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Mr. Laws: Has it been possible for the Financial Secretary to make any assessment of the number of cases in which the Official Solicitor would act in loco parentis?
Ruth Kelly: It is extremely difficult to produce an accurate assessment of the numbers involved, but I think that we are talking of about 2,000 cases rather than the total number of children in care. The Official Solicitor is very clear about the appropriateness of undertaking this role. He already has responsibility for looking after the funds of children in different categories and the provisions fit neatly into that current role.
To answer some of the questions raised by the hon. Members for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) and for Tatton, the responsibilities of the Official Solicitor will include: monitoring the performance and suitability of the CTF account; moving the account to a different provider or a different type of account, if appropriate; keeping the child informed of any movements made; engaging with the child, as necessary; and relinquishing the management role either when someone appropriate with parental responsibility for the child becomes available or when the child reaches the age of 16. The hon. Member for Tatton asked about the position applicable to a child who may be mentally incapacitated
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at the age of 16, but I urge him to wait for the mental incapacity Bill—shortly to be debated in the House—which will answer his question.
Mr. Laws: I must say that, the longer the Financial Secretary explains the job, the more difficult and undesirable it sounds. What guidance has she given to the Official Solicitor about how active he should be in managing these accounts in circumstances where markets are very volatile? Is it envisaged that the Official Solicitor is likely to be involved in managing these accounts, or would he or she do so only under crisis conditions?
Ruth Kelly: I am afraid that I cannot answer the hon. Gentleman's question in full at this stage. We are currently involved in detailed negotiations with the Official Solicitor regarding the precise criteria that he will have to consider in monitoring the performance and deciding whether to switch providers for CTF accounts. I should point out that the Inland Revenue would open a child in care's account and at that point the Official Solicitor would take over the management of it. That is when the Official Solicitor would have to decide whether to continue with the existing provider or switch to a different one. As I am sure the hon. Gentleman would agree, monitoring the performance of the fund is a vital role.
Mr. Weir: The Financial Secretary has talked a great deal about the Official Solicitor, but can she tell us what discussions she has had with the accountant of court? Although that seems to be Scotland's nearest equivalent to the Official Solicitor, I know from experience that the accountant of court does not normally undertake this sort of work. Has the Financial Secretary discussed these issues with the accountant of court's department?
Ruth Kelly: I can certainly assure the hon. Gentleman that we have had discussions on similar lines with the accountant of court in Scotland. Indeed, the Scottish Executive recommended the accountant of court as the office with the closest relationship to the Official Solicitor in England. However, those discussions are still ongoing. Given that the regulations are currently being drawn up, I can undertake that, when they are published shortly after the full recommendations are set out to the House—probably towards the end of this month or perhaps the beginning of June—I will provide a full commentary on the Official Solicitor's role in these matters. That will describe the circumstances under which the Official Solicitor would take advice and deal with the sort of concerns mentioned by the hon. Member for Yeovil.
I urge the House to support the amendment. It is important that looked-after children in care, where there is no one with parental responsibility, have an individual to take care of and manage their account and ensure that it is operated in the best interests of the individual child.
Lords amendment agreed to.
Lords amendment No. 2 agreed to.
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Clause 4
Lords amendment: No. 3.
Ruth Kelly: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to consider Lords amendments Nos. 4 to 6 and Nos. 8 to 11.
Ruth Kelly: These are purely technical and minor drafting amendments. Unless hon. Members want me to explain them further, I am happy just to present them and ask the House to agree to them.
Lords amendment agreed to.
Lords amendments Nos. 4 to 6 agreed to.
Clause 10
Lords amendment: No. 7.
Mr. George Osborne: I beg to move amendment (a) thereto.
Lords amendment No. 7 is rather curious and a little troubling. It gives the Government the power to make payments to children in custody. Those children would, as I understand it, otherwise be excluded because no one is in receipt of child benefit on their behalf.
