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Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I, too, support these amendments, whose provisions vary across several clauses and have been referred to in previous debates. I particularly wished to put my name to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, because one is increasingly looking at weasel words that would give an organisation or local authority that had other reasons, such as resources, for not going down a route an excuse to do so. If ever there were two such words, they are ““reasonably practicable””. When you remove ““reasonably practicable””, the phrase reads: "““The duties imposed””—" in relation to accommodation— "““are … to be performed only in so far as their performance is … consistent with the welfare of the child””." That is surely what we want, not, "““reasonably practicable and consistent with the welfare of the child””," particularly given all the needs that we have heard about and the difficulty of placing individual children for more than understandable reasons. I very much support all the amendments because of what we have heard, and continue to hear, about the details of some of these appalling cases. We are all horrified by the number of missing children, whatever it is. It is quite beyond belief.