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Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

To clarify the first point, it is £2 million for all the pilots each year. We are talking about £6 million for the whole piloting exercise in respect of social work practices over the three years. To put those figures in perspective, that is £6 million out of the £300 million that is being allocated to implement the White Paper and it is £6 million compared with the £5 billion that I was talking about, which is the sum available to local authorities in respect of children’s social care at large. If a local authority wishes to pilot other approaches, within the law, to developing social work and recruiting social workers, it is entirely at liberty to do so. Nothing that my department or the Government are doing, within the law, will prevent it being able to do so. It is entirely at the discretion of the local authority whether it chooses to engage in such pilots. It is therefore reasonable that the funding specifically intended for social work pilots should be spent on social work pilots.