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Jonathan Shaw: What about the Adoption and Children Bill?

Tim Loughton: Well, we are talking about the Children Bill, and that is all I need say on the subject of
 
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smacking, other than to express my amused fascination at the way in which the Government propose to repeat their practice of allowing a free vote only on their favoured option—or, more bizarrely still, at the Liberal Democrats, whose policy is to criminalise smacking by parents but whose peers voted for another Liberal Democrat amendment on a so-called middle way.

Peter Bottomley: As Labour Members know, I supported the free vote option, but said to its organisers that I would not necessarily vote for the criminalising of smacking. When I said that I did not want ordinary parents criminalised for doing reasonably ordinary things, I was told that the Director of Public Prosecutions would ensure that there would not be any prosecutions. It therefore seems slightly odd to be pushing to incorporate such a measure in the Bill.

Tim Loughton: My hon. Friend may well think that, but I could not possibly comment. We shall invite contributions on the matter on Report, but I repeat my hope that it will not overwhelm the rest of the Bill.

I should like to outline some of the specific changes that we want to make to the Bill. We support the establishment of a children's commissioner for England, and will therefore defend the new clause 2—we have now made it clear that we shall have to—which was passed in the upper House and which rightly seeks to give the commissioner proper teeth, rather than creating the feeble poodle that the Government originally sought to create and now seek to recreate.

As I have said, the jury will be out on the creation of the children's commissioners until they have shown that they can have a real, positive effect on quality outcomes, but if we are going to the trouble of setting up such an office, for goodness' sake let us give its holder the proper powers to do the job properly, in an open and accountable way and independently of the Government. Under the original wording of clause 2, that would not have happened.

The Children's Society has stated that the changes made in the Lords mean that we are now

One young respondent to the consultation exercise asked:

and one Member of the upper House voiced a similar concern that the commissioner should not be "castrated". We shall therefore defend new clause 2, which I guess will take up quite a lot of the early deliberations in Committee.

We also want to clarify the relationship between England's commissioner and those in the rest of the United Kingdom. We want to establish a reporting mechanism to Parliament that is independent of the Secretary of State and has clear procedures for producing meaningful responses by the Government and other relevant parties. We shall also table amendments to clarify who is responsible for children
 
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normally resident in England but who receive education or medical treatment in, say, Wales—or vice versa. Cross-border responsibilities are far from clear in the Bill and, as Lord Laming made clear, it is imperative that the question of where those responsibilities lie and where the buck stops should be quite open.

In relation to part 2 of the Bill, under the heading "Co-operation to improve well-being", we are concerned about the particular problems of children in care outside the responsible authority's area. The Minister has not touched on that point, and it did not really come up in the other place. Many hon. Members will be aware of the problems being caused by some errant young people being placed in small private children's homes far from their natural homes.

Nationally, there has been an explosion of private children's homes. In 2002–03, 1,172 such homes were registered, according to the Government's figures. By the following year, that figure had leapt by two thirds, to 1,956. They are mostly small, containing six or fewer people—which allows them to get round the planning regulations—and many offer a good service. In my constituency, in Worthing, however, the chief inspector of police has told me that earlier this year, 23 per cent. of one month's crime figures were down to a handful of youths from private children's homes in our town.

For example, one child in care in one of those private children's homes was supposedly responsible, over a period of between three and four years, for 66 calls to Sussex police regarding his activities, 38 recorded calls to Worthing police directly, had 12 recorded arrests in the town, was recorded as a missing person seven times, and since 2000, when he was aged 11—he is now aged 15—has committed one offence against the person, four offences against property, three theft and kindred offences, two public disorder offences, one offence relating to police and courts, and three miscellaneous offences. He also has a number of impending prosecutions. I fully acknowledge that that is probably at the upper end of the extremities in this regard, but it is very worrying.

West Sussex calculates—it has no way of doing so officially, because there is no duty to notify when placing people in the care of another authority—that about 200 children are placed by other authorities in our county. That one individual to whom I referred has been a mini crime wave on his own. That is not to suggest that the vast majority of those children will go down that slippery slope, but some of them are doing so.

The problem—which we need to see addressed—is the responsibility of the placing authority being properly recognised. It should be the responsibility of the placing authority, however distant it may be, to take responsibility for such children. In our case, however, which has been repeated up and down the country, it has fallen in the lap of the local police, the local magistrates court and the local social services, even though they have no duty of care or responsibility over that child. There is a problem with the line of accountability and where the buck stops—the issues that are dealt with in Lord Laming's report. The Commission for Social Care Inspection has at last been made aware of that problem, and we will table amendments urging the Government to adopt legislation to address it and to tackle the issue urgently, as it threatens to get out of hand in certain places.
 
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Under arrangements to safeguard and promote welfare, we want greater clarification on involving schools, as has been mentioned and presaged by the Minister for Children, as they are not named explicitly in the Bill. We would query the absence of explicit reference to schools and educational facilities in clauses 7 and 8. As the Local Government Association has said:

We will also address, as the Minister again foretold, the problem with including practitioners of health authorities—because we do not feel that it is sufficient to say that a legal obligation is not the be-all and end-all, as she has said—and other health care professionals outside of normal trusts, given the increasing amount of health care provided by autonomous trusts and bodies. We also believe that the immigration service at ports of entry should sign up to that responsibility, particularly when dealing with the increasing problems of unaccompanied child asylum seekers and child trafficking, about which we are all concerned.

The subject of databases will be one of the most problematic areas in the Bill. Unlike the Liberal Democrats, we believe that databases are necessary if the reforms are to be meaningful, but they are contentious and fraught with problems, and too much detail is still missing from the Bill. We welcome improvements instigated by my noble Friend Earl Howe in the upper House about standard criteria for how long information can be shared, and making sure that the information is accurate, for example. Currently, however, the Government are still leaving too much to as yet undetermined regulations.

The Minister answered a query earlier in relation to whether there will be a national database to include all 11 million-plus children; whether it will be in place on day one, or how they will come to be included, we do not know. I fear, however, that she confuses appearing on a database or list with being able to monitor and address properly those children's needs. Again, I fear that it smacks—not a good word to use—of the tick-box approach.       

Who will have access to the databases, national or local? Will there be common thresholds for all relevant professionals to trigger a reference to a database? What on earth does the woolly reference to "any cause for concern" in clause 9(4)(g) mean, and what basis has it in law? That question has been raised by a great many bodies.

When will the Government be in a position to give fuller details of how the databases will work, given that many of the trailblazers are only part of the way through their assessments? Many, indeed, are in the middle of applying for second-wave funding, including mine in West Sussex. We are being asked, potentially, to write the Government a blank cheque on a highly significant issue within the next few weeks. Barnardo's has queried that, saying:

It also says:
 
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As I have said, there are particular problems involving the role of GPs and other health professionals contributing to databases in the light of confidentiality considerations. The Minister is well aware of that. The British Medical Association has said:

Let alone all the other pressures on GPs, there are serious question marks over how they will fit into the whole mechanism.

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