Examination of Witnesses (Questions 52-70)
TIM LOUGHTON
MP AND DR
JEANETTE PUGH
15 SEPTEMBER 2010
Q52 Chair: Thank you both for
joining us this morning, Dr Jeanette Pugh and Tim Loughton MP.
It is a pleasure, Minister, to have you here for your first appearance
before us after taking office. Lord Laming said that what was
required now was to—I think he said—"Just do
it", echoing Nike or whatever. Why, after Lord Laming's Social
Work Taskforce and all the other reviews and efforts, have you
decided to have another review instead of just getting on with
it?
Tim Loughton: Perhaps I can make
three introductory remarks, and then address that entirely. Thank
you, Chair, for introducing Jeanette Pugh, who is here as my minder.
She is the director of safeguarding at the Department for Education,
and a very excellent one at that. First, I really welcome the
review that the Committee is doing. It is a really important issue.
Child safeguarding and the protection of vulnerable families is
a very important part of the work of the Department. It does not
get the recognition it deserves in Parliament more generally,
and I think the Committee's work will help to resolve that. Secondly,
this is a very important issue for me and for our part of the
coalition, in particular. For several years before the election,
we did a lot of work around social workers and child protection.
The commission on the future of children's social workers, which
I chaired back in 2007, produced a report, No More Blame Game,
and a second report in response to the Laming inquiry in 2009,
and we then produced a document called Back to the Frontline
in February this year, ahead of the election, so there is quite
a lot of form in this area—it isn't something that's just
happened. Why I think it is particularly good this inquiry is
happening now is that it's not a knee-jerk reaction to another
tragedy that has just happened, which is usually the only time
we get a focus on this particular area. On the third thing—and
then responding to your question about why don't we just do it—I
think we've done an awful lot in the first four months of this
Government. Within the first 100 days, we had set up the Eileen
Munro review—no doubt we'll have more questions on that—which
I think is absolutely crucial. We had established the new regulations
for publication in full of serious case reviews, and the first
of those was published retrospectively at the end of July with
the Khyra Ishaq case, and I think that that was a very positive
and widely welcomed move. And, on 6 August, I gave the order to
switch off ContactPoint—again something that was a clear
undertaking in the coalition agreement and in the manifesto commitments
of the two coalition parties. Added to that, the vetting and barring
review is under way, which is very germane to safeguarding; I've
been doing various things around fostering regulations; there
is the family law review, which is essential for CAFCASS, which
is very much a part of this area—and so on and so forth.
So there is an awful lot we have done at a very early stage in
this new Government.
Q53 Chair: What will the review
cover that Lord Laming didn't?
Tim Loughton: What is different
about Eileen Munro's review? The first reaction to it was twofold:
first, "Oh no, not another review" and, secondly, "Does
that mean that all the very good work done by Moira Gibb and the
Social Work Taskforce is going to be junked?" My response
to that is no, this is complementary to the work of the Social
Work Reform Board and all the excellent work that Moira Gibb has
done. The very first person that Eileen Munro went to see was
Moira Gibb, and one of the people from her reform board is serving
on the reference group. Secondly, on why it's different, so many
reviews in the past have been knee-jerk reactions—a disaster
has happened and something must be done about it. There's a big
review, and the result of that is usually several hundred extra
pages of regulations added to the rulebook. I believe those regulations
have added to the problem and resulted in social workers and other
key professionals spending up to 80% of their time attending to
processes, usually in front of their computer. What I think Eileen
Munro will come up with—I am in the slightly difficult position
of not wanting to prejudge her final report, let alone her initial
scoping report, which is due out on 1 October—will, I hope,
be to get rid of a lot of those regulations, or to say that, actually,
this stuff is standing in the way of better child protection and
we can do it better with fewer regulations, relying on the common
sense, the good training, good practice and professionalism of
social workers and other professionals, if we just allow them
to get on with the job of being social workers.
Q54 Chair: Is the brief that Professor
Munro has had from Ministers such that she will feel constrained
by the financial circumstances we're in, or does she have carte
blanche to recommend those things, however expensive, that she
feels need to be put in place to protect children?
