Examination of Witness (Questions 60-79)
THURSDAY 27 MARCH 2003
LORD LAMING
Mr Burns
60. Given this golden opportunity, do you think
the Government would then listen if it did not like the question?
(Lord Laming) Maybe I am a simple soul, but if the
Government sets out a self-audit study to all of these agencies
I assume they want honest answers back and they intend to take
the matter forward.
Andy Burnham
61. The ADSS also argued that child protection
registers should remain in place until the national database you
recommend is established. They also saw a continued role for Area
Child Protection Committees, and this should be linked into some
of the new local government structures which we have referred
to before. What is your response to that?
(Lord Laming) I would believe in child protection
registers if I thought they did any good, but I think they have
the potential to do harm. People who place a child's name on the
register have the right to assume that that child is receiving
services and I think there is no guarantee that a child will receive
services. I have said what I think about Area Child Protection
Committees. I do not want to single out ADSS. I hope that all
of these bodies who have to react quite quickly to reports of
this kind and say what they think, in the light of cooler reflection,
they may think there is a little more in it than they had perhaps
suggested.
62. Can I bring you on to the national database
suggestion. It is one I am personally very attracted to. You say
in your Report, "likely to be countered by concerns about
personal privacy expressed by those who oppose the use of national
identity cards". I strongly support national identity cards
and strongly support a database of this kind. I will quickly give
you an example of why I do. Last summer two asylum seekers, two
young girls, living in my constituency went missing at exactly
the same time the two girls were missing in Solent, yet there
was very, very little media coverage of this. What emerged was
the fact that they were not known at all to any of the agencies.
They were not known to the education department and were not known
to other agencies who should have known about them. That brings
me on to comments that you make about children slinking through
the net. It is a terrible phrase, but it happens. Children are
lost in the system. How feasible do you think it is to have such
a database? How personally committed to it are you? Was it a bit
of an add-on recommendation or is it something that you attach
personal weight to? How would it work in relation to something
like an asylum seeker who may come in illegally?
(Lord Laming) First of all, let me just say about
the database. I am committed to it. I believe that we live in
a much, much more mobile society now than in the past and I believe
that family structures are much more fluid than in the past. Children
move from place to place. We do not have a system in place whereby
it is possible to track children at all. In fact, in one of the
seminars we were told that children are discovered by the education
system as being not registered in a school much more frequently
than any of us would realise. If a parent or a carer does not
have the thought to tell the existing school the address to which
they are moving there is no way in which the receiving authority
actually knows about this child. Children can go on undiscovered.
This is not about asylum seekers; these are children who are resident
in our society who drop out of the system. It is one of these
things where it is no use holding up our hands in horror and asking
how it can happen in our society that children can be lost in
the way that Mr Burnham has given a very vivid illustration and
are not being prepared to do it. It is entirely feasible technologically
in that it is not a huge database compared with many databases
in this country. I suspect that much more is known in a whole
series of penny packages about children and their families. If
we put all those systems together at the present time it would
ever by recorded by a national database. The fact is there is
a phenomenal amount of information known about us all in penny
package systems across society. I think we either say that we
should not be squeamish about this and we should get on and do
it, or we should be squeamish about it. It is a matter of opinion.
I happen to think that we should not be squeamish about it and
we should do it.
63. We already have a National Health Service
number at birth. We have child benefit details that have been
administered separately by another database. The National Insurance
number is another database. My view is that there are some people—mainly
the civil liberties lobby—who overplay some of the dangers
of such systems and that stops some of the public benefits that
bringing them together would actually bring. Do you have sympathy
with that?
(Lord Laming) I certainly believe that there is a
very, very strong case to create a coherent database rather than
have all this fragmentation that goes on at the present time.
About asylum seekers, clearly if a child is not known and has
no contact with any service, then nobody can do it. Once the child
has made a contact with a service—whether is it education,
a GP, taken to Accident and Emergency, known to social services,
a housing department, it does not matter what it is—and
is identified, then it becomes part of the database system.
Chairman
64. Would you have a requirement for that child
to be entered at that point?
(Lord Laming) Yes, exactly.
Andy Burnham
65. You say in your Report that people who exploit
the vulnerability of children often try to keep them out of sight.
Going back to the database, there are systems around now, iris
recognition systems, where you can actually find someone's identity
very, very simply and quickly even if they do not speak English
or whatever. I have seen examples of children picked up from the
street in a very confused state. Would you go that far?
