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Health and Education

I completely agree. That is exactly the kind of breakthrough that we need in the performance of schools in our most disadvantaged areas. It is partly for that reason that we will open up the education system to new providers where they can raise standards and spread opportunity locally, subject, of course, to parental demand, to fair funding and to fair admissions. We will also introduce a Bill to provide better protection for children and vulnerable adults by creating a single vetting and barring scheme in place of the four different schemes that now exist. We will take forward the recommendations made by Sir Michael Bichard in response to the Soham murders. Checks will be more comprehensive in coverage; information will be comprehensively updated and available to employers online; and, for the first time, parents employing a home carer or a nanny will be able to check an applicant’s history. That is all designed to ensure as far as is humanly possible that people who are simply unsuitable for work with children and vulnerable adults are not allowed to take up such jobs. Finally, we will introduce a Bill to improve arrangements for children to have contact with their parents when those parents are no longer living together, and to strengthen the law relating to international adoptions. We have all dealt in our constituencies with those very painful cases where parents have separated, where the court has said that the child should have contact with the non-resident parent—usually, though not always, the father—but the contact simply does not happen. It is clearly wrong that a court order made in the interests of the welfare of the child should be disregarded by one of the parents. The Children (Contact and Adoption) Bill will give the courts more flexible powers to encourage parents to agree and stick to contact arrangements and, when necessary, to enforce a court contact order.