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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 40-iv House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE EDUCATION AND SKILLS COMMITTEE
Monday 10 January 2005 MR PETER NEWELL AND MS MARY MARSH PROFESSOR KATHLEEN MARSHALL, MR PETER CLARKE and MR NIGEL WILLIAMS Evidence heard in Public Questions 199 - 271
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Education and Skills Committee on Monday 10 January 2005 Members present Mr Barry Sheerman, in the Chair Valerie Davey Paul Holmes Helen Jones Mr Kerry Pollard Jonathan Shaw Mr Andrew Turner ________________ Memoranda submitted by Peter Newell and NSPCC
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Peter Newell, Children's Rights Alliance for England and Adviser, European Network of Ombudspeople for Children, and Ms Mary Marsh, Chief Executive, NSPCC, examined. Q199 Chairman: Can I welcome Peter Newell and Mary Marsh to our deliberations and say what a pleasure it is to have people with their expertise giving us their time to appear before the committee. Everyone knows I say that with my tongue in my cheek because otherwise we would have sent the Serjeant-at-Arms to get you. You will know about our deliberations on Every Child Matters and what difference that is going to make in the way we handle these very important issues and the way in which the new system is going to work compared to what we have all been used to with individual, separate responsibilities across a number of departments. This is a very big responsibility focused on and centred in our Department of Education and Skills and we take it very seriously. We have had a considerable amount of evidence already but if today you can assist us we would be very grateful. You are the experts. Can I ask you, Mr Newell and Ms Marsh, if there is anything you would like to say to open up this session in terms of how you view the current changes? Ms Marsh: Speaking for the NSPCC, where I have been for the last four and a half years, although what is relevant for this committee to know is that I used to be in education; I was a headteacher for ten years in two comprehensive schools before I went to the NSPCC, the starting point is that clearly the whole agenda of Every Child Matters is one that we welcome very much. There are many issues that have come through in the legislation, and indeed in the Change for Children programme that will follow, which fit very closely to issues that we have been concerned about for some time, including, obviously, the issue of the Children's Commissioner which you have a particular focus on today. There are obviously some things which are there potentially. It is what is going to happen in the operational reality which we still have some concerns about because there are areas where some things have not been sufficiently specified yet and of course there is quite a lot of the legislation which is open to us to understand fully by the regulation and guidance. We have been concerned throughout about the lack of robustness of the duty to co-operate, which I believe is an issue that you have been concerned with yourselves, and we are concerned about the proposed inspectorate framework of the Education Bill, about which we know a little bit more now than we did when you received the written submission from the NSPCC. We do not see that as being anything like sufficient to bring schools into this co-operative framework for delivery that is going to be so important. However, we certainly welcome the role of the Children's Commissioner. I am sure there will be further comments to make in a minute about where our concerns lie there, but we are very pleased that there is the opportunity to develop a much more robust strategy around safeguarding children with the setting up of the local Safeguarding Children Boards. Mr Newell: Briefly on the Commissioner, what I want to highlight is the bewilderment felt by a huge range of organisations (which all, of course, hugely welcome the establishment of the commissioner) in the way the promise to children of a powerful independent commissioner was spoilt during the passage of the Bill. What we have ended up with in comparative terms is an extremely weak commissioner compared with those not just across the UK but also across Europe. I act as adviser to the European Network of Ombudspeople for Children in about 21 countries now. It is bewilderment because obviously commissioners have no power to overturn the decisions of government. Their role is primarily to advise and if necessary to embarrass and push. Given that, they need to have as much authority as possible and to be seen to have that authority, and so we are thoroughly disappointed with the legislation. The other issue which I hope your committee will look at is that of "reasonable punishment", section 58 of the Act, and the disappointment again of a huge range of organisations who believe that children should have exactly the same protection as adults from being hit. We are again disappointed that the Act only limits and does not completely remove this very old defence of "reasonable punishment". Q200 Chairman: Thank you for that. I have a particular interest in that as a very young MP I knew Brian Jackson who came from Huddersfield and wrote extensively on the need for a Minister for Children and a Commission for Children. Can I therefore frame my first question in the sense that if Brian was still alive, and sadly he is not, what would he think of the proposals for an English commissioner? Would he be disappointed? Would he be very pleased that at last, after all these years of campaigning, we were going to have a new structure of legislation and a new commissioner? How do you think he would rate what we have got? Ms Marsh: Clearly all of us are pleased that there will be a Commissioner for Children in England. It is very odd that the role that we have is one that is not clearly based on a framework of safeguarding and promoting the rights and interests of children because that is the nature of such a role already elsewhere in the UK, and indeed elsewhere in Europe and in the world. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child would expect us to be more explicit about that, so that is clearly a matter of regret and I think is a matter of some puzzlement for those, as you suggest, who have watched this emerge over some time. The lack of clear independence seems decidedly odd because the nature of a Children's Commissioner is somebody who is going to have explicitly both the authority and the power to speak on behalf of children and challenge and intervene on their behalf. Also, one of the concerns would be about their credibility with children and young people themselves because they have to be able to deliver, have they not, if their role is going to be meaningful? I think the confusion (and I am sure you will go into further detail later) on the aspects of a UK-wide role that the English Commissioner has as opposed to the fellow commissioners in the other countries would be a considerable cause for concern and further puzzlement. It is good that the commissioner is there, and obviously these things can evolve and develop, but we have significant concern that the commissioner will not be able to follow through as we would want in the framework that is currently available. Q201 Chairman: Peter, we had Lord Laming give the opening evidence for this inquiry and he seemed to be pretty enthusiastic about and happy with not only the proposals but also the Act. I would have thought that if anyone was going to be a reasonable judge of the success of what the government has put forward it would be Lord Laming. Why do you differ so strongly from him? Mr Newell: I have looked at what exists in terms of the sorts of champions for children across the UK and across Europe. In fact, the Laming report's recommendation for a commissioner I thought showed some degree of misunderstanding of the role. It implied it was to some extent a governmental rather than a completely independent post if you look at the actual wording of his recommendation. In a way that confusion has persisted into the way the minister defended the right to direct the commissioner to undertake inquiries and she did not seem to be able to see that the concept of independence is not really compatible with ministers being able to direct a huge proportion potentially of the commissioner's time and energy onto a particular formal inquiry, and we know that formal inquiries are huge affairs that take an awful lot of time. There seemed to be a different conception of what a commissioner is and yet the original promise to children was for an independent champion. I have looked at the legislation establishing these offices, most recently in Malta, Mauritius and Croatia, and in each case there is a completely explicit general function of promoting and safeguarding the rights of children and there is no mention of any power of ministers to direct. In fact, there is a very strong statement that no-one can interfere with the role of the ombudsman or commissioner. Q202 Mr Pollard: I took part in the debate on the Children Act, particularly on the "no smacking" bit, and supported David Hinchliffe's amendment. I was lucky enough to be able to get an intervention, no more than that, but I stood up and said that as a father of seven children I believed smacking was outdated and should be stopped immediately. What sort of message are we sending out to children and to the world at large that we can still allow "reasonable chastisement", that is, smacking children? After all, we have moved on from poking boys up chimneys and other things like that. It is now considered totally illegal to chastise your wife or servants, as we could do some years ago, quite rightly too, and yet we still leave children as the ones who we can chastise. Ms Marsh: Clearly the NSPCC's position on this as part of the "Children are unbeatable!" Alliance from the very beginning of the Alliance has been very clearly that children should have equal protection in law from assault. That is not to say that we are interested in having a punitive framework where parents are criminalised or anything of that sort, which is indeed exactly the case that happens between adults, in relation to this particular offence anyway. It has to be a pretty serious assault before criminal consequences follow. It is entirely wrong for children and young people to have in this one peculiar example a case where the rules that govern adult behaviour, and indeed the way adults behave, is entirely contradictory to the way in which we expect children themselves to behave. In every other aspect of the upbringing and education of children we talk about them learning from adult example. It is extreme and extraordinary that in this particular case there is such a robust defence of the right to allow adults to behave in an entirely different way from that which we would want and expect children to do. In any case, the most important thing of all is that the evidence is overwhelming that using physical force in this way to discipline children simply does not work. It is not the best way to establish a firm disciplinary relationship with a child which is effective and lasting into adolescence so that you have a framework of dialogue with them that allows discipline, which is clearly very important, and boundaries and consequences and all of that but where the use of physical force, striking a child, is wrong. That does not mean that physical restraint is wrong and what I would say about the legislation is that we now have something which is very confusing to parents about where the boundaries really are and not the protection to parents about the use of physical restraint which is what the amendment we proposed would have provided. Chairman: I think we all have a pretty strong opinion on that one. Can we move on from that? We have only got an hour and we need to rattle through. Mr Pollard: I would like Peter Newell to comment. Chairman: This is a question that could take the whole committee all afternoon. Mr Pollard: Chairman, I feel very strongly about this, as I have tried to maintain, and I feel most put out. Chairman: Perhaps you would ask a quick question to Peter Newell and then we will move on. Q203 Mr Pollard: I want him to comment on what I said before. Mr Newell: It is absolutely about children's status in our society. It is about how we regard children, in that if we do not give them this absolutely fundamental protection of their human dignity and physical integrity it is suggesting that they do not have the same status and rights as us. I think it is totally in line with this government's objectives for children. It is an absolute anomaly to stick with this idea that we can with children exceptionally define acceptable violence. I think it is completely absurd and it clearly conflicts also with our human rights obligations as a number of human rights treaty bodies have told the UK. Q204 Mr Pollard: Some organisations have raised concerns about whether the new proposals will adequately protect children in the most vulnerable groups, such as refugees. Do you share these concerns? Ms Marsh: Certainly we have concerns about that. The particular arrangements for refugee children to be detained are of concern to us and to many other children's organisations. We have sought to assist with that by providing child protection advice to the Home Office on the arrangements for such places but that does not protect them in law at all. Q205 Mr Pollard: What was the nature of that advice? Ms Marsh: It was about the way in which they should manage the centres where children were being detained to try and ensure that the proper procedures were put in place to protect children but they are out of the normal system of protection of children while they are in such places. Q206 Mr Pollard: Do you think that the Every Child Matters programme of reforms strikes the right balance between universal