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Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

That was precisely the reason for the initial target which we set in 2000. However, I am glad that I can entirely meet the noble Baroness’s concerns on these issues. The national adoption target for England, announced in 2000, ended in March 2006 and there are no plans to reintroduce a similar target. Under the new performance framework outlined in the 2006 local government White Paper, local authorities will, from 2008-09, report performance on a much reduced set of 198 cross-government indicators in a new national indicator set. Local area agreements will be at the heart of the new performance framework and, other than the DCSF statutory education and early years targets, will be the only vehicles through which central government can agree targets with local authorities. The local government White Paper commitments mean that government will agree targets with local authorities only against indicators drawn from the national indicator set. From April 2008, there will not be a national indicator measuring the number of adoptions of children from care, so the Government will not, under the terms of the new performance framework, agree targets to increase adoptions from care with local authorities, which is the point underlying the second part of the noble Baroness’s amendment.