Like my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West, I talked to my county council about its approach to the Bill, which it welcomes. It is delighted that the Government have made progress on the issue. However, it is worried that social services are often the only body that is blamed for the delay in adoption. The Government are right to emphasise, as they did in their 1998 circular, the need to avoid delay and to put the child's requirements at the centre of the process.
Legal processes can hold up adoption as much as any decisions taken by social services.
The council wants me to emphasise that problem and hopes that the Bill will address it. The Downing street website contains a report of an unusually sensitive briefing by the Prime Minister's official spokesman in February 2000, although he got characteristically robust towards the end of his comments. The Government had to govern. That meant legislation and use of public money. We think that we get an unfair deal in Worcestershire when it comes to our share of the nation's resources for social services.