and targeted services? In other words, are we trying to do too much? Ms Marsh: What the NSPCC is particularly concerned about is that while we strongly support the move towards preventative services, early intervention and early identification, ensuring that we pick problems up at an early stage, and that being done through universal services being a right and proper thing to do, there is a danger that in the period while we are establishing this different way of operating the amount of resource that is available may mean that there is a problem in that the position for the hard end of child protection may get a bit lost in the diversion of energies towards prevention. It is a bit like one of those things where you need to invest at the beginning in order in the long term to balance things so that you are dealing with them early so you will not get so much of the problems at the hard end, but in the interim period clearly you are going to have both. It is being absolutely sure that we do not lose sight of the serious part of child protection while we are developing the new intervention that is important. It is a very difficult balance. The principle is right but I think implementing it is going to be very challenging and needs very clear monitoring locally. That is why having some clear local standards with all the regulation that is going to emerge around the local Safeguarding Children Boards and the way they are going to operate and how local safeguarding policy and practice is going to be put into place and monitored is going to be really important. It will not work unless all the organisations working with children do themselves actively safeguard their own practice. Nobody can depend on anybody else. Q207 Mr Pollard: Does that include voluntary organisations? Ms Marsh: Absolutely, which is, with our training and consultancy, what NSPCC does a lot of work to assist many people with at the moment. That is an absolute fundamental. We are concerned that that is consistent and that kind of safeguarding regulation needs to be something which is not open to too much local flexibility. We need to know that across the whole framework there are some very consistent standards and regulations which apply. Mr Newell: I feel that none of us will ever know how successful the child protection system is unless we have baseline detailed interview research with parents and children about all forms of violent victimisation of children. That is really how one should measure the success of a child protection system, not through conviction rates or reporting rates. It has to be about what is really happening to children. There has been research early in the 1990s but there has been no detailed interview research since then. I think they are very important things that government should start to do in order that they can measure whether they are protecting children effectively or not. Q208 Chairman: So it is the government that has to carry that out? Mr Newell: I think the government have the obligation so they should at least commission it. I am not saying they have to carry it out but they should be paying for it. Q209 Jonathan Shaw: I would like to ask Mary Marsh if I may what lessons the NSPCC have drawn from the Climbié inquiry. There are two sections to your organisation. You are a campaigning organisation; you alert parents to the dangers that children encounter, but also you are a service provider; you have contacts with the local authorities. Ms Marsh: Clearly, like all social care organisations we have been through the whole of the recommendations framework of the inquiry and done a rigorous audit across everything that we do. It has been an absolutely right and proper and robust way of being absolutely sure about the safeguarding of our own practice yet again. It is something we have done previously. For us the particular and direct area of challenge was around the way in which records were kept and managed and secured. That has been something that we have paid particular attention to but that has been the case for many other people in social care because it is clearly very evident that not only having the relevant information available in the way but also the oversight and the management and the supervision of the way in which cases are handled is absolutely crucial and was at the heart of what went wrong repeatedly in this particular tragic case. Q210 Jonathan Shaw: I think it was the summer before last when you had a campaign about "stranger danger". Is that correct? Ms Marsh: I think it is a while since we have done one which has been entirely about that. Q211 Jonathan Shaw: It was about three years ago. There have been people who have questioned that type of campaign. Looking at child protection overall, Peter was talking about some research base being clear about what dangers there are for children within our society. Obviously, an organisation such as yours is a very powerful organisation. Parents listen to you. Do you base those sorts of campaigns on research on the number of children getting abducted? I do not think it has changed really, has it? Ms Marsh: We certainly do use research. We conducted the only prevalence study that there is in 1999 to look at the levels of abuse and the only way we were able to get at that was to do one with 18-24 year olds looking back on their childhood. It was a very large study. That prevalence of child maltreatment and abuse has been incredibly important to us and many other people in understanding, at least to some extent, what the reality is of the nature of abuse and where the abuse is happening, albeit that that is probably missing a lot of the early childhood abuse where we know also that there is a lot going on. If you look at the overall area of our campaigning the bulk of the emphasis is on the abuse of children at home. That is what our concern about physical punishment relates to. Child deaths at home have been something we have campaigned about for some considerable time and we repeatedly and endlessly will say that the children are far more at risk of abuse - and it is a minority of children, of course, but a significant minority - at home than anywhere else. That is what the statistics make very clear, that that is predominantly where it happens. Whether it is physical abuse, emotional maltreatment or sexual abuse, usually it is somebody known to a child. A lot of our advice to people about the issue of strangers has been to help parents get that sort of thing into proportion because it is giving advice about the sorts of things you need to do to reassure yourselves. Parents get very over-anxious when these things become high profile and it is helping people understand the sorts of things to look out for without people becoming so paranoid that they do not allow their children to do anything. It is managing the potential for risk appropriately. Q212 Chairman: To conclude on that particular answer, we are conducting an inquiry into out of school education. We have been given similar evidence that a much more dangerous place for a child to be is at home in the family rather than on a school trip or something out of school organised by the school. You would concur with that, would you? Ms Marsh: I am strongly in support of such activity but I understand the difficulty for people organising it nowadays, not least the whole problem about arranging appropriate insurance for a whole range of risks, not just from potential issues of abuse. We are in a situation where people's understanding about the reality of risk in this area is distorted from the truth, as it is in some other areas, and that is why I think it is very important to encourage people to understand how you can take all reasonable steps to make activity safe. That is exactly what the consultancy service at NSPCC sets out to do. It helps organisations audit their practice, put the proper processes in place, understand how you recruit people safely and monitor them when they are working for you, things to look out for and all that sort of thing. That then gives parents more confidence that those safeguards are in place. The fundamental issue is that you can never make life totally risk-free. Sometimes we mislead people by suggesting that that is what we are all trying to do. One of the things which I think is very good for children and young people is outdoor experience. The other thing we do is educate children and young people to manage their own risk and be exposed to situations which are potentially risky but understand how you handle risk in such circumstances. Otherwise, as young adults we are going to have a lot of people who are not capable of looking after themselves or anyone they are responsible for. Q213 Chairman: Can I push Peter on this first bit? Here we have the Victoria Climbié tragedy, then the inquiry, then the recommendations. Do you think that everything that has been created is going to prevent future Victoria Climbié tragedies happening in our society? Mr Newell: No, I do not think it will. There is a sense, obviously, in which nothing will prevent occasional awful things happening in any society, but I think there are a number of deficiencies in the legislation. To me the first thing we need to change is the way children are regarded and thought about in our society. There one of the most symbolic issues is the physical punishment one. Giving children a powerful, independent commissioner is about redressing the lack of power, political and other power, that children have in our society. I think government has made some quite substantial moves towards listening to children more and taking them more seriously but the actual machinery of government has moved a bit backwards. In 2000 there was a great fanfare when they announced a Minister for Children and Young People, the Children and Young People's Unit, a Cabinet Committee on Children's Services, and the Children and Young People's Unit was going to develop an overarching strategy for children which would be rooted in the framework of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Then a year or two ago the Children and Young People's Unit disappeared, the promise of an overarching strategy also disappeared and was replaced in a way by the Green Paper and what has followed. We do have a Minister for Children but she is also the Minister for Families and children have been subsumed into families. In terms of trying to get this specific focus on children in government it is a move backwards. I think to have a Directorate of Children and Families is again blurring the focus on children. Of course, families are of total importance to children and cannot be separated from children, but if you are looking at how to protect children effectively, how to listen to them, how to take them seriously, you do have to have this specific focus and putting them into families means almost everyone in society, so that worries me. Also, but I know less about it, frankly, I am not sure that we have established clear accountability for when things do go wrong in local authorities, which again seems to me to be of vital importance in child safety. Q214 Chairman: Reading between the lines of that reply, are you saying that what we had, the status quo of two years ago, plus a very robust Children's Commissioner, would have been the right sort of balance? Mr Newell: I think we need a Cabinet minister for children. I think we need to have a children and young people's unit which could be still within one of the big departments but would have the power and authority to bring together different departments to try and solve the difficult issues which cannot possibly be solved by one department. It is like juvenile justice, which remains firmly in the Home Office where in many ways it seems to be getting worse rather than better. You cannot solve that just in the Home Office and so you need some way of forcing departments to come together and get inter-sectoral solutions to these difficult issues. Q215 Chairman: Mary, do you agree with most of that? Ms Marsh: Yes. The lack of strong focus at the right level right across government is something which is not necessarily going to come through this The mantra "Every Child Matters" has the potential to become a government-wide strategy and I am sure ministers would argue very strongly that that is what they are trying to do, but it is still very much in pieces in the way in which the youth justice response at the time of the whole original Green Paper was kept entirely separate and had a different tone and pitch to it. That has continued. I am very pleased to see that the Industrial Service Framework for Children, published through the Department of Health, obviously, has very much had "Every Child Matters" as a by-line on the way in which that comes through. I would not say that there is no intent to have a strategy for children but I do not think it is clear or explicit enough yet. With regard to whether this prevents another tragedy like Victoria Climbié - and, sadly, I have to say we can never give that absolute guarantee - what we can all do, and this is everybody with any responsibility of working with and for children, is everything that is within our reasonable power to protect children better, and quite clearly that is what we have not been doing. It makes some of the instances that arose in that particular case far less likely but it never deems it impossible. Of course, there are children who will suffer in that way at the hands of the people who look after them who may well not be known to any of the statutory agencies at all. They ought to be known in school, which is why the support we give to teachers and other adults working in schools in terms of their capacity to identify the potential in the early intervention area is really important and we should not underestimate the investment we need to support them properly in order to be able to do that because it is not what they have been accustomed to doing. I am not saying they would be the ones who