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Tim Loughton: Gladly. We published a response on 28 January. My hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring outlined a series of criteria that we want and on which we largely agree with Lord Laming. We also held a summit on child health and protection issues at Westminster on the day that the Laming report came out, which brought together a whole host of professionals. We have made many suggestions on how we should move forward from the report. We have been waiting for the Green Paper so that we may make our suggestions formally in response to the Government's consultation.

Let us listen to what other people have said about the problems caused by the lack of progress. The Local Government Association said:

"The Local Government Association . . . is disappointed and frustrated at the further delay to the Green Paper on Children at Risk. Five months after Lord Laming's report into Victoria Climbie's tragic death, progress should have been made on introducing measures to address the failings that Laming identified. Councils should not still be waiting for the government to give an indication of the changes to be proposed. Too many councils are in limbo, ambitious about improving their services in line with Laming's recommendations but afraid to implement changes without knowing what is around the corner."

Voluntary bodies such as the NSPCC have voiced their frustration at being constantly fobbed off about the timing of the Green Paper. Doctors need clear guidance and training. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said:

"Implementing Laming advice will mean a lot of extra work. We will need perhaps 30 trainers across the country to roll out the programme to . . . 6000 college members in the UK".

On the point about information sharing, it says:

"All reports into child abuse say it is essential to share information—with other doctors, with social services, with the police. But the laws on confidentiality state that we must not share this information"—

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although that is a crucial point that Laming identified. Doctors point out that we need a rational system for classifying abuse cases because, as their representatives say:

"At the moment child protection is seen as black or white. Either there is a child protection issue or there is not."

Many questions and problems need urgently to be addressed. There is a lot riding on this illusory Green Paper and there is no excuse for further delay. Victoria Climbié was murdered three and a half years ago. The trial of her killers ended two and half years ago. The proceedings of Lord Laming's inquiry opened more than two years ago. Numerous studies on child protection have been commissioned, such as the "Safeguarding Children" report that was published last autumn and dealt with arrangements for area child protection committees.

On 30 October 2002, the Prime Minister promised that a Green Paper would be published early in 2003 on the whole issue of children at risk and that the problem would be dealt with across the whole of government. However, there has been great confusion about which Department has taken ownership of the Green Paper and the Departments that have inputted information; I gather that it has largely been under the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. On 28 January, the former Secretary of State for Health said:

"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."—[Official Report, 28 January 2003; Vol. 398, c. 737.]

The spring has come and gone. Secretaries of State have come and gone. A new Minister for Children has come. We welcome the creation of the post of Minister for Children if it will genuinely join up Government policy on children across Departments. We have long called for that as an alternative to the situation under the previous nominal Minister with responsibility for children, the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham). He was also the Home Office Minister with responsibility for prisons, so that sent out all the wrong signals about the way in which the Government deal with children.

The hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) made a terrible start as the first holder of the important, sensitive and much-trumpeted post of Minister for Children. She has spent her first four weeks on the defensive for her track record as the leader of Islington council when she presided over one of the worst cases of systematic child sexual abuse and neglect in a local authority, despite the strong warnings that she was personally given by senior social workers.

Yet perhaps we should not be surprised when we see that senior officers in other Labour-run London councils, who all had responsibility for departments that should have looked after Victoria Climbié, went on to greater things. One became the head of the Commission for Racial Equality; one was head-hunted by Hackney council; one council leader went to the Lords and is a member of the Greater London Authority. If we add to that the track record of the hon. Member for Barking for putting the considerations of political correctness before the common-sense welfare of children, personally launching a booklet about banning skipping ropes, musical chairs and GCSE grades below C, we have to ask whether this important appointment is not already fatally flawed and one of the biggest let-downs of the botched reshuffle.

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Although the creation of the role was widely welcomed by all sorts of organisations involved with children and by us, the hon. Lady's appointment was greeted with deafening silence. Rather than spending her first month defending her record, claiming that her mistakes make her ideally placed for this new role and trying to sell us the line that the Green Paper will again be delayed because the Prime Minister wants to be personally involved in its launch, which she says is an unparalleled commitment—it is not, because he took ownership of the review on adoption, for example—she should be answering questions about what her new Department will cover.

