---

Margaret Hodge: By drawing attention to that issue my hon. Friend has shown that trying to provide a universal prescription for dealing with difficult problems through legislation or regulation does not achieve the objective of better outcomes for children. I genuinely believe that getting the integrated inspection framework right, setting the outcomes appropriately, stimulating a new style of leadership that promotes multi-agency working and providing training and education for professionals so that they can achieve common core skills are at the root of transforming the culture and will make inclusion and educational achievement the twin pillars of the Department for Education and Skills.

Mr. Willis: How will it be possible to inspect against the background of a non-statutory or non-existent framework?

Margaret Hodge: In the current negotiations on Ofsted's new inspection framework we aim to ensure that the five outcomes in the Bill are a key area for inspection of the way in which education and other
 
13 Sept 2004 : Column 1009
 
services are delivered to children in school. As that work progresses, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be comforted that we will achieve our common objective.

Mrs. Annette L. Brooke (Mid-Dorset and North Poole) (LD): How frequent will inspections be? If they take place every four years, it will take a long time to pick up any problems.

Margaret Hodge: I hope that the hon. Lady agrees that we do not want to make the burden of inspection unnecessarily heavy and bureaucratic in cases where we know that services for children are well delivered. Our review of Ofsted's new phase of inspection will put greater emphasis on more frequent inspection in cases where children's services or educational services in schools are not as good as they should be and less inspection in schools that are performing well in the delivery of traditional educational services and the wider services incorporated in the Bill. The principle of inspection in inverse proportion to success is employed and it has underpinned much of the work that we have done since coming to power in 1997.

When we talk about planning arrangements and legal duties, it is easy to give the impression that achieving better outcomes for children is all about statutory services. Far from it—some of the most innovative and effective practice can be found in the voluntary and community sector. The voluntary sector has often shown both how we can deliver better, joined-up services that work and how we can shift to a more effective preventive set of interventions. Most of us have seen evidence of that in our constituencies, for example, in projects funded by the children's fund. We want to build on that.

The Bill represents a strong vote of confidence in local government, but it is vital that we also create a framework and environment in which voluntary and community organisations can be at the heart of partnership working, so we are removing the barriers to the sector's greater involvement in service delivery. We want to ensure that the sector is fully involved in the planning and commissioning of services. We are developing with the sector a strategy for what we need to do at the centre to make things work both at national and at local level, and we are considering how we can support effective engagement at local level, build the sector's capacity in every local authority area and create better funding arrangements and communication processes.

I have emphasised our desire to shift to prevention, but we also want to legislate to strengthen the way in which we protect children. We aim to create a duty on relevant professionals to safeguard children so that we learn the lessons of the countless tragedies and implement Lord Laming's recommendations. We want to create statutory local safeguarding children boards, so that people really do work together and produce appropriate practical solutions to safeguard children from harm. We want to strengthen the private fostering notification scheme, which is why we have said that we will create a statutory registration scheme, without further legislation, if the voluntary route fails better to protect that especially vulnerable group of children.
 
13 Sept 2004 : Column 1010
 

We need to provide professionals with appropriate tools and support to work more effectively across agencies. We cannot legislate for culture change, but we can legislate to put the right support in place. That is why we are working, for example, on a common assessment framework to stop children and families having to tell and retell their story to every professional they meet; and why, drawing on what we have learned from our trailblazer authorities, clause 9 will enable us to put in place information databases—not as an end in themselves, but as a means and an effective tool to enable professionals better to work together. Time and again, I have seen reports on child deaths in which someone says, "If only I'd known others were working with the child, I'd have done things differently." We want to make things easier, although I accept that striking the right balance between the right to privacy and the rights of a child to be protected and safeguarded is a complex matter.

Miss Kirkbride: I think that I just heard the Minister say that the Government are still not minded to create a statutory duty to register private fostering arrangements, but remain willing to go down the voluntary route. What degree of success or lack thereof will she use to judge that approach? Surely it would be more straightforward simply to create a duty to register such an arrangement. In that way, we could monitor whether those involved are fit and proper persons to act as parents.

Margaret Hodge: Some make that argument, but we believe that we have to give a final push to the voluntary approach. Where we get local authorities to engage seriously in the effort, there is a massive increase in registration. If we adopt the other approach, we might create new ways whereby people slip through the net. In the Victoria Climbié tragedy, her aunt purported to be her mother; in such a context it is difficult to tell how anyone would have revealed anything that would have brought the child to the authorities' attention and put her name on a private fostering registration scheme, thus enabling action to be taken to ensure her safety in the home. Such issues are not easy to deal with. We fear that we will drive people underground if we do not use a voluntary approach.

Mr. Dawson: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the system of registering child minders has corrected a markedly similar situation, in which all sorts of abuses were going on? The registration scheme has been widely accepted and upheld with almost no problems. What is the difference? What is the difficulty with private fostering?

Margaret Hodge: I have to say that even having a statutory registration scheme for child minding still has not brought into the open all the illegal child minding that continues to exist. That is one of our concerns, but there are other issues, which I hope we will discuss in Committee. We always have to balance the need to safeguard children against the desire to over-regulate. We have to think about the difference in the regulatory framework for private fostering and for other carers. There are complex issues around that, such as who is covered by the scheme and whether, for example, young
 
13 Sept 2004 : Column 1011
 
people who come here aged 13 to 16 to go to a language school for a long period should be covered by a private fostering scheme. Those are not easy issues, and I hope that we can tease some of them out in Committee so that there is a greater understanding of what we are doing.

Peter Bottomley (Worthing, West) (Con): The Minister is right to say that Committee discussion will be worth while, and the whole House will be able to be involved in trying to decide whether the balance has been struck appropriately when we come back on Report. There is no ideology behind this question; it is a straightforward point about practicality. How, and how soon, do the Government plan to notice the reduction in avoidable disadvantage, distress and handicap that is supposed to follow from the Bill, and how do they intend to monitor the improvement in well-being, wealth and welfare of children? Or will there just be action and no real measurement?

Margaret Hodge: Absolutely not. We want clear measurement of progress as we develop our reform agenda. The targets that we have set ourselves in Government were published alongside the comprehensive spending review in the summer and, together with the targets that we are currently negotiating in the public service agreement with local government and the relationship that we are developing with the voluntary and community sector, will enable us to start to flesh out in a real and practical way measures of improvement on which we hope to measure our success in pursuing our reform.

Clause 9 will enable us to put in place information databases, not as an end in itself, but as a tool to enable professionals to work together. Striking the balance between the right to privacy and the right of a child to be protected is complex. We have said—I again give the House this assurance—that we will consult widely. We listened to concerns expressed in the House of Lords and amended the Bill to show clearly what information will be collected and that case details will not feature on databases. Our purpose is to make sure that children access all the services to which they are entitled and that professionals are put in touch with each other at an early stage.

We all know that the most important people in children's lives are their parents. All our understanding confirms that parenting in the home is more important than anything else in influencing a child's outcomes. We are working to develop much better support for parents in that most difficult task of bringing up their children. Our efforts may be derided by some as nannying, but I challenge that. Parents want support, particularly at key transitions in their children's lives, such as when they come home from hospital or when they first go to nursery, and so on into the teenage years and beyond. However, I do not believe that it would be right to interfere and to criminalise parents for smacking, which is why we shall continue to resist a free vote on any amendment that would create a new offence.

---