for thirteen to fifteen year olds. Police were keen to emphasise that they would raise concerns with social services but some local authority colleagues reported that teenagers were unlikely to receive support unless the level of risk was so high as to cause concern of risk to life.”

That appears to mean that if there is a valid cause for concern about the well-being of young people who have run away from home but it does not raise concern about a risk to life, those young people are, in many local authority areas, not being considered for looked-after status and therefore will not receive the benefit of many of the extremely valuable measures being put in place by the Bill. Will the Minister ensure that that set of young people is given full consideration under subsection (4)(b)? Can she identify for us whether she will be able to take that matter into consideration when regulations are made under the clause?

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

I welcome my hon. Friend’s contribution. It was through her sustained, dogged and very committed work that the action plan for young runaways was eventually brought forward. I commend her involvement in that. Let me just point out a couple of things. The prescribed persons referred to in subsection (4)(b) will, by definition, be young people aged 18 to 25. Younger people—the 15-year-olds whom she was talking about in relation to some local authorities’ apparently informal yardsticks for intervention—would be covered, as far as the Secretary of State’s duties were concerned, by the clause as it stands, because they are under 18 and the Secretary of State will have a duty to promote their well-being, as he will to promote the well-being of any children.

In relation to the prescribed groups in particular, we have no immediate plans as to how that might apply, but as my hon. Friend implied, we would have to introduce regulations if we were considering applying the measure to any of those groups and we would consult on the regulations before we did so. I hope that, with those assurances, she will accept that this issue is very much in our mind. Young people under 18 will be covered. In relation to any other groups, we are considering at the moment how far they might be included.

Clause 9

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I beg to move amendment No. 6, in clause 9, page 7, line 28, after ‘subsection’, insert

‘or submit a written explanation of why such a placement was not desirable or achievable’.

This is an obviously vital clause at the heart of the Bill. Largely rewritten in the House of Lords, it deals with the mechanics of how children in care are placed, giving priority to children being placed with extended family members if possible and making stipulations about distances from where the child comes from and about trying to maintain continuity of education and so on. That goes to the heart of what the Bill is about and is very welcome to the whole Committee and to those of us who over many years have drawn attention to the enormous disruption caused by the lack of stability in the life of a child in the care system, which can only exacerbate the many problems that such a child will already have. We welcome very much the level of commitment that clause 9 indicates, but once again we want to try to tighten the provision to get some greater definition in the Bill.

Amendment No. 6 relates to the proposed new section 22C(7) that section 9 would insert into the Children Act 1989, which is about the hierarchy of extended family members. Many of us would agree that some such form of hierarchy is needed for children who must be taken from their birth parents or parent into care, for however long a time, and that wherever possible, the best alternative, if there is no threat of harm to the child, is for them to be placed with another family member, close relative or close friend—someone with whom there is already familiarity and a relationship of trust. Failing that, the next choice would be non-related foster parents or perhaps specialist foster parents, if the child has complex needs or disabilities, or other kinds of foster parents, and then, if those were not available, and if it was appropriate, placement in a residential care environment.

In many cases, the residential care environment might be the best option. I do not in any way mean to put it at the bottom of the pile, but many of us have seen children who have been sent first to residential care simply because of the unavailability of suitable foster care closer to home. I hope that we can get the right balance in the future, but it must be horses for courses, and a question of what is in the best interests of the child.

In proposed new section 22C(6) of the 1989 Act, the Government have set out what they mean by an extended family placement, defining it as

“placement with an individual who is a relative, friend or other person connected with”

the child, who has been recommended by the local authority. We are trying to make that the absolute default position, and to require that if it is not possible the fact should be properly accounted for.

Although finding a placement with a kinship carer has for some considerable time been a preference—kinship care is described in section 17 of the Children Act 1989—in too many cases, it is still not happening. There have been various studies, perhaps the most definitive of which suggested that only 4 per cent. of placements initiated by social workers are with an extended family member who comes within the provisions of new section 22C(6). I think that I pointed out earlier the contrast with places such as Denmark, where some 45 per cent. of such foster care placements are with extended family members. There seems to be a bit of a discrepancy. Yet it has been estimated that between 200,000 and 300,000 children in this country are living with relatives who are not their parents, and only a small proportion of those are looked-after children. That has implications, of course, for private fostering registration schemes, which we shall be returning to later in our consideration of the Bill, if some of us get our way.

Most people acknowledge that there are clear advantages to kinship caring and placements with family members. The Family Rights Group has set some of those out in its brief, which it has provided to hon. Members. The brief details well-evidenced advantages in children who cannot live with their parents being raised by family and friends. It lists those advantages:

“Children in family and friends care tend to be in more stable placements that those placed with unrelated foster carers.”

“Children feel loved and report high levels of satisfaction.”

“Children appear to be as safe and their behaviour is perceived to be less of a problem when compared to children with unrelated foster carers.”

“Children placed within their family can more easily maintain a sense of family and cultural identity.”

“Contact with family members is more likely to be maintained.”

Therefore, that arrangement presses a lot of the right buttons. Familiarity with the carers tends to lead to greater short-term and long-term stability. For children who come from particularly traumatic family homes, a second chance of a stable upbringing is absolutely what they need.

There are some difficulties, which the Family Rights Group has also pointed out. A few of those are:

“Family and friends carers are more likely to be older, in poorer health and in more disadvantaged circumstances when compared to unrelated foster carers, yet receive significantly less support.”

“Some family and friends carers incur large legal costs in securing the care of children at risk of ill treatment.”

I am sure that many hon. Members will have had such cases in their constituency surgeries, often grandparents who want to take on responsibility for a grandchild whose parent has typically had drug or drink problems and is unable to look after the child. However, they face an uphill battle, struggling to make the case that they are capable of looking after the child to a social worker, to the local authority, and then having to go through the legal rigmarole, especially if it may ultimately be an adoptive placement. We should surely be making it easier rather than harder for people who are prepared to step into the breach and take on a child who would otherwise fall exclusively on the public purse, either with a non-related foster carer or in a home, at much greater expense and with much less chance of stability.

The group also points out:

“There are wide variations between local authorities in policies, support, finance and attitudes toward family and friends care, and in numbers of children placed with family and friends”.

“Access and entitlement to support, including financial support is based on legal status and not on need, resulting in some carers suffering significant financial hardship.”

“Assessment depends on legal status rather than need, thus risking inconsistent and inappropriate assessments. Some family and friends carers are subject to full fostering assessments that are essentially geared to non relatives while others have no assessment.”

We do not make some of those placements as easy as we might, and there is a big differential in how they are treated in different parts of the country. Surely we need to send out a clear signal with this Bill that that group of people should be given preference wherever possible, where it is in the interests of the child and where there is no risk to the child. Obviously, if part of the reason for removing a child from a family is the interference of extended family members who have exacerbated the problem, such a placement would not be in the best interests of the child. However, there are often other extended family members who could step into the breach. It is a mystery to me why that form of placement does not happen more readily in this country, compared with other countries. I have already referred to Denmark.

The brief we received from the National Children’s Bureau presented a few potential answers to the question of what the barriers to using kinship carers may be. It mentions that

“social worker power can be lessened by kin placements.”

Do some social workers see them as a bit of a challenge? Is it much easier to take the child completely away from a family environment, to give them a completely clean break in a placement with a foster carer directly employed by the local authority and with no connection to the family? The brief also mentions that

“the complexity of family relationships and kin loyalties”

are considered

“more difficult to work with than non-kin foster care.”

Is that because social workers have such an enormous work load? We described earlier the great stresses on them and it is less likely to be problematic if a child is placed with a non-related foster carer. In many cases, do social workers

“see kin as part of the problem, rather than the solution, and therefore not favour such placements”?

The NCB relates a number of studies that have been carried out, in both the US and the UK. It claims that several studies show fewer reported behavioural problems

“in children in kinship care compared to those in non-related foster care, and kinship caregivers tend to see themselves in more of a parenting role than do non-related caregivers and recognise the importance of their role in facilitating the child’s relationship with its family.”

A child has a better chance of returning to the family home with the birth parents or parent if extended family members are used—for example, if a mother with a drink or drug problem goes through rehabilitation and can take on the parental role again.

The family drug and alcohol court being trialled in Wells street by District Judge Crichton is an interesting experiment, which is based on an idea from California. The Government, to give them their due, have recently agreed to fund that pilot. I have seen videos from one of the courts in Santa Barbara or Santa Monica and it is a very interesting approach. The parents typically have a drink or drug problem and face care proceedings. In the past, the parent may have been given a last chance to get their act together or else the child would be taken into care. However, to get his or her act together that parent needs rehabilitation for the drink or drug problem, medical treatment, and often housing assistance as well. If a person is not in stable accommodation, they often go off the rails and other problems that are symptomatic of the underlying difficulty may come into the open.

The judge in the family drug courts assembles a group of professionals from various agencies—the local council, housing authority, health authority, drug rehabilitation service, social services and perhaps somebody from an education environment—to put together a package of care that should enable that person to rehabilitate themselves, if, when faced with the threat of losing a child into the care system, they are serious about wanting to do so. That is the last chance saloon. They will be enabled to rehabilitate themselves, and, if they show themselves as being up to the job and take advantage of the package of care, the child will be able to stay with that parent.

