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Mr. Hammond: The right hon. Gentleman read out a list of parents' functions, which he used in the November 1998 statement, which I have here. Is it his understanding that the young persons' advisers to be appointed under the Bill will be able to carry out all those functions?
Mr. Dobson: I was spelling out what a normal family, if there is such a thing, and a normal home, tries to provide for its children. In so far as officialdom can attempt to do what a family does, we should try to enable the person who is designated as being responsible for a young person to do all those things, or to arrange all those things, in so far as that is possible. No doubt, others can think of other things. They are not just the more obvious things; it is the casual help, the feeling that there is some base to go back to, that there is someone there who cares and who will do a bit of thinking on the young person's behalf and try to help him or her. That is what most families try to do.
If that is to be done, additional resources will certainly be needed. There was some argument in the House of Lords, where the Bill was considerably improved, about the Government's intention to ring-fence the funding. It was argued that to ring-fence the funding for children leaving care would fetter the discretion of local authorities. Until local authorities can demonstrate a rather better record than they have had up to now, we should fetter their discretion. Some of them have exercised their discretion by actively encouraging young people to leave care. I may fall out with some of my friends in local government for saying that, but that is not as important as trying to ensure that some of the most deprived young people in the country are properly looked after in future. Apart from the additional resources, all the people responsible will have to make a new commitment.
As the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge said, the quality protects programme is already creating some improvements. I shall give one or two examples. In Blackpool, there is a significant increase in the number of people approaching their 18th birthday who are staying in care; in Thurrock, there is a fourfold increase in the number of young people who receive support after leaving care; In Tameside, 96 per cent. of young people who were born in 1980-81 and for whom the local authority is responsible have what it regards as appropriate accommodation. Matters were much worse in the past. All those developments should be encouraged.
We must make sure that policy developments in other spheres are not harmful to young people in care. I urge those--I believe that that includes Conservative Members--who say that all schools should be able to choose their pupils and decide their admissions policies to pause and ponder whether children in care are likely to
be among the chosen. If the answer is no, the policy of schools choosing the pupils cannot be reconciled with a commitment to looking after young people in care.We must consider when the age limit will change not only from 16 to 18 but to 21. The average young person leaves home at the age of 22. It cannot therefore be right to tell young people in care, "You're on your own" when they are 18, any more than it is right to say that when they are 16. I welcome the fact that the Government have said that raising the age limit is not a question of "if" but "when". Freed as I am from the limitations of Cabinet responsibilities, I can say that I believe that the limit should be increased from 16 to 21 now.
I wish the Minister success in his negotiations in the comprehensive spending review, and I emphasise to my former Cabinet colleagues that, for all practical purposes, the decision on the age limit must be made now or never. If the money to increase it from 18 to 21 cannot be found in the forthcoming comprehensive spending review, when do they seriously believe that it will be found?
I urge the Government to find the money now for three reasons. First, it is right and just to do that. Secondly, it will benefit enormously many of the most deprived young people. The third reason should appeal to the Treasury: it will be a good bargain because it will reduce the huge number of young care leavers who go to jail, where they contribute nothing to society and cost us a fortune; sums that are vastly in excess of the cost of providing proper care up to the age of 21.
The Bill is a good measure. It was improved in the House of Lords, where it was welcomed by all parties. The thoughtful contribution from the Conservative Front Bench suggests that it may be improved again in the House of Commons. The sooner it becomes law, the better. I commend the measure with a quotation, which I discovered recently, from someone who is not usually associated with child care. Queen Elizabeth I, who had a rather chequered childhood, said:
- We are more bound to them that bringeth us up well than to our parents.
5.54 pm
Dr. Peter Brand (Isle of Wight): It is a privilege to follow the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson). I am glad that, with the help of some of my noble Friends and others, the Government have listened and accepted the right hon. Gentleman's original premise, which he presented so clearly to the Select Committee on Health and in his statement to the House two years ago.
We welcome the Bill, which is long overdue. It rightly places a duty of care on local authorities for those children who are in their charge and have no one else to look after them. I am worried that it also appears to grant local authorities powers that are beyond those of normal parents. I shall revert to that later.
