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11.25 am
Mr. David Hinchliffe (Wakefield): I am grateful to be called in this important debate. I am sorry that, at this stage, only the Minister and the Whip are on the Conservative Benches. Certainly, Opposition Members are concerned; they believe, rightly, that the subject of this debate has to be addressed. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) on his passionate and well-researched speech.
My thoughts are based on a number of experiences, partly to do with my background as a Front-Bench spokesman over three years. For part of that time, I shadowed the Minister, whom I respect. I recognise that he is interested in and cares about this issue. Although I would not say that about many of his hon. Friends, I think that he has genuinely attempted to look in detail at the matter and to listen to people's concerns.
Like me, he has met many young people who have been through the care process and has addressed conferences of young people. Indeed, I pay tribute to the articulate voice of the young people who have left care and have organised themselves in a number of ways to press, quite rightly, for changes to the circumstances that they have experienced and that others are still experiencing.
As the Minister and my hon. Friend knows, I also have personal experience of social work--over almost 20 years before I entered Parliament. It is very interesting to meet as adults people whom I took into care as babies. Talking to them about their life experiences in the care system is very traumatic. When I was a very young man, I was responsible in some instances for taking decisions about their lives. They were taken into care as babies on the assumption that the care system would offer them something better than they would otherwise have had. From meeting the one or two whom I know now and listening to their experiences, I have to say that I am afraid that the system has let many of them down very badly. I feel deeply about that because clearly I have some responsibility for their lives and the way in which they have been treated. Many have undergone all sorts of appalling experiences that should not happen to anybody.
The issue is brought home to me regularly by my wife, who works for an organisation in Leeds called Caring For Life, which is concerned with addressing specifically the needs of young people leaving care and attempts to care for them for life. That is a key factor, because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West demonstrated, once they leave the system, many are dropped, forgotten about and allowed to undergo appalling experiences. Some go into the penal system, to disappear for ever--sadly, sometimes in such circumstances as the recent events in Gloucester.
Many others have gone through very bad experiences-- not perhaps as bad as those in Gloucester--and have ended up in an environment that is totally unacceptable in this day and age. My wife's work has brought home to me the need for immense improvements along the lines of those mentioned by my hon. Friend.
On entering Parliament in 1987, I had the great privilege of being involved in the passage of the Children Bill. It was one of the first major pieces of legislation on which I worked. There was all-party consensus that that Bill offered a major improvement in protecting children and in alleviating the plight of people leaving care. Despite that cross-party support and the whole-hearted endorsement of the House, one or two reservations were expressed about the Bill.
One reservation mentioned by my hon. Friend was the limited time and responsibility that the Bill devoted to care leavers. I served on the Standing Committee and I remember the attempts by a number of Opposition Members to persuade the Government to extend those responsibilities in the way referred to by my hon. Friend. In that respect, and despite the great success of the Act in many other ways, our concerns have proved justified.
Another fundamental weakness, which is much more difficult to overcome, is that the Act fails to require a co-ordinated approach, both nationally and locally, to child protection and to services for children and young persons. One department, at either Government or local level, should not be able to initiate something that has not taken into account the responsibilities of other departments. The benefit changes initiated by the Departments of Social
Security and of Health are examples of that. I do not believe that the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis), acceded to the benefit changes--I know him too well. He understands as well as I do the impact that those changes will have on young people leaving care.
A classic example of a lack of policy co-ordination between Government Departments can be seen today. After this debate, I shall be serving on a Statutory Instrument Committee discussing a Government proposal to remove the social work training element from the qualifying courses for probation officers. That might appear to be irrelevant to what we are discussing this morning, but it is not. Unfortunately, a number of the people with whom probation officers have to deal have offended as a result of difficulties which they faced very early in their lives and which, sadly, have led them to end up in the penal system. I am sure that, privately, the Minister would not disagree with a word of what I am saying.
I become angry when I hear the latest proposals from the Home Office--the tough approach, going back to the short, sharp, shock treatment that was such a miserable failure. I know that because one of the experimental camps was in my constituency. Now, the Government want to bring in boot camps. The same kids will be going through those camps--they are the kids who have gone through the care system. Sadly, I see some of them in Wakefield prison serving life sentences.
We must tackle the problems much earlier. If we fail to do that, we will have to try to deal with them through the penal system, which is a much more expensive process. I appeal to the Minister to fight his corner against some of the nonsense that we hear from some of his colleagues in the Home Office. He knows that it will permanently damage some already damaged young people.
That point will be made in Committee this afternoon. I hope that we carry the day, but I fear that we will not. The Minister understands why social work training should be part of the probation officers' brief. They are dealing with social work issues and with some very damaged people who need skilled intervention. I mean no disrespect to ex-police officers or ex-Army officers, but I cannot accept the suggestion that authoritarian-style people, marching up and down and shouting like a serjeant-major can deal with very damaged people. The Government's own figures prove that. We have a very effective probation service with social work training which steers people away from the penal system.
No doubt other hon. Members will want to expand on the implications of the income support changes on young people. I know of many examples where they have resulted in immense difficulty for young people leaving care. The housing benefit changes that are due to take effect on 2 January next year and the restrictions on hardship payments will specifically impact on care leavers. The Minister should tell his colleagues at the DSS, loudly and clearly, what the Chancellor's proposals will mean for the sort of people about whom we are talking.
I am not simply pointing a finger at different Government Departments; I am aware that there is a lack of collaboration and co-ordination locally. In October 1991, two years after the implementation of the Children Act 1989, I did a survey of all English local authorities.
I discovered that, at that stage, only three of them had developed cross-departmental strategies on family policy. It is not just Government Departments but local authority departments that do not talk to each other, and even sometimes contradict each other.
There is a lack of clarity about the role of social service departments and housing departments, especially in relation to the definition of "vulnerability". I wish that I had a pound for every case that I have come across of a dispute between a housing department and a social services department about whether a young person is vulnerable. It is my view that, by definition, if a young person has been through the care system and is leaving it, he must be vulnerable. People must be vulnerable if we have intervened in their lives and placed them in the care system. They are disadvantaged and worthy of additional support and care when they leave the system.
Many local authorities have worked hard to overcome the problems. I know that many of them have tried desperately to improve the plight of young persons leaving care, but they have to wrestle with the local consequences of Government policy. Housing policy is probably the most important area, and there has been a complete rundown in investment in social housing. Whether it be housing associations or local authority housing programmes, there is no doubt that the housing stock for people in social need has been markedly reduced. That has impacted on young people leaving care.
Of course, it is easy for the Opposition to argue that the Government do not invest enough money and that there is a lack of resources. However, the Minister talks to local social services departments and he will have been told of the way in which the child care budget has been raided to prop up the huge demands resulting from the community care changes. There is a ring-fenced community care budget, but not a ring-fenced child care budget. Social services departments have told me that they have had to move resources away from care leavers and child protection to meet the massive demands of the community care changes.
The Minister should consider education policies and their impact on young people in care and leaving care. There has been a huge increase in the number of exclusions of young people from schools. Many of them have been through very difficult home circumstances and some have ended up in care, yet they are excluded from school. There is now a climate of league tables. They show academic success, but they do not show the nature of a school's clientele. They do not highlight the difficulties faced by schools and the admirable way in which they deal with them. Unfortunately, in some cases schools are only too happy to exclude certain pupils. I know that some of those within the care system are easily excluded because the difficult circumstances that they have experienced occasionally show in their behaviour at school.
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