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Mr. Hammond: I accept the point that the right hon. Gentleman is making, which is that the Scottish National party does not have a majority in the Scottish Parliament; but does he accept that there is a flaw in the devolution settlement, if legislation like this being workable depends upon the same party being able to command control in both the Scottish Parliament and the Westminster Parliament?
Mr. Clarke: No. I am trying desperately hard to please the hon. Gentleman, but I do not agree that there is a flaw in what we have done in respect of devolution. To return to what he said about children leaving home or leaving care, there comes a point when one cannot instruct them to do as one would like them to do, but almost inevitably they end up taking the right decision anyway. I confidently believe that the Scottish Parliament will do the same, in terms of the powers that we have given it. Again, I seek to reassure the hon. Gentleman. Let me quote what the Scottish Executive said about the responsibilities that we have given them:
- The most efficient and effective method would appear to be a transfer of resources from DSS to local authorities, thus enhancing the resources already available to them to carry out their duties under the 1995 Act.
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That was a firm statement. They also said:
The Scottish Executive proposed that young people requiring throughcare and aftercare should receive support in a co-ordinated way from local authorities in line with the principles of the 1995 Act.
- This parallels proposals for England and Wales. Dependent on the results of consultation, the aim would be to introduce the relevant changes to primary UK legislation at the earliest opportunity.
- Scottish Ministers are therefore seeking views on the proposal that the mixture of current spending on local authority aftercare, support services and DSS benefits should be drawn together in a single fund which would be used by local authorities to provide support and assistance to 16 to 18 year olds requiring throughcare and aftercare.
Let me return to the main thrust of the Bill in so far as it applies to the United Kingdom. I welcome the proposals that are being made, particularly on the pathway plans. A minority argue that we really ought to leave things as they are and let young people spend their benefits as they wish. Set against that, the experience that has been gained, not least the overwhelming reaction of the voluntary bodies that responded to the Government and the Scottish Executive by fully supporting the direction of the proposals, shows that there is a problem here. The hon. Member for Poole gave the figures: 75 per cent. of children leaving care have no qualifications; 50 per cent. of them are unemployed; and 38 per cent. of young prisoners have come from care. Given that situation, the pathway plans are long overdue and it is right that we should move in that direction.
I want to turn briefly to an important issue. Encouraging local authorities to appoint advisers and seeing that through is welcome, but I think that we should be more positive about their role. Let me give an example. I worry tremendously about children leaving care having access to higher education. Whereas I was able to obtain the statistics that I just gave fairly easily, and I imagine the hon. Member for Poole was too, I could find no figures, not even from our excellent Library, relating to young people leaving care and entering higher education. I assume, therefore, from the anecdotal evidence, that very few do. That is unacceptable. We must challenge such a state of affairs, and encourage the advisers to take the same view.
I should like to turn to the impact of the Bill on disabled children. Even now, many disabled children leave home. There are no advisers or advocates, and often there is no involvement in any decision that affects the future of disabled children. I hope that that will be put right, and I think that the Bill offers an opportunity to do it, particularly in the areas of education and employment.
The most acute area is probably that of children with learning difficulties. They, above all, are in need of the kind of advice, the kind of pathway plan, that the Bill seeks to achieve elsewhere. If the Minister is of a mind to embrace the priority that I seek to promote, I would greatly welcome her remarks.
The wider issue of financial support has already been touched on by other right hon. and hon. Members. I can imagine local authorities in each constituent part of the
United Kingdom saying, "We like Parliament's proposals, but once again we are being given responsibilities without the necessary resources." I would not expect my hon. Friend the Minister to comment on that, but given that the comprehensive spending review is now being considered, I offer her the support that I think she and her Department want. I am sure that the House wants this measure to work, and I am sure that that is also true of another place, but to achieve that, resources are crucial. The Treasury must take that on board.These provisions are inspiring as well as practical. When the legislation is in place, there should be proper training. The advisers should be properly trained and have the opportunity to bring themselves up to date from time to time with the demands and challenges of the society in which they work. After all, we will be asking a great deal of them.
The Bill seeks to help these young people achieve genuine fulfilment, given that in the past they have not exactly been up front in their achievements in employment, education, housing, leisure and recreation and higher education. Many of these young people have been in the House today and earlier this week, and they are right to tell Parliament that they are here and their problems are here. If they can be positive about their problems, the least we can do is be positive about their future, and I think that the Bill achieves that.