It is right for the Bill to define eligible children, but I want to ensure that the definition is not too tightly drawn. Families break down most frequently not only when children and young people become more difficult, but when child abuse is at its most rife. Young people may
have to leave home and go into care when they are 15 or 16. They would not have enough time in the care system to qualify under the new system. We should not forget that many young people have to leave home at 16 or 17 because they have no option. They would not be helped by the Bill, but would have to rely on an inadequate benefits system.Earlier contributions about the local authorities' duty to keep in touch were interesting. On the one hand, we are told that a postcard at Christmas is inadequate; on the other hand, we are told that there should be a report every three months. I get on extremely well with my sons, but if I insisted on the postcard at Christmas, I would have been disappointed sometimes. Young people have a right to decide whether they want to participate in the process.
The job of the adviser to some young people will be difficult and require dedication. I do not want to appear to be my usual, optimistic, starry-eyed Liberal Democrat self: I know what the real world is like. It can be extremely miserable for parents, children, social workers and their charges. The personal adviser role is key to the proposals. It is insidious of the Government to suggest that they can simply amalgamate current budgets and find the expert, caring, flexible super-parents that the Bill requires to make it work properly. Much training and thought will have to be expended to make that aspect of the Bill work.
If trust is not established between the adviser and the young person, the measure will not work. It will become a control mechanism whereby young people can be told, "You turn up for your giro or your housing benefit or we won't look after you." I know that the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras did not intend that. Parents do not care conditionally; they have a duty of care whether they like the sods or not. It is important not to lose sight of that, and to bear in mind that young people are not always compliant.
I want to consider briefly benefit withdrawal. When things are working well--we hope that the measure will work extremely well--everyone will benefit from a young person's receipt of practical help in their day-to-day life. That help could be through a foster placement or in a young person's own home, or with going to school, to a job or to a college. When the measure is working well, normal access to the benefits system should be withdrawn.
That is absolutely right, but I can envisage circumstances in which children and young people feel so alienated from their parents that they would not accept help from them even if it were offered. The same picture could emerge--rarely, one hopes--with a young person and a local authority. I would not want that young person's relationship with the authority, which may be important at a later stage, to be influenced by an insistence that the only means of access to the ordinary benefits system is through becoming pregnant. That seems to be the only means in the Bill of preventing the withdrawal of benefits.
Young women sometimes become pregnant because they want to start a family and have dependants of their own as a way of demonstrating their independence from parental control. I do not believe that they have babies in order to jump the housing queue--that is a myth. To have babies to demonstrate one's independence is unhealthy, but our benefits system has encouraged it. That is probably one of the reasons why we have such a high rate
of teenage pregnancies and of teenagers who remain lone parents. I urge the Government to reconsider the automatic exclusion from the benefits system for those people who come within the remit of the Bill.Most of the anxieties arising from the Bill were demonstrated in the thoughtful contribution of the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond). As anticipated, his slant on the command and control structure was slightly different from the Government's. We have a view that the Government have too much of a tendency to want to control the money passing down rather than to allow the recipient to make the decisions, whereas the hon. Gentleman seemed to think that care should be to some degree conditional--or certainly that the goodies should be conditional.
Stopping people's pocket money is okay if that money is on the fringes of what they need, but if we are talking about having enough to be housed and clothed and to get to school or a place of work, one cannot make that conditional on good behaviour and fitting in with what is required. I hope that the Bill will be amended in such a way that it will work and be a tremendous success, but it can work only if the young people themselves sign up to all the wonderful care pathways and pathway plans that are set out. I can tell hon. Members from my experience that if we try to impose a pathway plan, we will have lost before we have started.
We welcome the Bill, which is a first stage in looking after young people's needs. Parallel work must be done on the inheritance from the previous Government of the way in which young people are treated by the benefits system. It is ridiculous to expect young people to be dependent on their parents if the parents do not want to accept that dependency. We all see the misery arising from the differential way in which housing benefit is applied to young people. I hope that the Government will take that on board when considering a small but significant vulnerable group of children and extend it to the wider group of those who may be as much at risk as those who have gone through the care system.
It is right that the Government have accepted that we, collectively, have a parental responsibility for those children whose parents, for whatever reason, do not accept that responsibility, but it is not right for them to discharge their duty purely through local government. They retain a responsibility through the centrally administered benefits system, to ensure that there are no holes in the laudable measure that they are introducing to allow everyone to have an opportunity in life and to avoid failure setting in at such an early age that people have no way of improving themselves and making a positive contribution to society.
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