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Armed Forces (Logistic Support)
19. David Wright (Telford): What recent steps he has taken to enhance the cost-effectiveness of the logistic support to the armed forces. [128436]
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Mr. Adam Ingram): The Defence Logistics Organisation is responsible for logistic support to the armed forces. A comprehensive programme of change is in train to improve both the effectiveness and the efficiency of the Defence Logistics Organisation. This change programme is being managed by the head of the Defence Logistics Organisation, the chief of defence logistics, as part of the wider defence change programme.
David Wright: Will my right hon. Friend join me in thanking the people of Telford for the tremendous work that they have done in defence logistics over the last 12 months to support our troops in theatres of conflict? Is he aware, however, that there is growing concern among the people carrying out such work about the review of future defence supply chain initiative processes? Will he reassure them that in-house bids will be taken seriously, and that private sector bids will not automatically be considered to be more competitive?
Mr. Ingram: I was grateful to my hon. Friend for raising some of those issues at a recent meeting with me, at which I was able to give him certain assurances. I can now give the assurance publicly to the House that every effort will be put into achieving the best in-house solution by the Ministry of Defence. We will work closely with the unions to achieve that, because we want a proper level playing field.
I have had the opportunity to meet many of those who are employed in the supply chain, at Telford and elsewhere, and been able to pass on to them my personal appreciation of all that they have done in the Gulf conflict and the conflicts that preceded it, as well as what they will undoubtedly do in what may follow on. They are an integral part of what we do, but, of course, industry and the private sector have partnership roles—individual roles—to play in meeting that supply chain demand. I can, however, give my hon. Friend the assurances that I gave him in that meeting, and I have also been able to give them to the staff concerned.
Iraq
21. Mr. George Osborne (Tatton): When he last discussed the security situation in Iraq with the US Secretary of Defence. [128438]
The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. Geoffrey Hoon): There are continuing close consultations between the Ministry of Defence and the US Department of Defence on the security situation in Iraq. I last spoke personally to Donald Rumsfeld on 29 July.
Mr. Osborne : The US Defence Secretary has categorically ruled out placing US troops under United Nations command, whatever kind of UN resolution is
drawn up. Will the Secretary of State give a similar categorical assurance that UK troops will not serve under UN command?
Mr. Hoon: In recent operations, such as those in Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, we have not chosen to place UK forces under UN command, and I do not anticipate any need for that to occur.
Harry Cohen (Leyton and Wanstead): Are we not sending more troops to Iraq only because the US has asked for that to happen? Does not more troops mean more targets and more cost? How long are they going to be there, and at what cost? Is not sending more troops the first step towards a Vietnam syndrome, in which we send more and more troops for less and less result?
Mr. Hoon: I do not accept that. As I have already set out to the House, we are sending the extra troops for two specific reasons: first, to give the operational commander on the ground more flexibility in carrying out security responsibilities; and secondly, to ensure that urgent reconstruction tasks can be carried through in order to avoid the temptations posed to criminals in southern Iraq to steal the very equipment that we are providing to help the people of Iraq.
Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire): As one who supported the decision on 18 March and who does not have regrets, may I just express my slight surprise that the Secretary of State has not spoken to Mr. Rumsfeld since 29 July?
Mr. Hoon: I did have arrangements to meet the US Defence Secretary during August, but, unfortunately, I received an invitation that I felt it was probably best not to resist.
Mr. Jon Owen Jones (Cardiff, Central): Although the American position on the United Nations' power in Iraq has been somewhat finessed of late, it is still fairly clear that the United States believe that their forces should not come under UN control. The British position on our forces is not clear, however. We all hope that the new forces going in will help to solve the problem, but what if that does not happen? What if we get mired even further in? Where is the British bottom line?
Mr. Hoon: I am obviously not going to speculate as to the long-term future. I am confident, however, from the military advice that I have received, that this present force will be sufficient to carry out the two tasks that I have just set out to the House. It is also important that
we gain support from other countries willing to deploy their forces, so that we can significantly increase the number of forces in Iraq for the purposes of reconstructing the country and ensuring that it is safe and secure for its people.Territorial Army
22. Mr. Robert Syms (Poole): If he will make a statement on his plans for the future size of the Territorial Army. [128439]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. Ivor Caplin): I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have heard the figures that I gave to the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier). The Territorial Army will continue to support its regular counterparts on operations, as envisaged by the strategic defence review and the SDR new chapter. We expect to increase the current requirement by around 700 posts, in support of the enhanced capability in home defence that we outlined in the new chapter.