6.44 pm
Mr. Simon Thomas (Ceredigion): I warmly welcome the principles behind the Bill. Plaid Cymru, the party of Wales, hopes that the Bill will reach the statute book and be operational in Wales in quickly as possible. With a few amendments that I hope will be made in Committee, the Bill will provide a huge advance in the way in which our society looks after young people.
The Bill places a duty on local authorities to assess and meet young people's needs. It is done in a jargonistic way, as the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) remarked. What is important is that young people are part of the planning process for their future, however. They will have advisers with whom they will be able to build relationships and trust. Although that is not the same as the family support that we would all wish every child to have, it is a significant improvement on the present haphazard services, where postcodes are a factor and services differ according to county.
I particularly welcome the amendments made to the Bill in the House of Lords. The extension of eligibility to 21, and to 24 for education and training, is an important amendment, and I hope that it will progress with full Government support.
Ensuring that children leaving care can participate fully in society goes a long way to tackling social exclusion. I support the Government's intentions in that respect. However, we have a huge task ahead of us. It is partly about funding, but also about how to deliver these services at the right level. I would like to illustrate the task ahead by briefly outlining the work done in my constituency by a voluntary organisation that works with children leaving care, and the difficulties that it encounters in the present regime. I shall outline some of the improvements in the Bill that I hope will help that voluntary organisation, as well as my local authority, in delivering better support services.
Hope for Young People Everywhere--HYPE--has been going for just two years. It deals with 80 young people a week in the small, rural town of Aberystwyth alone. Eighty young people a week come through HYPE's doors, looking for assistance. They are mostly local school children, students and unemployed care leavers. Many are either on their way into foster care or on their way out of foster care, as the volunteers put it. Many have extreme difficulties and have been excluded from school in the recent past.
The benefits system presents a great many problems. Many of the young people seen by HYPE do not know their rights, and are at a loss as to where to go. They have support from other young people in the town--there is an informal family arrangement among many young people who support themselves. They often have difficulty accessing the benefits that are available to them. In that regard, the provisions rejigging the benefits system for 16 and 17-year-olds could be a significant step forward. The onus will not be on young people to find out what benefits and support they are eligible for and to try to fight through the system. Instead, the Bill puts the onus on the local authority to ensure the right delivery of services and support to young people.
Care leavers are let down by the present system of crisis loans, which is discretionary, and the lack of support in the housing benefit system for young people, which leads in particular to many care leavers living in poor accommodation.
HYPE identifies the problem as authorities not taking full responsibility for children leaving care. Nor are the guidelines that are already in place being fully followed. With all the improvements in the Bill, it has to include a warning to local authorities and the other partners that they must follow correctly the procedures and guidelines laid down and fulfil their responsibilities.
Having said that I welcome the Bill, I should like to pose a few questions on parts of it that may need looking at again. The withdrawal of benefit support for young people aged 16 and 17 could prove a significant step forward. However, at present it is difficult to see how that will occur unless we establish the right national standards of support for those young people. I do not want an ad hoc system to evolve whereby local authorities use that method of support in different ways for their children and young people leaving care.
Incidentally, I think that we should use the term "young people"; it is confusing that the Bill refers to children and young people. We are talking about young people, although I accept that the Government may have included the word "children" so as to have regard to the Children Acts.
In Wales, where the National Assembly will have full discretion over the regulations that result from the Bill, I hope that we shall introduce national standards. I also hope that the Assembly will receive that package of ring-fenced money provided by the amalgamation of the various support arrangements--revenue support grants, housing benefit, income support and so on--so that we can deliver a national standard for Wales to ensure that young people are fully cared for at the relevant time. I assume that similar measures will be adopted in England.
A real problem in my rural constituency is the dumping there--I cannot use a less strong word--of care leavers from other areas. Local authorities wash their hands of
difficult children in care--especially those in foster care. They use private foster care arrangements to farm out children--literally so, in my rural area--so that the children are far enough away from their own local authority area to be no longer a problem or a concern.The problem under the arrangements is that, when such children leave care, they cease to be the responsibility of the authority that put them, say, in Ceredigion and become the responsibility of Ceredigion. The Bill will produce an improvement, because the authority that was first responsible for the child will continue that support. However, I have a question about the pathway plans and the arrangements for personal advisers. How can we ensure the delivery of such services over long distances? We need to consider how that will be achieved.
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