| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
5.48 pm
Mr. Shaun Woodward (St. Helens, South): I welcome this debate, as do all hon. Members. It is terribly important. As someone who has been the deputy chairman of ChildLine and remains a trustee, I know that the debate will be keenly followed there and throughout all the children's charities.
My only regret is that I suspect that while this may be one of the most important debates that we have, the pretext for having it was probably not so well intended. For us to debate this subject on a motion that probably has a lot more to do with personality politics does no credit to the House and little credit to the Conservative party. The debate has provided an opportunity—some would describe it as opportunism—to attack the Minister. It has provided an opportunity for the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) to talk about his party's belief in arguing for a Minister for Children.
Well, I have a little experience of the Conservative party, and I do not remember the creation of a Minister for Children being party policy at the 1997 general election. Indeed, before a small incident led to my departure from that political party, I remember making a speech at the Social Market Foundation in 1999 in which I argued for a Minister for Children, and my then boss, who should perhaps remain nameless, told me that creating a Minister for Children would certainly not be a policy of the Conservative party. So we are talking about short-term memories here. It ill behoves Conservative Members to remind of us such things, because we can remember quite a lot as well—and I will have a little pleasure in remembering one or two things during my remarks.
I looked at the press releases from the Leader of the Opposition about the appointment of my hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) to her Front-Bench job. It is unfortunate that they were so personality-driven. The House could achieve extraordinary consensus on this issue and a great deal for children in this country, but that requires us to lay aside the kind of differences that have given rise to the debate today.
The fact of the matter is that there is no magic fix, and if we are not careful, we set ourselves up for failure for one very simple reason: whatever the Green Paper may produce in a few weeks' time, it will not end child abuse or child deaths by the end of the year. Since 1973, there have been 35 reports on child protection. Since 1945, there have been 70 reports on severe child abuse. Not one of those reports—some were produced under Conservative Governments, supported by the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing)—ended child abuse or the deaths of children in terrible circumstances. We must be sensible about the idea that the Green Paper is somehow a piece of magic that will end child abuse—it will not—but it may make things better.
The excellent recent report by the Select Committee on Health very sensibly considers some of Lord Laming's proposals, and it says that we need to be careful; we could get things wrong. No hon. Member on either side of the House wants us to get anything wrong in respect of protecting vulnerable children. The idea seems to be that, somehow, all we need to do is produce the Green Paper as quickly as possible and all will be well, but the opposite could be true; we could make mistakes, and I hope that we all want to avoid doing so.
ChildLine—an organisation with which I have been involved for a long time—counsels hundreds of thousands of kids every year. Last year alone, we counselled nearly 30,000 children who were in need of protection. Mercifully, that protection was given, but in
some cases things go wrong and a child slips through the net, with one agency or another. That is very clearly what happened with Victoria Climbié.There are many lessons for all of us to learn. They are not just about social workers, but about the culture in which we operate. Again, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman, rightly said that we should be very careful about laying the blame on social workers. Of course we should not do that—but again, if we are not careful, the idea may be that the Green Paper will solve all those problems.
Victoria Climbié was not murdered by a social worker. She was not murdered by a Member of Parliament. She was murdered by people who were supposed to be looking after her. That culture goes to the heart of things. Interestingly, Lord Laming's report and the Select Committee on Health report cite the cultural background of such things and what we learnt from the Stephen Lawrence case. There are cultural issues to do with colour, race and ethnicity, and those issues must also be considered. Such problems will not be solved by referring them to one department. With all due respect to my hon. Friend the Minister for Children, even if she were the best thing since sliced bread—as I am sure she is—the truth is that she will not solve all the problems either. We might just make them a bit better.
At ChildLine, over nearly 20 years, we have learned a great deal about what needs to be done. One of the things that we learned about was the importance of tackling bullying, which was a terribly important issue. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Epping Forest, who, with me, when I was in the Conservative party, recognised the damage that something like section 28 did to young people. She knew that there was a culture of bullying with it. It is a difficult issue, because it drives some division within her party. None the less, she was ahead of her party on the issue and she rightly campaigned for reform. To hear her colleague, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham talking about campaigning on children's issues—I seem to remember that he was not exactly in the forefront in campaigning for the reform of section 28—beggars belief. Given the motion that we are debating today, I can only expect that, if the Opposition continue in this direction, they will shortly be tabling a motion complaining about the Government's failure to reform section 28 quickly enough. If they do so, I will welcome it, because it will be great if reform can be driven further and more quickly on these matters, which is important.
Bullying remains a problem. We do not solve it simply by introducing a bullying code into schools. It is not solved overnight. Only a week or so ago, in Merseyside, a young lad of 11 died, having been bullied at school. That is an appalling, unnecessary death. God forbid, there will probably be more. But if we work together, we might make the climate better.