The amendment is curious for two reasons. First, it amends clause 10, which deals with further payments rather than initial payments. As I understand it, in some rare cases, children of 14, 15 or 16 may have a child trust fund opened for them for the first time. Such children may be in custody and, under the current legislation, I am unsure whether they would receive an initial contribution or whether they could have a CTF. The Government may want to correct that omission later.
Secondly, the amendment is curious because, in all the consultation documents and in Committee debates, the Government said that they were planning to make further payments into CTF accounts only when the child reaches the age of seven.
Even in the Home Secretary's Britain there are not many newborn babies in custody. I do not imagine that there are any seven-year olds there either. On the face of it, therefore, the amendment is pointless, as it is about paying money to children aged seven who are in custody, even though there are no such children. However, I suppose that the Government want to have the option of making further payments to children aged over 12, which is when children can be in custody.
2.30 pm
I hope that the Financial Secretary will say whether there are plans to make a further payment into CTFs at the age of 14 or 16. In the initial consultation document, it was envisaged that payments would be made at three different ages. I cannot remember whether those ages were five, 11 and 16 or five, 11 and 14, but the proposal
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was something along those lines. Perhaps the Government are reverting to their original plan. I suspect that all will depend on the electoral timetable prevailing at the time the children reach the relevant ages.
However, amendment (a) addresses a more serious point. The Home Secretary has stoked up an endless debate about whether more children should be in custody. Children who commit what most of us would regard as fairly serious crimes are not put in prison, but are given community service orders and so on. By definition, children who are in prison have committed very serious crimes, and the House needs to pause and consider whether it is really a good idea to give them an unconditional cash windfall at some future date. What sort of message will that send to such children about punishment and reward in our society, and about what society thinks of their behaviour?
I do not say that such children should be excluded totally from receiving payments. I also recognise that the Financial Secretary might contend that my amendment could lead to some rough justice. For example, a child who is not in prison on his or her 16th birthday might have been in prison for three years before that, whereas a child might happen to be in prison for three or four days just when his or her 16th birthday comes around. That child would therefore lose out. I agree that that would not be fair, and so amendment (a) is conditional in two respects.
First, the amendment would merely give the Government a conditional power to introduce regulations. That means that they could choose to take up the power, or not. Secondly, it simply suggests that, before money is paid to a child in custody, there needs to be a report from the person who is legally responsible for the child—the prison governor, or someone of that ilk—that attests to the child's good conduct over the previous year.
The amendment would mean that bad behaviour was not rewarded, and that the Government would not be sending out mixed messages. The prison authorities could use the provision as an incentive to encourage good conduct, and as a way of steering troubled children on to a more responsible path.
That seems a matter of common sense. The House should consider the alternative. A child who commits a crime that is serious enough to cause him or her to be sent to prison might be so poorly behaved in custody that the person legally responsible is unable to attest to his or her good conduct. That child might also have had various privileges withdrawn in custody, or been subject to disciplinary action. However, he or she will suddenly get a letter from the Inland Revenue saying, "Congratulations on reaching the age of 16, here's a cheque for £100."
That would undermine the work of the prison authorities, and make life much more difficult for them. In some ways, such a letter could cut across what they are trying to achieve, and I can imagine prison governors getting extremely frustrated. Just when a governor wants to insist on a certain form of behaviour from a child in custody, that would be undermined by the Inland Revenue unknowingly sending a cheque. The child would pick up the cheque, wave it in the governor's
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face and say, "I've just got a cheque for £100. Obviously, some people in the Government do not think that I am behaving badly."
Amendment (a) is a perfectly reasonable and conditional provision. It would give the Government the option to take regulatory powers, but would not insist on that. It merely says that children in custody should receive a Government handout from the taxpayer only if they behave well.
I think that that is a pretty new Labour idea. It fits in with what the Home Secretary is doing—with parenting orders, child curfews and so on—to encourage good behaviour in children. Moreover, I emphasise that the amendment refers to children who have ended up in custody.
I hope that the Financial Secretary will accept the amendment. If not, I shall press it to a Division.
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