---

Miss Kirkbride: One thing that was missing from the Minister's remarks about providing better services for children was the fact that they are often let down because social workers are undervalued and change jobs so frequently that there is no continuity of service among the departments in which they work. If vulnerable children are not readily seen by the same people, the simple fact is that no matter what institutions and mechanisms are put in place, they will not be caught by the Bill. I shall be interested to see what my hon. Friends and the Minister say about that in Committee.

Tim Loughton: My hon. Friend makes a good point. That is an aspect that we will certainly address and to which I shall turn later in my speech. We have many very good social workers. Although they are often the first people to have the finger of blame pointed at them, many do a fine job in very difficult circumstances. Because many vacancies have to be covered by agency staff, there is not the continuity of care towards cases for which one would wish. In every case I sat in on when I spent the morning in a family court in London recently, I found that the social worker involved was not the social worker who had initiated the case. Interestingly, every single one was Australian. Although exceedingly impressive, they will not be over here for long enough to see many of those cases through. That is part of the problem. We can change the structure and create new committees and titles, but that will not make a difference where it matters unless we have the people on the ground.

The Conservatives take this issue very seriously. That is why over the past few years we have devoted official Opposition debating time to the subject of vulnerable children; have organised children's summits on the subject at Westminster; and have tackled related subjects such as the abuse of the internet by child abusers and paedophiles and the inadequate arrangements for promoting equal parenting as between resident and non-resident parents in the interests of their children. We are continuing to engage in wide-ranging dialogues and policy formulation with a large number of children's organisations.

Before highlighting some of our concerns about what is in the Bill—or what remains outside it—I shall set out the guiding principles that we will apply in proposing our amendments. First, we echo the sentiments of the noble Baroness Ashton when she assured the upper House on Second Reading that the Government would be

"prescriptive only where we believe that this is necessary to ensure accountability or to protect children's welfare."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 30 March 2004; Vol. 659, c. 1209.]

It is surely right that, where possible, local authorities that are already doing good work in improving child protection should be able to continue to do so according to local structures and local circumstances. Local authorities are already bogged down by ill-thought-out
 
13 Sept 2004 : Column 1016
 
and usually ill-financed Government diktats and do not need more of the same just for the sake of it. We welcome Government assurances that partnership working is at the heart of their reforms and hope that that will be borne out in practice. I give a particularly warm welcome to the Government's success in encouraging participation in this exercise by children and young people, who gave an impressive number of responses to the consultation.

Our second guiding principle in assessing the Bill will be the basis on which it adds to quality outcomes. We can appoint as many children's commissioners or children's tsars as we can shake a stick at—apparently the Liberal Democrats want a children's commissioner for every region of England—and set up as many new committees and structures as there are bureaucrats to organise the paperwork for them, but in the end the Bill must be about protecting as many children as possible from abuse, and ultimately death, and promoting the life chances of as many vulnerable children as possible.

This is not about ticking boxes to register the number of new officials who are given titles or the number of committees that they set up or meetings that they hold.

Mr. Dawson: Would the hon. Gentleman include children in custody in the category of vulnerable children that he mentioned? If so, what would he do to prevent them from dying there?

Tim Loughton: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, for once without having a go at me, which is welcome. I am sure that that will come later. We shall discuss children in prison and in the penal system and table amendments on the subject. Recent developments in court cases have left a deal of confusion as between the responsibility of social services and that of the prison system for the welfare of children in custody. The Bill provides an opportunity for greater clarification, for which I am sure the hon. Gentleman will push in Committee should he be involved in those proceedings.

My third point is that none of what we are considering can be achieved unless there are skilled professionals on the ground to knock on doors, investigate abuse and work with others to root it out. I fear that that is currently far from the case. Social worker vacancies remain worryingly high, especially in London and the south-east of England. Recruitment for social services staff has not been nearly as high a priority as that for doctors and nurses. The recruitment campaign launched by the then Secretary of State for Health—who miraculously reappeared in a Cabinet position last week—was not followed through, and we have yet to perceive any great results from it.

A Unison survey of social services departments revealed a heavy reliance on agency staff and a high staff turnover, with 60 per cent. of departments saying that even if all the vacant posts were filled there would still not be enough social workers to manage the current case loads—before the additional work and responsibilities for which the Bill provides are introduced.

Have some local authorities taken notice of events in the past few years? Last week, we read the worrying stories about Haringey, where it was discovered that 18 people employed by the social services department had criminal records. When the records appeared in
 
13 Sept 2004 : Column 1017
 
Criminal Records Bureau checks, they were ignored in some cases and the people were still employed by Haringey social services department. Evidence has now come to light showing that one of those people was a convicted paedophile, who was given a job working with children with learning difficulties.

Despite all the hot air and the supposed extra regulation from Government, the abuses continue. More worryingly, some authorities appear not to take them seriously. I hope the Minister will examine in particular the case I have mentioned, and will respond urgently to the parliamentary questions that I have tabled.

We are also concerned that, although the Bill deals primarily with introducing new procedures and partnership working to protect vulnerable children, the media coverage—to wake the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) up—has focused entirely on the emotive subject of smacking, which this afternoon has threatened to lengthen considerably the Minister's opening speech. The Bill did not begin as a measure to legislate against smacking, and I hope that it will not be hijacked in this House as it was in their lordships' House. There are too many important issues at stake in the original measure. We shall doubtless be subject to a tight timetable—I hope that the Bill will not be derailed altogether by the latest posturing about fox hunting—and we should not allow valuable time to be diverted to debating smacking, rather than the wider issues of child abuse. I trust that hon. Members will adhere to that in Committee and during our doubtless limited time on Report.

Mr. Hinchliffe: I think the hon. Gentleman was deliberately provoking me to intervene and I shall not disappoint him. He must be aware that at least one child a week in this country dies at the hands of parents or carers. That is at least 80 a year. It is a disgraceful figure and I do not apologise for concentrating on an issue—physical punishment—which, having been involved in child protection, I believe relates directly to the number of child deaths in this country.

Tim Loughton: The hon. Gentleman and I agree on the solutions that need to be introduced in the Bill to attack child abuse. My point is that, although smacking may be part of that problem, it is an issue that threatens to overwhelm the whole of the Bill, and that we could lose valuable time which we desperately need to discuss some of the other details that need to be improved. The hon. Gentleman knows that, from the fact that there were virtually no media reports on the Children Bill until the amendments on smacking were discussed in the House of Lords. It would be unfortunate if that were to happen, as it would undermine much of the good work that needs to be done on the rest of the Bill. I need not talk about this issue at great length, because the Conservative party will quite rightly allow my colleagues a free vote on it, as we did in their lordships' House.

---