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Children and Families

My Lords, I have found this debate, as all these debates are, to be richly inspiring. I, too, warmly congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, on initiating this debate and having placed the community once more in her debt for the most distinguished efforts she has made for so long on behalf of children and young persons. It is inevitable that this debate should, to some extent, be in the shadow and gloom of the Baby Peter case, which has already been referred to today. I am very grateful to the Government for the swiftness and dedication with which they have approached this horrible situation, and for the promptness with which they have reacted to the report of the noble Lord, Lord Laming. That report, to my mind, is the fruit of assiduous and thoughtful study. The Government have accepted all 58 recommendations and have set in train very many relevant and splendid initiatives. I want to make three general points. First, the inquiry of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, splendid though it is, has been on a rather narrow basis: that was the basis on which he was invited to report. He was asked to consider the systems in existence for the protection of children and to ask whether those systems were now operating as they should, and what the difficulties were. To my mind, there is justification—and this will have to be attended to sooner rather than later—for looking into whether the systems now in existence are relevant to the needs of the 21st century. I hope that the Government can give some assurance that that is a matter very much in the forefront of their mind. Secondly, tragic, ironic and shocking as was the case of Baby Peter, there was nothing unique nor, I am sorry to say, outstanding in the loss of that child’s life. The statistics do not always tally, but taking a conservative view, one would come to the conclusion that about 100 children lose their lives every year, possibly as many as 150. In other words, two or three young children a week die of neglect or abuse. My third point is closely tied up with the question of at-risk registers. The registers, on which there are the names of thousands of children in England and Wales, form some sort of a potential statutory shield of protection for those children. But it is a sad fact that 80 per cent of children who are killed or who die of neglect do not have their names on a register. How can we improve that situation? Care orders have been mentioned. I agree completely with everything said so eloquently by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. It is inevitable that there will now be what the chief executive of CAFCASS has described as a bulge in applications for care orders. In October of last year, the number of applications in England was 496, whereas in March of this year, that figure had risen to 733 and is bound to rise further. The point I wish to make—and I do this, in common with all noble Lords, with the utmost regard for social workers and those who administer the care system—is that there is an institutional failure here. It is failure in the sense that it has not been possible to bridge and narrow that gap between children in care and those not in care. That gap, if anything, is getting wider. The dismal statistics are known to all Members of this House—how in every league of achievement they fail, and how, in every statistic of underachievement and dismality, they are overrepresented. It is well known that, of all prisoners aged under 25 in our prisons at the moment, half of them have, at some time or another, been in care. Many noble Lords will say, "Isn’t that to be expected? They are damaged children and have suffered terribly in the battle of life". That is perfectly true. A very high percentage of them—something of the order of one third of those who have been in care for more than a year—are the subject of educational statementing. They are educationally subnormal in almost all those cases. One can quote statistic after statistic suggesting that the situation is almost inevitable, but it is not. In Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Germany, the gap is being narrowed substantially, and we can do the same. I congratulate the Minister on initiatives taken in relation to the pedagogic attitude towards childcare. We have a great challenge to face, but also a great opportunity presented to us. There is a strong tide of feeling running on behalf of children and young persons. If we take that tide, it can lead to great progress and happiness so far as children are concerned. If we miss it, we should remember the words of the Bard: ""Omitted, all the voyage of their life"""Is bound in shallows and in miseries"."