Tim Loughton: I made it absolutely
clear, as did the Secretary of State when he wrote to Eileen Munro
confirming her appointment, that she has absolutely carte blanche.
There are two things we've given her, effectively. One is a destination,
and that destination is to come up with a system that protects
children better by freeing up social workers and other professionals
to spend more of their time eyeballing the people they are there
to protect at the front line, and able to make well informed value
judgments, some of which will be wrong, but they will be better
informed value judgments that their professional training leads
them to be able to make. That's the destination point. We gave
her a couple of landmarks, if you will, and that is that we are
scrapping—have scrapped—ContactPoint, and secondly,
that we will publish, and are publishing, serious case reviews.
As to where she goes from there, it's entirely up to her. There
will be areas that she feels the need to look at in terms of inspection
and training, what other professionals are doing and so on, and
it's entirely up to her to do that.
Q55 Nic Dakin: We have just heard
from the professionals about the publication of serious case reviews
and the concern about going down exactly the legalistic line that
you've described previous initiatives doing. How can we be confident
that that won't be the case?
Tim Loughton: I entirely disagree
with that sentiment. If the contention is that it would all be
about preparing for the serious case review, up to now it's been
all about preparing for the executive summary of the serious case
review, which is the only public face of that investigation. As
we have seen, very manifestly in the case of the Edlington Serious
Case Review, where the leaked full report to "Newsnight"
showed that there was very little, if any, relationship between
the 150-page full serious case overview and the 12-page executive
summary, it absolutely showed that there was no confidence in
serious case reviews really being a learning exercise, as they
should be. I believe we've got to the stage where public confidence
in child protection in this country is so completely shot, and
the ramification of that is that confidence in the profession
and on the part of the profession in itself is at an all-time
low, which I think is a really very serious matter that we need
to address and what Munro is really going to address. Only full
transparency of serious case reviews will start to rehabilitate
the image of child protection in the eyes of the public, and therefore
start to rehabilitate the reputation of those involved in doing
something about it, particularly social workers. I think those
who will benefit most from the full publication of serious case
reviews will be social workers. Let's face it, whether they are
published or not, most of the details of the high-profile cases
appear on the front page of the tabloids or on the internet. The
full details are actually there. When you see the full serious
case review—I have now been able to read some, and every
executive summary of a serious case review now comes via my desk
for me to look at them, and there are 130 of those a year at the
moment—you will see that, actually, okay, there were some
problems and mistakes made by social workers, but actually the
police didn't do a very good job, or the school was at fault,
or the GP or the paediatrician in the A and E department mucked
up. I am not looking at pointing blame. I am looking for a fairer
apportionment of responsibilities, so that all the partners know
that they have to pull their socks up too.
Q56 Nic Dakin: We are also aware
that there is a lot of pressure on funding and resources. How
can we be confident that the capacity will remain in the system
for effective early intervention, so that we get less of these
things happening?
Tim Loughton: I entirely agree
with the comments that Maggie Atkinson made in terms of the good
investment that early intervention is about. One of my jobs in
our Department is to ensure that we make that strong case in our
discussions with the Treasury and to say that it is a false economy
not to intervene early. That is also what the Munro review is
about—to ensure that social workers can intervene early,
so that the first knock on the door by the social worker is not
signalling the initiation of care proceedings but actually saying,
"We're here to help. How can we work with you supportively
and bring in additional services?" We want to ensure, as
much as possible, that families can stay together, rather than
the children having to be taken into care because it has all gone
pear-shaped and we are intervening too late in the day. A lot
of money is being wasted at the moment, though, because of the
high vacancy rates and the high absentee rates of social workers,
due to sickness and everything. We are paying a huge premium for
the turnover in social workers, for the cover provided by agency
social workers and for the fact that so much money is being spent
on processes and paperwork. If we get rid of a lot of that so
much more time can be spent at the sharp end and hopefully social
workers will feel rather more invigorated and confident in their
job, and more people will want to come into the job and stay in
it.
Q57 Nic Dakin: So what practical
steps are the Government proposing to improve the capacity of
the front line, in a context in which there will be no more money?