(Lord Laming) I am very conscious that I have some
colleagues that work with me who are sitting behind me and if
I give the impression that I understand anything about technology
I have to live with them afterwards. It would be quite wrong of
me to give the impression that I can even operate my mobile phone
satisfactorily. What I do think, however, is that in this day
and age we need to recognise that technologically there are no
impediments.
66. The benefits in terms of safety to children,
eliminating risks, is far greater than the perceived risks in
your view.
(Lord Laming) Yes.
Julia Drown
67. On the database issue, for me it is not
a squeamishness issue; it is an issue about practicalities and
bureaucracy. You have said there are no limits in the technology
aspect. Virtually every computer system, all the big government
computer systems, the major companies who make computer systems,
they set out the great goals that they can do this, that and the
other, then actually it is not quite so simple. Quite often it
is the administrative input into it that is the problem that slows
it down and makes sure that the output is not so good. My concern
over it is, does having a child register for everyone involve
so much work that we then do not concentrate on the children who
most need it. For me it has the reflections of what you were pointing
to earlier. We have all these volumes of guidance which then means
that the workers who are there at the front line cannot possibly
absorb all that. We would deliver more for children if we took
the responsibility and just gave them two sides of A4 to follow.
There is a reflection for me that we are trying to do too much
by checking every child. I would like to have your reaction to
that, but also on your comment about the limitations of the child
protection register. I recognise that that does not mean they
get services when they should. Is there not also something in
it that when you are putting a child on a child protection register
for at least some of them it is actually getting across to their
parents that we, as a community, are significantly concerned about
your child and your child and you need help? Is it not the case
with at least some of those people that it is actually that step
that makes them realise and not turn a blind eye to what they
know very well is happening to their child? For some people that
actually rescues those children. I would like your reaction on
those points.
(Lord Laming) I agree with the thrust of your comments
and that is why I suggested that the Government should establish
a feasibility study. You have to balance usefulness against cost.
The last thing I want is more bureaucracy; I hope I have conveyed
that. The fact is that the data registration system seems to work
extraordinarily well in this country and it is larger than the
number of children that we have. The number of people who have
access to the system would be much greater. I think there is a
real feasibility study that needs to be considered. It is concerning
that international hauliers can track their lorries across Europe
by satellite and yet we cannot manage data within a hospital.
We cannot manage data between two hospitals that are a handful
of miles apart. These are really serious issues that need to be
addressed. I do not think the answer is more bureaucracy, but
I am suggesting there should be a feasibility study about its
utility, whether it would aid the thing or get in the way. On
your second question about child protection registers, I think
that is a very interesting point you have made. I think I would
be very unhappy if practice in being absolutely honest and upfront
with a carer or a parent depended on our using the excuse of a
child protection registration. I believe that workers in all of
the different disciplines must be straightforward and open with
the carers about the well-being of a child. I would like to think
that practice in this country has moved to a point where devices
like a child protection register are not—in my view—misused
in that way.
Dr Taylor
68. Can I go back a bit to a general point about
the recommendations. Many of them are absolutely basic, common
sense things that should be going on at the moment. As I was coming
down this week a porter on my station was sweeping up cigarette
ends and he made this extraordinary comment: "It is easy
to change policies, it is very difficult to change people".
These simple recommendations need people to change what they are
doing. They know what they should be doing. How are your recommendations
going to force that to happen? How can we help to force that to
happen?
(Lord Laming) I have said throughout that I find it
very dispiriting and in some ways embarrassing to make some of
the recommendations that I have made. However, the fact that I
had to make those recommendations just shows how far we are from
acceptable practice at the present time. I think that although
people might have some reservations about the bigger recommendations
that I have made in the Report, at the end of the day you have
to have a system in place which actually is monitoring, checking
and is ensuring that things are being delivered properly. For
something like case recording, it is not rocket science to make
sure the case recording is good. It is not difficult to make sure
things are properly monitored, but it is absolutely crucial in
good practice and especially when there is deliberate harm to
children.
69. Did you get any idea within the hospitals
that you were dealing with that there was any meaningful audit?
(Lord Laming) No.
