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Health and Education

I am pleased to see that the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families is back in his place, because, as hon. Members will not be surprised to hear, I intend to talk about the child protection system. For some years, I have been concerned that the system makes the wrong decisions, including both false positives, when it intervenes when it should not, and false negatives, when it fails to intervene when it should. For some time, I have been trying to identify how many serious case reviews have taken place following the death of a child, because that would provide a threshold from which we could track trends. The Department has been singularly unhelpful. In fact, when I gave up trying to get information out of it and went to all the local children's services authorities, the Department kindly instructed them not to give me their lists of serious case reviews. I am pleased to say, however, that the Chairman of the Select Committee has agreed that the Committee will work to try to find out that information. Ofsted has given us all the figures—including the 210 figure from yesterday—but it has only been tracking the figures from 1 April 2007. The serious case review process has been going on for some time, but it was strongly emphasised by the Laming report. It is a good process and it gives us a mechanism for tracking what is going on. We should not focus only on one case: we must look at the system and where it is going wrong. We also have to consider the wider aspects, such as the Laming review. Lord Laming is obviously the ideal person to review the extent to which his proposals have been implemented, but he is not the ideal person to review to what extent other proposals should be implemented. The Government have gradually moved towards the idea, which I proposed, that we need to look at the whole system of public family law. That starts with the initial references, moves on to the assessment processes and the integrated children's system, and—if there is a reference—it moves into the family courts, and we have not yet decided to look at how those work. I am still hoping that in January the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Council of Europe will agree to investigate the family division of the High Court. I shall go into some of the reasons why the family division is part of the problem. In the initial process, the local authorities initiate proceedings. They often start with child protection conferences, which are often organised to prevent extended family members from attending. I had such a case today. One of my members of staff agreed to go to a child protection conference in Birmingham with a constituent—I do not know what has happened because I have been in the Chamber—and the time was changed at the last minute. We could say, ““Well, that happens sometimes””, except that it happened previously with another constituent. We arranged to accompany that constituent to the child protection conference and act as an advocate, but the authority—this was Solihull rather than Birmingham—changed the time of the conference. We were told, ““You've missed it, it's already happened.”” That is an abuse of process and it should not be tolerated. In a sense, though, it is a symptom of the attempt to drive out the extended family. We need to be straight about the fact that such things do not always happen. I work with many social workers, and there was a conference in Stafford—also attended, not surprisingly, by the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney)—arranged by Rachel Bramble that looked at why things are going wrong in social work. The fact that people are being driven out of the profession is evidenced by all the vacancies that exist, but why do people not want to work in the sector? The existing process is almost designed to exclude people, but then cases go into a court environment that is frightening and bewildering for people who have never been there before. Indeed, it has taken me some time to understand the processes involved. The House will be aware that I co-ordinate the Justice for Families campaign, and we are approached by people from across the country who are facing care proceedings. We refer matters to local constituency MPs, try to find volunteer McKenzie friends and so on, because there are great difficulties with the legal processes in the courts. In an earlier intervention, I said that the single-expert system meant that people could not get a second opinion without the judge's permission. Judges tend to refuse that permission, and they pride themselves on the efficiency of the system under which an expert is appointed jointly by the local authority and the parents involved. The problem is that the system is a machine for miscarriages of justice. A number of social workers have complained to me, and last year one explained how he used to collude with parents' solicitors to ensure that the parents would lose their case. That is a criminal offence, and it is very difficult for me to take the matter further, as that would mean the social worker involved having to give evidence against himself. A case in Oldham would serve well for a review of the single-expert system. The parents were refused a second opinion in both the county court and the Court of Appeal. When they applied again to the Court of Appeal, they were told that they could have a second opinion, which confirmed that the baby had not and could not have been hurt by them. Not only were the parents not guilty; they were provably innocent. In one sense, the failure to allow a second opinion is based on practice on the continent, where the parties involved have their own experts as well as the one appointed by the court. The idea is that the court-appointed expert can make a decision about the truth of the other expert evidence. In this country, what happens with experts' meetings is a move in that direction. I see a great many