would follow it through but they would need to know how to follow it through and get the right support if they did make that early intervention. As I was saying earlier, there are a lot of the elements there with the potential to come together and make a real difference, but it is what actually happens in terms of how they become operational on the ground. While there is a wish to allow a lot of local flexibility in the way in which some of these policies are implemented, I just have a caution about the flexibility being such that we end up with there not being sufficient consistency in these really core critical areas around child protection. Q216 Chairman: What about sharing of information? We all thought, did we not, that sharing of information was absolutely critical to the investigation in the report that Lord Laming produced? Yet, as we have taken evidence, it seems that there are certain key players in children's services who are still unwilling to share information or are only willing to share it on a very restricted basis. Surely that is going right against the grain both of the legislation's intent and whole notion of the full protection of children? Ms Marsh: I agree with you that the sharing of information is absolutely crucial in order to make the system integrate. It is the way in which that information is shared which is critical. The NSPCC has never supported a complex information-sharing system that is technologically driven because I do not think that will work. I think that the difficulties of appropriate information being shared among the right people in such a system would such that it would be a completely wrong distortion of resources to even begin to create such a system. Our view has always been that what you need to have is a way of identifying children, where they are, who is responsible for them and who the key professionals are who are involved with them, so that if anyone else gets involved with the child they can easily establish who they are, and then they can have an opportunity to share information in the usual, proper, professional way but much more effectively than was sometimes done in the past. I know there are big concerns around some of the tight confidentiality boundaries in health, which continue to be of concern to us too, and the lack of a duty to co-operate with GPs in the legislation was another dimension of our concern on that matter. We have done an awful lot of investment in these trailblazing authorities at the moment. Some of them are not yet working as they should and those are only within authorities. In the Victoria Climbié case the problem was the sharing of information between authorities and that to me is the most crucial bit, that we get to work so that the information hubs can pass information between each other as children move. That whole issue of mobility is at the heart of this. Q217 Valerie Davey: I would like to return to the role and responsibilities of the Children's Commissioner for England which you both raised in your initial comments. Which responsibilities do you think you would want to add to or subtract from those now given to the English Commissioner? Mr Newell: In terms of the general function I think the England one should be the same as the other three and pretty well all of those across Europe: to promote and safeguard the rights and interests of children. What the Act says is that the commissioner "will promote awareness of the views and interests of children", which is a perfectly respectable role but it is not a very strong one. It is also actually a duty of government under the UN convention to promote awareness of the rights of children amongst adults and children. It is one of the obligations the UK took on when it ratified the convention, and it is quite right in my view that commissioners should review how governments are fulfilling that task, but I do not see it as the central role for the commissioner. With regard to the complete bar on the commissioner investigating individual cases, there is a peculiarity here because the commissioner is now allowed to initiate or hold an inquiry into an individual child but is not allowed under section 2 of the general function to look at the case of an individual child. That again seems to me to be an unreasonable restriction because clearly what comes to the commissioner's office is going to be a lot of experience from individual children. None of us wants the commissioner to get bogged down completely in dealing with individual cases but we do think that the commissioner should be able within his or her discretion to look at the case of a child and think about whether that is something on which they should base a report or a comment to a minister or whatever. Again, it shows a basic misconception that with that sort of independent watchdog government should not be directing their activities at all. Government should give them a general function and let them get on with it and that is what "independent watchdog" means. Q218 Valerie Davey: In the recommendations which the NSPCC make, the four key areas, it did not include the investigation of individual cases. Would you like to comment on that aspect of it? Should that be a responsibility for the English Commissioner or not? Ms Marsh: I think there is a really serious issue in comparing the different commissioners because of the scale and responsibility of the English Commissioner and the number of children for whom the English Commissioner is responsible compared to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I think the most important thing throughout the legislation, and the NSPCC's position was in this direction, was that the commissioner should be there to ensure that other people are dealing with complaints appropriately and properly. As Peter has just said, none of us wants the commissioner to be overwhelmed by spending lots of time and resource on individual complaints. If you set up the English Commissioner to have a full expectation that they were going to investigate lots and lots of individual complaints you would have regional offices immediately and that is not necessary, but the principle of them being able to go into an individual case so that they can establish whether an individual case has some matters that require inquiry, which then means that this individual case has wider application, is important. It does seem rather odd that there is a hole between finding out about the individual case and being able to get to it. What really matters is that the commissioner is there to drive change in the whole system. Everybody has got to take children seriously; everybody has to have an approach where they can follow through where things are wrong for children. If you fully have a strategy for children, the impact of what government is doing in all sorts of areas, where people stop and think what the impact is of making this legislative change on children, could be very powerful. You have environmental impact statements. A pause for thought with any legislation, "What is the impact of this legislation on children?", could be relevant. We made the point about the involvement of the commissioner in scrutinising what happens in these areas about child protection, and I said earlier that we are concerned about how robust and consistent they are going to be, but we have a particular concern about safeguarding in the secure estate and the degree to which the approach and policies and procedures and scrutiny can happen there as robustly as should be the case. Q219 Valerie Davey: Thank you very much. We will thank the Commissioners for Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland in a moment personally for their contributions already in written form. For the record, you indicate that it is a matter of degree, and certainly the figures we have been given are that for the under-18s in Wales we are talking in round terms about 660,000; in Northern Ireland we are talking about 500,000; in Scotland we are talking about 1.2 million, and in England we are talking about 10.5 million. Ms Marsh: Exactly. Q220 Valerie Davey: The disparity in numbers is enormous and that does have to be, as you readily acknowledged, put into context for what we are asking. The other aspect of it though that you have brought out very clearly is the independence from government and it is that area I would like to explore. We went to Norway and we investigated there how a commissioner has been in post for longer and is independent and yet our fellow MPs were saying that that has caused some difficulty because the argument goes on then between government and commissioner. MPs who have cases brought to them are not quite sure which way they ought to take that case and perhaps we ought to have looked at Norway's experience, as some of our ministers I think have, and reflected on 20 years of work in Norway. I do not see why you should take our responsibilities too seriously, but how has it worked in terms of that independence and what does it do for children as opposed to being for organisations and academics a better principled position? Mr Newell: Norway is one of only two countries where the office has been evaluated. This movement has now been going on for long enough to need more evaluation in different countries. The evaluation in Norway happened after the second commissioner and was wholly positive in that members of the government, the public and children all felt that this had become an extremely valuable part of the scenery and had achieved specific outcomes (to use the favourite word) for children over the period since 1981 when it was set up. The evaluation also recommended that the office's law should be changed to connect it directly with the convention, which then happened, which was useful. The only problem perhaps in Norway has been the conflict between handling individual cases and promoting the overall issues that affect groups of children. Certainly the commissioner there has felt at times a bit overwhelmed by the numbers of individual queries and inquiries coming from children but the evaluation recommended that the office should focus on being a voice for all children on bigger issues rather than on individual cases and that has happened more and more. Q221 Valerie Davey: But you are talking about a country the total population of which is smaller than the number of children we are talking about our English Commissioner being responsible for. Mr Newell: Yes, but clearly issues change too. If we are not talking about a commissioner, which I am certainly not, who should deal with individual cases, then I do not think the problems of scale are so big. I feel that the commissioner should not get involved in individual cases but should from the beginning look at what means children have to have their concerns taken up, whether they are at home, in schools, in juvenile justice institutions and so on. That is an absolutely vital role and clearly there is an awful lot that needs doing, but not that the commissioner should take on those cases. Q222 Valerie Davey: If I can come back to Mary Marsh, the listening to children aspect in the English Commissioner's role I feel is possibly stronger than in others and however effective the United Nations rights and the European rights of the child are, they are a piece of paper as opposed to what our Commissioner for England is being asked to do, which is to continue to listen to children. Is there not something there which is perhaps more valuable in really still listening to children? Ms Marsh: There is absolutely no doubt at all that we are entirely supportive of the emphasis on listening to children and their voice being heard and being sure that people are hearing their concerns and are indeed acting on them. However, there is a context in which that listening happens to be where there is a robust and clear understanding of their rights being promoted and safeguarded. It is exactly what we are doing everywhere else in relation to human rights legislation and indeed the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. It seems entirely inconsistent with that whole wider agenda that the rights are not here for the commissioner. If you look at the Commission for Social Care Inspection (NSSI as it was previously), the Children's Rights Director there has been very clear in his role. Roger Morgan has listened to children with great care and with huge benefit to the way in which the inspectorate has developed its work. We have all learned a lot from what the young people have been telling him and how he has articulated their views and disseminated them and challenged people. The framework that he has used, and indeed in the Commission for Social Care Inspection it is built right into their work, is the importance of using the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to underpin it. I think you should listen to children but you should make sure that you are listening to them within that framework of the UN convention. Q223 Chairman: Many of my constituents, while stoutly defending the UN and European rights of children, would also like some sort of charter of responsibilities of children in certain circumstances. Any hope of that coming on the scene? Ms Marsh: All rights come with responsibilities for all of us. Q224 Chairman: Jolly good. Can I thank you very much for coming before the committee? As I say, every time we have people giving their expertise and time, if on your way home or when you get home you think of something that the committee did not ask you that is germane to their inquiry, will you e-mail or write to us? Ms Marsh: Absolutely. We would be happy to do that. Chairman: Thank you very much for your time.
Memorandum submitted by the Commissioner for Children for Wales, the Commissioner for Children and Young People for Scotland and the Commissioner for Children and Young People for Northern Ireland
