Margaret Hodge
Protection of Vulnerable Children
House of Commons
The Minister for Children (Margaret Hodge): I am delighted that we have the opportunity today, in a debate called at the very time when the Children's Bill is being presented for its First Reading in the House of Lords, to set out both the Government's considerable record on safeguarding vulnerable children and our plans to reform and transform children's services. Ours are plans that will support our ambition to enable every child, including the most vulnerable, to fulfil their potential and to ensure that no child slips through the net. Ours are plans that give us all a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reform services so that all children, but especially the most vulnerable, can achieve better outcomes. Ours are plans that are designed to maximise the opportunity for every child and to minimise the risk for every child.
The Bill that has been presented in the House of Lords today, about which I will say more tomorrow, sets out a legislative framework for children's services and places the well-being and safeguarding of children and young people, particularly the most vulnerable, at its heart. The Bill supports a much wider programme of reform, which I want to touch on in my contribution, but I have to say that it is a bit rich for this Conservative Opposition to try to claim the protection of the vulnerable as central to their political concerns and spending priorities.
I do not understand, nor will any rational person listening to the debate be able to begin to understand, how the Opposition can say that they care about vulnerable children, yet make public spending cuts the central theme of their political programme. We are determined to invest in the vital services that will better safeguard and protect the most vulnerable children, but they want to slash public spending and destroy our public services in the name of an ideological obsession with cutting taxation.
Tim Loughton: I am sorry that the Minister did not listen to the point that I made earlier, because what she is saying is complete and utter garbage. Will she confirm what she has said and is quoted as saying—that all the proposals in the forthcoming Bill will be cost-neutral?
Margaret Hodge: I have to say first that what I said is not garbage, because the commitment made by the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), the shadow Chancellor, is simply to protect health and schools, not education. The hon. Gentleman should go away, re-read the speech and come back to the Chamber better informed for the debate.
Jonathan Shaw: A central agency involved in protecting children is the police, in respect of whom the Opposition have said they will make dramatic cuts.
Margaret Hodge: My hon. Friend is right to draw to the House's attention the impact that cuts in police spending would have on the police's ability to protect vulnerable children.
We are determined to invest in the vital services—
Margaret Hodge: I will deal with that point as well: over time, if I may say so, we have increased spending year on year on social services and children's social services, whereas the Opposition, year on year when they were in government, cut expenditure on and investment in children's social services, which protect vulnerable children.
Mrs. Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con): Will the Minister give way?
Margaret Hodge: May I make a little progress? I will give way to the hon. Lady in a while. I do not understand how the Opposition can claim to want to protect vulnerable children when the shadow Chancellor—I say again what he has clearly and unambiguously stated—says that he will freeze spending on all but schools, and therefore on children's services, in cash terms for two years.
The shadow Chancellor says that he will allow only a 2 per cent. increase in expenditure after that point, so where will the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) find the money to protect vulnerable children when the Opposition would cut services by £100 million in the first year? Where would he be when that figure rose to £230 million in the second year? What does he intend—9,000 fewer social workers or 3,000 fewer Sure Start programmes? Is that where the cuts would fall? How would those cuts, in the terms of the Opposition's own motion, give vulnerable children the priority they need and deserve?
Mrs. Laing: Is the right hon. Lady aware of the enormous cuts in Government grant to Essex county council last year, which meant that in my constituency, and throughout Essex, social services, which were trying hard to provide services for children, including vulnerable children, had to be cut, directly because of the red pen of the Deputy Prime Minister?
Margaret Hodge: That is arrant nonsense. I am aware that Essex social services, along with every other social services department, will get an almost 9 per cent. increase in its spending on children's social services, so it will continue to do the effective job that it is currently doing, building on it and showing the way on the reforms that we want to provide a better chance for vulnerable children.
Mr. Mark Francois (Rayleigh) (Con): I thank the Minister for her courtesy in giving way, but I must tell her that she is incorrect. There has been a large movement of resources away from local authorities in the home counties towards local authorities in the midlands and the north of England. When the change was made last year, Essex county council had the lowest grant increase of any authority in the entire country, and it suffered badly because of it. That is the reality, not the spin that the Minister is giving out.
Margaret Hodge: There has been a year-on-year increase in expenditure across the board on local authority services. That has been coupled with a proper and totally appropriate redistribution so that areas that suffered from lack of investment because they were mainly Labour-controlled local authority areas got a proper slice of the cake in the distribution of local authority resources.
Mrs. Humble: On the Labour Benches, the increase in resources for social services departments has been very much welcomed. Will my right hon. Friend address the issue that I do not recollect that the Opposition mentioned: child mental health services? Vulnerable children often have behavioural and mental health problems. Is she liaising with her colleagues to ensure that mental health services, as well as social services departments, have additional investment that helps those young people and their families?
Margaret Hodge: I concur completely with the important point that my hon. Friend makes. Indeed, the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman), who has responsibility for children's mental health services, will reply to the debate, which shows how closely we work across Government, and he will reflect on the 10 per cent. increase year on year that we are investing in children's mental health services.
Mr. David Amess (Southend, West) (Con): Is the Minister telling the House that for purely party political reasons this rotten Government have given Southend children's social services department only a 2.4 per cent. increase, which is way below the national average? Is she saying that that is just because we have Conservative MPs in Southend? That is what she has been telling the House.
Margaret Hodge: I am telling the hon. Gentleman that this good Government have put right the rotten actions of the previous Conservative Government in deliberately—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The Minister was replying to an intervention.
Margaret Hodge: I will now make some progress.
I want to go further, because I do not believe that the Opposition begin to understand what we need to do to provide a stronger framework to support children and families. Let me give some instances. While we want to use the public purse to build a quality child care infrastructure, which will support choice for children and their parents and which will enhance the opportunity for families to climb out of poverty, the Opposition want to use the money to give mothers no choice but to stay in the home. While we understand that we can safeguard vulnerable children and enhance their opportunity only by ensuring that all our mainstream services deliver effectively for children—as well as strengthening the targeted services—they want only to offer the specialist services that families and children see as stigmatised and paternalistic. Poor services for poor children: that is the Conservative mantra. While Labour Members understand that parents want and need support to bring up their children throughout their lives, particularly at key transition points in their development, the Conservatives believe that parenting should always remain the private concern of individuals, with the state intervening only when things go wrong.
Tim Loughton: This really is rubbish. So far we have heard nothing but attacks on Conservatives for policy that we have never announced—policy that would never be ours. The Government have let it out of the bag that they have shifted funding up north to suit their own political ends.
Before the Minister starts berating us about fantasy figures that do not exist, she should tell us how she expects social services departments to cope with all the extra responsibilities she has given them on the very small increases that they received? Most of the money has gone to education. We are not suggesting slashing any provision; we are suggesting increasing provision.
The Minister has been decreasing the portion that goes to social services departments for children's services, particularly in the south of England, and she knows it.
Margaret Hodge: I suggest that the hon. Gentleman read the shadow Chancellor's speech on public spending cuts.
Jonathan Shaw : The Tory council in Kent, which is most certainly in the south-east of England—there is no disputing that—asked the Government for a 5 per cent. increase and received, I think, 5.4 per cent. The idea that all the money is going north is a fantasy.
Margaret Hodge: My hon. Friend, who works very hard on behalf of his constituents, understands what we are doing much better than some Conservative Members.
Jim Knight : Is it not the case that next year Labour councils will receive a 5.9 per cent. increase overall, while Tory councils will receive 6.1 per cent? Meanwhile, council tax is going up by more in Tory areas than in Labour areas. The truth is that Tory councils, most of which are in the south, are receiving more from the Government than Labour councils. That is ridiculous.
Margaret Hodge: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that important point.
Central to this debate is the fact that the Government are committed to year-by-year investment so that—most important—we can abolish child poverty. The Conservatives, whether they talk of one area or another, are committed to year-by-year cuts. That will only increase poverty, and will only widen division. For me, it is the worst and most destructive feature of the Thatcher legacy.
Let no one forget that it was under the last Conservative Government that child poverty more than doubled, with a third of all children living in poverty when we took office. That was the largest increase in child poverty in any industrialised nation. Those are the facts; that is the Conservatives' record. They created more vulnerable children, and they never delivered for vulnerable children.
Mrs. Lorna Fitzsimons (Rochdale) (Lab): My constituents, who suffered for 18 years under the Conservative party, will take the Conservatives' crocodile tears for what they are, given the criminal underfunding of child and adolescent mental health services in the north-west. Where was the money? The Conservatives took it away from the north to subsidise the south. They did not care about our children—the most vulnerable children in the country.
Margaret Hodge: I entirely agree. I can tell that my hon. Friend feels as strongly as I do.
The Children's Bill and the reform programme on which we are embarked build on our considerable achievements for vulnerable children since 1997. It is this Government who, through reforms to the tax and benefits system, have lifted more than 500,000 children out of poverty—children who were condemned to a vulnerable start through no fault of their own. Would that investment survive the Tory public spending cuts?
It is this Government who have increased maternity pay, introduced paid paternity leave, increased maternity leave and improved rights to flexible working, so that parents can balance their working lives with their child care responsibilities, thereby helping all children, particularly vulnerable children. Will the Conservatives now support those moves and work to improve them? It is this Government who have created and funded more than 500 Sure Start programmes in the most deprived communities in our country. They have to be long-term investments, but we are already getting evidence that Sure Start is creating massively better opportunities for our most vulnerable children. Through one programme in Leicester, referrals to emergency social services have been cut by 40 per cent. Through another programme in Corby, the number of children being assessed as having a special educational need when going to school has been cut by 10 per cent. Would the Conservatives not just applaud our Sure Start programme, but sustain and expand this initiative?