The holistic approach is very exciting. I am sure that the pilots in Wells street will be successful. Too often we look at the problems in isolation and tackle the symptoms rather than the root causes, which can result in parents in miserable circumstances facing the tragedy of losing a child. Often the support of an extended family member, or even respite care in a temporary placement, can aid somebody to get the treatment and assistance that they need to get their act together so that they can recover sufficiently to get their child back. Kinship carers are key on all levels of temporary or long-term placement and support.

The amendment says that the default position must be that a far more extensive pursuit of a family or friend placement should be undertaken. If, after an exhaustive pursuit of that placement, it is not possible to place the child

“with an individual who is a relative, friend or other person connected with”

them, as set out in new section 22C (6), a written explanation should be provided and made available to the relevant parties.

We speak to people whose children have been taken into the care system. I quoted the Ofsted report, which said that birth parents do not feel that they have been engaged in the process and do not understand why their children have been taken away or why they have been placed with somebody completely detached from the family, particularly if there is a family member—typically the child’s grandparent—who is prepared to take on the responsibility. It is perfectly reasonable to place a specific requirement on the social worker responsible for the child to submit a written explanation if it is not possible to place the child within the terms of subsection (6)(a). They should account for why that was not possible and outline under what terms it might be possible to do so in future.

We want to strengthen what the Government are trying to do under the connected persons provision and ensure that there is an increase in the 4 per cent. of placements that are currently made with kinship carers. If that is not increased, we need to know why. I do not know, and I am sure that the Minister does not know, why we do not have more kinship placements. That is the reason for the amendment and I commend it to the Committee.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

I genuinely have no difficulty with the spirit of the amendment. I hope that I can explain how the extra leverage that the hon. Gentleman proposes through the requirement of a written record is accommodated in the care planning system that is being established. According to the figures that I have been given, 9 per cent. of looked-after children are placed with parents and a further 11 per cent. live with related foster carers. That is 20 per cent altogether. It is not enough, but it is rather more than the 4 per cent. that he mentioned.

It is extremely important that local authorities make the right placement decisions for the children that they look after. Such decisions go right to the heart of whether they are providing the best possible care. They will affect the ability of those children to maintain relationships with their birth families, their friends and their local communities. They will affect their chances of reunification. They will also impact on their progress in the longer term.

Enabling children to live with people who they know and trust wherever possible is key to influencing their life chances for the better. If they cannot live with their parents, the arrangements should first and foremost be with family and friends for those within and outside the care system. The Bill provides a clear hierarchical framework to support such arrangements while allowing flexibility for decisions that reflect individual circumstances. We have to do that and I know that hon. Members will appreciate why. The continuing role of family and friends as carers is one the key factors that will be taken into account. Most importantly, placement decisions should be made in the interests of the child.

As the hon. Gentleman said, clause 9 is the product of much consultation and of detailed consideration by many experienced people in the other place. As it is crafted, it will ensure that decisions are made in the way that I have described. It includes much of section 23 of the 1989 Act, but it is much clearer about the kind of considerations that will apply to placement decisions.

Where placement with parents is not possible, the clause requires a local authority to place the child in the most appropriate placement available. The determination of that is subject to a number of constraints. First, subsection (7) requires that the decision be taken in accordance with the local authority’s other duties under part III of the 1989 Act, with particular regard to their duties under section 22 to safeguard and promote the child’s welfare, to ascertain and give due consideration to the child’s wishes and feelings and to those of other relevant persons.

I am setting out the sequence of the legislation and how it works together to provide clarity. When considering the placement options available to it, the local authority must give first preference to placement with a relative, friend or other person connected with the child. That reflects our commitment to the principle that children should, wherever possible, be brought up in their own families and communities.

Sometimes, such placements will not be in the child’s interests, and although we recognise that they might not always be possible, we must make a real push to ensure that local authorities always consider the potential for relatives or friends to care for the child. They should not only do that at the first stage of decision making, but revisit the issue at every subsequent stage. That reflects the commitment that we made in the “Care Matters” White Paper to put in place a gateway approach, and that is what I want to see. At every stage of the process, there should be a gateway mentality, with people asking whether the child should be with family and friends.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I am listening carefully, but could the Minister outline the process from the point when we introduce the Bill? How will this new culture—the new regulations—operate in practice? Some authorities are excellent at dealing with such issues, but the good practice is not spreading, and I do not feel that simply introducing the legislation is enough. What back-up actions is the Minister thinking of?

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

That is an important point that goes to the heart of my response to the amendment. The back-up procedures that we are putting in place will start to inculcate what the hon. Lady rightly calls a change of culture, which is what is needed in some local authorities.

For example, as part of making the proposals a reality, we published the new volume 1 of the court order guidance in January. The guidance introduced a requirement that relatives and friends should, as far as possible, be considered as potential carers in all cases, as part of the care plan that is lodged with the court at the outset of care proceedings. About 60 per cent. of children are looked after as a result of going through court proceedings, so we have a potentially strong lever here. The guidance that the courts now have makes it clear that they are required to check that the care plan has thoroughly examined and assessed whether there is a possibility of the child living with family or a friend. If not, the courts are required to ask why not. That is one important lever.

Another important lever, which relates to the proposal in the amendment, is that all local authorities are now required to use the integrated children’s system. That is an electronic system or template setting out in great detail the content of the care plan. Under the ICS, the care plan for a looked-after child requires the social worker to record evidence of the wider family’s capacity to care for the child as one of the family and environmental factors. That includes the practical efforts that have been made to ensure that such placements could happen.

Our intention is to make kinship care a reality in practice, and all of us on the Committee share that intention. Under the ICS, we are requiring social workers—this is true of all the care plan, but particularly where children do not go through the court processes and the court does not examine these issues—not only to mention their assessment of the wider family’s capacity to care for the child, but to give evidence in a particular place in the care plan to support that assessment.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

Can the Minister tell us who that evidence will be available to?

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

It will be recorded in the care plan, so it will be available to the social worker’s supervisors, but it will also be available and very clearly evident to the independent reviewing officer, who will be able to see easily whether the questions about the potential for family care have been examined thoroughly and, if the child is not to be placed there, why not.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I know that we will address this matter later during debate on different subjects, but is there a case for making that evidence available in some version to the potential kinship carers too?

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

The guidance that we produce—we are rewriting all the guidance—will also require social workers to notify the parents in writing about the care plan, as well as the child, other carers, representatives of other agencies involved with the child and others with a sufficient interest in the child. There is an intention to notify them, if not of the contents of the document itself—I will get a specific answer on that—certainly of the conclusions of the care plan and why they have been drawn.

I think that we agree completely that the decision-making process relating to that question needs to be clearly recorded and easily accessible by the other people within the system, including the IRO, the court, the child’s parents and carers and the child himself or herself. Through those two processes—the court process and, more generally for all children, the requirement to record the care plan in the ICS—that record will already be included.

However, we will not stop there. As I have explained, the significance of clause 9 is that we are bringing together all the requirements for care planning in one set of regulations. As we update the statutory guidance and develop those regulations to drive forward practice—that is the issue, as hon. Members have rightly said—as part of the delivery of the “Care Matters” programme, we will ensure that the requirements in clause 9 to consider family placements are fully reflected in the new guidance and regulations and that they mirror what we have included in the revised court order guidance where children are subject to family proceedings.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I just want to check whether a particular situation would be covered in regulations. I have a case involving a grandparent who is too ill and too old to take on long-term care of the child. The grandparent accepts that the child cannot stay. The child is likely to go to foster care and maybe, eventually, to adoption, but my constituent would like to remain the child’s grandmother throughout. It has been difficult to argue that with the local authority. Can Minister tell me whether the regulations can give me any comfort? It is another layer where a grandparent might lose their status, and there is no reason why they should.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

As the hon. Lady will appreciate, it is difficult to comment on individual cases. I do not know why that child is in care, whether there were any safeguarding issues with the family or anything else, but it is in the spirit of what we are including in the Bill and my passionate belief that we must enable children to keep their links with their birth family wherever and whenever that is conducive to their well-being. If that particular case gets to the adoption stage, issues will need to be worked out about adoptive parents and how that can be managed. However, in many cases, adopted children, with the agreement of all concerned, now keep in contact with their wider birth family. I would certainly like to see that trend continued and developed.

In conclusion, I agree completely with the two main arguments put by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham about the importance of enabling contact and enabling children as far as possible to live with family members or friends and the importance of maintaining effective records of decisions. The record should be one of the levers that keep the system charged and focused on the importance of the question and of considering it carefully for each child. Although he was a little sceptical and thought that I was going to brush aside his comments, I hope that he accepts that I agree with the spirit of the amendment and that we have provided for what the amendment would require in the various recording arrangements that are already embedded in the system. To require a separate written report outside that system would add to the bureaucracy and the need to use laptops when we are trying to streamline the system so that social workers can keep proper records in a way that reduces the record-keeping demands on them.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

Before the Minister finishes, will she give her view of why such record keeping is not happening now? We can agree or disagree about whether it will happen after the changes, but why is it not happening more now?