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Nigel Williams, Commissioner for Children and Young People for Northern Ireland, Mr Peter Clarke, Children's Commissioner for Wales and Professor Kathleen Marshall, Commissioner for Children and Young People for Scotland, examined. Q225 Chairman: Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. We mainly cover, but not entirely, English education. We always feel particularly privileged in this Committee when we have the opportunity and privilege to hear from the experience of the devolved partners of the United Kingdom. Certainly, we found a great stimulation of interest when we looked at student finance, for example, that was great fun. I do not think we have had anyone from the devolved assemblies or the regions, so welcome indeed. There are certain drivers of the timetable tonight but we have a reasonable amount of time. Can I ask if any of you would like to have a few minutes of introduction to say how long your experience has lasted and what you have learned, just to give us a setting? Mr Clarke: My name is Peter Clark and I am from Wales. I have been in post almost four years now, so I am the longest serving - which probably shows from the lines around my eyes - Children's Commissioner in the United Kingdom. Also, for my sins, I am the President of ENOC, the European Network of Ombudsperson for Children, which was mentioned earlier. Focusing on the proposal for the English Commissioner, which I think is your main interest, I would just reinforce everything that Peter Newell and Mary Marsh said over the concerns, which we have expressed also, about the degree of independence and, as we see it, the lack of emphasis on children's rights in what is being proposed and therefore, in a way, the difference between that and what would be deemed a conventional model of a Commissioner for Children. I have particular concerns, which I will outline very briefly, to do with the way in which devolution issues or non-devolved matters have been dealt with. I have a general power under the Acts which set up my post to deal with any matter affecting any child in Wales. This really gives me a device by which I might raise matters, which children have raised with me, for the attention of central government where issues are not devolved in the National Assembly for Wales. The way in which the model of the English Commission has been set up has given that person, also, the powers within Wales over non-devolved matters. To me that appears to be a recipe for confusion and particularly confusion in the minds of children. I think one of the most important ways in which we utilise our independence is, hopefully over time, to get children to understand that there is one person who is there meant to be championing their rights and looking out for their welfare and interests and now there are going to be two within Wales with very different powers and very different remits. Obviously, I will work with the post holder to try and minimise the confusion and disruption that might cause, but it is an objective problem and one which I have concerns about. Q226 Chairman: Mr Newell, thank you very much for that. Mr Williams: I have been in post since 1 October 2003, that is a little over a year now. I was responsible for co-ordinating the short memorandum which we sent to you. I think the message I would like to put to the Committee, just to begin with, is that we have all expressed significant concerns about the powers and independence of the English Commissioner and concerns about how it is going to work out in each of our countries, our regions of the UK, in relation to the practical relationships with the English Commissioner. I find it particularly contradictory and ironic that, in relation to seeking children's views, the English Commissioner has to consult with us if they are looking at an issue in relation to our own regions, but in relation to the power to hold an inquiry, the English Commissioner can hold an inquiry without coming near our offices in terms of the legislative responsibility. I think they would be very foolish to do that and I hope that they will not, but the statute is what the statute is and it has put some duty to consult in one area and not in another. Having said that, I think all of us feel that children are more important, at the end of the day, than simply our concerns, we want to try and make this work as best as we possibly can and to co-operate with the English Commissioner, but the Government has not made it very easy for us in terms of the way it has been set up. The final point I would like to make in opening is the question was raised earlier about, was it not a good thing that there was such an emphasis on seeking the views of children within the English Commissioner's office, I take that as read within my own responsibilities. Indeed, it is expressly stated within my legislation, but I simply could not do my job properly unless every day of the week, in some way, I was seeking to be in touch with children's views. I think, in a sense, the emphasis has come out the wrong way in the legislation, you cannot do the job of being a Commissioner without listening to children, it is an absolute priority. But, in my view, that sits underneath the responsibility of safeguarding and promoting children's rights and best interests, which I seek to do by listening to their views, one is a means to an end. Q227 Chairman: Thank you for that, Mr Williams. Of course you are in out pay week at the moment, are you not? Mr Williams: Yes, technically, indeed, I am responsible to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who, of course, is a member of the Cabinet here. Q228 Chairman: Recently, we had a very useful and interesting visit to Northern Ireland where we were very well received. Professor Marshall, it is your turn. Professor Marshall: Obviously, I have had the least time in the post. I have been in post for eight and a half months now, so there is a certain extent to which I am still gearing up, although I have been involved in a number of issues. First of all, I would like to say that I agree with a lot of what has been said both, by Mary Marsh, Peter Newell and my fellow Commissioners here. I think there is potential for confusion in having two Commissioners operating in each country. To me it does seem strange that, in a sense, it contradicts one of the aims of Every Child Matters which was to have one person in charge. We have created a system where, as far as the Commissioners are concerned, we have two people and we are going to have to be very careful about how that is publicised and how the message gets over to children and young people in our respective countries. Also, there is confusion, I think, which we will have to work through about things like terminology. We have got different remits about things like inquiries, investigations, what is an investigation in one area might be an inquiry in another, et cetera, what do we mean by reviews and, I think, when we are working with the English Commissioner, we will have to be very careful to try and map out what is going to be quite a complicated mosaic of different terminologies and different remits and work out how we work together on that. Also, for example, the fact that the children and young people covered under the remits are different; mine, for example, covers anyone in Scotland up to the age of 18 or up to 21 if, at any time, they have been in care or looked after. The English one is anyone up to 18 or anyone up to 21 who has been in care or looked after since attaining the age of 16 and anyone who has a learning disability. Again, there are slight differences in the different parts of the UK which we will have to be concerned about. In terms of taking account of young people's views, my legislation also has a very strong emphasis on that. In fact, in my annual report, I must submit to the Scottish Parliament a strategy for involving children and young people in my work and consulting them. I cannot get away with waffly words about that, I have got to put down in black and white what I am going to do to consult them and to involve them in my work. Also, I think there is another important issue about my role and vis-à-vis the English Commissioner in that my legislation does not embrace dealing with individual cases either. On the other hand, there is nothing that bans me from this "investigation" but I am not quite sure what exactly that is going to mean for the English Commissioner because I am quite clear, for example, that inquiries for individual cases will come my way. I am already recruiting for someone who is going to deal with them and try to make sure that they get dealt with appropriately by appropriate agencies, map out gaps and inform me on policy, so there are a number of issues. As you see we already have different interfaces, but I should say that, certainly with the greatest goodwill, we will be working with whoever is appointed in England. Q229 Chairman: Can I ask you, Mr Clarke, because you have been there the longest, so you are more of a target, how much added value you have given as a Children's Commissioner in Wales? What do you think you have added which was not there before? Mr Clarke: I will give you my impressions and then answer the question directly in a moment, but just to say that I am setting up a research project to find out the answer to that question also. They will be independent of me, although we will be paying for it, they will be going and asking children on a random sampling basis what they think of the Children's Commissioner and also, they will be interviewing key decision-makers and key agencies within Wales. I think what my post has been able to do in the four years that I have been in the post has been to act as a focus and a catalyst with a much higher emphasis on children's rights and listening to children's views and voices. I have been pleased to see the National Assembly now adopt the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and, therefore, every document that comes out of the Assembly has reference to it. This may just seem like words but I think it is beginning to change, quite genuinely, the orientation of a lot of the policy which is coming out of the Assembly. I think I have had some degree of success in terms of being part of a general shift in public mood towards children in Wales as well. These things are hard to measure. One problem we all have in these posts is who is to say what is down to us and who is to say what is down to anyone else. The Clwyd Inquiry - which in my Act is called an examination, the right to hold an inquiry and I learnt very early on that this meant I was subject to the full Public Inquiry Acts and the rest of it, so it was where I used the strongest powers - was where we investigated allegations against a teacher who had committed suicide a few days before he was due to appear in court on very serious charges of child sex abuse. We held a full public inquiry, we called witnesses who had to give evidence or oath and we came out with a whole series of recommendations. I think there we have genuinely added value to the education world because of the recommendations we made about governorship, about the way in which children's complaints should be investigated and they should be given voice to and a range of other issues. There are some specifics like that but, generally, I think we have started to improve the consensual view in Wales about children. It is very hard to establish facts from that. Q230 Chairman: In terms of an inquiry like that, where you come up with recommendations, would these recommendations be directed at, for example, the health authorities in Wales for action, perhaps, for new legislation in the Welsh Assembly and would some of your recommendations come here to the UK Parliament? Mr Clarke: Precisely so. In the case of that inquiry probably the majority of recommendations were aimed at local authority educational departments and, also, schools - and under local management of schools, as you will know, that is not the same thing - aimed at governors and also, aimed at the media - in a particular case of a drama teacher -. I do not have a power but we still made recommendations to them about the way in which young actors are safeguarded when they are acting a drama of any sort. There were one or two recommendations which would require primary legislation and, therefore, hopefully, would come to this place eventually. The recommendations are made to those bodies. I do not have the power, except in the case of the media, to require them to reply within a three month period to what they are going to do about that. Then, the ultimate power is to name and shame, in that if they do not comply with the recommendations I can go to any media of my choosing and articulate my views about what I think about the fact that they have not complied and there is a degree of immunity to slander and liable built into that. That is how reviews actually work out. As I say, they are called an examination, they are called an inquiry in the English Act and so on., As I have got the floor, if I might just briefly say the one thing that concerns me about the Secretary of State being able to instruct the English Commissioner to hold such an inquiry is I have a clear understanding now of how much time and resource it takes to conduct such a thing. Given the concerns already that we have about the size of the budget and, therefore, the staffing that will be available to this person and taking on board the fact that there are 10.5 or 11 million children in England, I am very concerned that such an instruction would seriously silt up or make it unlikely that the Children's Commissioner for England would be able to do very much else, unless, of course, they go and ask what was the Lord Chancellor to lend them a judge to do the hearings, but then I do not understand why the Children's Commissioner need be involved at all as the Government could do that on its on volition in any case or it could - as it did with Climbié - appoint somebody to do it. I have a number of concerns around that. Q231 Chairman: What about the people who look at your caseload and individual cases you take up and say: "How on earth does this man ever get the chance to be really strategic?". Is that not a criticism and where do you get time? Mr Clarke: It is a criticism that has been voiced and, I must say it is devoid of any basis in fact. I think we have to be clear here what we are talking about when we say, dealing with individual cases. If a child rings up my office, my staff are going to answer, we are then dealing with a child and whatever it is they want to share with us. The law is very similar to what is being proposed in England, surprisingly, in that we will refer on to the other systems which are locally available for the child to get redress for whatever their complaint is. But having noted the fact that they have come to us, we are then in a good position to evaluate how well those systems are doing. We do not carry a large present caseload, we are not an ombudsman in the sense of having to come to a resolution of cases, but we are someone who when children come in touch with us we will refer them on to the right people. We ask them to keep in touch with us and in that way we have been able, for instance, to come to the conclusion that the system of special educational needs tribunals and a lot of those services that should be in place are not there. It is absolutely gold dust for me to be able to get that information from children experiencing these things in their everyday lives. I think we could get distracted by this individual cases thing if we are not clear what we are talking about. Unlike Norway, I do not have an ombudsman function in the sense that I have to investigate, it is not a responsibility to investigate, it is a power that I can do it. Mr Williams: Chairman, if I could take up that point of individual cases because probably I have the most extensive powers in relation to individual cases and yet, also, very, very wide powers in relation to general issues affecting children. I would accept fully that it would not be reasonable for the kind of powers that I have to be imposed on the English Commissioner in relation to individual cases for the figures that were quoted earlier, it makes it clear that it would be too onerous. However, I would say that in relation to my own office, I am very clear about the function of individual cases. They are there to allow us to try and assist children and young people to resolve matters which they are concerned about, but then to use those individual cases to inform us about issues which are going on in relation to children's relationship with Government and to seek then to address, in a more general sense, those issues. That was brought home to me, very forcefully, by a couple of experiences we have had with individual cases where, effectively, we were getting the same kind of case coming and we were able to resolve it for the individual child in relation to a particular form of health treatment, but then the case was cropping up again. It was obvious that, in fact, it was a system problem. There was an issue about the allocation of resources and the priority being given to a particular type of condition that would only be resolved by addressing that at a higher level within the system and looking at how our health trusts were dealing with it and, indeed, the policy of the Department of Health. The case triggered an action on our part to try and help the individual but then it flowed on to an issue of policy which we needed to address. Certainly, I have taken a lot of steps to ensure that my own office - which does have a responsibility to support individual complaints right up to taking legal action, if necessary, on behalf of individual complainants - does not get us as the phrase goes, "bogged down" in individual cases, but rather becomes a springboard. In the way that I have approached this within Northern Ireland, we have put a lot of emphasis on trying to identify - which I know the Minister for Children and Families is so concerned that the English Commissioner should take up - what are the general issues affecting children and we really need to address? The very first thing I did when I was appointed was to instigate a major research study to look at what were the issues in Northern Ireland that really were affecting children and young people where their rights were not being addressed in an appropriate way or were being underplayed or were not being met, using the United Nations Convention as a kind of template to do an audit of how Government currently is behaving in relation to children. That produced a list of 52 issues that, if you like, is the shopping list for me and we are now in the middle of a public consultation to narrow that down, to prioritise the general issues that we need to be dealing with, and our casework is one of the factors that has informed that priority setting exercise. Chairman: Thank you for those opening remarks. I will hand over to Helen Jones now. Q232 Helen Jones: I want to look at the issues of rights in a moment in a moment, but can I ask you a very practical question first of all. We have got these different pieces of legislation representing different parts of the country and I was born and brought up in Chester and it is quite common for people to live in Wales, go to school in England, use the primary health care services in Wales and use the hospital in England and so on. How is a problem concerning a child in any of those border areas going to be dealt with in practice? Mr Clarke: If I can respond? Q233 Helen Jones: It is probably more for Mr Clarke and Professor Marshall than for Mr Williams. Mr Clarke: I genuinely do not know the answer. Once the person is appointed I will be ringing him up very early and asking for a meeting precisely to discuss some of these things. For instance, tomorrow I am going to Bristol to look at a juvenile justice institution where I understand 70 per cent of the inmates are from Wales. This is a classic example of where this interplay between my role and the English Children's Commissioner is going to be complex. A lot of those young people at some point will have been under the auspices of a youth offending team and a youth offending team is part social services, which is devolved to Wales, education perhaps, which is in the main part, and then it will have probation and the police maybe that are not. There are all sorts of geographical and organisational complexities that are going to arise. I tend to have gone along the lines that I will do something until someone tells me I should not, and I am sure the English Commissioner will do likewise, but we will meet early to try to resolve some of those issues. It is not just the example I have given, you are quite right, in Powys people are using health facilities in Hereford, Shrewsbury and the rest of it. We have got a lot of children from England who are being placed by private fostering agencies within Wales and vice versa, so we are going to sort out something, be it a Memorandum of Understanding or whatever, so the children do not miss out. That is the most important thing. It is nothing to do with our empires, it is all to do with the children. Are those children in that Bristol unit aware that they have got a Commissioner? If so, which one do they go to? That is the simple question, the practical question that they will need answered and it is our responsibility to work together to make the answer as simple as possible. I think the Government could have been a lot more helpful. Q234 Helen Jones: Professor Marshall, do you want to comment? Professor Marshall: I think exactly what Peter was saying. I have not come across that yet but I am pretty sure that we will because also we have people who are within the childcare system but, for example, placed in England et cetera. I think we will have to co-operate and work out how we are going to deal with these issues and keep it child centred. Q235 Helen Jones: What will be the position if, for example, one of you investigates a case arising from something brought to you from a child in Wales or Scotland but which leads on to the necessity for recommendations to be made about the way the Health Service operates in England? Do you have the powers to deal with that or will you have to deal with it through the Children's Commissioner for England? Professor Marshall: I have no hesitation about commenting on anything to do with children in Scotland and anything that impacts upon their rights basically, which includes their interests, their welfare, et cetera. I do not think you need legal powers to comment on it if you keep it child focused. My job is to promote and safeguard the rights of children in Scotland and if there are issues that come from outwith the boundaries of Scotland that impact on them then I do not think I need legal powers to comment on that. Having said that, I am pretty sure that once the English Commissioner is in place that would be a very obvious place to go initially to start the conversation and work out how we are going to address this issue together. Certainly it will make a change in my own practice from that point of view, that certainly I would seek to consult the English Commissioner on any of these issues. Mr Williams: I have had an interesting issue raised with me by one of the senior commanding officers of the army in Northern Ireland about children who are resident in Northern Ireland alongside their parents who may be involved in one of the regiments serving there as to what about the issues affecting children who are on those army camps in terms of their rights and so on. Clearly there the direct departmental responsibility is through to the Ministry of Defence but the children are actually resident in Northern Ireland. You may feel in a sense that is quite a small number of children but, nonetheless, I think the issues affecting them are very important and for my part that is something I would seek to try and work through with the English Commissioner if there was a general issue that may well be cropping up in army camps in England, Wales, Scotland and, indeed, outside the UK where children are going overseas with their parents. I think we are going to have to work some of these things through co-operatively and seek to do the best deal we possibly can from the basis of the children who first contact us. Q236 Helen Jones: Thank you very much. Can I go back to the issue that we were discussing before, the statutory requirement which I think all of you have to protect and promote children's rights, on which there was a great deal of debate when this Bill was in the House. Could you give the Committee some idea of how that shapes your work? What difference does having that power make to you? How do you think not having it will affect the English Commissioner's ability to get on with the job? Mr Clarke: There are people more erudite than I on this matter here, but if I could get my bit out of the way quickly. For me personally, the overarching duty and responsibility I have is to promote and safeguard the rights and the welfare of children. If I did not have the rights bit, if I did not have the UN Convention as the basis of what I do, I think I would be in danger of lapsing into the very strong paternalism that often comes with welfare views of what children are all about. Of course their welfare is important, but I think that very much needs to be balanced by a view of their rights, that children actually do have rights. If we look at the UN Convention, a lot of the way those rights are articulated are phrases like "the child must have a say", they are not these rabid rights which sometimes they are portrayed to be. In essence, that is it for me. It keeps me from falling too easily into the welfare trap. Once one has done that I think one is in danger of sometimes trivialising the child's view and the child's expression of what they want and what they have a right to expect from us. We have a Professor of Child Law here who will be able to speak much more articulately on that. Professor Marshall: Nigel, do you want to say something? Mr Williams: I do, but you go first. Professor Marshall: I find the whole rights basis absolutely crucial because the way I explain it, and I started explaining it to children this way but I now explain it to adults this way because I think it gives it a moral authority, is I say that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, for example, is a set of promises that we have made to children, that we will do certain things to make life better for them. I think the fact we are saying we have made promises to them is something that children and young people understand, they understand about keeping promises and about failing to keep promises. Also, I think it is important to underline the fact that I do not make the rights up. The promises have already been made in our ratification of this international convention and my job, as I see it, is to keep the Government and the country to the promises that have already been made. I think that does give it very much a weight and an objective content. Interests can be subjective, people can have different views on the interests of children. In fact, my legislation does not talk about welfare and interests, it talks about promoting and safeguarding the rights because the rights include the interests and include the welfare and I feel it is critical to my role in that moral authority to keep harping on about that thing that is objective, it is already promised and I am there to try and make the promises real. Mr Williams: One could not put it better than Kathleen has just put it in terms of the promises and I think that is absolutely right. Q237 Chairman: She is a professor! Mr Williams: Yes. In terms of the difference it has made to my office, that has been the starting point. That is why I commissioned that piece of research to look at how those promises are working out in practice in Northern Ireland, where have