---

Health and Education

It is a pleasure to be called to speak in this important debate. Sometimes we on the Back Benches wish that there were a curb on Front-Bench speeches. The hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) spoke for 35 minutes. I almost lost the will to live. I say that because half of the debate time today has been taken up by Front-Bench spokesmen. No wonder the Chamber is so sparsely attended on an important debate on education and health, when Back Benchers turn up and have to wait so long to make a short contribution. It is disappointing sometimes to see the way in which those on the Back Benches are treated. I make that as a general point, Madam Deputy Speaker. You know that I can get irritable, because a long time ago you were one of my students and knew that I was an irritable lecturer. However, I will get on with my speech and try to make it reasonably lively. Twenty years ago, we had the Education Reform Act 1988, which most of us associate with the now Lord Baker. Some important reforms were introduced: testing and assessment, which is taken very seriously, the national curriculum, and the inspection service. The Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families, which I have the privilege to chair, is going through them. We have conducted a major inquiry on testing and assessment, have come to the end of an inquiry into the national curriculum, and are going to take a thorough look at inspection. In a sense, I always try to use the Queen's Speech to say what is happening in terms of the progress that we have made over the past 20 years. Too often in the Chamber, we make party political points against one another, but if we took a more historical view, we would see that we agree on quite a lot of issues—but not all of them. We fundamentally disagree on some of them, and I shall come back to that. It is part of a Select Committee's job to attempt to establish the value for taxpayers' money and the progress that is made over a longer period. It is with great interest that we look at this Queen's Speech. It is quite thin, but it does include a portmanteau education Bill. There is an awful lot in it to do with education: from training and apprenticeships to the reform of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority; measures to promote equality; the introduction of primary legislation to enshrine the child poverty targets for 2020; and the general aim to help families and businesses. I make no apology for concentrating on families and children in my remarks. The newish Select Committee that I chair is different. Being Chairman of a Select Committee was a simpler task in the past because the Chairman called one Department to account. The responsibility is much more complex with children, schools and families, which I am told span 10 different Departments, if we follow families and children across those arbitrary divisions. The needs of families and children do not pay any respect to those artificial divisions between, for example, health and education. It would be wrong if, at this time, with the enormous public interest in the welfare of children—particularly the most vulnerable children in our society—I did not spend a little time talking about them. It happens that one of the Select Committee's decisions was to show that we were taking our responsibility for children seriously, and for the past few months we have been looking intensively at the whole area of children in care—looked-after children. We have been taking that very seriously and have learned a great deal. As soon as one gets into this territory, the vocabulary and acronyms are different, and there is a tremendous learning curve, which members of the Committee have enjoyed. As we approached the end of the inquiry, we were hit by the awful tragedy of baby P. As we studied the ramifications of the baby P case, we learnt very quickly not just how many children become vulnerable each year, but how many children's lives are ended when they are murdered by their parents or carers. The figures given to the Committee only yesterday by the chief inspector of schools were chilling indeed. During the early part of the debate about baby P, we were given figures from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children stating that a child was murdered between once a week and once every 10 days; the chief inspector suggested that the figure was nearer to three children each week. The issue is very serious, but it must be dealt with in a balanced way. When a tragedy such as this occurs, we need to establish what happened, and whether it is a one-off case or whether there are systemic problems to be addressed. The Secretary of State has moved very quickly in facing up to that responsibility. Unfortunately, we have seen yet another regrettable attempt by the British media to conduct a trial by television and newspapers even before the facts are known. I believe that we have a heavy responsibility to introduce some balance to that knee-jerk attitude to every crisis, and put it into perspective. What went on in Haringey was not good. I have been given privileged access to some of the documents involved, and they are very disturbing indeed. What do we learn from this case? We certainly learn that the role of Ofsted needs to be re-evaluated. The evidence that we took yesterday caused me to worry about just how often inspectors enter local authority children's departments, how close they get to those departments, how often they go to meetings, meet real people and discuss the issues across the table, and to what extent inspections are paper-based. As I listened to the chief inspector's evidence yesterday, I had the impression that Ofsted's system, which is not bad for the purpose of evaluating schools, has been transported to child welfare, where it is less appropriate. I told the children's commissioner that I found it surprising that, given that there are only 150 local authorities, there was not a member of the inspectorate in every one. It would not have to be a long-term arrangement, I said, but there should be a presence. A member of the inspectorate should regularly accompany social workers on difficult visits, and should sit in on case conferences. Of course, we now live in the world of the e-mail. We all know organisations in which colleagues who are just across the corridor from each other do not knock on the door and speak, but e-mail instead. That disease exists in health and social services organisations in both the private and the public sector. I believe in the good old-fashioned presence of a person at a table, looking others in the eye and talking about a case—perhaps asking ““When did you last see this family?””, ““When did you last discuss the child?””, ””When did you last talk to the child on his or her own?””, or ““When did you last ask whether there was a man in the house? Did you ask a neighbour whether there might be a man living in the house whom you had not known about?”” That last question is a common theme in many difficult cases of this kind. In the context of the baby P case, I issue a plea for us to look very seriously at the systems.