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Children, Schools and Families Bill

The hon. Gentleman is right. It is no good just looking at a serious case review in isolation, though we need to do that in full. If there are clear systemic weaknesses affecting many children's services departments, that is a serious job for central Government to undertake, rather than a localised issue for a local authority. One of my amendments, which I shall come to later, deals with analysing the work of local safeguarding children boards, which refers to the hon. Gentleman's point. There have been objections to the publication of serious case reviews, along the lines that social workers would be compromised in their work if the reviews were published in full, or that the identity of the children and families involved would be revealed. Clearly, many social workers working at the sharp end do not buy that argument. I do not buy that argument; I never have. Publication is in the best interests of social workers. Inevitably, when there is a tragedy such as the baby Peter case, the Doncaster case or others, social workers are always panned first. It is always assumed that if a baby or child who was on a local authority's radar dies in gruesome circumstances, it must be the fault of social workers. In some cases, that is true; in many cases, the system is at fault, as the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Jim Cousins) said; and in many other cases, other agencies have not done their bit. In the case of baby Peter, the paediatrician, whom we have heard about in the news this week, potentially had some shortcomings, and the police did not come out of it very well, either. However, social workers are always at the front of the queue to be panned, and they are always at the back of the queue to be congratulated and praised when things go right. They usually do go right, but that does not make for good news on the front page of a tabloid newspaper.