cases, of which the Webster case is a good example. Once initiated, a case like that will trundle through the system. Everything happens and the children are adopted, but then all of a sudden it becomes apparent that once again the court has got it wrong. Such problems are driven by the single-expert system. I proposed an amendment to the Children and Young Persons Bill that would have enabled people to get expert evidence. At present, when the court has gathered all the expert evidence, it is illegal for a parent's solicitor to telephone a doctor and ask whether he or she knows anything about a case. That would be a contempt of court, and it is another example of how the single-expert system is a machine for generating miscarriages of justice. Given that some solicitors also conspire against parents in such cases, the House will see that the situation can be very difficult. I received a letter from the eastern region of the Legal Services Commission, dated 31 October 2008 that refers to legal aid for a case involving a Mrs. M. It states that"““funding will continue on the basis that Mrs. M should accept that her case is being publicly funded, and that contesting Interim Care Orders, where there is no change of circumstances, is not an issue on which she would expect to be legally represented.””" Basically, that means that Mrs. M is allowed non-means-tested funding as long as she does not say no to the interim care order. In other words, she can have a solicitor at the hearing, but she has to agree to the order. That is not the way towards a proper judicial process, and, as I have said, such an approach drives everything else. The Department for Children, Schools and Families has done some good statistical work. Earlier this year, it analysed about 400 cases, and table A2.42 of its report shows what a low proportion of cases are chucked out of court. There is a problem with the single-expert system. Sometimes, people cannot get legal aid when they want to contest a case; they simply have to accept it and work with it. We need to look at the criteria used to determine when a child is taken into care. The phrase in the section 31 threshold is ““risk of significant harm””, but that could mean many different things. Obviously, everyone accepts that baby P and Kyra Ishaq should have been in care, and there are many similar situations, but should we put a 16-year-old in care because his parents have split up and he will not talk to one of them? I do not think so, but some judge does. Domestic violence is a difficult area, and it is challenging for kids. If parents split up and do not see each other because Mum was a victim of domestic violence, should we still be trying to take her children off her? I do not think so. We learn from women's refuges that women are so frightened of losing their children that they do not actually report domestic violence. Margaret Halliday of the Salisbury women's refuge will provide that information, and I, too, can provide lots of evidence. Another criterion is secure care for welfare reasons. In some of those cases, children should not be in secure care. There is no evidence that it does anything for them, and they are, in effect, suffering imprisonment without having committed an offence—much like the boy who will not talk to his mum. Not co-operating with professionals is another reason that does not seem sensible. The mere fact that somebody does not immediately snap to and do exactly what they are told should not be good cause to remove their children and have those children adopted. That does not mean that if the children are missing medical attention because the parents never take medical attention seriously, there is not a grave issue. Another reason is ““comments eroding children's self-esteem””; so if the parent tells the kids they are stupid, the children need to be taken into care. I do not think so. Then there is missing school. Obviously kids should be going to school, but we have a one-trick pony—a system whereby at a certain point the child is taken into care. We need much better scrutiny of the operation of the section 31 threshold. There are important reasons why the system correlates with the false negative environment. It is in part caused by the way the integrated children's system pressurises practitioners into making an early decision about the truth of the case and not changing it thereafter. That is the basis of an article that I have written with Sue White, who is professor of social work at Lancaster university, and Allan Norman, who is a social worker and lawyer based in Birmingham, where he runs his own practice—Celtic Knot. The article has been published on the Community Care and Family Law websites and in The Birmingham Post, and I have also sent a copy to the Minister, so there is no sense in my re-reading what is available on the internet. Haringey, like many authorities, has a target, for the number of children in care which is kept for budgetary purposes. The target for March 2007 was 365, and the target for March 2008 was 352. In part, the objective of reducing numbers in care is laudable. That is also true of trying to reduce the weekly costs, which have run at higher than £800 per child per week. On 3 October 2006 it was noted that the deficit forecast for Haringey council was £4.6 million, which included a forecast overspend for children's services of £2.3 million, including a figure of £500,000 for looked-after children. The executive member for finance said, ““I will be working closely with the services concerned, and I will be looking to them to identify ways to bring the budget back on target.”” It was recognised at that time that the placements budget was running at 381 children and was very tight, and the figure had crept up to 392 by November 2006. By 31 March 2007, the financial situation had improved, although there was still an overspend of £500,000 on legal fees. The number of children in care had reduced and a new target was set of 352. At the end of