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Seals: Conservation

Kerry McCarthy: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs whether he plans to review the Conservation of Seals Act 1970 with a view to strengthening the protection offered to seals. [245086]

Huw Irranca-Davies: The Government believe that the protection afforded to seals by the Conservation of Seals Act 1970 is appropriate and proportionate and therefore have no plans to review it.

Tuna: Conservation

Bill Wiggin: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs with reference to the answer of 18 November 2008, Official Report, column 312W, on tuna: conservation, what progress was made on agreeing enhanced control measures at the meeting; what assessment he has made of their effectiveness; and if he will make a statement. [242840]

Huw Irranca-Davies: The revised blue fin tuna management plan which was agreed at the 16^(th) Special meeting of International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) contains a number of enhanced management measures. These include:

Extensions to the closure periods of the fishery for purse seiners, long liners and pelagic trawlers as well as to recreational and sports fishermen;

A ban on the transhipment of blue fin tuna at sea;

An obligation on each contracting party operating in the fishery to institute a capacity reduction management plan covering both vessels and farms;

Transfers of blue fin tuna between vessels or from vessels to cages will not be allowed with the prior permission of the contracting party of the flag vessel which initially caught the fish;

All vessels operating in the blue fin tuna fishery, be they catching vessels, tug boats or transport vessels, must be registered with ICCAT before they can operate;

All vessels over 15 metres operating in the fishery must be equipped with vessel monitoring systems, 20 per cent. of each category of vessel operating in the fishery must have on board observers, all purse seiners and vessels transferring tuna to cages must have observers operating under a regional programme or their activities will not be authorised.

Furthermore, ICCAT will hold an inter-sessional meeting of the compliance committee in the first quarter of 2009, where all contracting parties with blue fin tuna quotas must demonstrate that they can fully comply with the control measures contained in the management plan. If they are unable to do so the Compliance
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Committee can vote, by simple majority, to suspend the quotas for individual contracting parties until they are able to demonstrate full compliance.

When the amended management plan was presented to the ICCAT meeting, the only contracting party to object was Libya. I consider the plan has the confidence of the vast majority of ICCAT contracting parties and therefore should be effective given the collective will for it to succeed.

Water Charges

Mr. Peter Ainsworth: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what assessment he has made of the effect of the costs of climate change adaptation on the Ofwat Price Review 2009; and if he will make a statement. [241186]

Huw Irranca-Davies: In August water and sewerage companies submitted draft business plans to Ofwat. In those plans they laid out the proposed level of expenditure for improving their systems' resilience to hazards such as climate change.

In October, Ofwat published its report, ‘Setting price limits for 2010-15: Overview of companies' draft business plans’. This shows that almost £1 billion of investment had been proposed by water and sewerage companies to increase resilience to a variety of hazards including climate change.

Ofwat is challenging these draft plans before final business plans are submitted in April 2009.

Further information on what companies have proposed in their draft business plans is available in Ofwat's report, which can be accessed on the Ofwat website.

Children, Schools and Families

Children in Care

Mr. Laws: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many children have been taken into care in each year since 1997, broken down by reasons for being taken into care. [241620]

Beverley Hughes: The number of children that have been taken into care in each year since 2001, broken down by reasons for being taken into care can be found in the following table.

Information going back to 1997 is not available. This is due to an introduction of new category of need codes in 2000 on the Children Looked After system which are used to identify the reason for being taken into care.

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Children who were taken into care during the years ending 31 March by category of ( need1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. ) Years ending 31 March 2001 to 2008. Coverage: England
Numbers
	2001( 5)	2002( 5)	2003( 5)	2004( 6)	2005( 6)	2006( 6)	2007( 6)	2008( 6)
All children who were taken into care(1, 2, 3)	7,000	7,400	8,100	7,500	7,700	7,700	7,700	7,400
Category of need( 7)
Abuse or neglect	5,600	6,000	6,600	5,900	6,000	5,700	5,700	5,400
Child's disability	70	50	70	50	60	70	70	50
Parents illness or disability	290	280	340	280	300	320	290	270
Family in acute distress	270	260	290	290	390	470	500	480
Family dysfunction	520	520	590	670	700	790	870	860
Socially unacceptable behaviour	100	110	90	110	80	100	80	90
Low income	10	10	10	20	20	20	20	10
Absent parenting	150	190	150	190	170	240	160	160
(1 ) Source: SSDA903 return on children looked after. (2 )Figures exclude children looked after under an agreed series of short term placements. (3 )“Children taken into care” are children who started to be looked after under the following legal status: interim or full care orders, police protection or emergency protection or child assessment orders. They exclude children freed for adoption or for whom a placement order was granted, they exclude children under voluntary accommodation and they also exclude children under youth justice legal statuses. (4 )Historical data may differ from older publications. This is mainly due to the implementation of amendments and corrections sent by some local authorities after the publication date of previous materials. (5 )Figures are taken from the SSDA903 one-third sample survey. (6 )Figures are taken from the SSDA903 return which, since 2003-04 has covered all children looked after. (7 )It is the most applicable category of the eight “Need Codes” at the time the child was taken into care rather than necessarily the entire reason they are looked after.

