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retrospectively, when somebody’s behaviour is difficult, but there is certainly good correlative evidence that the lack of a warm bond from the beginning can result in serious behavioural problems later.

The issues that the hon. Lady has raised go to the heart of a number of matters that are a priority for the Government in the areas of family policy, health policy and child development. We have many of the systems in place that will begin to pick up on those issues. This is about universal and targeted services. She made the powerful point that issues of attachment are no respecter of class or income, which is precisely why we need children’s centres that are universal, but that can focus on those who are in the most need. They must have a universal front door through which anyone can walk, and they must not stigmatise those people who walk in and ask for the services. They must then focus their resources on the most difficult and challenging problems, including those that the hon. Lady mentioned. That is exactly what we have been trying to achieve.

Regarding the statement that we published in the summer, a number of things will be key if we are going to get this right. First, it is about identifying need early and putting in place the support to help the families that need it. Frankly, the first problem that we need to get over is that of data sharing. As I have said, this problem goes to the heart of issues covered by the Department for Education and the Department of Health, and data sharing is one of the big nubs that the previous Government tried to get to grips with. My colleague the Under-Secretary of State for Health and I are determined to pick up on this issue, because until the information about which families are most in need can be passed between the different professionals, it will be difficult to put in place the help that we know is available.

Over the past six months, I have seen some really good examples of where the services are working really well, and it is worth taking a minute to talk about them. The most exciting of the examples was in Manchester. I visited the Clayton Sure Start children’s centre just after the riots to find out about the work that it had been doing in this area. As part of a drive to improve the integration of services with GPs in the area with the most deprived wards, the GPs themselves had arranged for junior doctors who were training to become GPs to spend time at children’s centres to see the services that were being delivered. Among the messages that they were trying to get across was that, when a woman presents with post-natal depression, it is not just the woman whom they need to treat. They need to look beyond the patient and to understand that a newborn child is also involved and that, unless they get the services right, there could be a risk of attachment disorder later. That is not to say that every woman who presents with post-natal depression will have a child who ends up with attachment disorder, but GPs need to be aware of these issues.

The hon. Lady made a point about training for professionals. Health visitors are trained to understand these things, as are early years workers, although I think that there is much that we can do to improve on that. I will come back to that in a moment. Many GPs have very little knowledge of child development and attachment issues. That was a really exciting project on social prescribing, and I will be fascinated to see the results. I hope that many other areas will follow Manchester’s example, and learn just what can be done.