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

I do not think that I can provide better evidence than the speculations in the research cited by the hon. Gentleman. The practice is very good in some local authorities. The reasons that he cited from the NCH can be felt in some local authorities and one can feel that it is more difficult for social workers in those authorities. It is a reality that they have to untangle and make sense of what might be long histories of relationships between adults in the families. There may be difficulties between potential carers and the parents. Within that, the social workers have to determine what is in the child’s interests. I am not arguing that social workers should not try to work through those issues, but I can understand that making good decisions can seem difficult for them.

It may be that there is genuine antipathy towards family care in some places. We have to cut through that completely and make a very strong statement that this is what children say that they want and that this is what we know is in the best interests of children. I hope that, with the support of Committee members, we will start to inculcate the change of culture that is clearly necessary through the provisions of the Bill. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept those points and my assurances and will withdraw the amendment.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

We have had a useful, short debate on this important subject. I am pleased that the Minister shares my enthusiasm for the concept, if not for the terminology of the amendment.

There are clear discrepancies in the evidence. I quoted from the Farmer and Moyers research, which found that social workers initiated only 4 per cent. of family and friends placements. I have seen other research by grandparents’ groups, which suggests that it is as low as 1 per cent. Other research suggests that the figure is 11 or 12 per cent.

There are also big discrepancies between local authorities, which is a real problem. This issue goes back to the tables of differential multiple placement records. A child who needs to be placed into the care of a local authority faces the same sort of problems whether in Cornwall, Stoke or Barnet, which are the three authorities that we cited earlier. The problems may be of a different magnitude, but interestingly, the research that I quoted suggests that there tends to be a greater willingness for extended family members to come forward as potential carers in more deprived areas. It is a problem on a number of levels that certain local authorities have different experiences and produce very different outcomes in how they place or look after the children in the care system, whether in foster care, kinship care or whatever. That merits closer assessment by the Government.

I am assured by the Minister that what I am trying to achieve is already being put in place. However, it is important that the message goes out from this short debate that this issue is a priority. It is not just another piece of paper on which the social worker responsible is supposed to tick various boxes; it is an important priority.

Andrew Turner (Conservative, Isle of Wight)

Will my hon. Friend remind me of the Government’s figures that apparently balance his 11 per cent. down to 1 per cent.?

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I cannot remember what the Minister said. Would she like to remind us what the figures were, or has she forgotten as well? [Interruption.] Anyway, there are big discrepancies among all the different figures. The Government might like to undertake research to get to the bottom of it and why it is going on. [Interruption.] We will read it in Hansard tomorrow.

A clear directive needs to go out as part of the guidance within the ICS. A culture change is required, which is why the thrust of the amendment was that it must be the default position, without which the responsible social worker must be forced to make a serious assessment of why it was not possible. The reason why I also queried whether that should be available in some form to the parents as well goes back to the Ofsted study that I quoted earlier. Parents and extended family members feel very much in the dark about why decisions have been taken. Many of the cases that we get in our surgeries involve grandparents who cannot understand why they have been rejected as foster carers or even adoptive parents when, on the face of it, they are the ideal person. Are they just getting the brush-off from a social worker who may be lazy, risk-averse or completely stressed out for all sorts of other reasons and unable to give the priority suggested in the directions?

On the basis that the Minister has said that there will be a culture change and we will hopefully start to see a radical improvement in the figures, which in turn will lead to greater stability among the placements so that there will be fewer placements with fewer different, unconnected bodies, I am happy to take her at her word. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I beg to move amendment No. 7, in clause 9, page 7, line 37, after ‘sibling’, insert ‘or siblings’.

Greg Pope (Labour, Hyndburn)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Amendment No. 8, in clause 9, page 7, line 38, leave out ‘to live together’ and insert

‘or siblings to be placed together and maintain that placement for as long as is reasonably practicable and in the interests of C’.

New clause 4—Sibling contact—

‘After section 34 of the 1989 Act insert—

“34A Sibling contact

(1) Where it is not consistent with the child’s welfare to be accommodated with a sibling, the local authority shall take all reasonable steps to ensure the child can maintain contact with his or her sibling on a regular basis.

(2) The local authority shall take all reasonable steps to ensure the child can maintain contact with any other siblings.

(3) Subsections (1) and (2) shall not apply if the child or the sibling objects to it and the authority is satisfied that the child or sibling has sufficient understanding to make an informed decision.”’.

New clause 30—Sibling contact (No. 2)—

‘(1) The 1989 Act is amended as follows.

(2) In section 34(1) after paragraph (a) insert—

“(aa) any sibling of his;”.

(3) In Schedule 2, paragraph 15(1) after paragraph (a) insert—

“(aa) any sibling of his;”’.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

It is me again, I am afraid. The amendments all deal with clause 9, but now we move to the also vital subject of siblings. Again, we may bandy around figures, but one thing is accepted—the Minister alluded to it just now, as did I—about connections with birth family members: it is absolutely essential that wherever possible, a child should be able to benefit from continued contact with a sibling, whether or not they are taken into care.

As we know, in certain families, some children are taken into the care system and some remain with the birth family. In the worst circumstances, children can be spread among different care placements. Surely it must be a fundamental principle that wherever possible, if there is more than one child, it is in the children’s best interests that they should be placed together. That puts great pressure on foster placements. If four children are taken away from a family, it is not easy to find a specialist foster placement for them, particularly if they have challenging behavioural problems or learning disabilities or a particular ethnic background that needs to be taken into account. However, surely the preferred position—it is what is supposed to happen—must be that those siblings should remain together.

The clause and proposed new section 22C(8) give a hierarchy of priorities. A child should be able to be kept near their home and may be prioritised for placement with a sibling wherever possible. The terminology could be misconstrued. That is why amendment No. 7 suggests adding the words “or siblings”. Technically, my reading of it is that subsection (8) refers to only one sibling even if a child is part of a group of three or more siblings. For completeness and to avoid misinterpretation, we suggest that subsection (8)(c) should state:

“if C has a sibling or siblings for whom the local authority are also providing accommodation”.

That is the technical purpose of amendment No. 7.

I turn to amendment No. 8. Subsection (8) refers to siblings being able “to live together”. What does that mean? Does it mean that they are together for one day? Does it mean that they see each other occasionally, that they are close by but are still “together”? That, again, could be misinterpreted. What is meant by the subsection is that the children should be placed together in the same placement, with the same foster family or in the same kinship arrangement, in the same premises. We therefore suggest that instead of the siblings living together they should be

“placed together and maintain that placement for as long as is reasonably practicable”.

Under a strict reading of the provision, an authority that put those two or more children together for a day or a week would have fulfilled that qualification. I am sure that it is the Government’s intention that they should be placed together for as long as possible, in order to provide stability.

Those are points of clarification. The amendments would not take anything away from the Bill, but they would make what is intended more evident.

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

The hon. Gentleman is uncharacteristically ungenerous in not admitting that the clause is a good development. Can he not bring himself to say that, with or without his minor amendments, it is really good that we want to put children with their parents or other family carers and, failing that, that they should go to the most appropriate placement, which includes living with their siblings, if they have any, whenever possible?

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

The hon. Gentleman is being uncharacteristically churlish. I started by saying clearly that the clause was welcome. It has been rewritten and greatly improved. We very much approve and support, as I have said, the hierarchy of kinship care. We approve of the detail on putting siblings together. I am trying to improve it further, in order to ensure that it is not open to misinterpretation. The hon. Gentleman and I share the same goal. Although it is always good to hear from him, he is being slightly churlish at this juncture. I am trying to give credit where credit is due.

New clause 4 takes a belt-and-braces approach. It places a duty on an authority to “take all reasonable steps” to ensure that if the siblings cannot be placed together because of problems—the siblings may have suffered a traumatic time and cannot live together; that may be one reason why the home has broken down—whenever possible there should be the means for those siblings to keep contact if they desire it. Again, both sides have spoken of the desirability of retaining some family contact whenever possible. The local authority should take all reasonable steps to ensure that the child can “maintain contact” with other siblings, but with the get-out provision in subsection (3) that if the child does not want it, it will not be forced on them.

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

I rise to ask the hon. Gentleman about a welfare get-out from contact between siblings. I very much support his point—indeed, I hope to speak in a moment to a new clause on sibling contact—but we would not want to force sibling contact when it is contrary to a child’s welfare. Clearly, we are not going to force them to live together if it is against their welfare, and new clause 4 recognises that point with its proposed new section 34A(1) of the Children Act 1989. However, the Bill does not say that there would be contact subject to the welfare of the child. It refers to “taking all reasonable steps”, and we could argue that it would not be reasonable to enable contact if it were against the child’s welfare. However, that is not explicit in the Bill. The hon. Gentleman just said that his proposal has a proviso about consent but it is not the same as the welfare of the child. Does he agree that there is a bit missing from the Bill?

