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Hywel Williams (Caernarfon) (PC): My party welcomes large parts of the Bill, certainly the parts relating to Wales. We join in the universal welcome for the proposals for CAFCASS—the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service—in Wales. I know from discussions with its officers of the difficulties it has experienced. It has taken a long time to extract decisions from the centre, and there have been problems with gaining access to the management structure at the appropriate level. The changes that the Government have seen fit to introduce can only be for the good of Welsh children. Would that power had been allocated as appropriately in other parts of the Bill—but more of that later.
I want to register my party's opposition to clause 49, as amended in the other place, and our commitment to equal protection. We support the "Children are Unbeatable!" campaign, and I want that to be a matter of record. I note that the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths) is no longer present, but I commend the comments he made earlier, and the passion with which he made them. Nevertheless, my party has serious reservations about parts of the Bill.
The proposals for the children's commissioner, for example, give the distinct impression that the arrangements for Wales were tagged on as an afterthought. How could I have reached that conclusion? Let us look at some simple pointers provided by the Government's apparent underlying assumptions. As far as I can see, Wales is mentioned just twice in the Green Paper "Every Child Matters": on page 16, which deals with the proportion of juvenile males cautioned in England and Wales—that handy little phrase which almost seems like a single word—and on page 95, where Wales appears in a long list along with England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. That is an even longer word!
"accountability and integration—locally, regionally and nationally".
Those levels are not defined. Perhaps the authors found them unproblematic, and they might well have been as far as they were concerned, but the real world is rather more complicated. This is not a nationalist whinge; I just want the Government to realise that circumstances are different in Wales as well as in Northern Ireland and Scotland. This is, in fact, a plea for the Government, in the specific case of the children's commissioner, to recognise that good government now requires a recognition of the reality of devolution.
I am inevitably reminded of the infamous entry in the index of a 19th-century encyclopaedia: "For Wales see England". Every example in the Green Paper is from England. That would be fine if the Green Paper were only about arrangements in England, which apparently it is not. England has no monopoly in good practice, and of course I do not allege that the Green Paper's authors thought as much. That simple fact merely confirms my underlying supposition that this was a Green Paper for England, and that Wales was tagged on some time later.
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There is, in fact, a reference to the establishment of a children's commissioner on page 79, but there is no reference to that person's being a commissioner for England, for the United Kingdom or for England and Wales. I asked the Minister about that earlier. As far as I can see, the remit is assumed to be for England. If that is so, the Green Paper is faulty, given that much of what it contains applies to Wales. If the whole document is supposed to be about England and Wales, it is faulty because it gives only part of the story—the English part.
As I said earlier, the Minister could clear a little of the fog by answering a simple question: what will the commissioner's title be? I think we are sophisticated enough to realise that names mean something. Establishing the commissioner's title will give a clear indication of what the commissioner is likely to do—the commissioner in England, that is. Are we to have a commissioner for England, for England and Wales, or for England and Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland? I should be happy to give way to the Minister if she wishes to intervene, as she has had some time to think about the answer to my question. Unfortunately, it appears that she does not wish to intervene. This is not a frivolous point: for many people, the answer would define what the commissioner is about.
The Welsh Affairs Committee conducted two investigations, into the empowerment of children and young people in Wales and the powers of the Children's Commissioner for Wales. Both reached conclusions that were the opposite of those reached by the Government. I was fortunate enough to join the Committee as a new member earlier this year, and had an enlightening opportunity to join questioning of the Minister about the Bill and, in particular, the powers of the commissioner. Both questions and answers were very revealing, and can be read in a document snappily entitled "The Powers of the Children's Commissioner for Wales". It makes interesting reading.
The Minister told us that 4,000 had been consulted, but was unable to assure us that they included children from Wales. She did say that she thought some members of the Funky Dragon, the Welsh young people's parliament, might have been involved when the United Kingdom Youth Parliament was consulted.
In that regard, she rather makes my point for me. Pre-devolution, it might have seemed quite reasonable for the few representatives from Wales on UK bodies to represent the views of people from Wales. However, we are now beyond that—as a result of the Government, of devolution and of the setting up of the Welsh Assembly.
The proper way to consult people in Wales is to talk to them and to the appropriate Welsh body. In this case, it seems that the Government either failed to consult properly, or assumed that others were consulting on their behalf. The Minister mentioned the Welsh Assembly, but rightly or wrongly it is she, not Mr. Rhodri Morgan, who is facing me across the Floor of the House today. Whatever the situation, even if the Welsh Assembly did not consult, it is the Minister's and her Department's responsibility to consult properly. The position eventually arrived at—of not much consultation going on, apparently—is unacceptable when framing legislation for Welsh children. The resulting controversy surrounding the commissioner rather confirms that. He is not controversial himself, and nor are any of these proposals particularly
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controversial; indeed, I am sure that we could get over the problems. Rather, we are unhappy with the lack of consultation.
