Ms
Keeble: I completely recognise the practical difficulties
of the amendment as it is drafted. I would appreciate it if my hon.
Friend said how she expects the partnerships to work and what kind of
protocol should be in place. The key is ensuring that we do not end up
with the county council and one district council deciding all the other
areas. I am particularly interested in the protocols; I am sorry if I
did not make that clear enough in my
speech.
Helen
Goodman: I am about to draw my hon. Friend’s
attention to the later parts of the Bill where the processes are set
out.
It is clear
that partner authorities must play a full part in the local
arrangements to tackle child poverty. The local needs assessment, in
clause 21, and the joint local child poverty strategy, in clause 22,
are framed in the Bill as the responsibility of the partnership, not
just the responsible local authority. Clause 22(2)
states: “The
joint child poverty strategy must set out the measures that the
responsible local authority and each partner authority propose to
take”, which
means that it must cover the actions of all the main partners with
responsibility for housing, including district authorities.
I hope that
my hon. Friend can see that the upper-tier authority will have a
leadership role in convening the partners together. However, for needs
assessment, strategy and action, all the partners will have a
responsibility to fulfil their duty and play their part. In addition,
the draft regulations for local needs assessment, which we have
circulated to the Committee, will require those assessments to cover a
range of local services, including housing.
The
arrangements for partnership working set out in the Bill are the right
ones, but it is clearly important to ensure that they result in
effective working practice. Statutory guidance made under the Bill will
build on the good experience of some local authorities, providing
information and guidance on how to ensure that local government and its
partners can maximise the opportunities for effective partnership
working. With those reassurances, I hope that my hon. Friend will
withdraw her
amendment.
Ms
Keeble: I am grateful to the Minister for setting out what
I wanted to be set out when I tabled the amendment. I shall look
carefully at the regulations and the guidance, but having received
assurances I am happy to beg to ask leave to withdraw the
amendment. Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn. Clause
18 ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
19Partner
authorities
Andrew
Selous: I beg to move amendment 3, in clause 19,
page 10, leave out lines 38 and
39.
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the
following: amendment 62, in clause 19, page 11,
line 3, at end
add— ‘(i) a Mental Health
Trust.’. Amendment
73, in
clause 19, page 11, line 3, at
end insert— ‘(i) a Regional
Development Agency, (j)
Learning and Skills
Council.’.
Andrew
Selous: There are three amendments in the group, and I
shall go over them in
turn. Amendment
3 is a probing amendment and not one that I intend to press to a vote.
It is intended to provoke some debate about the inclusion of police
authorities and chief officers of police as partner authorities in
eradicating child poverty. I recognise that they are statutory bodies
and already members of local strategic partnerships, which is entirely
appropriate in the context. However, I must admit that I find it a
little difficult to understand their core role and purpose in defeating
child poverty, particularly given how child poverty is defined in the
Bill, with the four targets specifically focused on income
poverty. I
can see that the police have a role in child well-being, because
children need to be safe and secure; that is even more important for
children than for adults. The Government, however, rejected our
amendment 58, which sought to place “well-being” in
clause 8. We were told that the Bill is not about childhood well-being,
which is
fair enough; that is the Government’s prerogative. However, I was
left questioning why chief officers of police and police authorities
are mentioned. It is not
just me who suffers from a little confusion about such matters. When we
saw reference in the Bill to chief police officers, Conservative
Members said that they thought it appropriate for the Association of
Chief Police Officers to give evidence to the Committee. ACPO’s
feedback was that it was not sure why it was being asked to give
evidence in discussions about a Child Poverty Bill and that it could
not see the immediate relevance of being asked to do so; I am not the
only one to question its involvement. Involving ACPO would certainly do
no harm, but I can see more logic in amendment 62, tabled by my hon.
Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness. That would include
mental health trusts in the list of partner
authorities. It
is almost a clichÃ(c) to say that mental health trusts are the
Cinderella service of the NHS, but they seem to be cast in that role
given that the Bill makes no reference to them. I have no doubt that
the Minister will direct me to clause 20(1)(c) and say that local
authorities can include mental health trusts if they so choose.
However, it is a little odd to say that councils must work with the
police whether or not councils think that they are helpful, but that
councils only “may” work with mental health trusts. It
would be more logical to put things the other way round, as my hon.
Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness will explain with his
customary panache when speaking to his
amendment.