Another big issue on which the hon. Member for Epping Forest might like to take the lead with her party would be, for example, the ending of the defence of reasonable chastisement. Sadly, at the moment, the Government clearly feel that they need to be cautious on this issue. Yet domestic violence is no longer tolerated, and we are not happy to see two men coming out of the pub on a Friday night thumping the heck out of each other—we think that they should be arrested and
punished. We do not tolerate men and women hitting each other inside the home—we think that something should be done about it. Again, the Government will be taking steps over the next few months to do more to deal with domestic violence. Yet, bizarrely, we find ourselves saying that it is okay to thump a child.This seems to me to create an extraordinary climate. What we are saying to people—I know that this will not make me very popular with the Daily Mail, but I have not been popular with that paper for a number of years now—is that we are sanctioning violence. We need to tackle a culture of violence which, at its most ruthless end, has dire consequences. Again, I ask the Daily Mail please not to make a travesty of what I am saying. I am not suggesting that ordinary parents who give their child a clip behind the ear are indulging in anything that relates to what happened to Victoria Climbié. Of course I am not saying that. But it helps to create a culture in which we can somehow tolerate violence.
Again, the hon. Member for Epping Forest may want to take the lead in her party on these issues, because it seems to me that continuing to sanction with the defence of reasonable chastisement the hitting of children is something that, sooner or later, the House will be brave enough to deal with. In a similar way that, I suppose, people look back on wife beating now, in 100 years they will look back and say how ridiculous it was that, in 2003, we had a society that still allowed children to be hit.
Like many Members, I am sure, I have four children, and I have once in my life hit one of them. Tom was four years old, and he had shut the door on his younger sister's fingers and had really hurt her. I did not know what to do, and, like lots of parents, I am afraid, I lost it. I gave him quite a hard smack. The story is legendary in our family—the kids say, "Do you remember the time Daddy smacked Tom?" I thought to myself afterwards, that if he was shocked, I was much more shocked. It was not a particularly hard hit, but it shocked me that I could lose my temper and hit a child whom I loved so much. I realised, of course, that the next time, to achieve any effect, I would have to hit him a bit harder, and then, perhaps, a bit harder. Probably, what ends up happening is what happened to me when I was a kid, which was that I started getting hit with implements. People might ask whether that is the reason why I am as I am—it did not do me much good and I am sure that it would not do my kids any good.
I pay tribute to the work of Esther Rantzen and charities such as ChildLine for taking a brave stance and recognising ahead of their time that smacking ultimately contributes to a violent culture, which is a problem that we must tackle. That is another issue on which the hon. Member for Epping Forest may lead her party.
We should appreciate the steps that have been taken regarding the Laming report. The announcement of the establishment of children's trusts last week is important. Again, there is no magic involved. We are at the beginning of a process that will hopefully allow us to do more.
I want to refer several important pieces of information from ChildLine to my hon. Friend the Minister because they arise from listening to children. First, excellent research done by the charity shows that children aged over 16 are often passed from one authority to the other, and that no authority is prepared to take responsibility for them. It is important to address that. Secondly, getting help for children and young people, which is a serious issue, appears to be more difficult in February and March—toward the end of the financial year—than at other times. That is an important consideration when we make decisions on resources.
Thirdly, little support is available for homeless 16 and 17-year-olds who live on the streets to enable them to try to escape from abusive home situations.
Fourthly, there is a serious concern about the lack of safe houses for young people throughout the United Kingdom. Such facilities do not provide long-term solutions for young people but they are needed to offer respite and assessment for vulnerable young people.
ChildLine has identified a further problem from its night service. Children who ring at night in need of help often find it difficult to get help because social services are more overstretched at that time. That fact is not a condemnation of social services or social workers. I tell Conservative Members—their motion is pretty condemning of the Government—that the only years since the early 1990s between which the number of social workers went down were 1995 and 1996. The number has increased in every other year. It is difficult to accept a Conservative motion that condemns the Government for doing insufficient to protect children given that the number of social workers reduced under the Conservative Government. I say that only to illustrate the danger of getting into point scoring. The right hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Virginia Bottomley), the former Secretary of State for Health, is sitting on the Conservative Benches and I know that she cares passionately about working for children. There is a danger of getting into petty political point scoring when we could do more than that, which is why I regret the fact that the debate has been personalised around my hon. Friend the Minister for Children.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member, has rightly argued for a children's commissioner for England, as have hon. Members. Children need not only a Minister but an independent voice that is above party politics so that important points may be made regardless of the political party in power. Children are too important for us to play politics with. I hope that the delay to the Green Paper will give my hon. Friend the Minister and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister the opportunity to announce that the children of England will finally have a children's commissioner when the Green Paper is published.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |