| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield): May I inform my right hon. Friend—I do not want to take away anything from the Chairman of the Human Rights Committee—that I represent a constituency where Brian Jackson, who wrote "Education and Social Class" many years ago, campaigned for 20 years for a children's Minister and a children's commissioner? This is a happy day for me, as a trustee of the charity that Brian Jackson set up, because something that he campaigned vigorously for has come about after so many years.
In welcoming the children's commissioner, I would point out that there is one way of giving him or her more independence, and my right hon. Friend knows well what I am about to say. The commissioner will have more independence if we make him or her responsible not to my right hon. Friend but to Parliament through the appropriate Select Committee. It would be an important step if my right hon. Friend made that announcement as soon as possible.
My last point—I know that many Members want to ask my right hon. Friend questions on this important statement—is not only to welcome the statement but to say that we will not eradicate deaths and other terrible things will happen to children in our country. Those of us who knock on doors in our constituencies know that poverty, drug addiction and the lack of a family—not the presence of a family—so often make our children vulnerable. I see the voluntary sector—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord): Order. I thought that the hon. Gentleman was about to put a question, but he has not, and I do not think that the Minister need respond.
Mrs. Gillian Shephard (South-West Norfolk): I broadly welcome the restructuring of local authority services that the Secretary of State has announced this afternoon, which will result in statutorily reinforcing co-operation between education and social services. I note also that in the creation of local children's safeguarding boards the right hon. Gentleman expects to net in police authorities. Will he tell the House whether that proposal will also, in his view, net in health authorities? Can he give the House more details about the practical role of the children's commissioner? We need—I believe that he shares my view on this—services that do what they are supposed to do to protect children and not, as Lord Laming said, another commentator.
Mr. Clarke: I can confirm what the right hon. Lady says about health authorities, but I can say a bit more. As for mental health services and primary care trust services, there is a division of children's services within those responsibilities. It is entirely imaginable and
feasible that in certain areas the PCT or the mental health trust will commission out their children's services so that they are within children's trusts more generally, so that they are even more intimately involved. Where that is not the case, they will be caught more directly, as the right hon. Lady implies, by the safeguarding children arrangements that I have described. We felt that we could not go so far as to say that every PCT or mental health trust should hive off its children's services into children's trusts, even though there might be logic for that, because lifelong responsibilities and serious bureaucratic issues are involved.On the right hon. Lady's second point about the children's commissioner, I can confirm that the approach that we take to the commissioner is designed to ensure that he or she is the champion of children's rights, and is ready to intervene constantly on every point that I have already outlined. The precise way in which the commissioner works will be a matter for general discussion once we have established the necessary legislation.
Mr. Hilton Dawson (Lancaster and Wyre): In welcoming every syllable that my right hon. Friend has uttered this afternoon, may I congratulate him and the Government on rejecting one aspect of Lord Laming's report and standing up for the independence of a children's commissioner, thus putting themselves in a position where they could be criticised by someone who had such independence? Does my right hon. Friend agree that the participation of children and young people in decisions that affect their lives both locally and nationally is the key to developing the radical transformation of services that he set out today? Will he explain how the national service framework for children fits with what is in the Green Paper?
Mr. Clarke: The national service framework is, and will continue to be, part of the overall arrangements that we have established. As for the participation of children and young people, I agree very much with my hon. Friend. It is important that in schools and children's services children's voices are heard and reflected in what happens. Of course, that will take place in various ways, and I do not wish to appear too prescriptive. However, we are right to be prescriptive in one sense—the establishment of a children's commissioner is meant to signal as strongly and clearly as possible that in every service the voice of children and young people should be heard and reflected in the way in which those services are run and organised.
Mr. Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire): With a Green Paper published in September which was originally promised in the spring, it will be no surprise to the Secretary of State if we focus on issues of timetabling. According to the written text of the statement, the Secretary of State was going to say that "in the long term" services would be integrated into children's trusts. However, when he delivered the statement he said "in the medium to long term". Perhaps he will now elaborate on the prospective timetable for children's trusts because, in the absence of such an explanation and of legislation providing a framework
that services can use in coming together at a local level, there will be a degree of planning blight and uncertainty which may last for years.
Mr. Clarke: The hon. Gentleman is right to focus on timetabling in general. However, I modified the written statement with the words "medium to long term" because in politics and life generally the phrase "the long term" tends to imply a time that is a long way away. The message that I wanted to send was that we need to move more quickly. As the hon. Gentleman knows, progress has already been made in some parts of the country—I want to encourage and extend that. We will therefore publish a timetable. It is important for the reasons that I gave earlier about the way in which we operate that we consult properly on the timetable with everyone who has to put it into effect, and that is what we will do.
Mr. John Denham (Southampton, Itchen): I welcome my right hon. Friend's recognition of the fact that the potential of literally hundreds of thousands of young children is wasted because, as he put it, help is too little and too late. Does he agree with two things? First, if there is to be information sharing, it must be sufficiently good to track children as they move around the country, and not simply operate in each individual local authority area? Secondly, if we are concerned about hundreds of thousands of children, it will not be good enough to aim to refer them all to specialist services. We will need to bend some mainstream funding within schools, the health service and social services to enable the professionals to intervene much earlier. Indeed, we will save money if we intervene when a child is five, six or seven, rather than wait until they are a criminal, a drug abuser or have an unwanted pregnancy at 14, 15 or 16.
Mr. Clarke: I agree with both points made by my right hon. Friend. First, on tracking children as they move across the country, I am sure that he is correct about that. As a former Minister with responsibility for the police—an experience which I share—he will know that even without the complication of tracking movements around the country, there is not sufficient sharing of data between agencies. Even without addressing the point that he made, there is an enormous amount to do if we are to get things right but, of course, he was correct in what he said. As for specialist services, I focused on the need to generalise the sure start experience because it is universal in every relatively small community where it operates. It ranges from early intervention, even before birth, to early co-operation between various professional services. We must extend that model to every aspect of what we do.
My right hon. Friend is quite right that that does mean bending mainstream services to deal with particular people. One of the problems is the definition of risk, so to speak, in how we operate. There is a vast hierarchy of work that he, when he was responsible for the children's fund, led in highlighting the types of risk that exist. We must consider the matter from that universal base, targeted on the particular risks that cause the most danger.
Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire): As the Secretary of State has recognised the need for widespread change, what plans does he have for
improving education in schools so that at an early age, children are taught the value of marriage and the stable family?
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |