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Under the 2004 Act and section 58, in particular, it is allowable, as the hon. Member for Stone said it has been for many decades, for a parent or someone in loco parentis to use the reasonable punishment defence for the use of force, but not for causing harm such as actual or grievous bodily harm. The provision in section 58 applies only to common assault. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley, it became clear when the issue was raised some weeks ago that there is a grey area within the definition of in loco parentis. Some individuals can be described as acting in loco parentis, and they could therefore use reasonable punishment outside of a full-time maintained school-where they cannot use that defence. To us, such individuals might look more like teachers than parents. An example would be the madrassah teacher, the Sunday school teacher or the sports club coach, and the question arises: can they use the reasonable punishment defence as a reason to strike a child legally?
Mr. Cash: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Ed Balls: I have been really indulgent. If I could just set out the current position, I shall absolutely take an intervention.
As I understand it, there are two different forces at work here. The hon. Member for Stone wondered whether we should extend the in loco parentis option for using force into full-time maintained schools, and argued that there may be-he did not say this absolutely-circumstances when a teacher should have the right to use the reasonable punishment defence to strike a child. That means that he wants to move from the grey area by making it possible to use that defence in schools. As I understand my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley, new clause 10 tries to go in precisely the opposite direction by defining someone acting in loco parentis only as someone who is genuinely the parent with parental responsibilities.
In replying to earlier debates, I said that as far as I was concerned, a teacher should not be striking a child whatever setting they are working in, but there is clearly a grey area in law. I then wrote to our adviser, Sir Roger Singleton, to set out my concerns about that grey area following discussions with the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole, and particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley, and I asked Sir Roger to look into the issue and report back to me. He wrote to me on 27 January. In that letter, he said that he, too, was worried that there was the potential for people who were acting in loco parentis by teaching a child at arm's length from the role of parent being able to use the reasonable punishment defence. He referred to Saturday and Sunday school teachers, youth workers, music teachers or home tutors, and went on to say:
"There is another group-those carers without parental responsibility to whom parents may entrust their children, such as step-parents and grandparents, or...friends and babysitters-who may also"
be in the "in loco parentis" category. They would not be the parent under the definition referred to in the Bill, but might be seen by us as somebody who was acting in a parental way. If I, as a parent, sent my child to a Sunday school, I would not expect the Sunday school teacher to strike my child, but if I had entrusted them to a grandparent or a step-parent, the question would be whether I thought that that situation was more like that of the Sunday school teacher or someone acting with parental responsibility.
Sir Roger said that we needed to think harder about this before we reached a conclusion. New clause 10 would mean that only a parent or guardian would be able to use a reasonable punishment defence, so it would exclude not only the Sunday school teacher or madrassah teacher but the step-parent, grandparent, friend or babysitter. Many of us would think that that went too far, and that is why we are worried that the definitions in the new clause are too restrictive. That was certainly Sir Roger's concern when he wrote to me in January. He also wanted to know how this would operate in practice and how we would ensure that it was properly monitored.
Sir Roger told me that he needed more time to produce his report. To be honest, he asked, as independent experts always do, for more time than I wanted to give. I asked him whether he could come back to us by the end of March, and he said that he would. I guarantee to the House that I will respond to his report on the day that he makes it. The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole spoke of wanting things done before we go into purdah. I do not know what timetables we are going to have- Lord Mandelson has not yet told me of his plans, nor of the Prime Minister's-but when the report comes out at the end of March, I will respond immediately. My expectation, and my personal view, is that the right thing for us to do is to tighten up the law. I would rather move more in the direction of a tighter definition than of a wider definition. I am sympathetic to the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole, but at the moment we do not know quite how to define this, and that is why Sir Roger needs to finish his work. We will have that report, with a response from us, in the public domain at the end of March.
Mr. Cash: I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his clear exposition of where he stands. However, this question still remains: would he prefer simply to use the term "parent/step-parent", for example, or perhaps include "grandparent", and leave it at that? It may be that he and I would not agree even on that, but at least it would remove a lot of the problems relating to the expressions "in loco parentis" or "parental responsibility", which the courts have extended in a whole variety of ways. From my point of view, I would want this to be less restrictive, but would the Secretary of State-
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I hope that the hon. Gentleman is going to conclude, as he knows that interventions should be brief.
6.45 pm
Ed Balls: The answer is set out in Sir Roger Singleton's letter to me of 27 January, in which he says:
"We need to consider very carefully the appropriateness of Government regulating arrangements that parents or carers make with others for the care and instruction of their children voluntarily and for relatively short periods, outside of mainstream education or other settings already covered by a ban on corporal punishment. Any regulation must be proportionate and involve the minimum possible interference in family life."