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

Yes. That is a good point. The Minister has lots of civil servants who could go through the detail of the Bill, and somewhere the terminology will demonstrate that it involves the welfare of the child rather than just consent. The hon. Gentleman is quite right to raise the issue, and I can envisage a situation in which a young boy wants to see his sister and has no objection to it, but the child may have been separated because, for example, there was some inappropriate sexual behaviour between the two and it would not therefore be in the best interests of the welfare of the child for those two children to be brought together occasionally. The question is not just about objecting because the child does not want contact; there is a welfare factor in respect of both children or more siblings. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and perhaps in his amendment he will take account of it, too. I entirely take his point on board.

There is a wider issue within the amendments, too. Local authorities should not just enable contact; they should promote it. Other than in the circumstances that the hon. Gentleman and I have just described, it is in the best interests of the children to maintain such contact, particularly if they are unable to maintain kinship contact with the older generation of their family. A sibling may be the only family member who comes into a child’s environment at all, so there should be a duty on local authorities not only to enable contact but to promote it—to make it a practical reality, particularly if the siblings are not able to stay together. If the foster placement were in danger of breaking down, perhaps because of insufficient support for the family in respect of their special needs due to dealing with a complicated set of siblings, the prime consideration should be whether an alternative foster placement, which did not keep those two or more siblings together, would be preferable to keeping the existing placement.

The three amendments, grouped with new clause 4, would only add detail and definition to the Bill. They are absolutely intended to achieve the objectives that I am sure the Government want to achieve—quite rightly and praiseworthily, having included clause 9. On that basis, I hope that the Minister will accommodate me by saying that this is a good idea and the Government accept it.

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

I rise to speak to new clause 30, which is grouped with amendment No. 7. Like the hon. Gentleman’s amendment, the new clause is about ensuring that local authorities facilitate contact between siblings if they are not accommodated at the same place. The formulation in the new clause is slightly narrower than that which the hon. Gentleman attempted, because it would simply amend section 34 of the 1989 Act. It already includes the full panoply of a local authority allowing reasonable contact between a child and various groups of named people, but it does not include naming siblings. The amendment would include siblings on the list. The 1989 Act says that where a child is in the care of the local authority, the authority shall allow the child reasonable contact with parents, guardian and anybody with a residence order, and the proposal would add “siblings” to show that the local authority should also allow reasonable contact with a brother or sister.

Andrew Turner (Conservative, Isle of Wight)

Does the word “sibling” include both looked-after children and children at their home?

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

Yes, because siblings are simply brothers and sisters wherever they are. The local authority’s duty is to the child in its care, so if one child was in care and one was not, allowing contact would be to allow contact with the child that was not in care. I think that that is the point on which the hon. Gentleman wants clarification.

The good thing about amending section 34 of the 1989 Act is that it goes on to provide many safeguards in order to ensure that the contact takes place safely. For example, if the local authority had doubts about whether contact was a good thing, it could refuse to allow it to take place. The person who wanted to object could apply to a court, and the court could make an order or refuse to make an order, depending on the circumstances of the case. In that sense, everything is protected.

New clause 30 would make a similar amendment to paragraph 15 of schedule 2 to the 1989 Act to ensure that the two provisions are consistent, but I read the measure more carefully when preparing to speak to it and I found that the Children Act 1989 is inconsistent. Paragraph 15 states:

“Where a child is being looked after by a local authority, the authority shall, unless it is not reasonably practicable or consistent with his welfare, endeavour to promote contact between the child”—

this is the point that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham made about promotion—

“and—

(a) his parents;

(b) any person who is not a parent of his but who has parental responsibility for him; and

(c) any relative, friend or other person connected with him.”

I took the trouble to look at the definition of “relative” in the 1989 Act. I see that it includes brothers and sisters, so brothers and sisters are covered in a schedule to the 1989 Act, but not in section 34—the primary legislation that matters the most. I should have thought that Parliament would be compelled to put that right and make it happen.

The hon. Gentleman made the case well on why sibling contact is important, but it is worth pointing out to the Ministers that their Department published its summary of responses to its consultation on the “Care Matters: Transforming the Lives of Children and Young People in Care” Green Paper last December. In the summary, it said:

“Many of the children and young people we have spoken to thought that it was vital to keep siblings together wherever possible.”

That is where clause 9 helps. The summary went on to say:

“Where this is not possible, maintaining contact with siblings is very important to young people.”

That is a very welcome statement. It is an all the more compelling reason for the Department to think that the amendment should be made.

The children’s rights director, Roger Morgan, published a report in December 2007 that gave the views of 433 children on improving care standards, which said:

“care placements should be designed so that brothers and sisters can stay together”.

That was the children’s fourth main recommendation.

Finally, the Family Rights Group has produced a briefing for members of the Committee in which it stated that NSPCC research published in 2000 entitled “Your shout too!” found that more than one third of children in care felt that they did not see enough of their brothers and sisters. That is compelling evidence of the need for an amendment, and new clause 30 is the right form for making that change rather than the other proposals included in this group of amendments.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I support both new clauses. The point has been made clearly about the great desire for more sibling contact. It is evidenced by a number of surveys, including one by A National Voice, an organisation that is run by four young people in care. That showed that 83 per cent. of children and young people who do not live with their birth siblings would like to see more of them. The critical point is the difference between allowing something and facilitating and supporting it, which is one step further. I would certainly want the caveat of when it was in the children’s interests for that contact to take place and safe to do so, with welfare being absolutely paramount.

Within those parameters, however, we should go that one step further to be truly facilitating. Travel expenses might be provided—I believe that they are—but sometimes more is needed. Making the first contact is a big step, so perhaps a person might need some support to undertake the journey rather than just the cost. I support the thrust of both new clauses and hope that the Minister, should she find the wording unsatisfactory, will be able to accommodate the views that have been expressed with regard to sibling contact.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

We are all aware of the importance that looked-after children place on their relationships with their brothers and sisters and the importance of those relationships for their well-being and progress, and in that regard we are all coming from the same point of view. These are the relationships that, for most children, endure throughout childhood and beyond and can provide that much needed stability and emotional support that we are seeking in a child’s life, so I share the sentiments behind amendments Nos. 7 and 8, which relate to the placing of siblings together.

With regard to amendment No. 7, I have simply been advised that section 6 of the Interpretation Act 1978, which applies to all other legislation, makes it clear that in any piece of legislation,

“unless the contrary intention appeals,...words in the singular include the plural”,

and vice versa. I did not know that before today, but think that it deals with amendment No. 7, for absolute clarity.

Amendment No. 8 relates to the placement of siblings together. For looked-after children it can be all too easy for relationships with siblings to be lost by being placed separately, either because the different needs and circumstances of individual family members might lead them along different paths in care or because there are too many children to accommodate, at least initially, in one foster family. We are extremely concerned to ensure that children are placed with their siblings wherever possible and where consistent with the welfare of each child. We expect those placements to be maintained as long as they remain suitable, in accordance with the overarching responsibilities of the local authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children for whom they are providing that type of accommodation.

Furthermore, the Bill places an expectation on local authorities to ensure that there is sufficient accommodation of a suitable type across the range of accommodation needs. When we draw up the guidance on how local authorities should fulfil that sufficiency duty and develop their commissioning strategies, we will include references to the possible need to accommodate sibling groups.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

The right hon. Lady’s final comment relates closely to the point that I was about to make about the deficiency in the present system of foster carers who are able to take sibling groups of three or more, which accounts for a fair proportion of the children going through the care system. Will she clarify what the Government propose to do to expand that group of foster carers to ensure that sibling groups are not split up simply because there is not provision, despite the spirit of the Bill, for them to remain together within the care system.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

I share the hon. Gentleman’s views. As I have said, we are emphasising the need for children to stay with brothers and sisters where it is in their interests to do so, and we are giving local authorities a duty to ensure that there is sufficient suitable accommodation of various types. That duty is given in the Bill, and in the guidance we will refer specifically to the need to anticipate and make provision for a wider range of placements, including those that will enable siblings to stay together.

Where siblings are separated on entry to care, perhaps because of a lack of capacity or because it is physically not possible to place them together at that point, we expect that separation and the reasons for it to be included in the care plan. If it is not possible to place siblings together, IROs should track the arrangements that are being made to reunite them at the earliest opportunity, so that that is in the interest of each child, and that appropriate arrangements are made for contact in the mean time.

Julie Kirkbride (Conservative, Bromsgrove)

Mr. Pope, I apologise for not being here this morning and if I missed anything important that is relevant to my question, but I wonder whether the Minister has any figures that would help the Committee to understand roughly how many children coming into care did so as two or three siblings together. How many children came alone and how many came as two, three or more together? My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich has suggested that, in his experience, a large number of children coming from one family were more likely to be in this position.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

I do not have a breakdown of the number of siblings and how many were in each grouping. The range is broad. Hon. Members may be familiar with a recently publicised case where 14 children in one family were taken into care at various times. Clearly, that is an extreme example of the sort of pressure that there can be on local authorities. Much more normally, where siblings are involved it tends to be groups of two or three. I shall see whether figures are available and if so, I shall let the hon. Lady have them.

The child’s permanence record, which is prepared when a child is being placed away from home long term, including for adoption, requires an enormous amount of detail about each sibling to be recorded to ensure that contact can be maintained or resumed in the future where they are not being placed together. Our intentions are clear. Together with the sufficiency duty that we are requiring local authorities to take on, I cannot see that amendment No. 8 would make any difference in practice to the duty in clause 9 in relation to placement.

