Tim
Loughton: The hon. Lady makes a key point. That was why I
singled out the increase in the baby figures and the fact that we need
to make the most progress in getting the hard-core cases, many of which
are difficult and challenging teenagers who are not easy to adopt, out
of the care system and into some form of permanent adoption if there is
no way they can go back to their birth parents or other members of
their family. That is where we are trying to get them. The hon. Lady
makes a perfectly pertinent point, so I hope that the Minister will
address those concerns in his reply. It is a genuine concern that we
need to dispel, because it does no one in the business of adoption any
good. 1.15
pm
Kevin
Brennan: Perhaps I can express a little disappointment
with the hon. Gentleman’s contribution on this occasion, just
for the sake of symmetry. To be fair, he is usually pretty assiduous in
his research and uses real evidence to support his points, but most of
what he has just said did not seem to be based on evidence. He used
words such as suspicion, impression, hypotheticals and fear, but then
proceeded to claim that it does no good to spread suspicion or have
those sorts of stories circulating in the wilder corners of the
media.
I would like
to make a few points absolutely clear. It is wrong to claim that local
authorities were incentivised in any way to meet a national adoption
target. That is not true and I will explain why later. It has always
been and remains the Government’s policy that children should
live with their parents whenever possible and that when necessary,
families should be given extra support to help keep them together.
Naturally, the expectations placed on local authorities through
legislation reflect that policy.
The hon.
Member for East Worthing and Shoreham was a member of the Committee
that scrutinised the Children and Adoption Bill a few years ago, so he
knows that the national adoption target, which ended in March 2006,
applied only to the number of adoptions of children who were already in
care and waiting to be placed for adoption and to the speeding up of
that process, which we all agreed had to be improved. Those targets
reflected the Government’s desire to reverse the long-term
decline in the number of children already in care achieving permanent
adoption.
The purpose
of those targets was to give hundreds more of our most vulnerable
children the chance to benefit from a safe, stable and loving family
life and fulfil their potential. That is exactly the right thing to do,
so I make no apology for it whatever. Local authorities were neither
compelled to meet national adoption targets, nor financially rewarded
against them. Having run its course and achieved its purpose, the
national adoption target was not extended beyond March 2006 and the
Government currently have no plans to reintroduce
it. Local
authorities are relevant in this respect because some of them chose to
develop local adoption targets as part of the local area agreements,
formerly known as local public service agreements. As with the national
target, those targets were focused on children already in the care
system. In other words, some councils judged themselves weak at helping
children find new families in a timely way and chose their own local
targets that were linked, in general with other issues, to the
rewarding of
funding. The Government never imposed adoption targets on individual
local authorities in any way whatever. Indeed, as I think the hon.
Member for East Worthing and Shoreham acknowledged, the local
government White Paper commitments mean that the Government will now
only agree targets with local authorities against indicators drawn from
the national indicator set, which contains no indicator for measuring
the number of adoptions from care. The first
point is that any targets that existed, whether the national target set
by the Government or those that a local authority decided to set for
itself, are no longer in place. As I have said, I make no apology at
all for the national target set by the Government, because it
successfully improved the speed at which children were able to go
through the care system when they were already judged suitable for
adoption. In the new system there will be no financial incentives for
performance against specific targets; instead, local areas will be able
to earn limited reward funding based on average performance across a
range of targets agreed with the Government and their local
authorities, but adoption will not be
included.
Annette
Brooke: Did that target specify how long the children
needed to have been in care? Could they have been in care for just a
day or
two?
Kevin
Brennan: The national target was to increase by 40 per
cent.—more if possible—the number of looked-after
children who were adopted within a specified time. That target was not
quite reached—38 per cent. was the outcome figure. All councils
were meant to bring their performance up to that level. If I have not
answered the hon. Lady’s question, she might want to come back
on
that.
Annette
Brooke: My question was whether the target specified how
long the children that one wished to move out of care had been in care.
Could an authority count children who had only been in care for seven
days?
Kevin
Brennan: I apologise to the hon. Lady. The target was
nothing to do with how long the children had been in care, it was about
whether they had been in care and judged suitable for adoption. It
would be impossible for them to be part of a target if they had been in
care for just one day. The target kicked in only after a judgment had
been made that adoption was the right route. If they had been in care
for only one day, they would not yet have been assessed as suitable for
adoption. Mr.
Edward Timpson (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con): Will the
Minister clarify whether when he says that the child had been judged
suitable for adoption he means that the child had then been placed
through the adoption
panel?