we failed to meet the promises that we made when we signed up to the UN Convention and where are the areas that we are not doing as well as we should be. That has determined what the agenda will be for the office. Then I am going out to listen and see how children and young people feel about those promises, what are the things that concern them most, what do they feel needs to be fixed first and what is the issue that they are most concerned about. It becomes a holistic effort in trying to reach out and work alongside children in order to help them change the world and secure the promises that they want. I feel that the English legislation is a wee bit back ways up, it has got the cart before the horse or is the wrong way round. I am getting my analogies all confused here but you see what I am trying to say. It is talking about listening to the views and then it is tacking on at the end in listening to the views and working out what the interests are that you must have a look at the UN Convention. That seems to be the wrong way round to me. Q238 Helen Jones: Can I move on to another issue which has also been very controversial and that is about the independence of the English Commissioner. Do you feel that as the Act is set up, the English Commissioner will have sufficient independence? Can you give us any examples perhaps where having greater independence under your legislation has brought benefits to the work that you do? Mr Clarke: On a general level, the independence of my office means that I can say honestly to children and young people, "I am here for you. I am not here for anyone else, I do not have anyone else's agenda. As long as I keep to these broad parameters set down by these two Acts of Parliament that set up my office, I am here for you." I only have one boss in a sense. My accountability comes through the National Audit Office and all the rest of it rather than through a political accountability. I do think that this power to instruct the English Commissioner to undertake investigation potentially is quite a serious inhibition on their independence and a serious limitation on it. I have already talked about the impact it would have on their work programme, but from a child or young person's point of view there are likely, therefore, to be activities that are being planned to listen to children and re-present their views which will be knocked off course because a minister has said so. To me, that is a serious impediment to real independence. Mr Williams: I am concerned both about the requirement that the Secretary of State can instruct about undertaking an inquiry and the requirement to consult the Secretary of State if the Commissioner wants to instigate an inquiry at their own behest. I do not have either of those things. Ministers can ask me for advice and I can offer advice, even if it has not been asked for, and that seems to me to be the right way round. We had a case where ASBOs were being introduced in Northern Ireland and it seemed to me that they were being introduced with considerable haste and without thought being given to the views of the children and young people about who are likely to be subject to some of those orders. The ministers were very unhappy that I was unhappy and was being publicly unhappy about it and, indeed, under my powers I did what I was entitled to, which was to take the minister to court for judicial review. I think having that independence allowed me to do that, even though people did not want me to do it, civil servants would have much preferred that I did not do that, of course, and yet I felt I had the basis of independence and there was no other part of my responsibility over which ministers had control which they could then use against me because I had done something that they did not like. I believe the independence is crucial and I am concerned about how that will actually work out. Q239 Helen Jones: Thank you. Professor Marshall: My legislation actually says that I am not to be subject to the direction or control of (a) any Member of the Scottish Parliament, (b) any Member of the Scottish Executive or (c) any Member of the Scottish Parliament corporate body. It is made quite clear on the face of it that I have to be very independent. I think it is important from my point of view in a sense divorcing me from any implications of party politics. I have to be completely politically neutral; I am neither the opposition nor am I part of the establishment. I have made it quite clear that I will not hesitate ---- Q240 Mr Pollard: The third way? Professor Marshall: I will not keep away from issues that are politically contentious because I think to do so I have to be involved in anything where the rights of children are concerned, but I will not be getting involved in a political way. As long as I can maintain that non-political objective stance on the promises that we have signed up to then that gives me a certain credibility and a certain strength, that I am not tied into any government, I am not tied into any party politics and I want to be very clear about doing that, that I am being objective about the rights of children. Mr Williams: If I could just add one further thing. I think the independence actually is a complete independence because also we have to be careful that we are independent of the voluntary sector, even though both Peter and I have a long background in the voluntary sector, and Kathleen too. It is possible that the English Commissioner may come with some background in the voluntary sector or he may not, he may come from the statutory sector. It is important that we are looking at children's interests completely independently and not simply from the agenda of the voluntary sector, although we might agree with much of it. Helen Jones: Thank you, that is very illuminating. Q241 Jonathan Shaw: You have raised potential difficulties that you foresee with the appointment of a Commissioner for England in terms of the Devolution Settlement. Are you not whingeing really and complaining about nothing? The fact is we have devolution, it has been embraced, and it does throw up anomalies whether it is with Children's Commissioners, such as yourselves, or in other areas. What you went on to articulate is these are issues we will have to embrace, grapple with, in a mature way as to how we have devolution as it evolves within this country. Mr Clarke: From my point of view ---- Chairman: Mr Clarke, you are whingeing! Jonathan Shaw: It is a fair thing to level at you. Q242 Chairman: He often levels it. Mr Clarke: If I may respond? All I am saying is it could have been done much more simply. The only extent to which I am whingeing is why on earth have they gone for such a really complicated, muddle model when they did not have to. It would have been perfectly simple to say that in each of the countries of the UK the Children's Commissioner has responsibility for this, this and this. That would have been simple for us poor souls who are going to have to struggle with it and, much more importantly, simpler for the children. The only residual element of my whinge is that it is going to be difficult for children still. Sure, I am a grown-up, we all are, we will work out our relationships with the English Commissioner and the rest of it, but what worries me is it is not going to be so easy to give that clear message to children that "Here is someone for you". For instance, I am going to have to say, "Here is someone for you except if it is to do with that part of your life and, by the way, they cannot deal with it as an individual then because...." and on we go. It could have been so much easier. That is the end of my whinge. Mr Williams: I would accept that we have made our views known on this and if you want to call that whingeing, fair enough. The reason we have done it is precisely as Peter says, it could have been done better. The Devolution Settlement was not followed to the letter in relation to my responsibilities. The Northern Ireland Assembly pleaded with the Secretary of State, and won the case, that I should take responsibility for criminal justice matters, even though those had not been devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly in the past when it was sitting and has been the responsibility of Westminster ministers. The Devolution Settlement is not simply a neat and tidy thing that has been set in concrete that cannot be worked around. What we have got to remember is what is children's experience, how do they experience things. You cannot go along to a child and say, "Show me the devolved bit of your life, show me the reserved bit of your life and show me the accepted bit of your life in terms of constitutional powers", they would think you were mad. Children are children who have whole lives. What we are doing all the time is trying to get the different authorities to see that so that the education and health bits of children's lives actually can be seen as one, and that is what Every Child Matters in many ways was all about. Again, what we will strive to do as this rolls forward is to ensure that children's lives are seen as a whole and we will not hesitate to try and work that out with the English Commissioner and force the pace on it. Professor Marshall: I think whingeing is a very negative word. Q243 Chairman: It is eliciting some very good answers. Professor Marshall: We have not travelled here today to whinge, we have accepted an invitation to talk about what difficulties there are. We are very willing to talk about that and to move towards some constructive resolutions of it. I would say that none of us have ever been precious about our own powers or empire building, we all want to do what is best for the children and young people throughout the United Kingdom. We are all very committed to making the best of what we have got and that is what we will be working together to do. Chairman: Excellent. We are getting a third way commissioner. Jonathan, do you want to carry on with that? Q244 Jonathan Shaw: Just on this issue about the independence and your concern that the post holder will not be independent but will be at the behest of a politician. In your post in the years to come, if you become unpopular and people do not like the things you are investigating, people think that you are investigating the wrong types of things, children think you are investigating the wrong types of things, are you going to fire yourself? You say it is political interference but it is also democracy as well, is it not? Mr Williams: There is accountability built in our legislation. In my case, the accountability comes in a number of ways. My appointment is for a limited term, I simply cannot go on and on. After four years, as the legislation requires, there has to be a review not only of my appointment but of the office as a whole and how it is working and how effective we are being. That is a relatively short period of time and I think the message will get across very clearly to public representatives who will be doing that and through the system as to how we are getting on. Q245 Jonathan Shaw: Who appoints you, Mr Williams? Sorry to interrupt. Mr Williams: It would have been the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister. Q246 Jonathan Shaw: Ah, a politician. Mr Williams: Their responsibility is for the process and then for the actual instrument of appointment. In effect, it was children and young people who had the major say in that appointment process. I might say one of my concerns is I do not think children and young people are being given enough say in the appointment process for the English Commissioner and I would have liked to have seen more. I would have liked to have seen them being treated as equals in the appointment process, but that is another matter you might want to pursue. Accountability is also through the audit arrangements, the annual report arrangements, and ultimately I would say that if I cannot look the children and young people of Northern Ireland in the eye, particularly those who were involved in my appointment, in three or four years' time and say "We have secured change", then I should not continue in the job. Q247 Jonathan Shaw: The English Commissioner might be able to do the very same as well, might he not? Mr Williams: For the English Commissioner in terms of aspects of their role, there is direct interference by ministers. Q248 Jonathan Shaw: Direct interference? Mr Williams: Yes. Q249 Jonathan Shaw: If something comes up, if there is a big issue that comes up and the public are concerned about it, what is wrong with the Secretary of State asking the Commissioner to have a look at that? What is wrong with that? Mr Williams: I will just say two sentences. I am sorry, I have got into my stride here. It is the Commissioner being asked to undertake a formal inquiry, being directed to do so. There is a difference between that and being asked for advice or invited to consider what would be the appropriate response to an issue. Q250 Jonathan Shaw: In the way that Ofsted do now. Mr Williams: I think that is the difference. Mr Clarke: After four years you can imagine that we have membership of all sorts of working groups within the Welsh Assembly Government where we have observer status and I meet regularly with the link minister every three months or so, we have discussions, so there is a lot of work that goes on. What worries us here is that there is the possibility built into the statute of operational interference in what the person is doing and I think that is quite distinct from accountability. Q251 Jonathan Shaw: Do you think that is the intention? Mr Clarke: Why else is it there, with respect? Q252 Jonathan Shaw: No, that is fine. Mr Clarke: So the answer must be yes. I can imagine it might come out of thinking "Oh, well, what if we have another case like Climbié and we need someone to do an inquiry", but my point would be that the Government already has the powers to appoint someone to do an inquiry of that sort. I think the other difference is often