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Child Poverty Bill

I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness on the amendment. I am reminded of my days as a young councillor in the 1970s on Glasgow Corporation, which had a magnificent reputation for looking after its children. The children could not always be fostered with families within the boundaries of Glasgow and so were placed with families all over Scotland. Every summer, the committee, the convenor and the shadow convenor, Labour and Conservative, would be given an allocation to visit foster homes throughout Scotland to see how the children were being looked after and to check that the social workers employed by the corporation were placing the children with good families. I was always amused by the old-fashioned language used. People would say, "Councillors are invited to visit fostered and farmed-out children". I do not know why they used that word, which is an old Victorian term. I remember being greatly impressed when visiting a household in Dumfries, well outside the city of Glasgow. The lady there had fostered children all her married life. She said, "You’re from Glasgow and you’ve turned up in a big limousine. The last time that happened, I wasn’t at home and the limousine went to the school, looking for the children. The headmaster said, ‘I want the Glasgow children to meet the councillors’. The following day, I marched up to that school and told the headmaster, whom I had known since he was a boy, that under no circumstances were those children ever to be described as the ‘Glasgow children’. They are children living in my home and they are my children". That impressed me. On those visits I also met men and women looking after not only young children but sometimes young adult men and women with educational difficulties. Some of them were in their 30s but were still regarded as people being fostered and looked after in families. Can I make a point to the Minister? One of my worries is that, while it is ideal if grandparents and aunts can look after these children, it should be remembered that in many cases the aunt or grandparents will be living in a different local authority area from where the child is being looked after in care. Sometimes that leads to disputes between authorities. While it is recognised that the aunt or grandparents should be given some financial support, arguments arise over whether it should be paid by, say, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh or Newcastle. I remember a case where a child in care with a local authority south of the border had an aunt in my constituency, when I was an MP. The child said that it would be lovely if they could stay with the aunt. A phone call was made to the aunt in the middle of the night asking if she would take the child. The aunt said that of course she would, but that she had financial commitments with a mortgage and children of her own and so would need some financial support. She was told that it would be all right. However, in the end, that verbal agreement made over the phone was not adhered to. The child was being very well looked after in Glasgow and no discrimination was made between that child and the others in the family, but there was a dispute. As the local MP, I went to the Minister at the time, Paul Boateng, and the matter was resolved. My worry is that we have to be careful that we do not have local authorities that are strapped for cash arguing about who should meet these commitments.