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28 Jan 2003 : Column 734—continued
Patrick Mercer (Newark): I spent Friday with two watches at Newark fire station. As soon as the evening watch came on, there was a shout and the fire crew were out in an amazing and admirable 45 seconds. They got on to the A46 very efficiently. However, the town and the firefighters believe that there will be job losses and that Newark will become a day station with no night
cover except for retained firemen. As far as I can ascertain, there is no basis for that in fact. I therefore beg the Deputy Prime Minister to dispel those rumours in as clear English as he possibly can, and to try to clarify matters without exacerbating the problem.
The Deputy Prime Minister: Another ex-Army type—they have always brought to the House some arrogance, which we enjoy from time to time.
Local committees will decide matters that affect fire stations. Repealing section 19 of the Act gives responsibility for such decisions to local committees. The people in the area will therefore have maximum influence on them.
Fire risk cover must be taken into account, and a proper balance must be struck between intervention and prevention. Again, the committee will make that judgment. I believe that that is right and that the hon. Gentleman's constituents will welcome it.
Mr. Iain Luke (Dundee, East): No one benefits from a prolonged firefighters' dispute, but does my right hon. Friend accept that many elements of the trade union movement will view his announcement with concern and, indeed, outrage? However, I hope that it will give time for thought. If the FBU returns to the negotiating table and embraces discussions on modernisation, will the Government find extra money in view of the contention that, in the past, firefighters were offered 16 per cent. over two years? Given the profound nature of the proposals in the Bain report, will the Government make a commitment to find extra money if the employers want to go down that road?
The Deputy Prime Minister: Let me make it clear that the 16 per cent. over two years was not agreed between the relevant parties, although I believe that it was discussed. We said that, as Bain pointed out, a settlement of 11 per cent. for two years and a possible agreement to extend that to three years would require a transfer of funds. It is therefore possible that the negotiations could have led to more than 11 per cent., but we never got to that point. I simply ask the FBU to sit down and discuss that. It claims that there will be redundancies and that fire stations will close. Why does it not sit down, negotiate and find out? If it finds that its judgment is correct, I assume that the members will walk out. That is called negotiating. I hope that they will not walk out, but that happens in negotiations.
I understand my hon. Friend's point about outrage, but only a few months previously the rest of the local authority workers, who are paid from the same fund, got less than 4 per cent. a year for a two-year programme, yet the FBU asks for 40 per cent. Local authority workers feel outraged that 40 per cent. from the same fund could be regarded as justified. They
believe that they are entitled to more, and they have a point. I have to strike a balance, and 4 per cent. and 40 per cent. do not balance properly.
Norman Lamb (North Norfolk): Will the Deputy Prime Minister provide some clarity about the time scale to which he is working for introducing the legislation? When does he propose to publish a draft measure? Is he working on the basis that it will end the dispute or is it intended to deal with future disputes? I am not clear from his answers whether he intends to ban strikes as part of the agreement. Would he consider the alternative of moving towards an agreed no-strike arrangement? That might be an attractive way forward because there must be better ways in which to resolve disputes in emergency services than the débâcle so far.
The Deputy Prime Minister: I have some sympathy with the idea of a better way; I call it negotiations. It is a pity that we have not concluded them. However, we must bear it in mind that negotiations have taken place with the firemen for nearly 20 years when there have been no disputes. An agreement was reached 20 years ago. That is what people would like, but we are in the process of replacing the agreement with another. Although I have often made it clear that the Government consider all options—we must do that—rushing into strike legislation will solve nothing. If I impose a settlement that the FBU refuses to accept, further difficulties will ensue. However, I should prefer to face that. I am putting my faith in negotiations.
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point about the difference when dealing with emergency services. The White Paper will deal with that point, which the Bain inquiry raised. My judgment is to ask the FBU to continue negotiations.
The hon. Gentleman asked how long legislation would take. That depends on the consultation, but I am talking about weeks, not months. However, weeks remain available for negotiations. I cannot therefore answer the hon. Gentleman. If I introduce legislation, hon. Members will want to debate it and any recommendations that flow from it. I cannot give an exact time, but we are looking at weeks, not months. The negotiations cannot go on and on in deadlock. I have a responsibility to act and I have given my best judgment today.
Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby): Given the Deputy Prime Minister's comments about the unreasonable actions of the FBU leadership, does he consider them, to quote Harold Wilson, "a small group of politically motivated men"?
The Deputy Prime Minister: They are a group of people who feel strongly about their negotiations and want to conclude an agreement. The leadership currently suggest that they want to follow the route of more industrial disputes; that is their right. However, I intend to introduce legislation in a specific period if the deadlock continues.
Victoria Climbié Inquiry
1.29 pm
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Alan Milburn): With permission, Mr Speaker, I wish to make a statement about the Victoria Climbié inquiry.