He then talks about different considerations in different kinds of settings and for different groups of parents, and says:
"In arriving at a way forward, whether...legislative or not, I do think it will be important to give careful consideration to the...evidence and to consult...stakeholders"
to ensure that we get this right. My view is that there is a grey area-a loophole. I personally would favour a tightening-up of the position. I do not want to pre-empt Sir Roger's work, but I think that his direction of thinking will be towards a tighter definition of "in loco parentis", but perhaps not one that goes as far as the particularly tight definition in new clause 10. I am not ruling out the possibility that we might end up with a similar definition to that in the new clause, but I would rather wait for Sir Roger to report before reaching a view.
Annette Brooke: I thank the Secretary of State for the assurances that he has given. As I said repeatedly, I wanted to keep this issue on the agenda and to stay focused about it. His responses to us today have been very satisfactory, and we await the next responses.
Ed Balls: The hon. Lady is right. It was because people in this House, and people with expertise and direct personal experience, including my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley, raised particular issues, that the matter is on the agenda. I fear that the hon. Member for Stone may want to broaden the agenda further than I, and probably those on both Front Benches, would seek to do. I am happy to consider a further amendment at any point, but I hope that we now have enough clarity to move forward.
Let me turn to the safeguarding issues that were raised-some hours ago, as it now seems-by the hon. Members for East Worthing and Shoreham and for Mid-Dorset and North Poole, and then by my hon. Friends the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Jim Cousins) and for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Joan Walley). The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham contextualised this by looking back over the past year. He pointed to the fact that we have just passed the anniversary of the tragedy of the death of baby Peter and that we have had, since then, other individual acts of cruelty and suffering that are very distressing. He referred to our frustration and upset that this should have happened in Haringey after the death of Victoria Climbié, which was now 10 years ago, pretty much to the day.
I think that the hon. Gentleman gave credit to some of the progress that has been made in the past year, although probably insufficiently so. We have had today the publication of Ofsted's second inspection report, following the first joint area review inspection a year ago, which gives a good report on Haringey children's services and the progress that has been made in the past year. I would like to put on record in the House my appreciation to the leader of the council, the director of children's services and the chief executive for the progress that they have made, which Ofsted has recognised today, while not for a minute suggesting that we are out of the woods. There is still more to do to ensure that children are fully and properly safe in Haringey, but there has been real progress there. There is also the work of the social work taskforce, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned, under the chairmanship of Moira Gibb. This has been seen, by the taskforce itself, and by the wider social work world, as a real watershed moment-that was the language that it used to describe the extra investment, support, challenge and training that are now going into the social work profession.
The hon. Gentleman talked about a collapse in morale, but in the past few months more people have come forward in response to our advertising and said that they wanted to be considered for training as social workers than at any time for many years. That shows that out of a tragic situation and tragic circumstances, there is a fuller understanding of the role that social workers play.
I was particularly heartened when The Sun, not a supporter of the Government these days, ran an editorial in September praising the work of social workers. That was one reflection of the changing mood over the past year. It is not right to say this is a time of only bad news for social work. In fact, out of a tragedy a year ago, and, I would like to think, through cross-party effort-at times it has not felt as cross-party as one might have thought it would be on such a sensitive issue as child protection, but let us put that to one side-we are in a stronger position than we were then. That is not least because of the work of the social work taskforce following Lord Laming's excellent report published almost a year ago.
Tim Loughton: I genuinely hope that we do get more people coming forward to be social workers who are of sufficient calibre and are trained to a sufficient standard to do the job that we desperately need them to. However, will the Secretary of State not admit that back in 2002, when there was a recruiting exercise for more social workers, a lot of people came forward but very few stayed the course and went on to be the child protection social workers of the great calibre that we need? We are in danger of the same thing happening now.
Ed Balls: As the social work taskforce has stated, initial training, training within the profession, pay and progression and the supervision of social workers at the front line by management have all been inadequate for years. They are now being addressed, because of the taskforce's work, Lord Laming's impetus and the tragedy of baby Peter a year ago, in a way that is revolutionary and quite different from anything that we have seen in recent years. That is why I am cautiously confident that we will be able to look back on last year and say that 2009 was the year when, for the first time, we properly recognised, financed, resourced and supported the role that social workers play, particularly in the difficult area of child protection.
John Hemming: Does the Secretary of State share my concern at the fact that the number of serious incident notifications to Ofsted in 2009 was substantially more than in 2008?
Ed Balls: The rise in referrals, which means that harm is coming to the attention of the authorities, has been a real challenge for children's social services departments around the country. It has been the result of the heightened awareness of child protection issues among not just social workers but other individuals and professionals who work with children. The hon. Gentleman is right that there has been more awareness, which has led to more pressure on the system.