Steve
Webb: I have huge sympathy with the idea that mental
health is a key issue in tackling child poverty. I suppose that the
rationale behind the list might be that it covers a set of
commissioning bodies. For example, acute hospital trusts are not
included in the list; presumably, that is because primary care trusts
decide what they do and how they spend the money. Does that not apply
to mental health trusts,
too?
Andrew
Selous: There may well be logic in what the hon. Gentleman
says, but I am concerned about the fact that mental health trusts are
statutory bodies. He is correct to say that they clearly have an
important role, but I am questioning why they should not have a seat at
the table, as of right, because they are spending public money and
providing services. I accept that they are not the commissioning
body—primary care trusts are—but mental health trusts
have a vital role in helping parents of children with mental health
problems get back into the workplace and thus enable children to be the
productive workers of the future. I shall listen with interest to what
my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness has to say on the
subject. I
have some sympathy with amendment 73, which was tabled by the hon.
Member for Regent’s Park and Kensington, North. We could argue
that regional development agencies, learning and skills councils and
their successor bodies, which are charged with local economic
regeneration policy and local skills training, have a good case for
being included in the Bill. So, perhaps, do chambers of commerce and
further education colleges, as they play an integral part in what we
are trying to
do. The
hon. Lady’s amendment is supported by London Councils, the
collective body that represents all local authorities in London. It
thinks it surprising that regional
development agencies and the Learning and Skills Council, which is soon
to become the skills funding agency, have been omitted from the list of
partner authorities. No doubt my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley
and Holderness wishes to speak to his amendment, but I will listen with
interest to the rationale for the current list of partner authorities
when the Minister
responds. Ms
Karen Buck (Regent’s Park and Kensington, North)
(Lab): As we have heard, the danger of having a list of
partner authorities is that we focus on the partners that are not in
the list, but the danger of having a comprehensive list of dozens of
partner agencies is that everybody feels that responsibility lies
elsewhere. It is then hard to focus, and some of the work at
local-area-partnership level reflects that.
I have a
strong view that it makes sense to keep a tight focus. The emphasis at
the local level on commissioning is sensible and sound, and we should
not dilute responsibility too much. However, in practice there is
frequently a weakness in the relationship between a local authority,
those agencies—the PCT and others—that commission
services in the area, and the more regionally based and, in some cases,
national organisations, whose service delivery and commissioning can
have huge implications for a local area
service. 11
am
Ms
Keeble: Does my hon. Friend agree that where there is a
local prison, particularly a women’s prison, it might be
appropriate for the responsible authority to look to involve that body
when discussing the poverty of prisoners’
children?
Ms
Buck: I can certainly see my hon. Friend’s point. I
am sure that everyone here has experienced constituency casework
involving a lack of communication and a lack of data that would allow
policy to be shaped on prisoners’ children and many other
issues. The
two agencies that I want to add to the list are particularly important
and germane. The regional development agencies have a driving role in
child care delivery, and the Ministers have graciously conceded the
importance of child care as a key policy commitment to be specified in
the Bill. I welcome that, but the resourcing of a significant amount of
child care to assist in the employability of parents is done through
the regional development agencies. For example, the London Development
Agency is the delivery agent for the child care affordability programme
in London, which has significantly helped to deal with
affordability and child care delivery. It has just awarded
another £1 million to my local authority to provide
200 child care places for parents seeking work. Having that bound into
the local delivery of child care provision is critical, and I therefore
strongly commend the inclusion of the regional development
agencies. The
Learning and Skills Council, which is soon to change its name to the
Skills Funding Agency, is also very relevant, and I shall give an
example of why. Last week, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State
for Work and Pensions came to a school in my constituency and met a
group of parents who were supported by a voluntary organisation called
Women Like Us, which does important outreach work in traditionally
hard-to-reach
communities, with primarily Bangladeshi and Arabic-speaking women. A
strong message from the women to my right hon. Friend was that many of
them wanted to work in schools and child care settings because the
working hours made a great deal of sense for them as parents, and there
was also a cultural dimension, in that they regarded such settings as
good and safe places to begin their working lives. However, they were
not funded, so they were required to pay for a level 3 national
vocational qualification in child care, which is now a necessary
qualification for working in a school setting. On the one hand, the
accreditation standard for working in child care has
changed—whether through local authority or national Government
determination I do not know—and, on the other, LSC funding of
skills training has not changed, so there is a gap between the training
that parents require to fill the available jobs and the funding. That
is a good example of where we need to tie up more effectively how we
resource skills training with the kind of jobs people want to take and
are preparing for. There are good arguments for those two agencies, if
we are to have a specified list of partner agencies. I look forward to
my hon. Friend the Minister’s
response. Mr.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con): It is a
great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Caton.