The report of the inquiry is being published today. It is available in the Vote Office. I am grateful, Mr Speaker, for your agreement that Victoria's parents should have had advance access to a copy of the report.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I established the inquiry in April 2001 under the chairmanship of Lord Laming, formerly the chief inspector of social services. We are both extremely grateful to Lord Laming and his advisers for producing a searching and detailed report and recommendations.
Words in a report can never be enough for a family whose child has died in such terrible circumstances. I am grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Climbié for seeing me last week and allowing me to express, on behalf of the House and the country, the sorrow we all feel at the death of their beloved daughter, Victoria. Anyone who has had the privilege to meet Mr and Mrs Climbié cannot fail to be struck by their quiet dignity in the face of what happened to Victoria.
I hope the report provides them with some comfort as it seeks to answer the questions any parent would ask: what exactly happened? What went so wrong? What needs now to change to prevent services that are supposed to keep children from harm failing in the way they failed Victoria so badly and so repeatedly?
Lord Laming's inquiry lasted more than a year. His report runs to some 400 pages. We will study its 108 recommendations with care. Today I will outline the inquiry's findings and the Government's initial views. We will make our substantive response to the report as part of the Green Paper on children at risk, which we intend to publish this spring.
Victoria Climbié was part of a large, loving family living in the Ivory Coast. Her parents had agreed she could come to Europe in order to be educated. This was not about giving Victoria away; it was about giving Victoria an opportunity. All they wanted—as any parent would—was for their daughter to have the best education. Instead, she suffered the worst cruelty.
Victoria arrived in Britain with her great-aunt, Marie-Therese Kouao, in April 1999. Within a year she was dead—murdered by the people who had taken the principal responsibility for caring for her: Kouao and her boyfriend, Carl John Manning. Both are now serving life imprisonment.
The cruelty experienced by Victoria before her death is truly the stuff of nightmares. Manning told the trial that Kouao would strike Victoria daily with a shoe, a coat hanger and a wooden spoon. She would hit her toes with a hammer. Victoria's blood was found on Manning's football boots. He admitted hitting her with a bicycle chain.
Victoria's final days—in the depths of winter—were spent living and sleeping in a bath in an unheated bathroom, in her own urine and faeces, bound hand and foot in a bin bag.
Despite valiant efforts on the part of NHS staff, Victoria died of hypothermia, after months of abuse, on 25 February 2000 at St Mary's hospital, Paddington. She had 128 separate injuries to her body. She was just eight years old.
It is a shocking but sad truth that about 80 children a year die from abuse or neglect. While a civilised society must do everything it can to protect children, sadly a few adults will always manage to perpetrate abuse, not least because those who do are, by definition, manipulative and secretive.
What makes Victoria's case so appalling, however, is that while the unspeakable abuse she suffered happened behind closed doors, in secret, Victoria herself was never hidden from the authorities or the agencies empowered by Parliament to protect children like her.
Victoria was known to three housing authorities and involved with four social services departments—in Brent, Ealing, Enfield and Haringey. Despite receiving allegations that she had been abused, none of the councils even managed to undertake a proper assessment of her needs. Social services did nothing to help her.
Victoria was known to two separate child protection teams of the Metropolitan police. Despite being told that she had probably been deliberately harmed, they failed to investigate the alleged crime. The police services did nothing to help her.
Victoria was referred to the specialist Tottenham child and family centre, managed by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Despite marking her case as urgent, it failed to take any action to see Victoria. The NSPCC centre did nothing to help her.
Victoria was admitted to two different NHS hospitals—the Central Middlesex and North Middlesex. Despite suffering scalding to her head and face, and other evidence that staff saw of beatings and abuse, she was discharged and returned to her abusers. The NHS did nothing to help her.
Between April 1999 and February 2000, on more than a dozen occasions the relevant services had the opportunity to intervene to protect Victoria Climbié. More than 12 times in 10 months they failed to do so. This was not a failing on the part of any one service. It was a failing on the part of every service.
- "The extent of the failure to protect Victoria was lamentable. Tragically it required nothing more than basic good practice being put into operation . . . doing the basic things well saves lives . . . Victoria died because those responsible for her care adopted poor practice standards."
Those who take on the work of protecting children at risk of deliberate harm of course face a difficult and challenging task. As Neil Garnham QC told the inquiry,
- "Hundreds of children benefit every year from efficient and timely intervention by social workers, police officers and hospital staff. We would do children like Victoria no favours if we demonise entire professions as we seek to understand and remedy the weaknesses and deficiencies highlighted by a single case."
Lord Laming rightly describes as breathtaking the unwillingness of some of the most senior people in these agencies to accept that they were in any way accountable for these failures. It is his concern with this lack of accountability that leads Lord Laming to recommend change through the creation of new national and local structures for services for children and families. Lord Laming rejects proposals to separate child protection services, but calls for better co-ordination from top to bottom.
It is an all too familiar cry. In the past few decades there have been dozens of inquiries into awful cases of child abuse and neglect. Each has called on us to learn the lesson of what went wrong. Indeed, there is a remarkable consistency both in what went wrong and what is advocated to put it right. Lord Laming's report goes further. It recognises that the search for a simple solution or a quick fix will not do. It is not just national standards, or proper training, or adequate resourcing, or local leadership or new structures that are needed. It is all of these things.
In recent years there has been a renewed effort to improve safeguards for children: the Protection of Children Act 1999; the Care Standards Act 2000; programmes such as quality protects and sure start; new work on systems for identifying, referring and tracking children at risk.
Alongside the fuller response that we will include with the Green Paper in the spring, I can tell the House that there are important steps I intend to take immediately.
First, the inquiry is highly critical of the local services that failed Victoria. Since her death each has been subject to review. Some have been restructured. Some staff have been disciplined, others dismissed. In the light of the Laming report, it will be for each employer to determine whether further action is necessary against individuals, including those in senior managerial positions. In the meantime, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I are asking the inspectorates responsible for health, police and social services to undertake further joint monitoring of these local services in north London to provide independent assurance that standards are, indeed, improving.
Secondly, the inquiry concludes that in all agencies there was a low priority given to the task of protecting children. The Home Secretary has made child protection a priority through the national policing plan. He has asked chief constables to review force child protection units and consider how to action the recommendations of the report and reflect them in their local policing plans.
Additionally, I am today writing to all chief executives in local health services and local authorities emphasising their duties towards vulnerable children and the need to reflect them in their budget decisions. Social services budgets will rise by an average of 6 per
cent. in real terms in each of the next three years. NHS budgets will rise by nearly 7 per cent. Extra resources should help employ more staff, including an extra 5,000 social workers, at a time when applications for social work courses, which fell for almost a decade, are now rising.Thirdly, the report highlights inadequacies in the training of front-line professionals. Training for police officers is already being reviewed and we will ensure that Lord Laming's recommendations are fully taken on board. Social work training is also being fundamentally overhauled. From September, a new three-year social work degree will be introduced to raise the standards and status of the profession. It will focus on assessment, communication and working with other professionals—the areas where Victoria was so badly let down. The Home Secretary and I also intend to ask the professional bodies responsible for training police, social services and NHS staff in child protection to oversee a review of training needs, including a better focus on inter-agency training.
Fourthly, the report highlights the failure of agencies to adhere to common standards in the care of children. I believe that the Laming report re-emphasises the need for new national standards to which all local health and social services can work. I can tell the House today that I intend to publish the first part of those standards, covering the care of children in hospital, next month and the remaining standards by the end of the year.
Fifthly, the report says that there was confusion about guidance on aspects of child protection. Within the next three months, I intend to secure the replacement of all existing local guidance with new, shorter, clearer guidance that will reach every one of the 1 million professional staff dealing with the safeguarding of children. I also intend to simplify the wider range of Children Act guidance. It runs to more than 1,500 pages and covers 15 volumes. Some of it is out of date. Our intention is to reduce it by 90 per cent., make it available in a single volume and update it regularly.
Sixthly, more than half Lord Laming's recommendations are aimed at correcting repeated failures in basic professional practice. We are today issuing a checklist of those recommendations. Police, health and social services are being asked to guarantee that, within the three-month deadline demanded by Lord Laming, those basic elements of good professional practice will be in place.
Seventhly, the report says that there was a fundamental failure to translate good intentions into good practices. The Home Secretary and I have therefore asked the relevant inspectorates to supplement their planned joint inspections with a new programme of further visits to verify that those elements of basic good practice are being implemented, particularly where there are concerns about local services. We will also consider whether further powers are needed to intervene earlier and more effectively.
Finally, Victoria needed services that worked together. The report says that, instead, there was confusion and conflict. Down the years, inquiry after inquiry has called for better communication and better co-ordination, but neither exhortation nor legislation has proven adequate. The only sure-fire way to break down the barriers between those services is to remove them altogether.
Fundamental reform is needed to pool knowledge, skills and resources to provide more seamless local services for children. Therefore, I am today inviting health and social services, and other local services such as education, to become the first-generation children's trusts. Those pilot children's trusts will mean that local services for children are run through a single local organisation.
We will explore a range of models, including children's trusts, that could be led by local authorities and others, and that could be established as new public-interest organisations, drawing in the expertise of the community, private and voluntary sectors. In future, services for children must be centred not around the interests of any organisation, but around the interests of the child. Nothing—no existing organisation, no existing structure—should be allowed to stand in the way. We will of course consider in the Green Paper Lord Laming's recommendations for further structural changes.
Those reforms cannot be the end of the matter. If some good is to come out of this tragedy, lasting change must come out of it too. Lord Laming is determined that that is what should happen, and the whole Government share that determination. Victoria's parents asked for nothing more for their daughter than the opportunity of a better life in our country. I am deeply sorry that she did not get that simple chance.
We cannot undo the wrongs done to Victoria Climbié. We can, though, seek to put right for others what so fundamentally failed for her. That is what Lord Laming's report demands, and it is what the Government are determined to do. I commend the Laming report to the House.
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