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Mrs. Anne Campbell (Cambridge) (Lab): I should like to draw my right hon. Friend's attention to an excellent briefing from Women's Aid which expresses concern about the courts continuing to enforce contact with estranged parents even in cases where that parent has been convicted of violent offences against the parent with custody. Will the commissioner have any role in such things? Will any change to those provisions be made in the Bill?

Margaret Hodge: The commissioner will certainly have a role in commenting on the Government's proposals to deal with the extremely complex and difficult issues of access and contact between children and their separated parents, but the propositions that we included in the Green Paper that we published just before the summer recess go a long way to try to ameliorate the difficulties that people face. By trying to take more cases out of litigation and introduce earlier conciliation and mediation, we hope to make it easier for children to maintain contact with both their parents. Where mothers may have concerns about domestic violence, we propose to give the courts additional powers, so that they can consider how and whether access and contact should be maintained.

Tim Loughton: In response to the question from the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr.
 
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Willis), will the Minister confirm whether she intends to overturn new clause 2, which was proposed in the upper House with cross-party support?

Margaret Hodge: I confirm that I intend to propose amendments that would return us to the position that applied before the amendments were endorsed by the upper House.

The other unresolved issue concerns the commissioner's role in relation to non-devolved issues. I am aware of the Welsh Affairs Committee report, and I have been involved in much work on this issue over the past year. It must be right that the new commissioner should report to this Parliament on non-devolved issues. However, there has never been any question of the Bill overriding the existing powers of the other commissioners. Our amendments in Committee will make it even clearer that we want to provide an additional direct route of influence in reporting to Parliament on the issues that affect children across the whole UK. On a day-to-day basis, we want children in other parts of the UK to be clear about the process. I believe that that can best be achieved by the commissioners working together, and we will legislate to remove any unnecessary barriers that stop that happening.

The Bill will make a big difference to the lives of children and young people in Wales. Nearly a third of the Bill is specifically given over to that purpose. I have worked with my counterparts in Government and in the National Assembly to ensure that the Bill provides what the Welsh Assembly needs for everyone in Wales to continue to improve and achieve better outcomes for children in their unique context. In particular, the Bill will take an important step by transferring to the Assembly responsibility for the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service in Wales. That is a significant increase in the devolution of children's services and reflects the absolute dedication that exists in the Assembly Government to providing the best possible support to their children and young people.

Hywel Williams: I am most grateful to the Minister for giving way a second time. As a matter of curiosity, will she tell the House what the commissioner will be called? Will he or she be the English commissioner, the English/Wales commissioner, the Wales/English commissioner, or perhaps the UK commissioner present in England, but not in Wales? I am sure that hon. Members would like to hear.

Margaret Hodge: If the hon. Gentleman is seeking to suggest that the commissioner's title will create confusion, I am sure that he and I can have discourse in Committee to ensure that that does not take place; it is not our intention, and we will certainly listen to common sense on that argument.

Julie Morgan (Cardiff, North) (Lab): I congratulate my right hon. Friend on introducing the children's commissioner. I think that the whole House is pleased about that. Will there be one point of contact in Wales for all children in Wales to go to, whatever issue is raised?

Margaret Hodge: I know that many hon. Members think that that is how the commissioner should work,
 
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but I hope that my hon. Friend will agree that the best practical way to ensure that children in Wales are not confused is for the commissioners to agree how they should operate through a memorandum of understanding or another mechanism. All hon. Members agree, as will be reflected in this debate and elsewhere, that we do not want Welsh children to be confused, but the way in which that happens in practice should be devolved to the commissioners themselves.

Mr. Andrew Turner: Will the Minister tell me something about the appointment process and those who will be consulted? We know that the Secretary of State will appoint the independent commissioner, but Megan Thomas, the youth MP for Isle of Wight, has asked me why the children's commissioner cannot be elected by children.

Margaret Hodge: I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman would like a postal ballot to be used for that election. We clearly want to engage and involve children and young people in the appointment, so the board is being established as a mechanism for doing that; I have made several statements on that. I doubt that an election would be the best way of involving children and young people, but I do not think that there is a difference of principle between the hon. Gentleman and me. If the children's commissioner is to be a powerful voice working on behalf of children, she or he will need the support of children themselves, so we need to find appropriate ways of achieving such support.

Mr. Simon Thomas (Ceredigion) (PC): I listened to the Minister's reply to the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) and thought that she was making a point against elections. The Children's Commissioner for Wales was interviewed for his job by children, so would that not be the best way to take the process forward in England?

Margaret Hodge: The Children's Commissioner for Wales was interviewed by not only children, but other people. We are considering the mechanisms that were used in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and elsewhere to determine the most positive way in which we can engage children and young people in the process.

I have already said that we want professionals to work better together. That is why we are creating directors of children's services, introducing an integrated inspection of children's services in every local authority area and enabling professionals to pool resources and budgets—that is all in the Bill. However, we want to go further. We want to reduce the bureaucratic burden on local authorities and stimulate better integrated planning and delivery of children's services. We will bring together planning arrangements, including education plans, into a single children and young people's plan to achieve that. I will table an amendment to that effect in Committee and we will review the need for a statutory plan after the first new plans have been prepared.

Over the summer, some people argued that we should place legal duties on both schools and general practitioners to co-operate with other services, but I believe that that would be unnecessary and bureaucratic. GPs work under contract to primary care trusts and PCTs will be covered by appropriate duties.
 
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They will, no doubt, wish to use the contracts to bring GPs on board. There are those who fear that some schools will want to opt out of their responsibilities for all children, including the most vulnerable, but I think that such fears are unfounded. Higher educational achievement and the wider concept of well-being go hand in hand with achieving better outcomes for children.

Tim Loughton: We are also worried about the accountability of GPs, people with other health functions and schools. How will what the Minister said apply to independent medical practitioners and independent schools, for example?

Margaret Hodge: In both instances, it is not just through legal requirements that we will ensure the engagement of other professionals and institutions in children's well-being. As a result of the outcomes that we have set out, the inspection regime and other mechanisms including training and the common core skills that we expect all professionals to hold, we will ensure that all professionals and institutions will play their part in promoting the well-being and educational achievement of children and young people.

Jonathan Shaw: In 2000, the Department for Education and Skills and the Department of Health published "The Education of Children and Young People in Public Care", which proposed that all schools should have a designated teacher responsible for children in public care. How does the Minister reconcile that guidance with the report produced by the social exclusion unit in 2003, which said that the success of the designated teacher scheme was mixed or variable? Some schools are proactive and operate the scheme, but others do not. We should draw a line under current arrangements and say that all schools need to promote children's welfare by having a designated teacher—there should not be any that are separate from the scheme.

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