in this discussion I have heard ministers use the phrase "my Commissioner, our Commissioner", but we are Children's Commissioners. Q253 Jonathan Shaw: That is being precious, is it not? Mr Clarke: Not at all, I do not believe so. What it shows is a Government acting with confidence and with a degree of statesmanship because they are saying, "We are setting up this post for a group of people who need a particular champion at a particular time and we realise that because of the other constraints upon us we cannot do that. Therefore, we are setting up these posts in a way that gives them the room to manoeuvre to champion on behalf of this group of young people and children". I think that is part of what are called the Paris Principles for independent human rights institutions generally. That is where I am coming from. I do think it is a serious point and I do not think it can be casually put aside by saying "What is wrong with a minister?" It is not that they are going to ask, they are going to tell, and I think that is a very different thing. That is my view. Q254 Jonathan Shaw: It does feel a bit conspiratorial, that the ministers have dreamt up these particular words to put on to the face of the Bill in order that they might avoid something. That seems to be the collective impression that you are presenting to the Committee. Mr Williams: I think conspiratorial is not the word that I would use at all about this, Chairman. I simply think it is a matter of fact within the legislation that that is the way it has been constructed. The whole of section two of the legislation does not have that ministerial involvement and that will form a very substantial part of the work programme of the Commissioner. Certainly I would not be alleging that somehow the Commissioner is going to be under the thumb of the minister day in and day out. Jonathan Shaw: That is certainly how you presented it to us when you had a great deal of scope prior to me asking you these questions. Q255 Helen Jones: I did not get that impression. Mr Clarke: I think we were asked to focus on the problems we had, or the issues that we had. Mr Williams: I do not think that is fair. Q256 Chairman: The Chairman does not think it was very fair but he specialises in sparking you off, to put it in context. Mr Williams: To respond to that, we have focused, and that was what our paper did, on the specific comparison of powers and the differences between the English Commissioner's role and our roles. We have pointed out in a particular regard in relation to inquiries that there is a ministerial involvement in two sections of the legislation that in none of our roles do we have and, therefore, we believe that does lead to a compromise of the independence. What I was clarifying for you before your intervention was in relation to a whole other area there is not that direct ministerial involvement. I wanted to make sure that you understood that the balance of our comment is to raise a concern in a particular area about independence and a concern that may then flow over in relation to other areas but recognising that in relation to section two responsibilities the Commissioner on a day-to-day basis will be able to determine their own work programme. Q257 Chairman: We have got some time constraints. Very quickly, Professor Marshall. Professor Marshall: Can I just add something to that? Q258 Jonathan Shaw: Put the boot into me even more! Professor Marshall: My concern is that power to direct could hijack the agenda because, as Peter says, it takes an awful lot of resources to do this kind of investigation/inquiry/examination. One of the things that I have to do that I want to do is involving and consulting young people about my policy priorities. It may well be that with what resources I have I may want to have an investigation into an issue that young people have raised and get them to identify the questions and get them to ask them. In terms of encouraging citizenship, there have to be ways for young people to get their issues on the agenda. I think there are enough opportunities for politicians to do it and it is very important that what scope there is in these independent offices is to allow us to be true champions for the children and young people. Chairman: We must move on. Paul, can I ask you to move to the next section. Q259 Paul Holmes: How far do the three of you representing children's interests in Wales, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland work together, or does that never arise? Mr Clarke: We are working together. We have been at it four years, two years and one year in appointment, so obviously we are learning as we go along. Personally, I think that the advent of the Children's Commissioner will mean that we will have more regular meetings and may constitute ourselves in some way as well. We have done a lot of phone calls and e-mails to each other and work together in that way a lot, as well as all being members of the European Network, which is a very strongly supportive body. It is not one that has very strong policy directives or anything, it could not do because we are independent, but it is a very supportive agency. Mr Williams: I think Peter's experience was invaluable in helping me look at how I would set up my own office and how I would approach the whole task. As I get involved in the work programme of research on individual issues once my consultation period is over, one of the questions we will be looking at in each case is what experience can we learn from Scotland, Wales and England. There is quite considerable relevance to that already in a series of areas where there are differences in the way things are worked out on the ground within our individual countries where we can learn from the good practice in other countries. We will constantly be trying to get the best deal for individual children and then get the best that we can pick from each other's brains in terms of what we can do in our own countries. Professor Marshall: It has been a tremendous help to have two people to ask and e-mail. I do agree that when the English Commissioner comes on board that will provide a certain guide in a sense because there is an overlap with all of us. I think most of our focus, apart from asking for individual advice and guidance from each other on how to do things, getting staff to visit et cetera, has been about this potential overlap with the English Commissioner and that will provide a focus that we will have to work together. Q260 Chairman: None of you have never been politicians, have you? Mr Williams: I do have to own up to having been a Liberal Democrat councillor and also a failed parliamentary candidate, of which there are quite a number, although they are gradually getting fewer. Q261 Chairman: I only ask because you seem to get on so well that you could not possibly have been! Mr Williams: Having said that, I resigned my membership on taking up this position, just to emphasise the very point that Kathleen made of complete independence. Q262 Paul Holmes: You have networked informally and learned from each other but you have not had to formally work together although that will change because of the overlapping of the jurisdiction of the English Commissioner. We have already covered a lot of the issues about the overlap in jurisdiction but I would just like to clarify one or two things. Are you saying that in the areas like criminal justice, social security and refugee issues that affect children, you have taken those on board in your respective parts of the UK but once the English Commissioner is in place you will not be able to do so any more? Mr Clarke: Having done it for four years, for instance I have taken up cases of individual refugee and asylum seeker children, juvenile justice cases and the rest. The Act, as it stood prior to the recent Children Act, said that I could do that through two routes, I could either go direct to the Wales Office, and hence to the UK Parliament, or through the Assembly, but I tend to go for whatever is the shortest. The advent of the English Commissioner will add another route because none of the actors remove my power to do that. Potentially in that sense, if we get it worked out, it could be a route that could be better. I am not clear and I am not aware whether or not the English Commissioner can actually delegate part of their powers to us under agreement and that is something we will want to explore with them. Q263 Paul Holmes: The Children's Minister has said all this worry about the overlap in jurisdiction is not that important, you can just sit down and sort it out between yourselves. Is it going to be as easy as that? Mr Clarke: I genuinely do not know. Certainly, I have stopped commenting publicly since the Act was passed because I thought we are now in phase two where it has happened, all my whingeing is over and it is now time to move on and make it work, and that is still my general orientation, that is what I am intending to do now. We will find out whether we can make it work well and, if not, I think it would be our collective duty to say there are still some residual problems that need sorting out. Mr Williams: It is absolutely right that we will seek to try to make this work. I am confident that as people with the best interests of children at heart, we will try and find the best solution. I suppose an occasion like today highlights the concerns that we have had about how it may work and, therefore, we go into this with our eyes wide open. There are certain issues that we are concerned about but we will try to find the best possible way around those. Just to respond to your previous question to Peter, the position from me in relation to the kinds of powers that you described is that those authorities are not designated within my legislation so the Home Office is not designated as the authority for immigration and asylum and so on. I cannot get involved in investigating an inquiry, I simply have an advocacy role. There have been cases where I have written on behalf of a child or highlighted an issue that I would like the Home Office to think about dealing with, but I cannot get involved in investigating that in detail. Professor Marshall: Can I just add that criminal justice is devolved in Scotland so that certainly falls within my remit, which again shows the complexities of what overlaps and what does not. As regards the other matters that are reserved to Westminster, I have always been very clear about the fact that it is matters that are reserved, not children. My focus is on children and young people in Scotland and I feel I have a very clear advocacy role safeguarding and promoting their rights and I do not think anything is going to affect that. As the others have said, obviously I would regard the English Commissioner as being a very early port of call on any issues or on matters that are reserved to Westminster. Mr Williams: The other thing to add is that there are things that affect the children that happen outside the UK for children who have a very strong connection in relation to one particular area of the UK. I have had the case of a child caught up in a custody battle in the United States where it was born in Northern Ireland and one of the parents was from Northern Ireland, where we sought to make some representations in that case even though it is technically outwith our responsibility. Q264 Paul Holmes: The organisational details and the support structure of the English Commissioner has not been settled yet. Nigel talked about the benefit of learning from Peter's experience and Kathleen said she benefited from looking at both previous examples, what would you recommend from the three different experiences now for the English system as to how it should be organised? Mr Williams: I would recommend that in relation to the work programme that the Commissioner is going to undertake that they do some exercise near the beginning of their term to try to establish in a broad sense what the agenda is going to be and what the concerns are of children and young people on issues that are not currently being dealt with in a way that meets their concerns. The Commissioner does have to take account of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child so I would encourage that they use that to inform them overall of the issues. I think it is important to get that overall perspective, because there is a danger, as Commissioners, that we can be blown about a little bit by the issue of the moment because the media inevitably, now that there is a Children Commissioner, if an issue comes up affecting children, will not just go to the individual MP in whose constituency it happened, they will not go just to the Minister for Children and the Government, they will go to the Commissioner and say "what do you think about this?" It would be easy, if you are not careful, for the media to dictate the agenda rather than the children and young people you are trying to assist. That would be my major piece of advice. Professor Marshall: Given that there is such a great focus on the views of young people in the English legislation, as indeed there is in mine, I have been concerned to map out what is already existing and trying not to re-invent the wheel. Given that, for example, both in English and Scottish legislation as well, I am not sure about the others, it talks about paying particular attention to those who have difficulty being heard, we have decided as a matter of principle that we have got to try and build on what is already there for the mainstream and work from the outside in trying to get the disaffected groups included. Obviously, there are going to be some more complexities there in terms of just the sheer number of young people in England and Wales, so mapping out what already exists and building on that is going to be very important. Mr Clarke: I think it is important four years in still to always be aware that you have got to earn the right to be children's champion. It is not something you can ever assume you