Chairman
70. Can I come back to an area that I though
Julia was touching on a moment or two ago. You will forgive me
but I was so taken aback by a comment from Andy on a kind of North
Korean ID system and we were having a dialogue about the implications
of it and I missed part of what Julie was asking about. You spoke
earlier about labels being tied round people's necks and I was
interested in that Victoria was judged to be a child in need rather
than a child in need of protection in terms of the way this issue
was handled. One of the points that has concerned me for many
years about the 1989 Act—and I entirely concur with your
views on it—was that the practical application has concentrated
on where there is a statutory justification for some form of intervention
and less on the preventive aspects that were clearly assumed to
be a key part of that measure. What are your views on that point?
What you are talking about presumably is that the law as it stands
is fine, but it is the way we are applying it.
(Lord Laming) Absolutely. How can we have a system
where we describe this as being a child in need where the child
is actually admitted to hospital because of suspected deliberate
harm, where the police take the child under police protection
without the child having been seen, without the carer being told
about it, and then discharge the protection without the child
ever being seen. I think this is the nonsense about trying to
put a label around a child's neck before the child has ever been
seen or thinking that the Children Act is only about the tip of
the iceberg kind of child protection issues. The fact is that
the Children Act should apply to children with needs; that is
what it was intended for. You, Chairman, are one of the people
who played a big part in that. I think there was enough evidence
to this inquiry which was of the most alarming nature to demonstrate
to you, I hope, that practice has drifted away from what you and
your colleagues intended at the time. The preventive work and
support for the families has become such a low priority that it
is does not feature in many of the business plans that we saw
from the authorities.
71. Can I go back to a point that I raised with
you earlier on, which is the issue of reasonable chastisement
question. I was interested in Richard's porter and his comments
about it being easy to change policies but it is more difficult
to change people. You mentioned about getting the values in place.
The issue of how we value children does not relate to how we treat
children within law and what we can do to children that I could
not do to my colleagues round the table (physical assaults). I
was interested that the reasonable chastisement elements of this
particular case did not seem to merit a great deal of mention
within the Report. It seems to me from reading the Report and
what happened to Victoria that discipline and punishment was a
major context for the abuse that took place. Carl Manning said
that Victoria's abuse began with little smacks. The great aunt
told the inquiry that there was nothing wrong with smacking. My
personal experience has been going to court on a number of occasions
with child abuse cases and losing cases on a defence of reasonable
chastisement. I know many social workers who share my view, that
as long as we have the reasonable chastisement defence social
workers—to some extent in child protection—have one
arm tied behind their back when they remove a child that has been
injured. Do you not see this as an issue?
(Lord Laming) Of course I see it as an issue, Chairman.
I thought that in the way in which the Report was written, particularly
in the introduction, I had conveyed to you and everybody else
a rather shocking story of the way in which a child can be abused
and it go on undetected and uncorrected.
72. You have, yes. My concern is the conclusions
that you have reached.
(Lord Laming) The conclusions are, I thought, all
about achieving good outcomes for children and about improving
the welfare of children. I thought that anybody reading this Report
would also recognise something that I thought I had conveyed very
strongly, which is that we seem to take assaults on adults much
more seriously than we take assaults on children. Is that not
extraordinary?
73. Unless I have misunderstood the Report or
missed something, have you made a specific recommendation in terms
of amending the law to protect children in this respect?
(Lord Laming) I have made a number of recommendations
to protect children. I have not used the phrase "reasonable
chastisement" which I take to be a phrase which is subject
to a great deal of interpretation by a number of people. Reading
the Report I would have thought that people would come to the
conclusion that violence towards children should be taken as seriously—or
more seriously—than violence towards adults. I make a claim
that if you actually look at the way in which the police in particular
conducted the murder inquiry—which was of a huge professional
standard—where they succeeded in getting a successful outcome
with convictions and life sentences, and you contrast that with
the way in which an assault on a child was not investigated or
looked at, then it seems to me that with the Report there are
a number of key messages about assaults on children.
74. Can I put it to you specifically that your
predecessor Bill Utting was on the record in his report People
Like Us as making as specific point about the need to remove
the reasonable chastisement defence in terms of protecting children
from being injured by their parents or carers. Do you feel it
would be helpful to children and to people working in child protection
for that issue to be addressed directly by the Government in a
child protection strategy?
(Lord Laming) I am here to talk about what is in the
Report as you will understand and not to express personal views.