The amendment talks about maintaining the placement, but I cannot imagine that local authorities would wilfully not support successful placements—indeed, there would be a huge financial disincentive to doing so. As a further strength, both in the new Children Act guidance that we are completely rewriting and in the first ever statutory guidance to independent reviewing officers, we will reinforce the considerations in respect of sibling placements and the importance of supporting sibling contact.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford, because the inclusion of new section 22C(8)(c), which requires a local authority to provide accommodation for siblings to live together, is a huge step forward. It makes clear our intentions to local authorities, which we will support and buttress in the guidance that we give to them.

The new clauses deal with contact between siblings. Obviously, we are all aware of the difficulties that contact presents for some children and families who are separated. It can generate difficult, mixed feelings; it requires careful planning, organisation and in some cases supervision for that contact to be maintained when they have been separated. Paragraph 15 of schedule 2 to the Children Act 1989, which my hon. Friend had diligently researched, explicitly requires local authorities, as he said, to be proactive in not just maintaining contact, but promoting it—indeed, it is headed:

“Promotion and maintenance of contact between child and family”

Included in that paragraph is a reference to “any relative.” As he said, under section 105 of the Act, the definition of “relative” specifically encompasses grandparents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and stepsiblings. The point is that the law as it stands already requires local authorities to maintain contact between siblings. I accept my hon. Friend’s argument—up to a point—that we have to work from section 34 to schedule 2 and on to the definitions in section 105 of the 1989 Act; none the less it is there in statute, and we would achieve nothing more by accepting the amendments.

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

Is there not a slight difference under section 34, because if the local authority fails to allow the contact that it is supposed to be promoting, as the Minister explained, the person who is dissatisfied—I am arguing on behalf of the other sibling—could apply to the court for an order to make it happen? The one third or so of children in care who have no contact with a sibling, and that sibling, could go to court to force the hand of local authorities that are not doing what they are supposed to be doing.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

I agree with my hon. Friend. However, my argument is—I think that his point reinforces it—that we do not need further legislation or changes to it; what we need is the current law to be implemented much more effectively. Although I recognise that there is some very good practice in relation to sibling contact, I agree with him and other Members that it is very patchy. I do not believe for a minute that sufficient priority is given in practice to ensuring that that contact happens. For that reason, we have included the requirement that contacts are reflected in the child care plan, the placement plan and the integrated children’s system, and that the IRO must pay particular attention to that matter. That is what we are trying to do throughout the Bill. Where we need to strengthen legislation, we are doing so, as in new section 22C(8)(c), but where legislative provisions already exist, we should strengthen their implementation.

I have already mentioned the ICS in relation to another clause, and shall not rehearse the details, except to say that there will be specific requirements on social workers to include in the ICS care plan all the details of siblings, including step and half siblings, arrangements for contact and the practicalities of how contact will be maintained. Guidance notices within the records will reiterate and emphasise the importance of that contact. Those new provisions, together with existing legislation, cover the intentions behind the amendments. The real challenge is to use the other measures in the Bill—particularly those on the strengthening of the IRO’s role, which we will get to shortly, and the requirements through the recording systems and the detailed guidance that we will insist on in the care plan—to achieve results in practice.

I hope that the Committee accepts my assurances on those points. We have a job to do that does not require further legislation, or changes to existing legislation. We need simply to implement the levers in place to improve the quality of social work practice.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

Again, the Minister and I seem to be coming at this from the same direction as far as intentions are concerned. I am slightly nonplussed by the reference to the Interpretation Act 1976—

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

1978.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I’m terribly sorry—that makes all the difference. On that basis, will she explain a reference in new section 22C(10), that

“The local authority may determine...the terms of any arrangements”.

Surely to be consistent that should be “arrangement” on the basis that the 1978 Act requires a reference only to the singular, rather than the plural?

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

Far be it from me to question parliamentary counsel. I simply refer the hon. Gentleman to what I said, which is that unless the contrary intent appears, words importing the singular include the plural and vice versa. It is a matter of decision in the drafting as to whether the singular or the plural is actually written down, but in either case, it always includes the opposite.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I hope that is clearer than mud to people other than me. Clearly that Act needs revisiting, because if a singular or a plural can be used arbitrarily, without having any effect at all, something is a bit wrong. What if one wanted to refer only to the singular rather than the plural? Anyway, that is for another committee on another day, but I am very grateful for the Minister’s explanation of sorts.

I do not think that the right hon. Lady entirely took my points about amendment No. 8. She assumes that a decent social worker would clearly want to maintain a placement with siblings for as long as possible, but we cannot take it as read that the social worker would always do everything to make it possible to keep siblings together—not just living together but placed together in a sustainable placement that enabled those two or more siblings to live together in a stable family environment for as long as possible. I think we might have to agree to disagree. I do not think that what the Minister says actually achieves our aim in amendment No. 8, but we are very much agreed on the necessary intention.

I will not get bogged down in the Interpretation Act 1978, and I beg to withdraw the amendment and the new clause.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I beg to move amendment No. 9, in clause 9, page 7, line 41, at end insert—

‘( ) The local authority must ensure that C does not have more than three placements within a 12 month period or more than two placements within the last year of compulsory schooling, or submit a written explanation of why this was not possible.’.

Greg Pope (Labour, Hyndburn)

With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 3—Reviews for social worker turnover—

‘A local authority must conduct a review of a child’s experience of care if, during a child’s time in care, he or she has been looked after by three or more different social workers during the course of one single year.’.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

Not wishing to appear churlish, let me say at the outset what another good addition the clause, and this particular subsection of the clause, is to the Bill, and that we want to make it even better. I hope that satisfies the hon. Member for Stafford.

There is one amendment and a new clause dealing with the related subjects of multiple placements and multiple social workers. They are on a similar theme. I quoted earlier figures from a table showing alarming differences in the local authorities who have children who have been in three or more placements during the year ending March 2007, which is a cause of great concern. The basic theme of all our discussions on the Bill has been the need to maintain some stability, continuity and familiarity with environment and carers. If a child has multiple placements—we have set a benchmark of more than three in the space of a 12-month period—that cannot be conducive to giving that child a chance of regaining some degree of stability. It is particularly important given the impact on education which is quite rightly also part of the clause.

As constituency Members, we have seen foster placements breaking down for various reasons—in many cases it is because suitable and appropriate support was not given to the foster family to enable them to cope with perhaps a particularly difficult child who has particular behavioural problems or needs—so a new foster placement has to be found. Given the shortage of fostering places—we heard recently that the Local Government Association has identified an immediate deficit of 5,250 foster carers—often it is not practically possible to find an alternative appropriate foster carer in the vicinity. That can mean, particularly within large county authority areas, placing a child many miles away, often at the opposite end of a large county, which makes the maintenance of that child at his or her school practically impossible, or possible only at great expense and with great time taken to ship them from an out-of-area placement to a school. My local authority is West Sussex county council, and I have no reason to think that West Sussex is any better or worse than other authorities are.

We need to do a lot more to ensure that multiple placements are avoided at all costs. When one looks at the table that I quoted from this morning showing that a quarter of children in the care system in Cornwall and one fifth of children in the care system in Stoke-on-Trent had three or more placements in the previous year, one becomes deeply alarmed. That figure needs to be reduced considerably. That could mean sharing the best practice of places such as Barnet, which are able to do something about the number of placements.

The two issues are interlinked. Some years ago, Barnet very boldly decided to invest in its social work work force, particularly child social workers. It launched a recruitment campaign called, “Got a new Barnet?” It attracted social workers, gave them special allowances to enable them to live in the area and focused on the welfare of its children in care. It developed a buddy system, whereby every child in care was buddied up with an officer from the local authority, from the chief executive down. That person would be the “pushy parent” in the background looking out for that child’s educational achievement, health records and so on, and asking awkward questions of the relevant department, social worker or officer when that child appeared to be achieving less than expected. The scheme proved to be very successful.

In Barnet, the number of looked-after children going to university or into equivalent further education is about 12 per cent., compared with 1 to 2 per cent. of the looked-after children population as a whole. The last time that I checked with the former director of children’s services, the vacancy rate in Barnet was less than 4 per cent.; it is 20 per cent. in other London boroughs. Barnet identified as a priority, and invested in, a well motivated, well resourced and well rewarded social work work force. That led to much lower turnover in the work force, a much better service for the children they were there to look after, and an investment in foster carers, which meant that more foster placements were likely to succeed than to break down. Such action is not rocket science and certain authorities are better than others at doing something about the problems.

We need an extra safeguard to avoid multiple placements at all costs. I refer back to the office of the children’s rights director for England’s report that I and the hon. Member for Stafford quoted from earlier. It is very rich in appropriate statistics on the attitudes of young people in the care system towards social workers. According to that report, children said that their social worker moved them when they were just settling down—a major gripe. Others said that a big issue was that social workers kept changing. One child is quoted as saying:

“I have had around 30 social workers in 10 years.”

The office of the children’s rights director heard from many young people about how important it is not to keep having new social workers.

