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Children, Schools and Families Bill

My Lords, I shall speak solely in support of Clauses 28 and 30. I feel sure that the whole House will share with me the hope that the day will never come when we fail to be shocked when something awful happens to a child or young person who has already been identified by the local services as being in danger of suffering serious neglect or deliberate harm. It is for that reason that I welcome the parts of the Bill that strengthen the work of the local safeguarding children boards. Indeed, I commend the Government on the progress made since the death of Victoria Climbié. As a result, in every local authority there is now a director of children's services, a local safeguarding children board and a lead member for children’s services, as well as the availability of considerable guidance on good practice, including in inter-agency working. The work of local safeguarding children boards is of immense importance, not least in undertaking serious case reviews when a child has been killed or seriously injured and abuse or neglect is known, or suspected, to have been a factor. However, does the Minister agree that the purpose of these reviews is not always well understood? Is it not important that we recognise that these reviews, important as they are, are not inquiries and that it is certainly not within their remit to apportion blame? As your Lordships will recall, the primary function of these reviews is to learn lessons to improve service provision by highlighting ways to improve good practice, both locally and nationally. The task is therefore to conduct a detailed study of all aspects of the child’s life, the family circumstances and the activities of each of the services that were directly involved. Does the Minister agree that in these circumstances, success depends predominantly on securing voluntary contributions by everyone with knowledge of the child and the family? The challenge is to persuade everyone involved to have the confidence to be open and frank with the review. It is important to recognise that this often entails family members, neighbours and others revealing aspects of their sometimes chaotic lives that they might well prefer to remain hidden, and helping professional staff to be willing to expose less than adequate performance or conflicts between agencies. The reality is that the local safeguarding children boards have few powers in this respect when conducting serious case reviews. Indeed, their main power rests solely on persuasion and the guarantee of personal confidentiality to each and every contributor. I therefore welcome the provisions included in the Bill to enable local safeguarding boards to better gather all the relevant information they need to carry out their functions. In the progress report that I prepared on child protection in England, I indicated that these boards must have access to full information and must see all the key players in order to give greater confidence that serious case reviews, and indeed child death review processes, are doing the job intended of them. Because of comments made elsewhere, not least in another place, does the Minister agree that any local authority or health authority can formally establish an inquiry either in circumstances where the criteria for a serious case review are not met or in addition to such a review? I hope the House will excuse a personal reflection. When, some 10 years ago, I was persuaded to chair an inquiry of this kind established jointly by a local authority and a health authority, following the conviction of a patient of the mental health services for the death of a local person, the limits of the powers of the inquiry to gather evidence were all too evident. Indeed, if media reports are correct—I realise that that is always a big "if"—mention was made in the inquiry report on the hospital in Mid-Staffordshire that the former chief executive of the hospital declined to give evidence to that inquiry, which was conducted by a leading QC. If that is correct, it demonstrates all too clearly the need for everything to be done to assist serious case reviews to access all the relevant information. If I may make another personal comment, when Parliament established the independent statutory inquiry following the death of Victoria Climbié, it invested in the inquiry very wide powers, which frankly I never expected to have to use. In the event, though, sadly, I had to employ each one of those powers. I mention that only to emphasise that serious case reviews are very different from inquiries and must be treated as such. Most of all, we should not underestimate the difficult task that we have given to those who conduct these serious case reviews—a task so important that, on average, 100 or so such reviews are initiated each year in this country. Chairing or writing the report of a serious case review is very demanding and, therefore, it behoves us to do all that we can to help those who do this work achieve the best possible outcome. It is clear to me, and I hope the Minister will agree, that it would be entirely unreasonable to embark on a serious case review and at the outset give a guarantee of confidentiality to all concerned, only for that to be disregarded later. I was somewhat surprised that mention has been made elsewhere that it would be possible to preserve the confidentiality of these review reports by redacting sections of them. I would have thought that the other place might already have had sufficient experience of the hazards of trying to publish sensitive material in a redacted way. I hope the Minister will agree that any attempt to handle a report of a serious case review in this way would result in page after page being blacked out. Therefore, it would not achieve the objective that those who mention this possibility have in mind. Furthermore, it is surely unrealistic to think that only certain review reports would be published, not least because at the outset it is impossible to know which reports are likely to attract most media attention. More than that, it is surely important to recognise that the suffering of every child must be of equal concern and that we must guard against allowing the degree of media interest to determine which reports can or cannot be published. I feel strongly about this point because I believe that we have entrusted a most arduous task to those who conduct serious case reviews. In my view, the legislation and guidance that is currently laid before Parliament needs either to be protected or, I fear, that it will need to be abandoned. That is why I warmly commend Clauses 28 and 29 to the House and I hope that they will command the support of the whole House.