Tim Loughton: First, we released
£23 million of social work reform money, which is all about
improving training and retention of staff at the sharp end. That
has been absolutely welcome. I need to argue, and I have been
arguing, the case that we need to have some resources available
for what Eileen Munro comes up with, particularly in the early
stages. Otherwise it would be a meaningless review, if she came
up with lots of what I think are lots of practical and whizzy
ideas only to be told, "Well, that's all very nice, but actually
there's no money in the pot." As I say, though, I think that
actually there is a financial gain to be made here in quite short
order, whereby if we get it right in social work we instantly
get rid of a lot of the waste. We speed up the courts system,
where there are delays because a social worker is not available
to turn up in court, because the paperwork has gone missing, or
because it is a new social worker assigned to the case so they
have to go back to first base. That is where so much money is
wasted, and while that time delay exists the problem is being
exacerbated such that a more expensive permanent care option may
be the only solution by the end of the day.
Q58 Nic Dakin: So you are very
clear that resources will be there to fund what comes out of the
Munro report, to ensure that the problems with vacancies, management
and so on and so forth, which you very clearly described, will
be addressed in short order?
Tim Loughton: I am very clear
that I am making that case to the Treasury. As for whether or
not the Treasury has completely taken that case on board, that
will become clearer after 20 October.
Q59 Tessa Munt: Can I pick up
on some of the issues related to serious case reviews? In Maggie's
comments—I know you were here then for them—she talked
about the impact on the survivors, if you like, and the siblings
of such a situation. How do you answer that potential criticism,
that it is not very effective to publish? Secondly, why do you
choose to publish serious case reviews? I ask because, as you
have identified, if those case reviews come across your desk and
you can see that the executive summary is different from the content
of the report, it strikes me that it is possible for you to instruct
that the executive summary be written accurately and the executive
summary could be published without the content of the document
itself, because of the implications that publishing the content
has. We have heard already about the potential fear among the
people who are involved of the impact of publication. I just want
to explore that a little more, if I may.
Tim Loughton: I will take that
second part first, Tessa. It is the role of Ofsted to inspect
the serious case reviews, both the executive summary and the full
overviews in any case. It can obviously rate one as unsatisfactory
and then it would have to be done again. There is the whole question—this
is something that the Munro review will look at—about the
capacity of Ofsted to inspect serious case reviews, which came
up in the Haringey case. The first executive summary was deemed
to be okay until all the subsequent information came out, and
then it wasn't worth the paper that it was written on. I see all
the executive summaries at the moment. For some serious case reviews,
where there are wider implications, I will ask to look at the
full review as well. All of them, apart from the four cases that
we said should be published retrospectively, were initiated pre-10
June, which is the date that we announced that future serious
case reviews should be published. I go back to the point that
I made to Nic Dakin earlier that the credibility of the child
protection system requires greater publication transparency to
the public in the future. I want to get to a stage where the public
are not interested in the latest baby death tragedy because they
are confident that a serious case review is there, warts and all,
available for all those professionals at the sharp end and for
others who are interested to take a real interest in, and that
things have not somehow been swept under the carpet. There is
a fear about the culture of secrecy, which surrounds a lot of
serious case reviews, that has led people to be entirely cynical
that any lessons will be learned and to believe that it is another
whitewash, that there are the same old regular suspects and that
nothing ever happens about it. We need to improve serious case
reviews. Eileen Munro will be looking at whether the format of
serious case reviews is the right one. Can we learn from either
the different models that the SCIE is looking at at the moment
or the way in which they do it in America—the different
narrative to the serious case reviews? I don't think the reviews
are the best way of doing it anyway. They were introduced in 1988
as a replacement for having a full inquiry into every suspicious
child death. We also need to consider the way in which they are
audited. Should we go back in a year's time to do a checklist
to see whether things that were suggested in the recommendations
have been done? The authorship of serious case reviews needs to
be looked at. How can we be guaranteed that the quality, independence
and arm's-length position of the author from the LSCB is guaranteed?
We need to look at all those things, and Eileen Munro will be
looking at them. Your first point, which is a very valid point,
is that we did not just say that every serious case review will
be published and bulldoze that through regardless, and we certainly
did not say that retrospectively every one will now be published.
There would have been no time for any social workers in any local
authority children's department in the country to do any social
work if they had had to go retrospectively through all those reports.
We chose instead to highlight four high-profile cases that had
very wide ramifications for the way in which we are doing child
protection in this country and say that they should be published,
of which one has been published already. We said that they should
be published subject to anonymisation, to appropriate redaction
and, crucially, to there being no threat to the welfare of a surviving
child or siblings. There may well be future cases in which the
LSCB can make out a special case for why the full publication
of that serious case review could go against that third criteria.
Indeed, one of the retrospective reports that we are considering
having published may come under that bracket. If it does, it won't
be published. However, I would say that, if you look at the model
of mental health homicide reports, which have been published in
full for many years, there hasn't been a problem. They refer to
Dr A, Nurse B and Patient C or whatever, and are a very thorough
and transparent learning tool. If we can do it for mental health
homicides, why can we not do something similar for child deaths
and child harm?
Q60 Lisa Nandy: I want to return
to the question of resources. The Government spend an enormous
amount of money each year on locking up children in immigration
detention. It has been documented beyond any doubt that that horrific
practice causes long-lasting harm to children and cannot be justified.
Your Government made a very welcome commitment in May that that
practice would end. That was May and this is September. Five months
later, why is this horrific practice still going on?
Tim Loughton: First, it is not
a matter for me. There was a clear commitment in the coalition
agreement, and the progress on that has been outlined by Damian
Green as the responsible Minister. Absolutely, it is the intention
to bring that practice to an end as quickly as possible. I entirely
agree with your sentiments. As for the exact mechanics about the
timing, that is a matter for the Home Office and the Immigration
Minister.
Q61 Lisa Nandy: I am a little
concerned about that answer, because one of the key things that
the creation of the Department for Children, Schools and Families
did was bring together under one roof responsibility for all children.
For some children left out of that equation alternative arrangements
were made, but for others no arrangements were made, including
this group of children in particular. Are you telling the Committee
that this group of children is not a priority for your Department?
Tim Loughton: Absolutely not.
I am saying that the mechanics of bringing that practice to an
end, the timing and the practicalities are a direct responsibility
of the Home Office and the Minister for Immigration, with whom
I have had conversations. He is entirely aware of my sentiments,
which are the sentiments of my Department and which coincide with
your own feelings, as you expressed. So absolutely, we have serious
concern about the future of that group of children and want to
see the situation brought to an end as quickly as possible.
Q62 Lisa Nandy: Can you tell the
Committee when the practice will end?
Tim Loughton: I can't, because
it won't be me signing it off. However, I am putting as much pressure
as I can from my Department on to the Home Office to bring it
to an end as quickly as possible.
Q63 Lisa Nandy: Are you concerned
about your lack of ability as a Minister who is responsible for
children to influence what is happening to that group of children
right now?
Tim Loughton: No, I don't think
so. I have every confidence that the Minister for Immigration
is absolutely committed to bring the practice to an end as soon
as possible. I don't think there is a conflict of policy here
at all. It was a clear coalition agreement. It remains a clear
coalition undertaking. It remains a clear obligation of the Minister
for Immigration, as the front-line Minister responsible, to do
that as soon as possible, in full measure.
Dr Jeanette Pugh: If I may say,
to reassure the Committee, I have been working closely with a
ministerial colleague, Sarah Teather, on this—indeed, were
it not for this Select Committee this morning, at this very moment
I would be at a senior programme board dealing with this issue
at the Home Office. Unfortunately, I had to give my apologies
because I am here, but the very first e-mail that I sent this
morning was to my opposite number at the Home Office, arranging
for a further meeting with him about the matter next week. We
are working very closely with colleagues in UKBA and the Home
Office to deliver this commitment, on which we are absolutely
determined to make the most progress possible, through the review
and by working with UKBA and a range of NGOs. I can certainly
give you my absolute assurance on that.
Q64 Lisa Nandy: What concerns
me about your answers is that this very specific practice raises
wider questions about the commitment to safeguarding children.
Essentially, we have a group of children, today, who are being
harmed at the hands of the state. My question for you is, if safeguarding
is top priority for this Department, why has that practice not
been ended?
Tim Loughton: Lisa, I think you're
looking for a problem that's not there. There is no suggestion
of any demurring about that commitment. All the things that I
have outlined so far express in tangible terms a huge undertaking
of child protection and safeguarding vulnerable families that
we initiated in the Department for Education in our first 100
days. Absolutely, we hit the ground running. The first visit the
Secretary of State paid on becoming Secretary of State was to
a group of child protection social workers in Hammersmith, for
example. Having been quite a cynic in opposition about how government
works, I have been absolutely amazed at just how quickly we have
been able to bring about some of these things that we were committed
to in opposition, and at how we have already set a very tight
timetable for Professor Munro, the family law review and some
of the other reviews. We don't want to kick them into the long
grass. I want to make these changes because I don't think that
vulnerable children in this country are any safer now than they
were on 25 February 2000, when Victoria Climbie« lost her
life in tragic circumstances. Despite an enormous amount of good
will and good intentions on the part of the previous Government
and all parties, and a huge amount of legislation concerning children—every
piece of which I served on in opposition since 2001—we are
not getting it right, and I want to get it right. It is a priority
of my Department that we get it right.
Q65 Lisa Nandy: I simply put it
to you that you will be judged on the record of how you protect
the most vulnerable, and I haven't heard anything yet about that
particular group of children, of whom Victoria Climbie« was
one—a child brought into this country from abroad—to
suggest that your Department is sufficiently involved with that
issue. It was an unequivocal commitment in May that the detention
of children must end. Yet five months later, there is no clear
rationale for why that practice continues. There are children
in immigration detention now. I put it to you that that is a problem
that really does exist.
Tim Loughton: And it existed in
the previous 13 years of the last Government, when no action took
place. It will happen, but in the first 100 days, the clear coalition
agreement commitments—to abolish ContactPoint, to publish
Serious Case Reviews and to get under way a serious review of
child protection—have already happened. I think that that
is pretty impressive, and absolutely shows the commitment in our
Department to getting on with it.
Q66 Damian Hinds: There has been
something threading through all three evidence sessions we've
had this morning, which is very important, about inter-agency
working, joined-up thinking, collaboration, computer systems that
let people see what notes other people have taken, and all the
rest of it. One thing I don't think we have heard much about at
all is the individual ownership of cases—responsibility.
It strikes me that in most organisations if you really want something
to happen you don't give it to a group or a committee. You may
involve lots of people. You may want people working across departments;
you probably even want them working outside the organisation,
with other organisations; but ultimately one person owns the problem
or issue. I wonder, Minister, if you might say a few words on
your thinking on that.
Tim Loughton: I absolutely agree.
At the end of the day, it is not a computer database, however
elaborate and, in the cast of ContactPoint, very expensive, that
rescues vulnerable children. It is key professionals, at the sharp
end—well trained, well intentioned, and confident about
their job—who will make the appropriate judgment calls and
intervene. My criticism of what has happened in the past is this:
here is a problem; we all know what the problem is and agree something
urgently needs to be done, so, "Let's set up a database"—that
becomes an end in itself. That has done more harm than good. There
was the, "Let's set up a new database" approach, and
the previous Government came up with the Integrated Children's
System. I think that did more harm than any other single IT approach
to child protection, because it meant that social workers had
to spend hours of their time filling in the equivalent of 50 pages
per child, in a very un-user-friendly system, when a lot more
of that time could have been spent more profitably actually speaking
to the child, as Maggie Atkinson quite rightly would like, or
speaking to the child's parents, or visiting the home, etc. The
other approach was, "We need to restructure everything."
Children's services went through so many restructurings. So much
was wasted on that; so many new committees have been set up. Now
we have Children's Trusts. I think the principle of Children's
Trusts and greater agency working is right, but Children's Trusts
have become a huge great body. With Local Safeguarding Children's
Boards the solution was, "Let's add more people." The
previous Government said, "We're now going to have two lay
people on the Local Safeguarding Children's Boards." We therefore
have a lot of time spent with an increasing cast of thousands
round an increasingly large table, talking about the problem,
when what is needed is one, two or three key individuals to identify
the problem, pick it up and run with it and knock on the door.
Too much of what has happened is preventing that and putting so
many obstacles in the way: there are so many boxes to tick, so
many processes to go through before somebody can actually get
up and do something practical.
Q67 Damian Hinds: This might be
a point for Dr Pugh as well: I think a lot of people felt that
putting all 11 million-odd children and youngsters in the country
on a database was slightly disproportionate to what we are trying
to achieve, but on the other hand you want the right IT systems
and support to make sure that people are well informed and able
to work together and so on. What do you see as the right balance
to be struck, and what should be the entry criteria for how someone
gets on to such a database?
Tim Loughton: I shall start, and
then perhaps Jeanette can answer. A database is not an end in
itself. We need to identify the problem and then we need to find
solutions, which may be IT based, in order to address that problem.
Too often it has been the other way round. So the key feature
of everything we do, and the destination of Eileen Munro, must
be to free up that professional's time to deal with the case at
the sharp end and have the space to make those well informed judgment
calls. Everything must be predicated on that. What we want to
see as an alternative to ContactPoint, which we are investigating
at the moment, is a system that concentrates resource on genuinely
vulnerable children. Absolutely a key question, which Maggie Atkinson
raised, is how you define those vulnerable children. That is the
work that we are doing at the moment. It makes much more sense
than thinly spreading resource across 11.5 million children in
ContactPoint, which did not do an awful lot of what people said
it would do. It still had serious security flaws, such that the
last Government would not publish the security review they commissioned
into the security behind it. It had access to 390,000 professionals
and goodness knows who else and did not really tackle the problem.
I want a system that enables us to identify those kids who are
genuinely vulnerable and makes sure that they are on the radar
of those people who are in a position to do something about it,
and to build some other checks into the system. I had a very interesting
conversation last week in my constituency. I met a group of doctors.
I asked them all what they thought about ContactPoint. Only one
had ever heard of it. These GPs who are supposed to be part of
that system, who are part of the weak link between child protection
and health, had not even heard of it except for the one senior
doctor who had heard of it because her daughter goes to an independent
school and the independent schools waged a very aggressive letter-writing
campaign to all their parents saying, "ContactPoint is terrible.
You must do something about it." I thought that spoke volumes.
I also asked her, "If you had a child in your surgery with
Mum and there was some suspicious bruising on that child and you
had doubts, what would you do?" Her reaction was, "I
think I'd ring up the school and have a chat with a responsible
teacher there. If that teacher said, `Well, it's funny you should
mention that because we have been a bit worried about little Johnny',
that should trigger an intervention. It would then go to children's
services and a responsible social worker would be asked to look
at it." ContactPoint never did that. I want to see some trigger
points in the system so that if a professional got on to the database
to see whether there was any form about that child and whether
that child was deemed to be vulnerable and was told no, then a
few weeks later another professional got on to that system about
the same child, it triggered someone to ask why they were getting
those inquiries. ContactPoint would not have done that, so I want
a system that works and brings in interventions when they are
required for those children we know are genuinely vulnerable.
We also need to know about those children who are just under the
radar. We can spend our resources more effectively on achieving
that sort of solution.
Dr Jeanette Pugh: I simply want
to broaden out the point into what is different about Professor
Munro's review. It very much starts with what happens in that
living room between that social worker and that child or that
family. What is it in that moment that prevents that social worker,
if that is the case, from doing the right thing? It could be a
whole range of things to do with an intimidating family or a lack
of confidence. It might be something that another agency has failed
to do or has not done adequately. What is different, and leads
to optimism and a wider welcome for Professor Munro's review,
is that it starts from that point, works outwards and looks at
the system, which is not just IT systems and processes, but the
people and how they interact and whether we can make them interact
better to create a virtuous cycle of behaviour rather than a vicious
circle, which leads to risk aversion and poor judgment.