As I mentioned earlier, many children said that they had no say in the selection of their social worker, even though they rightly identified that it is important to get on well with one’s social worker. There was a way to change the social worker if the relationship was not working from the child’s perspective—that might happen if the child felt that the social worker was overpowering them, or if they did not feel that their views, worries or feelings were being listened to. The children’s rights director also heard that careful matching was needed to get the right social worker for each child. The young people who proposed that said that they had not had any choice in who would be their social worker, even though getting on with them and trusting them was vital. One of the quotations says that

“social workers are like young people—you have your good and bad ones”.

Amendment No. 9 would make it an absolute exception for a child to have more than three placements in the space of 12 months. Ideally, they would stay in the same placement and the local authority would do everything possible to enable that. If a child had more than two placements in their last year of compulsory schooling, when continuity is vital to their achievement in their studies and examinations, a written explanation would be required.

As with the earlier amendment, it may be that the Minister will tell me that this provision will be included in new guidance. It would be reassuring if it were required in a different form. If it is not, the aim of avoiding multiple placements, which can be so damaging, is a minimum requirement of acceptability.

Similarly, new clause 3 would require that if a child had been looked after by three or more different social workers in the course of a year, the local authority must account for it. It should not just be brushed under the carpet of all of the pressures on the social work department. It may well be a requirement in the performance assessments of social worker practices that they are assessed on how few placements they are able to achieve for one of the children for whom they are being paid a bonus, as was set out in the recommendations, or they could be assessed on whether children have had the continuity of just one social worker wherever possible. If it is likely, as I envisage, that these terminologies will be applied to the new social work practices, surely we should ensure that they apply equally to social workers within the existing local authority remit.

Hopefully, these are constructive and positive proposals that will give greater definition and detail in the Bill to what the Government are trying to achieve and the goals that we all share. They make it explicit that multiple placements and the use of multiple social workers has been unacceptable for too long. A very strong message must go to the relevant departments that everything must be done to avoid those things so that we get more figures comparable with the likes of Barnet, rather than authorities at the other end of the spectrum.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

As the hon. Gentleman rightly says, stability is critical for children in care. That is why stability is one of the four key principles that underpin the “Care Matters: Time for Change” White Paper and that are at the heart of the Bill. We know from our own children that they should be able to rely on stable relationships, and that applies particularly to looked-after children. They should be able to attach to people, to trust people and to gain consistent support from their carers and social workers. That kind of stability is essential in allowing looked-after children to thrive and achieve.

It is particularly crucial to minimise disruption during the two years of key stage 4, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned. Such disruptions can have a dramatic effect on the ability of children to achieve their educational potential, particularly if they have to change schools.

Most children who remain looked-after for more than a year stay in the same placement. We want to increase the proportion of children in long-term, stable care placements, because we know that that leads to the best outcomes. At the other end of the spectrum, we want to reduce the proportion of children facing three or more placement moves in a year. That is why both the measures are part of the national indicator set for local authorities and feature as a part of many recently finalised local area agreements. Since they have been part of the national indicator set, it is gratifying that there have been year-on-year improvements in relation to both—not fast enough or big enough, but the measures are none the less beginning to have a lever effect on local authority practice. Coupled with clause 9, that will further strengthen our leverage for ensuring continuous improvement at the local level.

Decisions about a child’s placement must be taken in the light of that child’s needs and circumstances. I have no difficulty with the amendment’s intentions, but I would like to put two issues to the hon. Gentleman. The first concerns the amendment’s practical effect. It would enshrine in primary legislation an assumption that it is normal or acceptable for a child to face three placements in a year as long as there are no more than three. Clearly, that is absolutely contrary to his intention, but to enshrine that figure in a Bill would not be helpful. Indeed, for the large majority of children, it would set the bar far too low. Where it is in their interest, children should ideally have a single placement where they can develop relationships and find stability and continuity. For a very small minority of children, there can be good reasons why several moves in a planned progression might be needed to prepare them for permanent attachment.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

On that point, the Minister will acknowledge that that is clearly not what I want to achieve. Ofsted’s figures provide tables concentrating specifically on three or more placements. That has already been set down as a benchmark by her own Department for what is not acceptable. We need to set a threshold somewhere, whether at two, three or whatever, above which it is absolutely not acceptable. With all the incentives to push it down even further, we need to start somewhere.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

I agree with the spirit of what the hon. Gentleman says. Arguably, if we were setting the national indicator set now, we might have defined it rather more ambitiously than three or more placements. He is right that that benchmark is enshrined in the national indicator set and reinforced in guidance, but my point was that I would be worried about putting that permanently in legislation. We need to be more ambitious than that for most children. Putting it in the Bill might, over time, normalise it as an acceptable benchmark. We want to ensure that most children’s number of placements is far lower.

Andrew Turner (Conservative, Isle of Wight)

Surely the Minister is aware from the figures quoted by my hon. Friend that the number placed twice is far too high. We know that the figures are low for one, but I am not sure that they are low enough. Where are the rest? Are they like that or like this, or somewhere in between?

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

The majority of children who remain in care for more than a year stay in the same placement. We also know that a substantial number of children—about 40 per cent., I think—are in care for a year or less before returning home. We are talking about a small minority of children, but none the less a substantial one. As of 31 March 2003, 14.8 per cent. of looked-after children had had three or more placements. By 2007, that had fallen to 12.3 per cent. of children in care. It is a minority, and it is falling, but it is still too many, and we want to reduce that as much as we can.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

It seems that there are three aspects of a child’s circumstances that might cause several placements. Otherwise, the issue is the skill with which the placement is made, and the pool of foster carers or of social workers, which we discussed in depth. What is the Minister doing to encourage local authorities to recruit a larger pool of foster carers, with a wide variety of skills? That is an ingredient that we need.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

The hon. Lady will be familiar with those aspects of the “Care Matters” White Paper for which we do not need legislation and which we are therefore not discussing here. There is a wide variety of proposals there, designed to enable local authorities to recruit a wider range of foster carers, and also to give foster carers more training and more status within the family of carers for looked-after children. The hon. Lady raises an important point, because unless that situation is improved—particularly in some areas where the situation is worse—the consequences will ultimately be felt by the children themselves. We are trying to avoid that.

I remarked that there is a minority of children for whom several planned moves may be needed, either because of their own circumstances or because they are in special situations. I met a young man last week; it was tremendous to meet him. He is in an intensive fostering project and has been through three carers. He was about to move on from anti-social behaviour to all sorts of serious crime. Having a series of moves with trained people, and staying with the last set of parents for almost a year, has transformed him. That was fantastic to see. There will be special situations such as that, and we want to ensure that we allow for those. Such planned placement changes are already required to be reflected in a child’s care plan. What we need to do here is to reinforce the clear messages about stability, and as the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said, we will do that again in the guidance that is being rewritten.

New clause 3 will strengthen the reviewing process, to ensure that it is rigorously focused on whether the care plan that the local authority puts forward is the most appropriate and responsive way to meet the child’s needs. I am sure that Members are aware that independent reviewing officers already have the power to report it to senior managers if actions from review are not being carried out, including where a change in social worker is delaying the implementation of decisions made at review. There is already a requirement for regular reviews: three in the first year and then every six months. That is a minimum requirement. The IRO can direct further reviews as he or she thinks necessary. Therefore I hope that Members will accept that in the specific context of a child experiencing an unacceptable number of changes in their social worker, we should strengthen both the reviews that are already in place and the role of the IRO, rather than focusing on triggering additional reviews. That will enable those who ought to be examining those changes for children to do so much more effectively. When we reach clause 11 we will perhaps talk about some of that in more detail.

Reviews should always consider whether the child’s placement offers the stability that they need, with secure attachments. Holding additional reviews in isolation from the focused activity that needs to take place in the local authority to recruit and develop social workers, will not necessarily address the real issue here, which is needing to increase the number of social workers where there are shortages, and achieving a range of expertise. As I said on Second Reading, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families has taken measures outside the Bill to help local authorities address some of the issues of vacancy and turnover rates of social workers. There was a package of measures backed by substantial resources to enable local authorities to do more of the kind of work that authorities such as Barnet have undertaken with great success in improving recruitment and retention.

With those assurances, I hope that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham will feel that we agree with the purpose of the amendment. On new clause 3, I do not think that adding further reviews to an already demanding set of reviews with the potential for the IRO to demand more would help with the problem. I therefore hope that he will withdraw the amendment.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I am delighted and relieved that the Minister is with us. Her favourite buzz word today appears to be “lever in” or “leverage”. All of these measures are beginning to lever in the extra requirements, which is good.

I do not want to place greater bureaucracy on local authorities or on social workers. The greatest incentive for local authorities or social workers not to have to account for multiple placements or the use of multiple social workers would be that bureaucracy. That is where the incentive lies.

The Minister places great store by the IRO. Given that we have not reached that part of the Bill, I think that we will have an interesting debate on the exact nature of the teeth that the IRO will be given and how accountable he or she will be able to make local authorities or social workers who do not achieve the improvements in outcomes that we want.