We now know that the Children's Commissioner for Wales, the children's commissioner for Scotland and the children's commissioner for Northern Ireland were not consulted. Inevitably and perhaps unfairly, some people draw the conclusion that in terms of consultation, "every child matters" but some matter more than others. In fact, I asked the Minister seven times and in various ways about consultation with children in Wales. Eventually, I got an answer by letter. She said:
"The Committee questioned me about whether children in Wales had been consulted on the proposals in the Green Paper . . . I answered that, to the best of my knowledge, my Department had not carried out any specific consultation exercises with children in Wales, and I can now confirm that this is indeed the case."
I turn to another vexed question—a problem that taxes us in Wales frequently: the role of the Welsh language. It is a vexed question not because of anything to do with the Welsh language itself, but because the Government have given it insufficient consideration, if any at all. Here, there is a contrast with the establishment of the Children's Commissioner for Wales. He runs a proper bilingual service—it was planned from the very first day, rather than after extensive consultation with the Welsh Language Board—and there is proper financing. Provision of service by the commissioner in Welsh or in English is not a problem, therefore; it is entirely normal. As such, it is a model of good language planning.
By contrast, so far as I can tell from the Minister's replies, the Government's proposals ignore the Welsh language at this point, and they seem certain to mire this much-needed Bill in language controversy. At a fundamental level, the reality of bilingualism in Wales requires the planning of services with both languages in mind. Sadly, in her evidence to the Committee the Minister did not give the impression that she has any real idea of the amount of Welsh spoken in Wales. Certainly in my constituency, the language is central to Welsh life, both public and private. Nor, regrettably, was any understanding shown of the Welsh language's legal status under Welsh language legislation of 1983 when compared with other UK languages—apart, of course, from English. The Minister helpfully referred to the 160 languages spoken in her constituency; the Welsh language's status is somewhat different.
We know that the Government intend that the new commissioner will not be involved in individual cases, although I cannot see why, given that the Welsh commissioner does so very successfully and gleans a great deal of information from such contacts. I shall give the House a simple example of the potential pitfalls of working in a bilingual context with only a monolingual mindset. One child says, "Mae fy llysdad yn fy ngharu", and another says, "Mae fy llysdad yn fy nhuro". There is a difference of only two letters, and the two sentences sound similar. However, one child is saying, "My stepfather loves me", and the other is saying, "My stepfather beats me." I have long experience of trying to persuade English colleagues that they cannot work successfully with children in Wales without an appreciation of such subtleties. Indeed, sometimes such differences are not so subtle.
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To the dismay of the Committee, the Minister also revealed that she had no contact with the Welsh Language Board, had not considered the Welsh language scheme and had no information on how a service—bilingual or otherwise—for Welsh children would be provided in practice. Significantly, she was also wholly unclear as to the financial resources available to provide a proper bilingual service.
Unfortunately, there is a widespread perception that the English commissioner will not be as independent as the Children's Commissioner for Wales, the children's commissioner for Scotland or the children's commissioner for Northern Ireland. There is an argument to be had on this issue—I do not want to enter into it—but that is the perception. Of course, the Children's Commissioner for Wales can inquire into cases as he sees fit. He has produced work on this issue, and he can require an answer from the Government within three months. He has the power to review proposed legislation and policy for the National Assembly, to consider its potential effects on children, and so on. As I said, the current commissioner has made the direct involvement of children and young people pivotal to the work of his office.
The European network of ombudsmen for children is also concerned about the establishment of a commissioner in England and Wales. They have said that the powers are the weakest available to any existing commissioner in the European network, and they have suggested that the new commissioner would be unable to join the network because of the lack of autonomy. That is not rabble-rousing Opposition politicians speaking; it is the European network of ombudsmen for children. I am afraid that, rightly or wrongly, this perception will hamper the commissioner's work, whether he is working in England or in Wales.
This is not an argument about devolution, as the Minister alleged in her evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee. Indeed, the Prime Minister said as much to me in a letter, after I wrote to him expressing my concern that this worthwhile legislation was likely to be mired in controversy. If I may, I shall briefly quote the words of Earl Howe in the other place:
"it is odd, to put it at its kindest, that the lines of accountability that the Government are proposing for these two commissioners appear to put legalistic considerations ahead of common sense. Children do not understand devolved and non-devolved powers; they want a simple system. They need to be able to access a single commissioner whom they regard as the champion of their interests across the board."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 4 May 2004; Vol. 660, c. 1066.]
I put it more bluntly—or, as some might have said, more obscurely—when I said that if the Children's Commissioner for Wales acted as a proxy for the English children's commissioner, he would then be wearing two hats, each of which would be invisible to the children he was facing, and that his position would be undermined if the lack of independence was real.
I could cite several other quotes from the other place. For example, Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, Lord Thomas of Gresford and Lord Prys-Davis made similar comments. I will end, however, with a quote from a Scottish colleague, Professor Marshall, who said in giving evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee:
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"I think it is a question of whether you fit the children into devolution or whether you fit the government structures to meet the needs of children."
As an ex-social worker, I, too, start with the client—the children. That is where the emphasis should be: we should fit the system to the way that children see the world and how they organise their lives. We do not need two commissioners for children in Wales: we need one with proper powers. We already have a Comisiynydd Plant Cymru—and he is quite good enough for me.
8.30 pm
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