Kevin
Brennan: Yes, that is absolutely correct. That is the
point at which the target would kick in. When we debated the Adoption
and Children Bill in 2001, concern was expressed that too many children
were languishing in care when it had already been decided—the
paramountcy principle having been considered—that the
appropriate way forward for them was to be placed for adoption.
They were not being placed for adoption quickly
because local authorities were not being very effective or efficient in
finding the right family for them. That was the purpose of the national
adoption target, and it was
successful.
Tim
Loughton: Just to be clear on the point made by the hon.
Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole, on the back of the accelerated
adoption processes for babies in particular—which we enabled
through the Adoption and Children Act 2002—more babies could
come into the care system and be quickly adopted, and they therefore
formed part of the adoption figures that met the adoption targets. That
would appear to be borne out by the fact that the biggest increase in
adoptions has been in the adoption of young babies. That is the case,
is it
not?
Kevin
Brennan: The key safeguard in all cases is that no child
can be adopted unless it has been through the proper procedures,
including the court procedures. We all agreed, and it was absolutely
the case, that where it was appropriate that a baby be placed for
adoption it should happen quickly. What are being conflated in the
argument, perhaps deliberately in some cases—not here but in
some of the media accounts—are the local area agreement targets
and the national target on adoption. There is no evidence at local
target level that the policy has resulted in any inappropriate
adoptions—none whatever. In fact, the available evidence
suggests that local authorities that included time-limited adoption
increases as part of their local public service agreement were already
well below average in using adoption as a permanent option for
looked-after children in comparison to other local authorities. They
set fairly modest targets, as the hon. Member for East Worthing and
Shoreham indicated, and even when they achieved those targets in full,
the individual local authorities involved rarely became above average
performers in terms of adoption as a permanent option, even in the
short term while the targets were in place.
I have seen
no evidence of inappropriate adoptions resulting from the target. It is
very sad that some accounts—not from anybody on the Committee,
but elsewhere—have given the impression that Ministers, judges,
social workers, lawyers, solicitors, CAFCASS officers and a range of
other people are involved in some sort of conspiracy to kidnap babies
from otherwise loving families to meet adoption targets. That sort of
swivel-eyed nonsense is exactly what contributes to our problems in
improving the image of social workers and in ensuring that children in
care, whom the Bill is largely designed to assist, have the best
possible outcomes. The extent to which we pander to those views is very
dangerous to what we are trying to
do. Let
us base our deliberations on evidence. There is no evidence of
inappropriate adoptions. There are no national targets in place now,
the national target having achieved its outcome. Councils set local
targets for themselves because they felt that they needed to challenge
their poor performance; the Government did not set them. They are no
longer in place and there is no evidence whatever that they resulted in
inappropriate adoptions. I see no need to adopt an amendment that would
tie the hands of future Governments seeking to improve adoption
performance, although targets are not currently needed because of the
improvements made directly as a result of the 2002 Act and the national
target set at that time.
I
call for consensus on adoption across the Committee and across the
parties in the House, and hope that we can reach it. Given that no
targets are in place at this point, and that the hon. Member for East
Worthing and Shoreham fundamentally disagrees with targets, consensus
should be possible without the necessity for his amendment. On that
basis, I invite him to withdraw it.
Tim
Loughton: We needed to have this discussion. I think the
Minister and I are entirely at one on what needs to be achieved, which
is an increase in adoption, particularly for those who are in the care
system for far too long and in many cases spend their entire youth in
the care system without the chance of adoption. I have been very
careful not to make wild allegations about inappropriate adoptions. One
cannot deny, however, that the system is such that they could happen,
nor could one say that they would not happen. There would be no
question of anybody pandering to the allegations if the Government had
not introduced the performance reward grants in the first place, or
subsequently allowed local authorities to include any adoption target
within local area agreements. That is where the problems come in and
that is what we warned about in 2001. A question remains. I am
interested in further analysis from the Minister’s Department as
to why there has been such a big increase in the adoption of babies,
which is part of the targets, but little movement in the adoption of
older children, on whom we should be
concentrating.
Kevin
Brennan: I will be happy to send the hon. Gentleman some
further information on that point. It is true that more children aged
between zero and one are coming into care, but the compensating figure
for children aged between one and four balances that. In other words,
early intervention is working exactly as we want it to. We have learned
the lessons about the need to ensure that we intervene early where
children are genuinely at risk and the statistics absolutely bear that
out.