Will the new Department or the Department of Health be responsible for children and adolescent mental health services? Will the hon. Lady be responsible for the even more delayed national service framework for children? When will we get serious and comprehensive solutions to the issues raised by Lord Laming? When will responsibility for child protection be properly joined up at local level, and which individual will ultimately take responsibility for drawing all the relevant agencies together locally? Where, and when, will the buck stop? When will we have properly informed assessments of need for individual children, properly monitored, resourced and implemented? When does the hon. Lady expect to have established a framework for children at risk which is all about outcomes, not structures, and which is child-centred, not concentrated on the adult agenda?

Those are the issues that need addressing urgently. Instead, it would appear that the hon. Lady's sole achievement today is an undertaking that she will not in fact be the Minister for Children but the Minister for Children, Young People and Families. We fear that the Green Paper will be further delayed by the new Minister being sidelined and sidetracked by having to defend herself, now that the truth is coming out about her failure to protect vulnerable children in Islington.

The Laming report must be different. It must herald a radical shake-up of the system. As the former Secretary of State for Health promised:

"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."—[Official Report, 28 January 2003; Vol. 398, c. 741.]

We agree wholeheartedly with that now, as we did then. But changing ministerial titles, giving feeble excuses for delay about prime ministerial interests and issuing checklists about how many interdepartmental committees need to meet do not save children at risk and are now standing in the way of protecting those children.

The real test for any new structures must be measured not by how many bulletins and meetings are generated, but by how many children are saved from cruelty and abuse. The Green Paper has been promised as a crucial element in that process, and must be produced and promoted without further delay. To repeat Lord Laming, the

"recommendations cannot be deferred to some bright tomorrow."

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DEFERRED DIVISIONS

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I have now to announce the result of the Divisions deferred from a previous day.

On the motion on Immigration, the Ayes were 376, the Noes were 52, so the motion was agreed to.

On the motion on Social Security, the Ayes were 270, the Noes were 52, so the motion was agreed to.

[The Division Lists are published at the end of today's debates.]

4.49 pm

The Secretary of State for Education and Skills (Mr. Charles Clarke) : I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:

"welcomes the Government's commitment to children's services as evidenced by the appointment of the Minister of State for Children; congratulates the Government on its Quality Protects initiative, which provided £885 million to improve children's social services; supports the action the Government is taking to legislate to establish an independent inspectorate to inspect local authority children's services and social care provided by the private and voluntary sector; notes that the Government, local authorities and other statutory bodies are already taking further action to improve services for children, in the light of the Victoria Climbié Inquiry Report; congratulates the Government and local services on the announcement of the 35 Children's Trusts Pathfinders on 10th July; and looks forward to the publication of the Green Paper on children in the autumn."

We welcome the debate. I shall begin by addressing aspects of common ground before exploring points of difference. We all welcome Lord Laming's report and its recommendations. We also all regret that the time scale is so long, although the reasons for that are understandable. Victoria Climbié tragically died on 25 February 2000. Two individuals were convicted of her murder on 12 January 2001; Lord Laming's inquiry was established on 20 April 2001; the evidence was finished on 31 July 2002; and the inquiry reported on 28 January 2003. The period is too long. I agree with the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) that that is a matter of concern which we need to address.

The truth is that we have a long history of sad inquiries. Since about 1980, there have been more than 50 inquiries into child deaths and child abuse, of which five, including the Laming inquiry, were statutory inquiries. The others were serious case reviews of high-profile cases, including some in my county. As an aside, I pay tribute to Conservative Secretaries of State during that time who tried to address those matters in a principled way. That is how we should address politicians who tackle such problems; we should not cast slurs.

Equally, there have been inquiry reports—17 in the same period—into the abuse of children in residential care. We all know that there is too long a history of a children's social services profession that has been blown about by difficult sequences of appalling tragedies and their consequent inquiries. Sometimes the profession has been accused of intervening too much, and at other times of intervening too little. It has been difficult to get stability in those circumstances. I agree with the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) that getting a sense of proportion and balance is

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extremely difficult but also extremely important. So another aspect of common ground is the need for stability and confidence in the profession so that people can proceed with their professional duties in a positive and strong way that deals with the interests of the child.

The third element of common ground, on which the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham concluded, is linked to the second. The child's welfare must be at the centre of everything that we do. We are not interested in the welfare of particular professions, institutions or whatever.

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