This has been another useful debate. It has teased out that the Government are thinking along the same lines as us, but that these requirements are taken care of elsewhere in the Bill. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Greg Pope (Labour, Hyndburn)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: New clause 1—Welfare of looked after children—

‘When considering or maintaining placement for a child a local authority or other responsible body shall have regard in particular to—

(a) ascertaining the wishes and feelings of the child;

(b) the desirability of retaining the child in the family home wherever it is the child’s best interests and that an appropriate package of care and family support has been made available to that end;

(c) the likely effect on him of any change in his circumstances and environment, and the benefits of his remaining close to home wherever possible;

(d) any harm which he has suffered or is at risk of suffering;

(e) ensuring all options for kinship care have been explored and an assessment of their parenting capacity undertaken;

(f) maintaining contact with siblings and other family members wherever practicable and in the child’s best interest;

(g) maintaining continuity of appropriate education, accommodation and standards of healthcare;

(h) the appropriate level of access to the responsible social worker being maintained;

(i) where the required changes have been specified and not achieved.’.

New clause 27—Support for family and friends carers—

‘(1) The 1989 Act is amended as follows.

(2) After section 17B insert—

“17C Support for family and friends carers

(1) This section applies to a person (“P”) who provides full-time care and accommodation for a child (“C”) for more than 28 days but who is not—

(a) a parent of the child, or

(b) a local authority foster parent.

(2) A local authority shall assess P’s need for financial and other support under Part III of this Act to care for C in any of the following circumstances—

(a) where the child comes to live with P as a result of a plan made following an inquiry under section 47 (local authority’s duty to investigate);

(b) where the child comes to live with P following an investigation under section 37 (powers of court in certain family proceedings);

(c) where P has secured a residence order or special guardianship order in order to avoid the child being looked after, and there is professional evidence of impairment of the parents’ ability to care for the child;

(d) where P has obtained a residence order or special guardianship order arising out of care proceedings;

(e) where P is providing accommodation for the child and then secures a residence order or special guardianship order.

(3) The local authority shall provide such support as is required to meet the needs identified by the assessment referred to in subsection 2.

(4) The local authority shall appoint a named person who shall have responsibility for coordinating the provision of support to persons to whom this section applies.”

(3) In paragraph 1 of Schedule 2 (identification of children in need and provision of information), in sub-paragraph (2)(a)(i) for “17,” substitute “14F, 17, 17C,”.’.

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

First, having chided the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, it behoves me to say what a wonderful clause this is. Congratulations to the Government and the other place for getting it into its current order. It is a very welcome clause.

I will speak briefly to new clause 27. It goes along with the thrust of the clause that in future, local authorities should think first about supporting parents and other family members in caring for children who would otherwise be in danger of being taken into the care of the local authority. If local authorities have to step in and use their statutory powers to take a child into care, they should immediately look at whether they can rehabilitate the child back to the parents or other members of the child’s family and that should be done as quickly as possible.

New clause 27 draws attention to the one lacuna in clause 9, which is the practical support that will be given to family members who take on the very important task of looking after one or more vulnerable children on behalf of the whole family. It would deal particularly with physical and financial support when it is most needed. When local authorities take a child into care, whether they place the child with a family member, a foster carer or in residential care, the panoply of support and money is available to the people giving the care. When family members rally round and take on that responsibility, there is no entitlement or direct duty for them to be given support and money to do that important work.

To ensure that the practical aspect of the enterprise is not overlooked, new clause 27 would require the local authority to carry out an assessment of the needs of the family members who are looking after those children at the outset and see what support, financial and otherwise, would be necessary to ensure that they could do their job to the best of their ability. Otherwise, the risk is that the placement will break down and the local authority will have to come back and exercise those statutory powers and take the child or children into care.

We have willed the ends in the clause, but at the moment we are not willing the means to ensure that it is carried through into practice. I hope that the Ministers can say that they are sympathetic to closing a gap in what is otherwise an extremely welcome provision to ensure that families are properly supported by the local authority when they rally around to take on this awesome responsibility. Local authorities, instead of exercising their care powers, would be exercising their ability to support families and keep them together.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman has said, but I want to concentrate on new clause 1, which is grouped with the clause stand part debate. New clause 1 is intended to be helpful and constructive to the Bill and is based on previous legislation, and I think it is quite a good wheeze. It would place on the face and at the heart of the Bill—if it is possible to do both—the equivalent of the welfare checklist that is enshrined in the Children Act 1989, which remains as important a piece of legislation as it was when it was innovated under the last Government. Key to that legislation was the concept of the paramountcy of the child and the focus of various aspects of welfare on the wishes and feelings of the child.

The Bill has been criticised for not going far enough and for not containing detail that is explicit enough to require local authorities to pursue the legislation right up to the spirit in which it is intended. In many cases, local authorities will be reluctant to spend more or invest more resources than they need to in order to comply with the new legislation, which is understandable, given the competing requirements on their budgets from all sorts of other children’s services requirements. That is the reason for our previous arguments over the term “having regard to.”

It would be suitable, appropriate and helpful for the Bill if a welfare checklist giving the nine criteria set out in new clause 1 was used as a benchmark against which a local authority could be measured in order to see whether it had fulfilled the spirit of the legislation rather than just carried out the minimum requirements. That would be measured in relation to the impact on the welfare of the child, which is the most important consideration and the reason we are all here. We thought that it would be helpful to suggest a welfare checklist that cannibalised the list from the 1989 Act and was made germane to looked-after children.

I will briefly run through the nine criteria listed in new clause 1. Item (a) states that a local authority should have regard in particular to

“ascertaining the wishes and feelings of the child”,

which we are all familiar with from previous legislation. It is right that children should be consulted on matters such as the appointment of their social workers, as we mentioned earlier. Many children feel excluded from decisions in relation to which they might have views of their own, and which could be relevant to their being able to get on with their social worker, which is in turn important for the success of the placement or of their relationships that they are building.

Item (b), which deals with

“the desirability of retaining the child in the family home wherever it is the child’s best interests”,

would back up the kinship care priority hierarchy in clause 9, which we have debated. Again, against the checklist, has a local authority pursued as fully as is practicable the possibility of keeping the child within the family rather than taking the child away? Item (b) contains the preventive measure. As I have said, it is too often perceived that social workers’ first contact with a vulnerable family is when care proceedings are about to be initiated, not—as should happen—when things are starting to go wrong in a family and they need help and support, resources or whatever.

Community Service Volunteers, of which I am proud to be a trustee, has piloted a project using voluntary social workers, whose role is to liaise with the family as a family support resource, a relationship that is often difficult when it involves dealing with somebody who also has the power to initiate care proceedings to take a child away from a family. Social workers are regarded with a degree of suspicion on the doorstep, particularly on a first referral, so the role of voluntary social workers can involve working with the family to ensure that everything is being done and liaising with the local authority and the official social worker to ensure that the family has support and can be kept together wherever possible.

As a benchmark before care proceedings take place, the new clause asks whether the local authority has done everything practicable to ensure that the child can be kept with the family, that the family can be kept together and that taking the child away from the family, however temporary or permanent the basis, is not an obvious option. The desirability of trying to keep the family together with the child in the family is the second benchmark.

The third benchmark is

“the likely effect”

on the child

“of any change in his circumstances and environment, and the benefits of his remaining close to home wherever possible”.

Clause 9, although we have not debated it in detail, mentions the desirability of keeping a child close to a familiar environment wherever possible and in the best interest of the child and the child’s welfare. Even though things might have broken down with the family or birth parents, it is in the child’s best interest to retain some accord with familiar friends, perhaps at the same school, or with kinship carers.

Before taking a child away from their environment, both in terms of their personal relationships and their physical environment, has an assessment been done of whether that is in the child’s best interest? In some cases, it clearly will be, such as if the child is being victimised or bullied or is under threat of physical or mental harm by remaining in a very damaging environment. Has an assessment been made? That is the third benchmark.

The fourth benchmark will be familiar from the 1989 Act:

“any harm which he has suffered or is at risk of suffering”.

Clearly, the welfare of the child is the basis for that. The fifth concerns ensuring, as we have debated at length, that all options for kinship care in the hierarchy criteria have been explored, including an assessment of the kinship carer’s parenting capacity. The Minister has told us that that will happen under the new arrangements, so that criterion should be quite easy to satisfy.

The sixth concerns

“maintaining contact with siblings and other family members wherever practicable and in the child’s best interest”.

Again, it replicates, but on a benchmark basis, what we have debated.

The seventh is

“maintaining continuity of appropriate education, accommodation and standards of healthcare”.

We have touched on the continuity of remaining at the same school, particularly in the sensitive key stage years of exams. Stability of accommodation should also be a factor, as well as standards of health care, should the child have some illness, such as a long-term condition or a disability, that would make any move harmful.

The eighth check is

“the appropriate level of access to the responsible social worker being maintained”.

Again, it deals with criteria that we have touched on, whereby the multiple appointment of social workers is clearly detrimental.

The final check is

“where the required changes have been specified and not achieved.”

There is a lot of repetition on the checklist, but it is meant to be held up as a benchmark, so that when there is a question mark over whether a child has received the very best support and ended up in the most appropriate and beneficial placement, the onus will be on the appropriate authority to measure its performance against that checklist. Did it really pull all the right levers and exhaust all the right possibilities before deciding that the child could not stay with the kinship carer, or that it should be placed in a completely new or physically distant environment?