However, does
the hon. Gentleman not accept that for those aspersions to be true in
some way—aspersions that the system conspired to put people up
for adoption inappropriately—the court system itself and the
judges involved in it would have to have been part of that
conspiracy?
1.30
pm
Tim
Loughton: I entirely take the Minister’s point and
I am not suggesting that there was a conspiracy. However, the evidence
supplied by social workers closest to the case will weigh heavily in
court and, without there having to be any sort of conspiracy, if a
claim is being made by an employee of the local authority and that
authority stands to benefit from a performance reward grant, clearly
there is the potential for that employee to over-egg the claim when
otherwise they might not have done so. That situation does not require
a conspiracy.
Part of the
problem is the pressure on the courts at the moment. I have sat in
family courts where the judge will tell me that there have been changes
in social workers and the paperwork is enormous—we will go on to
talk about transparency in family courts when we discuss another
amendment very shortly—so I know that the scrutiny of some of
these cases is not as tight as it might be. On that basis, some of
these numbers, hypothetically, could be raised higher than we would
like.
The
point is that, ultimately, the overall adoption figures have not risen
recently and we need them to rise; in particular, we need them to rise
more for older children than for babies. That is a real problem that we
need to face. However, I hope that when the Minister endeavours to
tackle it again—I realise that all sorts of things are happening
that are ongoing—he will not revert to coming up with some sort
of financial incentive that is based on numerical targets, because that
will only give rise to further suspicions that children are being
inappropriately adopted at an early age who would otherwise not
necessarily justify being adopted.
I do not wish
to put this matter to a vote. On that basis, I am grateful for the
debate that we have had and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
motion.
The
Chairman: If the Minister is going to write to
Mr. Loughton, it might be helpful if that correspondence was
copied to other members of the Committee.
Motion and
clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause
13Responsibilities
of parenthood ‘(1) In section
10 of the Children Act 1989 (c. 41) (power of court to make section 8
orders), after subsection (9)(b)
insert— “(ba) in
relation to residence orders, whether or not the person with whom it is
proposed that the child should live is likely to be able and willing to
accept the responsibilities of parenthood in relation to the
child;”. (2) In section
8 of that Act (residence, contact and other orders with respect to
children), after subsection (4)
insert— “(4A) In
this Part “the responsibilities of parenthood” means, in
so far as is practicable and in the best interests of the child, the
safeguarding and promotion of the child’s health, development
and welfare, and the provision of direction and guidance to the child
in a manner appropriate to his age and
development.”’.—[Tim
Loughton.] Brought
up, and read the First
time.
Tim
Loughton: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second
time.
The
Chairman: With this, it will be convenient to discuss the
following: New clause 17— Issue of written judgment relating
to a court order in family
proceedings— ‘(1)
The 1989 Act is amended as
follows. (2) After section 8
insert— “8A Issue
of written judgment relating to a court order in family
proceedings (1) When issuing an
order in any family proceedings a court shall issue a written judgment
in respect of that order. (2)
No children under the age of 16 shall be identified by name in that
judgment. (3) A judgment issued
under subsection (1) will be issued to all parties to
proceedings. (4) Parents of
children in family proceedings who were party to those proceedings, may
publish the judgment issued under subsection
(1). (5) Parents of children in
family proceedings, who were party to those proceedings, may publish
any other documents that are part of such proceedings on the condition
that documents are redacted to remove the names of any children under
16.”’. New
clause 18—Family proceedings:
evidence— ‘(1)
The 1989 Act is amended as follows.
(2) After section 9
insert— “9A
Proceedings on orders with respect to
children (1) No order may be
made in any family proceedings that shall prevent the provision of
evidence to— (a) the
police, (b) any regulatory body
that the Secretary of State shall by regulation
define. (2) In the course of
such proceedings it shall be lawful for any
person— (a) to provide
evidence to the bodies specified in subsection
(1), (b) to assist any person
in the provision of such
evidence. (3) In relation to
any family proceedings held in private it shall be lawful for any
person to provide any information relating to such proceedings
to— (a) a Member of
Parliament, (b) a Member of the
Welsh Assembly, (c) a Member of
the European Parliament, (d)
such other persons as the Secretary of State shall by regulation
define. (4) In relation to any
family proceedings held in private it shall be lawful for any person to
provide any information relating to such proceedings to any other
person for the purposes of obtaining advice, performing research or
ensuring the enforcement of the law or regulatory
procedures.”’.
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