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28 Jan 2003 : Column 754—continued
Ms Debra Shipley (Stourbridge): The failure to protect children shames all of us. I welcome my right hon. Friend's comments, and the comments of the shadow Secretary of State, which I support. There have been endless inquiries, and there will be a Green Paper in the spring. By May or June, another child will have died, and by the time the White Paper comes out, yet another child will have died. Will my right hon. Friend reassure me that the process will be speeded up and put high on the agenda? In terms of delivery, we must have one person who is accountable at a local level. That person should be the chief executive—I have senior legal advice on this matter, and have brought it to the attention of the Prime Minister. We also need co-ordination at ministerial level. Coverage by three Departments—the Department of Health, the Department for Education and Skills and the Home Office—is not good enough. Even with the best intentions, children are slipping between the cracks in provision, and they are dying as a result. I suggest that a Cabinet Minister should be made responsible for child protection.
Finally, will the extra resources mentioned by my right hon. Friend be ring-fenced? For example, in my well-run borough of Dudley, child intervention happens at level 5, although, according to the Government's guidance, it should happen at level 2. Will the resources that he mentioned allow intervention in my constituency at level 2, which is necessary to protect children?
Mr. Milburn: It must be right that we do not delay in doing anything that can be done without delay. That is
precisely why we are taking action today: not just publishing a report but writing directly to those who have responsibility for leading these organisations, not only in local authorities but across the national health service, too. We are giving them a three-month deadline within which they must make sure that all the elements of good practice, which are basic common sense and which were simply not in place in Victoria Climbié's case, will be in place in the future.Secondly, my hon. Friend refers to the need to ensure that we have appropriate structures at national level. There is more that we can do in that regard. She should not, however, understate what has been done so far, such as the advent of the children and young people's unit and its work, and the role of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Crime Reduction and Community Safety, who has particular responsibility in that regard. On resources, again, we must get the balance right. Ultimately, the difference is that those of us sitting—or standing at the Dispatch Box—in the comfort of the House do not have to deliver a single service to a single child. The people who must do so are the people outside. Those are the people who should be empowered and held accountable, as a quid pro quo. That is why I happen to think it is right to have less ring-fencing rather than more. In the end, public money is involved, and those people must decide how to spend the money appropriately to serve their local communities, and they should be held to account stringently and rigorously for that. If we do that, we will get the right balance between national responsibilities and local ones.
Mr. Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich, West): I welcome the Secretary of State's commitment to addressing this
problem. Since the Maria Colwell affair in 1973, there has been a demonstrable failure to address it effectively. Will he clarify the respective roles of the proposed children's trust and the existing area child protection committees? Will he give an assurance that in future somebody at local level will be accountable, perhaps chairing a body that must legally own that particular responsibility, and that a statutory obligation should be placed on the agencies concerned that the people they send should be suitably qualified? Lastly, if something goes wrong, there should be a mechanism for a thoroughgoing and independent investigation, not a botched and obfuscated investigation as we had in Haringey when the Victoria Climbié affair first came to light.
Mr. Milburn: My hon. Friend makes a succession of extremely important points. It is important that we learn from things that go wrong. The only way of doing so is to get the facts out into the open. That is why the report and inquiry have been so widely welcomed.
I have great sympathy with my hon. Friend's comments on the area child protection committees. He will see in the guide to children's trusts, which has been published today, that one of the forms that they could take, for example, is to group together all the services in the local area that perform functions relating to child protection, mental health services or wider children's services. The important point about that is that, once again, it provides an opportunity for local services, whether in the public, private or voluntary sector, to come together in a way that is appropriate to meet the needs of sometimes different local communities in different local circumstances.
Points of Order
2.40 pm
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow): On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Would it be indelicate to suggest that a fraction of the understandable compassion that we heard in the past hour for children in this country should be directed towards the traumatised children of Iraq? My point of order is this: what does it take in this House of Commons to get an emergency debate when we are on a motorway to war, which will end heaven knows where? Is not it desperately important for us to have a debate on a substantive motion on what is happening with the weapons inspectors? Millions of people outside the House think that it is high time that we had such a debate.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): The hon. Gentleman hovers between a point of debate and point of order. He knows that there are ways to influence those people who are responsible for determining the business of the House, but the Chair is not one of them.
Angus Robertson (Moray): On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You will be aware that, like many other hon. Members, I represent coastal communities that face severe trauma from losing their livelihoods and way of life as a result of European Union fishing quota cuts. You will also be aware that a written statement has been laid before the House and a statement has been made by the Scottish Executive today about compensation plans. Do you know whether the Minister with responsibility for fisheries intends to come before the House so that hon. Members, especially those who represent fishing communities as I do, can question, cross-examine and scrutinise those proposals, including the lack of an application for EU match funding, which may help many thousands of my constituents?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Again, the hon. Gentleman is indulging in a fair amount of argument. The Chair has no intimation of such a statement, but the relevant Department is due to answer questions this week. That may or may not provide an opportunity for him to pursue the matter.
Mr. Ian Davidson (Glasgow, Pollok): On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Yesterday the hon.
Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth) expressed his concern on a point of order about the withdrawal of a question tabled in my name. He suggested that it had been withdrawn as a result of pressure placed on me. May I explain to the conspiracy theorists that the reason is much more mundane? It is simply that the bmi plane was delayed. The fact that the relevant Minister told me that he had arranged for that delay and the delay of the subsequent British Airways flight as well was simply an attempt at humour on his part.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth) left his remarks open to the possibility of a perfectly simple explanation—although probably not as simple as that one.
Mr. Mark Simmonds (Boston and Skegness): On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I require your assistance and guidance. Yesterday, the General Affairs and External Relations Council delayed the decision on extending sanctions against Robert Mugabe and his regime. Tomorrow, EU ambassadors meet, but that forum does not have legal powers to extend sanctions; only the Council of Ministers can do that. The next Foreign Affairs Ministers meeting is not until 24 February, which is six days after the present sanction regime expires.
Can you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, bring pressure to bear to insist that the Foreign Secretary comes to the House to explain his attitude to Mugabe's invitation to Paris, and to explain what procedures and mechanisms are being followed to ensure that sanctions are renewed prior to the key date of 18 February? If they are not renewed, Mugabe will be at liberty to travel not only to Paris, but to London, which would not be acceptable to the Government or the House while people starve and suffer brutal retribution at the hands of his thugs in Zimbabwe.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman must not engage too much in the substance of debate, however strongly he feels about the subject. He must know that the Chair has no power to command a Minister to come to the Dispatch Box to make a statement. He may, however, find an opportunity to raise the matter, perhaps even at Prime Minister's questions.
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