Q68 Damian Hinds: On the IT aspect,
we all recognise that the way you outlined it is the way it must
be. But these systems and processes are there as back-up. The
trigger points have to happen. You need to make sure that the
trigger points have been activated. There are all those sorts
of things. Can the pipework—the infrastructure—of
ContactPoint be recycled into this new purpose, or is it a new
spec that you are having to put out? What progress has been made
thus far?
Tim Loughton: One criticism that
we received was that we did not turn off ContactPoint the day
after the general election. One reason I did not do that immediately
was precisely because I wanted to see what we could cannibalise
from it to be available for any new systems. Secondly, there are
all sorts of penalty clauses around switching off that contract
early, which I wanted to be able to—I hope that I have—avoid
successfully. There were financial reasons and some IT development
reasons behind that decision. We are taking all that into account
in the scoping that we are now doing, to see whether we can have
a system that does what we want it to do. It may be that we cannot
make the case for that system. What I will not say is that we
will have a computer system whether it does what it says on the
tin or not, which, I think, is partly what ContactPoint turned
out to be. If the Munro report comes up with all sorts of other
solutions that are not IT based, we may not end up with what we
have called a national signposting database of generally vulnerable
children. I have no hard and fast criteria there. It is a question
of what works to make children safer at the end of the day, and
I'll look at any range of things. At the end of the day, however,
it is the professionals who rescue vulnerable children, not technology.
Q69 Charlotte Leslie: Lord Laming's
report was unequivocal in its view on safeguarding. It stated
that you needed an independent cross-departmental perspective
for improvement. Given that, why has the National Safeguarding
Delivery Unit been abolished?
Tim Loughton: We opposed the NSDU
when it was set up, because my response was, "Here's yet
another structure being set up to tick the box `We're doing something
about safeguarding children'." Roger Singleton has done a
very good job in contributing to the whole area of child safeguarding,
and continues to do so in other areas and be available to the
Department. The NSDU was created to improve front-line practice,
but its establishment was based on certain assumptions about how
the system should work. I think that we have moved on from there,
and Eileen Munro's review will create a completely different route
ahead. Having said that, it is not as though we have lost that
resource, because some of the people who were working in the NSDU
are now working on the Munro review. What it comes back to is
the culture and approach from the past of, "Let's set up
another committee, let's set up another unit, let's set up a database
to address the problem", rather than getting to grips with
the problem at the sharp end, which is what we are now trying
to do.
Q70 Liz Kendall: I have just one
quick question, as people may be wanting to move on to Prime Minister's
questions. You discussed GPs being a weak link in the child protection
system, so how do you think the NHS will be better engaged in
child protection when primary care trusts are abolished and GPs
are given responsibility for the NHS?
Tim Loughton: That is a very good
question, and it is certainly an issue that I have been discussing
with colleagues in the Department of Health. With all the proposed
changes to the NHS, the issue of who has responsibility for safeguarding
children absolutely needs to be factored into those considerations.
I think that that is a fair point, which has not been reflected
in some of the headlines about the changes in the health service,
but goodness knows that it is my primary focus. There is a problem,
which was identified particularly when the high profile cases
came out, with how A and E departments deal with child protection—for
example, the child who turns up at 9 o'clock on a Friday night
with some suspicious unexplained injuries. Just over a year ago,
we did a Freedom of Information survey of all hospitals on how
they would handle that, and they would handle it in very different
ways. In many cases, they had not even fulfilled the obligations
that came out of the Victoria Climbie« case from Lord Laming's
report. That absolutely needs to be overhauled with what we are
doing in the Munro review. We need to go to Health and say, "This
is the way we need to do it." That needs to apply to GPs
as well, because GPs were some of the most reluctant engagers
in ContactPoint in the first place, and they raised all sorts
of problems about client confidentiality and things like that.
So they've slightly distanced themselves from the whole process.
The evidence for that, colloquially, was my meeting last week.
They have to be absolutely fully engaged in the process, because
it is GPs and teachers who probably see those vulnerable children
in the right context. They're in a position to say, "Hold
on a minute. We need to do so something about that." We need
to make sure that they are absolutely integrated into the preventive
systems—or the intervention systems, rather—that we
need to bring into play.
Chair: Minister and Dr Pugh, thank you
both very much for coming along and giving evidence to us this
morning.
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