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Mr. Clarke: There must be not only something in writing, as my hon. Friend describes, and I agree with what she says, but clear responsibility under statute to place the responsibility in the way described. In addition to the different natures of different local authorities with different circumstances, I would add the factor that my hon. Friend identifies: different personalities. For the state centrally to stipulate that ultimate responsibility should always rest with one particular role is not necessarily the right way to proceed. That is an important aspect of the Green Paper consultation that will take place.
Tim Loughton: I want to add to the consensus on that important point, which I mentioned when I said that the buck must stop with somebody. I agree that it should be left to local determination and horses for courses as to who that person is. Can the Secretary of State give an undertaking that whether it is the director of education, the director of social services or a newly created director of children's services, it should be a person at chief executive level or, at a minimum, at director level with whom the buck stops?
Mr. Clarke: I agree. I am prepared to give the assurance that the Green Paper will contain that commitment. As Lord Laming identified in his report, it is critical that there should be a senior level personal responsibility for these matters. However well intentioned and committed individuals lower in the hierarchy may be, the buck must stop at a senior level.
Mr. Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire): Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), the key recommendation of the Laming report is not simply, as the hon. Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) made clear, that we and all the agencies have a responsibility, but that we should know who is in charge and who is accountable. In recommendation 7, Herbert Laming made it clear that he wanted each local authority within six months to have a management board responsible for these matters
and chaired by the local authority chief executive, so that there was no question even of a director-level appointment being distracted by other priorities. Will the Secretary of State accept recommendation 7 or, by implication, not accept it?
Mr. Clarke: The hon. Gentleman was correct to use the word "accountable", as the key to this matter is an accountability that is not only formal, but genuine in terms of the individual in question feeling that they are responsible. I shall come in a moment to the Laming recommendations, including the one that he mentioned. The fact is that the most important thing that we can achieve in that regard is a clear individual senior board-level responsibility in every local authority, and that is what we will achieve.
The areas of common ground that I have sought to set out represent important common ground across the House generally. On at least three important issues in the motion, there are differences that I hope are not simply about party political point scoring or game playing. The first point of difference is the suggestion that the recruitment of social work professionals has not been proceeded with. That point is set out in the motion and the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham addressed it in his speech. I rebut absolutely the allegation that we have not made progress in this area. Strong steps have been taken and will continue to be taken.
In October 2001, the release of £1.5 million was announced for the first ever social work national recruitment and retention campaign. Over the 12 months to October 2002, the number of applications for social work training increased by at least 6.5 per cent., so an increase was coming through. Since then, new specific grants to councils have been established for human resources development. The grants are of £9.5 million in 2003–04, and there will be £25 million in training grants in 2004–05. Those grants will lead to more appropriate use of staff, ensuring that highly trained workers are used only where their skills are essential. We aim to raise the number of people applying for social worker training by 5,000 by 2005–06, to inform the public about what social workers and social care workers do and make existing social workers and social care workers realise that their work is valued. In the 18 months after the campaign was launched, there were more than 50,000 calls to the helpline and hits on the website.
I rebut the charge made by the hon. Gentleman. Of course, I will always acknowledge that we need continually to do better and that important recruitment and retention issues remain, and those will be addressed in the Green Paper. However, the charge in the motion tabled in the name of the Leader of the Opposition is false and I rebut it entirely.
Tim Loughton: I remember the speech made by the Secretary of State for Health at the Local Government Association conference. In announcing that £1.5 million would be provided for a training programme, he pointed the finger of blame at many of the social services employees, councillors and representatives who were present at the event. What the Secretary of State cannot tell us is how many people have been recruited as social workers. Many people may have rung the hotline or
applied for training places, but how many are ending up as social workers in key positions? His own Department cannot produce those figures, but it is they that matter.
Mr. Clarke: Those figures form part of the figures that matter, but only part. The number of people going into training, the quality of the courses and so on are also important. That is why the fact that we are training people is important in achieving precisely the end to which the hon. Gentleman refers.
The most important allegation that the hon. Gentleman made, which I rebut and is a point of difference between us, is the suggestion that we have done absolutely nothing to implement the Laming report over this period. That too is untrue. [Interruption.] He is demurring, but his motion says that the House should note
- "that, of the 108 recommendations by Lord Laming, 82 were recommended to be acted upon within six months".
Mr. Loughton: The point is that we do not know, as we have no evidence. That is what we are waiting for. It was promised that the Green Paper would provide the evidence about what the Government were doing, choosing not to take up from the Laming report and so on. That is why the motion is there—we do not know and we are waiting for the evidence.
Mr. Clarke: I shall come to the Green Paper, but I want to answer the hon. Gentleman's helpful question by telling him what we are doing to implement the Laming report.
On self-audits and inspection activity, Ministers set out, on the day of publication of the Climbié inquiry report, a checklist covering 56 of its recommendations on basic good practice. That was followed up with self-audit tools whereby social services, health services and the police were asked to guarantee that those recommendations were put in place within three months. My Department has received all the responses, which are broadly positive and indicate that most services are following the basic good practice recommendations of the Laming report. Those who are not will be followed up by the relevant inspectorate. The responses are being analysed fully to provide the information that the hon. Gentleman wants. We have been proceeding in accordance with Laming and shall continue to do so.
As regards the services in north London, the health, police and social services inspectorates are undertaking joint monitoring of the local services that failed Victoria Climbié. Haringey was inspected in March 2003, Brent was inspected in May 2003, and Ealing and Enfield will be inspected in July 2003. Full reports of the findings for those four boroughs will be published in due course and followed up as necessary in each area to ensure that local services are satisfactory and have addressed the various issues raised by Lord Laming.
All the relevant inspectorates have reviewed their planned individual and joint inspection activity. The chief inspectors concerned have met to consider the outcome of those reviews and to plan for the next
triennial joint chief inspectors' children's safeguards report. There will be an integrated inspections framework for children and a lead inspectorate for children's services—namely, the Office for Standards in Education, or Ofsted—to assess joint working and the achievement of outcomes and standards.
Mr. Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam): I want to clarify the Secretary of State's intentions on inspectorates. Is he saying that the lead responsibility for co-ordinating joint inspections of children's services will be held by Ofsted, and not by the Commission for Social Care Inspection?
Mr. Clarke: I am saying that the lead responsibility will be with Ofsted and that it will be an integrated approach. The Green Paper will set out the precise process by which we get to that point.
On training, a review is being undertaken involving all the relevant bodies in health, social care, education and the police. The initial stage of that review identified current standards for inter-agency training. The second stage, which is to report by the end of this September, will make recommendations on the changes that might be implemented to improve inter-agency training. The Government are in the process of commissioning training materials to accompany the booklet, "What To Do If You're Worried A Child Is Being Abused". Social work training has recently undergone reform, with the new three-year social work degree from September 2003, new funding of £7 million in 2003–04 for practice learning to support individual students, and the creation of learning resource centres and skills laboratories.
On guidance, on 19 May the then Health Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Jacqui Smith), launched a clear and concise booklet for people working with children and families—"What To Do If You're Worried A Child Is Being Abused". It is designed to be clearer than existing guidance in order to help people get to grips with the best-practice approach for safeguarding children. By publishing a single set of guidelines for all those working with children and families, we intend to eliminate any need for local bodies to produce their own. That is in direct response to Lord Laming's concern about the amount of out-of-date local guidance that he found in the services involved with Victoria Climbié. We will also update the guidance on the Children Act 1989 to make it shorter and clearer.
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