Chris Ruane: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what assessment his Department has made of the recommendations of the report of the Thanet inquiry in respect of looked-after children and vulnerable young people being placed out-of-county by local authorities. [244252]

Beverley Hughes: The Thanet Inquiry was produced in June 2005 by the (then) Kent Child Protection Committee. The Inquiry report included useful information about the impact of “out of authority” placements of looked after children on a district with a significant number of private children's homes and independent fostering providers.

There are a number of initiatives that we are taking forward as part of our “Care Matters” programme that will tackle some of the concerns raised by the Inquiry. The Children and Young Persons Act 2008 recently received royal assent and Section 8 sets out the considerations that local authorities must have regard to when they are considering making a placement for a looked after child, including giving consideration as far as is reasonably practicable to a placement being near a child's home and within the local authority's area. Furthermore, Section 16 of the Act reaffirms local authority responsibilities to ensure visits to looked after children including those placed out of authority and a long way from their homes.

We will shortly also be consulting on revised guidance on children missing from care which will include more information about the responsibilities of local authorities when a child placed outside of their local authority area goes missing from their placement.

Children: Poverty

Mr. Laws: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many children are living in poverty and not entitled to a free school meal, broken down by local authority area; and if he will make a statement. [242470]

Beverley Hughes: It is not possible to answer this question as the Government do not have this information broken down at the local authority level.

Children: Protection

Tim Loughton: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families whether any of the Ofsted inspectors who undertook the recent inspection of Haringey child protection services took part in the (a) 2007 Annual Performance Assessment and (b) 2006 Joint Area Review. [240757]

Beverley Hughes: This is a matter for Ofsted. HM Chief Inspector, Christine Gilbert, has written to the hon. Member and a copy of her reply has been placed in the Library.

Letter from Christine Gilbert, dated 10 December 2008:

Your recent parliamentary question has been passed to me, as Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, for a response.

On November 12 2008, following receipt of the Serious Case Review on the death of Baby P, Rt Hon Ed Balls MP, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, commissioned a Joint Area Review of safeguarding in Haringey. Ofsted led this review, working with Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary and the Healthcare Commission.

None of the inspectors who undertook the recent Joint Area Review in Haringey took part in the authority’s 2007 Annual Performance Assessment. One of the members of the inspection team led the previous Joint Area Review of Haringey, which was undertaken in 2006. This ensured that the team possessed the necessary knowledge and background on Haringey, which I deemed to be beneficial in the circumstances. I signed off the report and it was issued in my name.

A copy of this reply has been sent to Rt Hon Jim Knight MP, Minister of State for Schools and Learners, and will be placed in the library of both Houses.

Children's Centres: Loughborough

Mr. Andy Reed: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what level of funding he has made available for children's centres in Loughborough in (a) 2008-09 and (b) 2009-10. [244196]

Beverley Hughes: Funding for Sure Start Children's Centres is allocated to local authorities as part of the Sure Start, Early Years and Childcare Grant. Details of the allocation given to Leicestershire local authority to support and develop children's centres across the authority,
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including in Loughborough, is given in the following table. Local authorities are responsible for allocating funding to individual children's centres within their area, based on levels of need and demand for services.

£ million
	Sure Start Children's Centre Revenue( 1)	Sure Start Children's Centre Capital
(a) 2008-09	5.1	0.967
(b) 2009-10	6.7	2.5
(1) Includes ring-fenced funding for Leicestershire's Sure Start Local Programmes, now Sure Start Children's Centres.

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