I shall speak primarily to amendment 62 which, as my hon. Friend the
Member for South-West Bedfordshire commented, would add mental health
trusts to partner authorities. The hon. Member for Northavon pointed to
the logic of omitting mental health trusts from partner authorities but
I shall explain why I believe that logic is flawed in
practice.
I will make
a few comments about the prevalence and impact of mental health, and
the reasons why it is relevant to any debate on child poverty, even in
a Bill that centres mostly on incomes rather than wider issues.
According to the brilliantly named Dr. Nurse, the national lead for
public mental health and well-being at the Department of Health, one in
six of the adult population experiences mental ill health at any time.
Some 10 per cent. of children have a mental health problem, which for
many continues into adulthood, and 15 per cent. of people experience a
disabling depression at some time. One in 100 people has a serious
mental health problem. It goes without saying that those
problems—particularly in the acute phase—have a real
impact on a family’s ability to manage finances and ensuring
that the children do not suffer poverty. King’s Fund research
estimated that mental health problems in England had a social cost of
£71.1 billion—around 5.3 per cent. of gross domestic
product—in 2007. Increasing trends of poor mental health mean
that, by 2026, the cost of mental health problems is projected almost
to double to £136 billion, which will be made up of
more than £47 billion of health and social care
service costs, and £88 billion a year from loss of employment.
That figure can be compared with the £95 billion that we
currently spend on the NHS each year.
Mental
health is therefore a hugely important issue that will grow in
importance over coming years. It is obvious that the loss of employment
through poor mental health will have a serious impact on the income of
a household in which a child is growing up, as well as
possibly on the health of the parent and the quality of parenting that
they can provide. Poor mental health in children has an effect on
educational outcomes and school drop-out rate. It clearly has an impact
on their life chances and ability to move out of poverty for good. I
put it to the Minister that it would almost be perverse not to include
mental health trusts as partner authorities when poor mental health
will be one of the most significant determinants of household income
and child welfare. I now come
to the succinct point that was well made by the hon. Member for
Northavon about the logic that the Bill includes primary care trusts
and strategic health authorities as partner authorities and that they
are the commissioners of services. I put it to the hon. Gentleman and,
most importantly, to the Minister that in reality that is not entirely
true. In my area, there is an excellent local mental health trust that
is seeking foundation trust status. It has members, a board and a
chairman. The reality is that the services it
provides—[Interruption.] The Minister is
looking dubious. The money flows through the primary care trust but I
put it to the Minister that, in reality, local mental health services
are chiefly commissioned by that mental health trust. It is the body
with the expertise; it is not micro-managed. It gets on and provides
the tapestry of services as it sees fit, working with its members,
board and experts. It is not looking over its shoulder all the time to
the PCT to tell it what to do, let alone to the far-distant strategic
health authority whose main aim is to ensure that that trust is
properly run and that its books balance. I will press the amendment to
a Division and I ask Ministers to take it
seriously. The
Campaign to End Child Poverty, which is run by Save the Children,
Barnardo’s and Gingerbread, has submitted a memorandum
stating: “The
Campaign to End Child Poverty agrees with the Committee that parental
mental ill health is a major contributing factor to child poverty. We
note that Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities are
listed in Clause 19(2) as partner authorities, and suggest that these
are the appropriate bodies to hold responsibility for setting out their
role in the reduction of child poverty as they are commissioning bodies
rather than
providers.” That
powerful contribution does not help my case, but I am not persuaded by
this. I ask the Minister to reflect on the matter and to consider
talking to others on the front line. I am convinced that mental health
trusts are not merely providers at the behest of commissioners. They
are effectively a real commissioner of services, and if they are not at
the table when mental health has such a critical role in child poverty,
there is a risk that the Bill’s central aims will be undermined
and it will be a weaker piece of legislation. I hope that the Minister
will consider
that. The
Government reject the idea of including those authorities because they
want things to be very local, yet they have strategic health
authorities listed as partner authorities. That is rather peculiar. The
hon. Member for Regent’s Park and Kensington, North talked about
child care and also what the regional development agencies are there to
do. The Learning and Skills Council is there to provide skills and
promote enterprise. It was disappointing and slightly bizarre that the
Government did not see fit last week to accept our amendment that would
have put the promotion of enterprise as a route out of child poverty in
the Bill.
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