We received the evidence and it was written up in the way it came
to us. Whether it be about what people term "reasonable chastisement"
or whether it be things like private fostering or whatever it
may be, the fact is that the Report has to be confined to the
evidence. I can do no more than hope that people will read the
Report intelligently—as I am sure you do—and that
you will see that there are some key messages in there.
Julia Drown
75. I want to get onto the issue of racism in
particular which featured in Victoria's case. Obviously they are
sensitive issues, but you did suggest in your Report that cultural
assumptions had been made about Victoria and her situation and
that might have diverted attention from the signs of neglect and
ill-treatment. Can you tell us a bit more about conclusions you
reached on this?
(Lord Laming) I take racism very seriously indeed,
but not confined between people of the same colour of the skin.
Indeed, I have worked in places where people of the same colour
but happened to come from different backgrounds have actually
been at loggerheads with each other. I am sure you have all had
experiences of that. It would have been tempting in the inquiry
to say that because Victoria had a black skin, her two murderers
had black skins and many of the staff who dealt with her had black
skins, that actually racism played no part. Indeed, we had no
evidence of overt racism to the inquiry. What we did get—and
I think this is a very important part of being effective in a
diverse society—was staff making assumptions that because
people originated from a particular culture that behaviour could
be described as being culturally determined when in fact they
knew nothing about that culture and had never visited the country.
For example, when Victoria always jumped to attention in front
of Marie-Therese Kouao but did not do so in front of nurses or
doctors or social workers, it was assumed by some that that was
because that was the way she had been brought up on the Ivory
Coast. The reality was quite different. I believe we all need
to develop a greater degree of humility about making assumptions
and generalisations about other cultures. Racism is much more
than the kind of unpleasant comments and behaviour with which
we are familiar; it is about understanding how services need to
operate in a diverse and multi-cultural society.
76. You did mention, in answer to a question,
private fostering. There are 10,000 West African children in private
foster care and they remain completely unnoticed by social services.
Some of them, as in Victoria's case, are extremely vulnerable.
Sir William Utting did look at that. Do you agree that that is
a loophole in the law that needs to be closed in terms of making
sure that those private foster carers register.
(Lord Laming) All of the agencies that dealt with
Victoria assumed that Kouao was her mother so the issue of private
fostering did not arise. Had they actually made what your Committee
and other people would think were basic enquiries, they might
have discovered something quite different. As I indicated earlier
on, committees have to base their reports on the evidence they
receive and not on the personal judgments or preferences of the
chair or anybody else. What I did, however, feel able to do in
the Report was to draw the Government's attention to what appears
to be a fundamental contradiction that in the day care of children—they
go home at night—it is highly regulated, but you can leave
a child for weeks and months without it being as well regulated.
I felt able to say that the Government should address what looks
like a serious anomaly. At an earlier meeting some weeks ago the
Minister said that the Report had done sufficient to ensure that
the Government will be addressing these matters. I welcome that.
77. Can I pick up an issue about cultural attitudes
which is on natural parents as against others. You said then that
they thought the great-aunt was Victoria's mother but they did
know it was a boyfriend and not a natural father.
(Lord Laming) Yes.
78. We picked up twelve of the major cases that
had happened since 1945 and I could not help noticing that one
child was killed by her mother (but that mother had asked for
her children to be taken into care). Then there was one last year,
Ainlee Walker, who was killed by her parents. There were a couple
by the father. Then all the others were fosters, great-aunt, boyfriends,
step-father, one step-mother with a blind eye from the father
and so on. Eight out of twelve were at the hands of people who
were not their natural parents. Is there something else going
on there or something that we need to learn as a society from
that about the support that is needed to children or to the parents
of children when they are not their natural children? Is that
another failing that we are making as a society?
(Lord Laming) My view is that services have to change
to keep pace with the changing needs in society and the way in
which family structures are created and recreated is a reality,
whatever people think about the desirability or not is irrelevant.
The fact is that it is a reality. Therefore, services have to
adjust to meet that change in needs. I believe that there is evidence
in the Report to show that it was very difficult for people to
gain access to a service unless they came with a child protection
label round their neck. That means that you are cutting off a
huge range of social need out there for children and families
who are just not getting the service.
79. That is going back to David's preventative
point.
(Lord Laming) Yes. I believe there needs to be a refocusing
of these services—dedicated outcomes for children—hence
the recommendations that I have made which I think are a vehicle
to achieve that.
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