have earned. I have this post for seven years, I have done four and I have got three left, and I hope I go out still remembering that because I think it really informs every single thing that you do. Q265 Paul Holmes: I think that leads on to my final question. I was taken with Nigel's example of upsetting the politicians by saying, "We will have a judicial review on the introduction of ASBOs". If the English Commissioner is not supposed to get bogged down in individual cases but is supposed to be taking a strategic advocacy role and listening to children, what do you think is the most important single strategic issue that the Children's Commissioner might perhaps look at and upset ministers by saying, "You should change your policy on this"? Mr Clarke: For me, the most radical agenda item is to require the UK Government to involve children much more in decision making and to express their rights as defined in Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. I think that would immediately bring all sorts of conflicts with school management systems, with all sorts of government policies on everything really. Mr Williams: In terms of an issue that is outside of my control, I would love the English Commissioner to look at the way children of asylum seekers are currently dealt with. That may not be the issue that affects the most number of children but it is an issue outside my own powers that I would be concerned to see addressed. Professor Marshall: I have been very involved in the asylum seeker issue as well but I think some of the most fundamental issues just now are about how we support families generally, for example. We heard from Mary Marsh and Peter earlier on about that and about the balance between a universal service and child protection and I agreed a lot with what they said. There is a huge agenda there and sometimes I think people tend to come up with simple solutions that are going to give a quick hit, but we have to be confident enough to take the long-term view and to have a programmed approach to something that is not going to be resolved in a very short period and, unfortunately, accepting some of that but working towards a proper resolution and not looking for very quick evaluations that are going to provide very quick successes to show that you have done something that is good because that is unlikely to happen. Q266 Chairman: It could be said that some of us might be a little jealous of your role. We are elected politicians and I suppose I have always thought of myself as the children's champion in my constituency as well, and I am sure all of us have, that we are pensioners' champions and all sorts of people's champions because we are the elected Members. Do you work well with local Members of Parliament? Sometimes at my Friday night advice service I would be very happy if you would take some of my asylum seeker cases off me. Working in harmony is much better than working against each other. Mr Clarke: Absolutely, yes. Often I say that my post was launched in Wales on the back of the most durable political consensus that there has been in Wales. Every political party wanted a Children's Commissioner, every professional organisation, every children's charity, and why would I want to spoil that? Therefore, I have sought to work collaboratively and do take referrals from MPs. We see them as allies. From my point of view, if I am there to be a champion for children I am looking for powerful allies for children and often those will be elected Members, be it of the Assembly, the Council or, indeed, the House. Yes, very much so, and I suspect my colleagues feel exactly the same. Mr Williams: Yes, I could not agree more. In my case, the consensus was even more remarkable across all of the political parties in Northern Ireland in agreement about the need for a Children's Commissioner. It is very important for me to be able to work with and seek to co-operate with the parties as a whole and the individuals representing those parties in the different fora at different levels. That is the way it has worked out. They see the Commissioner as an additional avenue that may be appropriate in a number of circumstances that they have concerns about to help raise those concerns, whether they are general concerns about children as a whole or specific concerns about individual cases. In practice, that has worked very well. Professor Marshall: There was a consensus in Scotland as well. We had cross-party support and I have not seen that breaking yet and certainly I plan to make sure that consensus remains. Chairman: I am conscious that Andrew has been extremely patient. I am going to give him the opportunity to ask the last questions. Q267 Mr Turner: Thank you very much. I must say, I am always most suspicious when there is cross-party support, especially when there is cross-front bench support for something. Could I start by asking about the involvement of children in the appointment of you, Mr Williams, and how that compares with the other Commissioners. Can I say how disappointed I was that there is not more involvement written on to the face of the Act for the Children's Commissioner. Mr Williams: The candidates who applied for the position in Northern Ireland were subject to quite a lengthy process. A forum of children and young people that was representative of all of Northern Ireland was put together and those young people chose a number from their number to be involved in the recruitment process. They were involved in the short listing and they then sat on two preliminary groups that were part of the interview process that all candidates had to go through. One of those was a straight interview panel, like many of you will be familiar with, but was entirely made up of children and young people aged between 12 and 18. The second was a role play where the candidates had two or three minutes to prepare to come in and then lead a discussion amongst the young people. A representative of each of those panels, the role play panel and the interview panel, then went on to the final interview panel and they brought their scores and views from the two subsidiary panels to the final panel that took the final decision that was chaired by a senior civil servant. We have sought to follow a similar process, although simplified, for all the appointments within the office with young people sitting as equals, having been appropriately trained, of course, because there is nothing worse than asking a young person to do something but not giving them the tools and the assistance that they need to do it, but having been appropriately trained they are involved in every selection process now for the staff of my own office, and there is no question that it has produced better recruitment because young people do not mess around and are not as correct as we adults sometimes are in being very gentle in our views or in the way we put things. They cut to the chase is perhaps a good way of putting it. Q268 Mr Turner: How does this apply in Scotland and Wales? Professor Marshall: With me it was slightly different because technically I was appointed by the Queen on the nomination of the Scottish Parliament and because it was a parliamentary committee that was doing it they felt they could not have the young people on the committee. What they did was have the young people recruited from various backgrounds and all the candidates had to go through two different interviews, one with a group of primary school children and one with a group of 14 older young people who then wrote a report, with adult help, for the selection panel of Members of the Scottish Parliament. When we are recruiting our own staff, of course, we do not have that difficulty about the parliamentary committee so we have had a young person's group interacting with them and also we have had two of the young people on the interview panel. With the new round - I have only recruited three staff so far - we are looking for ever more inventive ways to include them and to make it a meaningful experience for them. Mr Clarke: For Wales, I was interviewed, as were six short listed candidates, by a panel of 12 young people aged 10-19 for about an hour. We were then given a break and ushered into a room where there was a further group of eight young people where we had to do a role play in front of them and they put on various plays and described various scenarios and then questioned us very directly and very clearly eliciting our fundamental attitudes to young people really. Likewise, we now have two young people on every panel for our own staff. In Southern Ireland I believe they actually got them involved in drafting the advert in the paper as well and the second characteristic of the person they were seeking that they listed was humility. My sons tell me I would have failed. Q269 Mr Turner: I am sure you would not be alone. Mr Clarke: They were considering a dancing test for Nigel's post. Mr Williams: They were, they thought the Commissioner should be able to dance, but I would have failed completely. Q270 Mr Turner: What about when you are listening to young people yourselves? Forgive me if I quote you out of context, Professor Marshall, but you said you wanted to build on what is there for the mainstream and work from the outside in. Professor Marshall: Yes. Q271 Mr Turner: I did not understand that. Professor Marshall: Let me explain. In terms of participation, there are already a number of good initiatives in Scotland, for example there is the Young Scot Network which has invested a huge amount of money in an interactive website to ascertain the views of young people, and what is being developed at local level are what are called mostly dialogue youth projects to try to involve young people at a more local level expressing their views. Some of these projects are more developed than others. Given that all this investment has been put into them, it would not seem right for us to try to set up something in parallel, so what we are doing just now in developing our participation strategy is looking at the scope for using what exists for the mainstream and those who can access that kind of thing, because not every young person can or would want to access a website, for example. We are looking at the scope for that and also hoping to develop by using them so, for example, perhaps for those more local projects that are not very active, if we give them a task to do we can help develop them by doing it. There are other groups that are going to be more difficult to access. We have got a lot of contact already with groups of children and young people with different kinds of disabilities. Our website has got the initial introduction in British Sign Language and we contact lots of wheelchair users and children with learning difficulties. At the moment we are trying to set up a meeting of people who work on the streets with young people to work out how we can use their services and their expertise to get to those who are socially excluded and who, by definition, are not going to join a focus group for the socially excluded young. They are going to be the most challenging group because some of the others are issues about how you communicate, but with the socially excluded you have to put a lot of effort into trying to find out how we can get their interest and how we can somehow engage their interest in what we are doing and show them we are taking it seriously and we are giving them a voice. Most of our resources will be put on the fringes, people who have the difficulties, and we will be using and hoping to develop the central mechanisms that already exist. Mr Williams: I agree very much with Kathleen that you have got to build on what is already there and not disturb things that are really working to try and seek children's views, but seek to use those avenues as well. On Saturday, I was with the Fermanagh Shadow Youth Council, which is a remoter part of Northern Ireland, where they have a youth council that shadows the local authority and their elected members. I spent some time with them talking about my own priorities and what do they think and doing various exercises with them to see what their views were. I think there is no single way of hearing children's views, the important thing is to use all the different avenues. We have had major pieces of research where over a thousand children and young people have been involved. We have commissioned special work with pre-school children to establish their views on particular issues. We are experienced in doing that work with younger children. I have established a youth panel as my own set of private advisers, if you like, that I can go to about anything. I was with them yesterday, in fact, and said to them, "You have got to keep me honest. If you see anything in the news about the Commissioner and my work", we call ourselves NICCI rather than Commissioner for Children and Young People in Northern Ireland, which is such a mouthful, "if you see anything that NICCI is doing that you are not happy with then do fire off a quick e-mail to me or let me know". I think they are in a special position but going and listening in schools, working with the voluntary organisations that have specialised in working with particular groups of children, who have access to those children, is very important, and getting passed those young people who have taken the opportunity to be politically active, with a small 'p', and get their views across, to listen to all those who do not take those opportunities, that is where you have got to find additional mechanisms to do that. Chairman: Can I thank you. I am sorry, I did promise my colleagues a 1745 finish and we are just slightly over time. Can I say what a pleasure it has been to have the three Commissioners before us. I think we have learned more in this session than we have learned for a very long time. I thought the two sessions complemented each other brilliantly. If you remain in communication with the Committee we would be most grateful. Thank you very much. |