the 2007-08 financial year, however, the number of children in care had increased back up to 373, which was 21 more than budget. It appears that controls on the number of care proceedings were tightened up in November 2006 with the 12-month rolling number from November 2006 going below 40 for the first time they were released in August 2007. The number then went back up above 50, its historical level in recent years. Sadly, baby P died in August 2007. Given the inherent constraints on the number of children in care, if children are put into care who should not be in care—one of my examples was from Haringey—it pushes resources in the wrong direction, so we have difficulties with that. That is a bit of a run through; I could go on for a long time about other aspects, but two other Members want to speak, and if I can do another five minutes that would be quite reasonable. [Interruption.] They are both smiling. I want to raise mental capacity and the RP case. It is not sub judice, simply because it has been through all the domestic courts and has got to the first stage in the European Court of Human Rights. That case is absolutely appalling in my view. An expert was appointed who said, ““Mum's too stupid to instruct a solicitor and therefore isn't allowed to operate her own proceedings.”” The Official Solicitor was brought in and said, ““Sorry, we're going to concede this case. That's it. You've had it.”” So there was no trial. There was a 10-minute hearing, at which everything said by the local authority was accepted as gospel, and that was it, except for the fact that we have taken it up and said that audi alteram partem—hearing the other side—is a key part of a trial process. Interestingly, although the expert at the time said, ““Mum didn't have the capacity to instruct a solicitor,”” another expert has said more recently, ““Well, she's obviously got the capacity to instruct a solicitor.”” In fact, she has done quite well at presenting her own case in the Court of Appeal. I have the transcripts of those hearings if anyone wants to read them, and the case is now in the European Court. Good news from my point of view is that the Equality and Human Rights Commission is showing some interest in mental capacity and what is happening in the Official Solicitor's office. We have about 180 cases a year where parents are basically excluded from judicial proceedings. They have no locus—something that is not allowed in criminal proceedings, which people have been able to contest since a case in the 1800s. In family court proceedings, it is seen as perfectly acceptable to put parents in a situation where they cannot contest the proceedings. I have another case, which I call the HP case, in which a lady who does not speak English was given an IQ test in English, did rather badly—whoops—and contacted the Official Solicitor. We went to the Court of Appeal, which said, ““Tough.”” So that quite appalling case is going to Europe as well. We have international cases where it is thought more important to ensure that no one escapes the family courts in Britain than to look after the children better. I know of two such cases: the one that is well known from The Times, and another one that is not so well known, where the court's objective is to get an eight-year-old back to England, away from his or her mother and leave the mother with another baby in situ. When I suggested to the Government that it would be better to put the child first and to transfer the case to the local jurisdiction, the response was, ““Oh, no, we can't do that; the courts have to win,”” even though it is better for the child for the case to be transferred to the foreign jurisdiction. I want to make a few points about Ofsted, which has been very good in this area. It has started to reveal in its reports some of the truth about how the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service operated. It has also revealed the truth about the serious case review. Baby P died in August 2007, and Ofsted started taking responsibility for the sector in April 2007. I do not think that those two things can be correlated. It is a ray of light in an area that has involved people covering up for one another for years. The problem is that secrecy tends to prevent accountability. In fact, secrecy is often used to prevent Members of Parliament from finding out about such cases. Generally, what the Government say should happen is the right thing. I do not think that the Government's objectives are wrong. The problem is that something quite different actually happens. What is needed is a much wider inquiry, which is independent of people who make money out of the area. Perhaps the departmental Committee can look at that—perhaps the Justice Committee should do so as well—but we need people to look at it who are not interested in sweeping things under the carpet and saying that everything is perfect and that everyone is doing a brilliant job. Some people are doing a brilliant job. Another whistleblower came to me who had faced disciplinary action for telling the truth, which I thought was not very clever. I do not know what has since happened in that case. There are some very good people doing a very good job in difficult circumstances; the problem is that the secrecy has allowed bad practice to develop in unaccountable way. I will be happy to meet the relevant Minister and the departmental Select Committee to go through all the details. I met Lord Laming on Monday, although I think the terms of reference of his inquiry are far too narrow. What we need is a wider inquiry, because this matter cannot be kicked into the long grass. Problems arise every day across the country, particularly in England and Wales. Scotland generally has fewer problems, for reasons that I could go into at length, were it not five minutes to the hour—I have said that I will speak for only so long. This is an important issue and both sides of the coin matter. I ask the Government to consider instituting a wider inquiry.