Mr. Syms : Will the Government now acknowledge that major cuts a few years ago in the TA, including the 2nd Battalion, the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment, were a mistake not only because they reduced our reserves but because of their impact on recruitment from the TA to the regular armed forces, which are suffering with shortage of manpower?
Mr. Caplin: As I said previously to the House, there have been recruitment and retention problems in the Territorial Army for some years now but thankfully those problems are being put behind us and we are seeing an increase in the numbers joining the TA.
Mr. Frank Roy (Motherwell and Wishaw): I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that those TA members serving in Iraq have proved their professionalism time and again. However, is he aware that those same Territorial Army personnel are at risk of losing their full-time civilian jobs, because they have been told that when they return from Iraq they still have to carry out their six weekends' camp or a 14-day continuous camp? Surely that is wrong and will put an intolerable strain on the relationship between the TA member and their employer.
Mr. Caplin: We are in constant discussion with employers to ensure that that type of thing does not happen. If my hon. Friend has a specific case, I would welcome him writing to me about it.
Children's Green Paper
3.31 pm
The Secretary of State for Education and Skills (Mr. Charles Clarke): With permission, Mr Speaker, I wish to present to the House the children's Green Paper, "Every Child Matters". It is published alongside a detailed response to the Victoria Climbié inquiry report and a report by the social exclusion unit into the educational achievement of children in care.
I want to begin by thanking my colleague the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the Minister for Children and officials across Whitehall for the excellent work that they have done in preparing the Green Paper. The Chief Secretary's personal commitment to the central importance of inter-departmental partnership working was crucial to achieving these proposals.
The Green Paper sets out reforms covering children and young people from birth to 19 living in England. Our goals are both to protect children and young people and to ensure that each child has the opportunity to fulfil their potential. The death of Victoria Climbié exposed shameful failings in our ability to protect our most vulnerable children. On 12 occasions over 10 months, chances to save Victoria's life were not taken. Failings occurred across all services at all levels. While no society can entirely eliminate the risk of children being damaged or exploited, our society has a duty to give priority to the protection of children and to tackle the tragic and avoidable failures that occurred in Victoria Climbié's case as well as in other cases.
From past inquires into the deaths of Maria Colwell and Jasmine Beckford to recent cases such as Lauren Wright and Ainlee Walker, the list of problems is familiar: unwillingness of some of the most senior people in agencies to accept their own accountability; poor coordination across agencies; insufficient sharing of information; front-line workers who are often over-loaded and under-supervised. But these issues do not just afflict the 80 children on average who die each year from abuse. Weak accountability, poor integration and work force pressures are all critical barriers to improving the lives of all our children. Too many children fall through the net only to reach a crisis that could have been avoided. Too many children are passed around the system only to end up in care, in prison, or worse.
Lord Laming in his admirable report makes it clear that nothing less than fundamental reform will address those issues. No single change alone is enough. National standards, inspection, information sharing, training, national and local structures, all need to change if we are to achieve real changes in culture and practice. Radical reform is needed to organise our services around the needs and priorities of children. I believe that the proposals that I am publishing today meet the reform challenges identified by Lord Laming. Our task is properly to put them into effect.
The central theme of the Green Paper is that every service, every professional, every community and every family must take responsibility for the protection of children. Child protection must not be ghettoised and seen to be the responsibility of only one profession—social work. It must be the responsibility of everyone, and so must be at the heart of all public services.
Equally, it is vital that every organisation has a positive vision of young people and high expectations for all of them, whoever they are, and wherever they live. Every Department is already trying to tackle the reasons why children are held back, whether through poverty, poor schooling, violence in communities, lack of activities for young people, or lack of access to health care, and I can confirm that we will continue this drive, rightly shifting the emphasis to prevention.
The Green Paper sets out comprehensive reforms to ensure that this approach is carried through. I believe that they extend the principles of our sure start programme, which have been widely welcomed, to all areas of child care in this country.
There are four main areas of reform, the first of which is supporting families and carers. We all know the critical influence that parents have on children, yet in the past we paid insufficient attention to the crucial role of families in improving children's lives. By bringing children's policy and family policy together within my Department, we will start to see how we can support families more effectively.
