Children and Social Work Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2016-11-08
Topic: Social Welfare
Norman Warner (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, as someone who strongly supports reform and innovation across the public services, I rise, perhaps a little surprisingly, to support Amendments 57, 58, 64, 66 and 68, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and to which I have added my name. I will not rehearse again the arguments that he and the noble Lord, Lord Watson, have made, and with which I totally agree. I welcome, and accept, that the Government have crafted some safeguards to meet the extensive concerns expressed across the Benches of this House in Committee and by many concerned interests outside Parliament, most notably the social work profession itself and the major children’s charities The Government’s amendments include one of my proposals, for which I am grateful—namely the establishment of an independent panel to consider particular proposals. Ultimately, however, after reflecting further on this issue following a pretty lengthy meeting with Edward Timpson, many of his officials and people from local government, I think that these clauses remain fundamentally flawed, even with the proposed safeguards, for three main reasons First, the examples that the Government have cited in support of the clauses do not justify the kind of draconian powers that the Secretary of State has sought. All the examples I have heard about are relatively minor changes which may or may not improve effectiveness and efficiency. The Government have simply not shown why such wide powers are needed, or the scale of innovation that cannot be attempted because of primary legislation. We simply do not have the evidence base to show that there are a lot of hungry people out there wanting to innovate who are frustrated by primary legislation. In any case, if the Government thought that the changes they have cited were necessary and needed primary legislation, they could, and should, have used this Bill to make them, and subjected their ideas to parliamentary scrutiny. There was nothing to stop them including those proposals in the Bill and explaining why they needed to introduce changes and why children’s services would be improved. However, the Government have chosen not to do so. Instead, they have chosen an extremely large sledgehammer to crack quite small nuts, which has only caused many people to wonder what the Government are really up to. The Government’s failure to consult properly on this Bill in advance has only fuelled that suspicion Secondly, the Government have singularly failed to convince all the major children’s charities, Liberty and the majority of social workers that what they are proposing in Clauses 29 to 33, even with the proposed safeguards, will benefit outcomes for vulnerable children. The charities, along with the professional interests, simply do not consider that the Government have made the case for Parliament to open the door to remove long-standing protective rights granted by Parliament to safeguard highly vulnerable children. They are right to warn us to draw back from granting these wide powers to the Government, even with the proposed safeguards, without much more convincing evidence. As the charities said in the briefing to us, the Government should go back to the drawing board on innovation and conduct a proper review of what is needed in consultation with the various interests. It is striking that all the briefing we have received shows that these bodies have an appetite for innovation. They are not being Luddites about innovation and reform. They are saying that the process which the Government have adopted is totally inappropriate if we want to safeguard rights-based children’s protection services Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, referred to an argument which is currently being given a good airing over the triggering of Article 50. The argument is that when Parliament puts legislation in place, Parliament should amend it and not allow a Secretary of State to take wide powers to amend what he thinks fit. That is a particularly important consideration when the rights of vulnerable children are involved. For those reasons, if the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, chooses to test the opinion of the House, I will vote with him.