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28 Jan 2003 : Column 748—continued
Mr. Milburn: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is always worth listening to on these issues. He has campaigned long and hard for many years both before coming into this place and since he has been a Member of Parliament for better integration and co-ordination of services. There are important lessons that we need to learn from that.
It is crystal clear from this and all too many other cases that services were simply pointing in opposite directions. Social services were doing one thing, the health service was doing another and the police were doing a third thing. The consequence of that is confusion: people are passed round the system and, unfortunately, there is intervention later rather than sooner. Those are issues that we need to address. However, I say in all candour to my hon. Friend that I am cautious about confusing what happened to Victoria Climbié with issues around smacking and the reasonable chastisement of children. What happened to Victoria was of a quite different order. I know that my hon. Friend knows that. He knows the Government's position on these issues. Of course we will keep them under review, but it is important to separate the extreme violence that happened to this poor child from the sort of issues that my hon. Friend raised.
Mrs. Gillian Shephard (South-West Norfolk): I welcome the Secretary of State's statement today and his proposals to publish a Green Paper. He clearly recognises that the fundamental causes of the 80 deaths from abuse per year of vulnerable children are a lack of liaison between the relevant agencies and a lack of accountability. Both were clearly demonstrated in the tragic case of my constituent Lauren Wright.
Does the Secretary of State intend to make the new guidance statutory? Is he in a position to say today—perhaps not—how children's trusts will improve accountability?
Mr. Milburn: I know that the right hon. Lady has taken an active interest in these matters, not only in the case of Lauren Wright but in her previous guise as
Education Secretary in the Conservative Government. She is aware that the current guidance is statutory. That is the problem. We have to get the right combination. Of course we have to have statutory guidance. Of course we have to have the right system of monitoring. Of course we have to have the right system of accountability. Of course we have to have the right system of training. Of course we have to make sure that we have decent local management who take responsibility rather than ducking it. Of course we have to have the right structures.Several colleagues on both sides of the House have asked what is so different about this situation and the Laming report. I believe that the difference is that we have a broad sweep of recommendations covering all the issues and a vehicle, in the Green Paper, by which they can be addressed. It is only if we get accountability, structures, training, funding and local management right that we will avoid some of the terrible problems that children down the years have had to face. I believe that we have an opportunity to do that. Children's trusts are a means to that end. I believe that they will improve accountability. One local organisation will be responsible for protecting vulnerable children and people will not continually pass the buck.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney, North and Stoke Newington): The Secretary of State will be aware that the Laming report explicitly directs most criticism, and places most of the responsibility for what happened to Victoria, not on the front-line staff but on senior managers and councillors in the local authorities. Time after time, events such as this happen, senior managers get themselves a media adviser and we hear the same old interviews about lack of resources. In many cases, those people go on to even better and more highly paid jobs. I believe that one way to stop such events happening again is to make sure that senior people take the responsibility that they are paid to take.
The practice of private unlicensed fostering, largely by west Africans, has gone on for a long time. At best, it causes all sorts of trauma. At worst, children are open to all sorts of abuse. It is time that the Government moved to close this practice down.
Mr. Milburn: To make managers accountable there has to be a proper system of accountability from top to bottom. That is what Lord Laming addresses in his recommendations. We will consider those recommendations seriously because that form of accountability is not present in the current system.
On private fostering, we will take extremely seriously the representations that have been made to us not just by Lord Laming but by others. However, let me strike one note of caution about reviewing the law on private fostering and the Victoria Climbié case. It is true that, legally, Victoria was being privately fostered. No one knew that, for one simple reason. Her great-aunt Kouao lied about who she was. She called Victoria "Anna" and said that she was her mother. Even if we had had changes in the private fostering legislation on the statute
book, it would not have stopped the person responsible for caring for Victoria lying. She would have continued to lie.
Mr. Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire): For Cambridgeshire Members, I am afraid that the painful recollection of the Rikki Neave case serves only to heighten our distress at what happened to Victoria Climbié.
Substantial benefits may flow from the introduction of children's trusts, but will the Secretary of State consider in the Green Paper two consequences that ought to flow from that proposal? First, having a children's trust does not automatically remove professional demarcations and boundaries—they could persist inside one. Is there a case, therefore, for giving one professional worker, whatever their discipline, responsibility for the services provided to a child and the authority to draw together the relevant services within the children's trust and impose requirements on other services?
Secondly, if one puts all the services within the trust, one makes the accountability clearer, but the service is unified and hence potentially more resistant to external scrutiny and more likely to cleave to a single explanation. Is it not therefore more important for there to be an external voice—if not that of the children themselves, then a children's commissioner—to speak on behalf of children from an independent, external standpoint?
Mr. Milburn: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comments and questions. On his latter point, we will address those issues as part of the Green Paper. On the first issue, I very much agree about professional demarcations and boundaries. The disaster would be to break down boundaries between structures and organisations but retain precisely the same boundaries between professionals. That is why it is so important that we have asked various professional bodies, local government and the training organisations to produce proposals on that. For example, I have never fully understood why the skills of health visitors and those of social workers cannot be put together to offer better support to families and children in times of trouble. We should be perfectly capable of doing that.
The hon. Gentleman puts the accent on flexibility and partnership working, but that has to apply as much at the level of the individual professional in those services as at that of the individual services.
Mr. Shaun Woodward (St. Helens, South): The Secretary of State will be aware that, for 10 years, I have been a trustee of the charity Childline, which takes tens of thousands of calls each year from children who, mercifully, do not die, but many of whom suffer in silence and never reach social workers or anyone else for protection.
Childline, along with every other major children's charity, has argued for a children's commissioner for England for a number of years. The Secretary of State spoke about culture. The problem is that civil servants, by and large, do not want a children's commissioner for England. If he wishes to tackle the culture of child protection, he will have to tackle the culture of
Whitehall, which does not want to create a children's commissioner for England. Since every children's charity supports the creation of one, will he agree to change that culture in Whitehall? Will he act quickly to do so, because I believe that a children's commissioner would make a serious difference in protecting children?
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. Although we all know that this matter is grave, deeply disturbing and complex, may I appeal for brevity in questions and answers, as that is necessary if I am to call every hon. Member who is seeking to catch my eye?
Mr. Milburn: I shall do my best, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
As for getting such things out into the open, it is very important that there was a public inquiry. Indeed, before he joined the Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy) was one of those who argued very strongly that a public inquiry should be conducted properly in the open, so that people could hear and see the evidence for themselves. That has been achieved.
As for a children's commissioner, I understand the concerns and views of the organisation with which my hon. Friend is associated. Of course we will consider those issues in drafting the Green Paper. Again, let me say that it is very important that any structure or post that we put in place fulfils a function that will make a difference. Let us forget about making suitable gestures or getting the right symbolic policies. Symbolic policies do not save lives. What saves lives is good practice in social services offices, NHS hospitals and local police stations. That is the focus of the Laming report. Of course we have to ensure that we get the right combination between the national and the local, but let us remember where services are delivered: not in Whitehall, but in local communities.
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