The Green Paper involves consultation on a long-term vision to support families through universal services providing information, advice and support, and through more targeted services. As a first step, we have created a parenting fund to build capacity in the voluntary and community sector, and we will introduce proposals to roll out nationally the current level of home visiting support provided by home start.
The second main area of reform is early intervention. For the majority of children, the combination of support from their families and schools is enough to enable them to thrive, but for a significant minority more help is needed. The potential of hundreds of thousands of young people is wasted, because help too often comes too little, too late. A child may be known to several services, but nobody shares the warning signs, so the necessary action is not taken. Children can be passed from agency to agency. They may be assessed again and again. They may be known to lots of professionals, but all are based in different places, working to different bosses and budgets, and—most damaging of all—with no one in overall charge.
We need to build a system that ensures that children receive help at the first onset of problems. Early intervention requires new forms of integration on the ground: information sharing systems; a common assessment framework; a lead professional co-ordinating packages of support; and professionals working together in multidisciplinary teams, based in and around the places where children and families spend their time—schools, children's centres and doctors' surgeries.
The Green Paper includes proposals to develop better early intervention on all those fronts, including legislating to ensure that professionals share information more effectively. We will always have to strike a balance between individuals' right to privacy and the need to share information to protect children, but I believe that the balance needs to be shifted towards sharing information better so that problems can be identified more rapidly and more effectively.
The third area of reform in the Green Paper is accountability and integration. Integration in practice means integrating our institutions, structures and
professions. That is the real focus of the Green Paper, tackling the underlying barriers to improving our services. Lasting change requires new institutional arrangements, not new initiatives.Let me set out the key changes aimed at delivering clear accountability and integration in serving the needs of children. First, we will legislate to create the post of a director of children's services, accountable for local authority education and children's social services. As Lord Laming made clear, we must have a clearly named person in overall charge of children's well-being and protection in every part of the country. Secondly, to ensure clear accountability politically, we will create a lead council member for children.
Thirdly, in the medium and long term, our aim is to integrate key services for children and young people under the director of children's services, as part of children's trusts, bringing together the local education authority, children's social services, health services, and potentially others, including Connexions and youth offending teams, in a single organisational structure.
Of course, as Members of Parliament for our own constituencies, we all know the very real difficulties in joining up across boundaries. Our approach is to seek to break down boundaries altogether, and to organise services around children, at the core of our overall services.
Fourthly, there will always be some organisations outside the new children's trust, such as the police. We will therefore require the creation of local safeguarding children boards, to bring together all agencies to improve child protection. As part of this approach, we will also legislate to place a duty on all services to safeguard children. We must ensure that our children's safety is a priority across all services.
Fifthly, we will support local changes through national change, including the development of an integrated inspection framework, led by Ofsted, to ensure that all services are judged on how they work together.
Finally, where national standards are not met and our inspection system indicates failure, we must be tough on delivering changes. We will therefore create within my Department a strong focus on sharing effective practice and intervening in areas that are falling below national standards. In addition, I can announce that the Government will legislate at the earliest opportunity to create a children's commissioner to act as an independent champion for children. The commissioner will develop effective ways to draw on children's views, locally and nationally, and make sure that they are properly fed into policy making.
The final area of the Green Paper is work force reform. The reforms set out in it have two aims, the first of which is to tackle the recruitment and retention problems that are particularly acute in social work by making working with children an attractive, high-status career. Secondly, to improve the skills and teamworking of the work force, we need to ensure that our professionals work together with shared goals, shared values, shared language and shared priorities. We intend to introduce a package of changes to develop this: new career pathways to enable staff to acquire new specialist
skills, to enable sideways career moves, or to enable remaining in front-line services; a leadership programme to support the first generation of children's directors and their senior staff; a common core of training for those who work with children; reduced bureaucracy and work load pressures; and more flexible and attractive training routes into working with children, including expanding work-based training routes for graduates. To deliver this, we will work with employers and staff to create a sector skills council for children and young people.I believe that the reform programme that we are delivering will mark a turning point in child protection. The legislation and institutional change that we are proposing will genuinely put children first. Reform will take time and will require commitment across government. Perhaps most critically and most difficult, it will require a process of cultural change, to build a society in which protection is embedded in all communities, professionals and services, locally and nationally. Our aim is to build a society in which truly every child matters, and in that spirit I commend these proposals to the House.
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