John Hemming: I apologise to the Secretary of State for not having been very clear. By "serious incident notifications" I meant the notifications to Ofsted that are the formal process by which most serious case reviews are kicked off following the death of a child. The increase in serious incident notifications in 2009 compared with 2008 refers to those following the death of a child.
Ed Balls: As the hon. Gentleman knows, there has been a downward trend over recent years, but if there was a greater rise in notifications last year, we will need to examine and understand it. I am aware of that matter, but I do not believe one can say that it is a consequence of the events that happened a year ago.
I turn to particular issues raised by the new clauses and amendments. As I have said, Lord Laming reported last spring and talked about our having
"a sound framework for professionals to protect children and promote their welfare",
but stated that we needed a step change in how it was applied consistently across the country, particularly to
"ensure that leaders of local services accept their responsibility to translate policy, legislation and guidance into day-to-day practice on the frontline of every service."
He stated that that was the only way to ensure that children were safe. The measures that we have debated today will take forward Lord Laming's recommendation in two areas-further strengthening the serious case review process and improving the working of local safeguarding children boards. We also debated those matters in relation to new clauses 1 and 21.
The statutory guidance "Working together to safeguard children", which we have updated in recent months in line with Lord Laming's recommendations, is an important step forward. We have already strengthened the requirements in that document to have thorough, comprehensive serious case reviews whenever a child is seriously harmed and to ensure that immediate lessons are learned and implemented before the publication of the executive summary and the completion of the full review.
I know that there is debate in the House about the publication of full serious case reviews, and it has arisen again in recent weeks because of the executive summary of the Edlington review following the tragic events in Doncaster last year. It is important to say that the executive summary of that serious case review, which Ofsted rated as a good summary, was drawn up under the old, more restricted guidelines for the preparation of executive summaries. It would not be state-of-the-art today. The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole made powerful points about her reaction having read the serious case review, and I had the same reaction. I was shocked and surprised by the extent of multiple engagement of children's services in Doncaster with the child in question. Under the new guidelines, that would be more fully set out in the executive summary than it was under the one drawn up on the old basis.
I say to the hon. Member for Stone that it was clear in that case that the children who had perpetrated the crime, for whom there can be no excuse, had themselves been subjected to either witnessing the physical harming and abuse of the parent in their household, or to physical harm and abuse themselves from the adults there, over a number of years. It is important to say that in the context of the remarks that we heard earlier about the importance or otherwise of children learning boundaries through punishment and physical harm. Those boys did not learn boundaries, and they lost any moral sense because they grew up in a family in which there was none. That was part of the problem.
The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole has read the serious case review, but it would have been impossible to publish it even in redacted form without
putting into the public domain the details of the harm suffered not just by those boys but by other siblings in the household. Those details could then have been seen by other children, young people and adults in the same part of Doncaster. That would have been the wrong thing to do not only for the boys who perpetrated the crime but for the victims of the crime, whose suffering is there for us to see in the serious case review, and for the other siblings, who were not named in the court case but are named in the review. The harm that they suffered, which is material to the case, would have been there to see. I defy the hon. Lady to say to me that the serious case review could be published in a redacted form without putting those children in jeopardy.
I make that argument about publishing serious case reviews on the basis not of my judgment but of advice that I receive. I cite my usual sources-Lord Laming, the child protection expert; Sir Roger Singleton, our child protection adviser; the Association of Directors of Children's Services; the Association of Chief Police Officers; and the NSPCC. They all agree that publishing full serious case reviews would be wrong, because it would put children at risk and make it very difficult for professionals to co-operate in what is not an independent inquiry into who did things wrong but a process to ensure that lessons are learned.
The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said, "This will not be good enough. What we are going to hear is the same old excuses trotted out by children's charities for whatever reasons." I have to say that he does the NSPCC a disservice when he belittles its view on the publication of full serious case reviews.
The NSPCC wrote to me at the beginning of February-in the public domain-after those issues were raised in the House, to say that it does not agree with the publication of full SCRs. In the letter, the NSPCC states that it believes
"that the proposal does not take into account two important consequences: the possibility of further harm to surviving and subsequent children of the family; and the hesitancy of children, young people and their families to cooperate with the review process."
The NSPCC is right on that point. I urge the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole, who is an expert in these matters, to think hard again about the proposal to publish the full SCR in the face of all the advice of all the experts, including the NSPCC, which thinks it would be the wrong thing to do in the interests of the safety of children.
7 pm
Annette Brooke: I absolutely agree with the Secretary of State that sections of the review would have needed to be redacted, particularly to protect the children who were attacked and their families, and the family of the attackers. However, I repeat to him we are proposing a change in the thought process, so that we start by deciding what can be published. There were pages detailing miscommunication in the review that I believe should be in the public view.
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