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

The hon. Gentleman mentioned that there is already a welfare checklist in the 1989 Act, but there is no reference in the new clause to the way in which its checklist would interact with the Act’s checklist. What is his thinking? Why do we need two checklists, with some checks that are the same and some that are different? It would be a recipe for confusion if the situation either was not clarified or was completely different. [Interruption.]

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

Yes. Checklist or checklists. You say tomayto, we say tomato—it’s all the same thing, is it not?

The hon. Gentleman makes an appropriate point, however. I do not want to replicate provisions so that one has to go through two different checklists, but the checklist in new clause 1 is germane to looked-after children. Clearly, the 1989 Act will retain its appropriateness and its sections on the welfare of the child their paramountcy, but we are dealing specifically with children in the care system, whereas the 1989 Act deals with more than just those children. The new clause has its place.

No doubt the Minister will say that she cannot accept the new clause for the reason that the hon. Gentleman just gave—that it causes confusion or it replicates. However, it is a genuine effort to measure whether local authorities are achieving what the legislation wants them to achieve—its spirit. With reference to “have regard to”, they may have been doing less, and not achieving the very best outcome for the child, than they would have done if they had had to measure up to the checklist before us.

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

The hon. Gentleman’s answer is wrong, and I am sure that his hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich, the family law barrister behind him, could tell him that the welfare checklist in the 1989 Act relates to circumstances whenever a court is asked to make a decision. It could take place in private family proceedings or in public care proceedings. It could also take place when a local authority seeks a care order, or when someone wants a variation of an order, wants to bring an end to an order or wants contact with a child who is already in care. So, when the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham says that his welfare checklist relates only to children in the care system, and that the list in the 1989 Act relates to some other children or to children generally, he is just wrong.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for doing the Minister’s job for her. It might be more accurate to say that the new clause relates to children in the care system as set out in the Bill—that all the new factors that the Bill brings in should be measured against the checklist. It is an innovative attempt at being more appropriate to the changes that we all welcome in the legislation, so that local authorities can be properly measured. The welfare checklist—with its vagueness in certain areas, for obvious reasons going back now 20 years—could be tightened up by the more detailed provisions before us. I fully appreciate that competing priorities are a possibility. However, when it comes to judging whether a local authority has done its job in promoting kinship care or sibling care, and in keeping children closer to home, which the Bill will bring about, it is that checklist that will have to be used to see whether local authorities have measured up.

The hon. Gentleman is right in so far as we are talking about the same pool of children, but we are talking about new legislation and new requirements. If we are serious about wanting to ensure that those requirements make a difference, we need a test against which local authorities should be prepared to be judged, one against which their performance could be found wanting—or found to be fulfilling the real spirit of the legislation that we are all so eager to bring in. On that basis, I am keen that the new clause should be considered by the Committee.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I welcome clause 9. I have not yet had the opportunity to express those warm words. It is significant that there is so much common ground among Members. We all agree on the outcomes that we wish to achieve, but it is the mechanisms that will ensure they can be achieved that are under debate.

I speak in support of new clause 27. The payments that might be made to kinship carers vary between local authorities, but they are made at a time when the carers desperately need support. I am aware that some authorities can be more generous with the budget made available to them by social services, and that others are not.

There are all sorts of reasons why a kinship carer may be short of money at times of crisis, and that might put pressure on the relationships that we are talking about—relationships that we want to flourish. I know of an example in my constituency. A grandmother had to pay considerable babysitting fees so that she could keep her one night out every week. That did not seem unreasonable, but I was surprised at how much she had to pay. It ate up the entire sum that she was given by social services. I mention it because a grandparent taking on a 14-year-old girl and not wishing to leave her at home unaccompanied is very worthy but expensive. We need to consider the matter further. I imagine that we will be discussing it again when we reach clause 24, but the new clause fits in well at this stage because of the necessity, when appropriate, of giving all the support that we can for kinship care.

I might also say a few warm words on new clause 1. The principle that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham is trying to achieve is rather interesting. I am not sure about the exact details, and the title seems to throw things into disarray, but we nevertheless need more in the Bill than what we have now that will give a stronger message to local authorities. Something like new clause 1, perhaps with a different title, might become as significant as the welfare checklist was in the context of the Children Act 1989, not least because the Bill is meant to be another landmark piece of legislation in a highly specialised area.

The new clauses deal with two different things, and they need to be approached carefully. I hope that the Minister will pick up on them and not dismiss them entirely.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

New clauses 27 and 1 are clearly intended to ensure that, as we discussed earlier, local authorities should better consider the needs of children being cared for by family and friends, and when that is happening we need also to consider the needs of the parents themselves. However, it is important to note that many excellent services are already available in the best local authority areas, whether provided by them or third sector partners. We have to ensure that those services are available no matter which area of the country people live in.

Chapter two of “Care Matters” sets out how we intend to make significant improvements to the support for carers who are either family or friends. In particular it sets out in statutory guidance the expectations of an effective service to those carers. That will address issues that authorities need to consider when they are commissioning services, such as widening support to include financial benefits to which carers may be entitled, and an appropriate assessment process in which the relative is approved as a foster carer. Obviously, we will consult widely as we develop the new framework to ensure that we get it right.

It is important to remember that section 17 of the Children Act 1989 already places a general duty on local authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in need in their area and to promote their upbringing by their families by providing a wide range of services that are appropriate to children’s needs.

As the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole mentioned, we are already seeking, through clause 24 of the Bill, to amend section 17(6) which, at the moment, restricts the making of payments to exceptional circumstances. We will no doubt debate that clause when we get there, but the intention is to give local authorities a wider discretion to provide financial support on a longer-term basis if they are satisfied that to do so would safeguard the child’s welfare.

We want to see more relative carers receiving financial and other support from local authorities when it is needed. The serious problem with the amendment is that it would, in effect, remove the discretionary aspect of section 17 for this category of children and family carers and effectively give family carers an entitlement in law that birth parents, who may have similar difficulties, currently do not have.

We have to be very clear that it is not the role of local authorities to provide general income maintenance for families, and nor are they resourced to do so. Carers who are family or friends are already entitled to a range of financial supports similar to those that parents are entitled to when caring for their own children, such as child benefit and tax credits. Neither of those are affected by any payments made under section 17. Carers can qualify for other benefits on broadly the same terms as parents generally. If they are bringing up a child on their own and unable to work, they may claim income support on the same basis as other lone parents. The main problem—I very much understand the intention here—is that the measure would give an entitlement in law to family carers that birth parents do not have. That is why I cannot accept this particular amendment.

Turning to new clause 1, there is a great deal to be said for all the principles underpinning the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham. In fact, when we looked, they were nearly all included in other pieces of legislation, particularly the Children Act. If they were not, they were included in the Bill. I think that the hon. Gentleman has put forward a very powerful proposition that all such principles should all be brigaded in one place. We all reflect and understand the way in which the welfare check list in the 1989 Act has been readily understood and is on the tips of the tongues of everyone who works with children; they know about all the measures because they are in one place, in a list, and it has had a powerful impact. Although I do not think that we should include this amendment in the Bill because the issues already exist—and I can send the hon. Gentleman the collation that we have done—in other pieces of legislation, the idea of brigading all of the elements together in one place is an excellent one. I assure him that, when we set out the new care planning guidance, I and the Under-Secretary of State will set out a list of key principles, including any that we might have missed that might be elsewhere in legislation.

That will have the same effect as a check list, such as the one in the 1989 Act, although in this case the list will be set out in guidance, given that very specific provisions exist in law already. Brigading those themes in one place will have a powerful effect by setting out very clearly the principles that we think should govern every aspect of social care work practice in relation to looked-after children. Indeed, the list in his new clause underpins the Bill’s four themes—good parenting, stability, the voice of the child and higher aspirations for children. I hope, therefore, that he accepts my assurance that we will set out that list at the beginning of the care planning guidance.

Helen Southworth (Labour, Warrington South)

Will the Minister also look at proposed new section 22C(6)(d) dealing with placements? According to the explanatory notes, placements

may include, for example, supporting young people to live independently in rented accommodation, residential employment, or in supported lodgings/hostels.”

Will she make explicit whether proposed new subsection (6)(d) will be subject to the Ofsted inspection process? Furthermore, a case was brought to my attention of a 15-year-old girl placed be her local authority in bed and breakfast accommodation. Will she make it clear in guidance that accommodation under the subsection must be suitable and appropriate.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

I understand the spirit of my hon. Friend’s interventions. I shall have to write to her on the technical detail, and I shall do so before our next sitting, if she will accept that.

Tim Loughton (Conservative, East Worthing and Shoreham)

Mine was not the lead new clause, but I would still like to reply briefly to the Minister, who gave a very gracious answer. Whatever the mechanics of my proposal, and however it might conflict with provisions elsewhere in legislation, it was a genuine attempt to brigade—as she put it—the key principles, which are appropriate for the children and affected in the Bill. If she is happy to set out such a list in the front of the care planning guidance protocols, I would be delighted, and I look forward to seeing the fruits of our labours.