It is this Government who have delivered free nursery education for every three and four-year-old—six months sooner than we said we would. That investment supports every child, but in particular it supports opportunity for the most vulnerable in our community. Will the Conservatives now support an investment that they failed to make during the 18 long years in which they had the power to do so? And it is this Government who will increase spending for children's social services by nearly 9 per cent. in the next financial year. Would the Conservatives, who are committed to cuts in spending, keep our investment in children's social services going?
It is this Government who introduced the quality protects programme—a five-year investment of nearly £900 million to improve the life chances of some of the most vulnerable children in the country.
Mr. Dawson: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the quality protects programme did extend as far as Essex, and that the money was used very well? In fact, Essex social services developed a pioneering family group conferencing system. Opposition Members would do well to celebrate that fact, rather than constantly denigrate their local services.
Margaret Hodge: I should tell those Opposition Members who have constituencies in Essex that much very good, innovative and effective practice is being developed by—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. If the hon. Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) has a comment to make, perhaps he could make an intervention.
Margaret Hodge: If the hon. Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) had been listening, I was responding—in a way in which I would have thought he would welcome—to all Members who represent the county of Essex. Essex county council is developing much excellent, innovative and effective practice, particularly in respect of children's social services. Those Members should be applauding and encouraging that practice, not denigrating it.
Mrs. Laing: I agree with the Minister unreservedly—the social services department of Essex county council is doing an excellent job. Putting everything in one department under one person was an excellent idea, and the newly appointed director of learning services and social services is doing an excellent job. I have spoken to her about it many times in great detail, but it must be recognised that she and her colleagues are doing that excellent work under the great constraint of the massive budget cuts that the Deputy Prime Minister imposed last year.
Margaret Hodge: I have to tell the hon. Lady that, when in government, her party cut spending year on year, while we are increasing spending year on year.
Mr. Francois: Will the Minister give way?
Margaret Hodge: One final time.
Mr. Francois: I thank the Minister for her courtesy in giving way again. For the avoidance of doubt, Conservative-controlled Essex county council has an excellent social services department. I have been briefed on the value of family group conferencing, which can be extremely valuable. I have great praise for Essex county council social services department, which does a very good job, particularly given the financial pressures that it is under because of this rotten Government.
Margaret Hodge: Perhaps after that lengthy exchange we can now all agree on the good work being done by the county represented by a number of hon. Members.
I want to describe our record. The Government have enacted a raft of legislation better to safeguard vulnerable children, from the Care Standards Act 2000 to the Adoption and Children Act 2002 and the Protection of Children Act 1999. It is this Government who have increased investment in our schools year on year, so that all our children, but particularly the most vulnerable, can achieve more and realise their potential.
It is this Government who are developing the extended schools programme so that, by 2006, every authority will have at least one extended school, where all the services that vulnerable children in particular need—from study support to sporting facilities; from children's mental health services to advice about drugs—can be accessed in one place, where children are and where they feel safe.
It is this Government who have funded and created the first programme of preventive services for vulnerable children in every community through the children's fund. The Opposition sought to criticise the Government because, as a result of the programme proving so successful, we have had to identify new and extra money to keep projects funded. Far from cutting these preventive services for children, we have put an additional £20 million into sustaining them. What hope would those programmes have under a Conservative Government ideologically fixated on cutting public spending?
It is this Government who have invested in preventive and restorative youth justice programmes, which have cut re-offending rates by 20 per cent. It is this Government who have virtually eradicated youth unemployment and introduced educational maintenance allowances to support vulnerable young people to stay in education and training. It is this Government who have developed the modern apprenticeship programme, with a record 230,000 young people now taking part in a modern apprenticeship course.
That is the record on which we want to build; that is a record that only a Labour Government can achieve. That record gives us a sound basis on which to build a further programme of reform, which we heralded in our Green Paper, "Every Child Matters", and which we are putting into practice in part through the Bill we are introducing today.
Tim Loughton: Before the Minister gets completely carried off to fantasy island, will she confirm that, to make up the cuts that she was proposing in the children's fund, the Government will take money from the youth offending teams programme? Will she confirm also that the budget for children's fund projects in 2005–06 has not been confirmed and is still vulnerable? Will she confirm that all the programmes she is looking at go only to 2006? There has been no commitment from the Government—we have not had the next spending review—on any of the funding being sustained beyond 2006. Before accusing us of cuts that we have never proposed, will she give us guarantees that these schemes will continue after the next election, in the unlikely event that she is still in a position to do something about it?
Margaret Hodge: The hon. Gentleman must read speeches that are put into the public domain on behalf of the Conservative party so that he is clear on what his party is committed to. I can confirm that we have not cut the youth offending teams programme in any way; I do not know where he got that idea from. He is correct that we will settle the 2005–06 funding for the children's fund programme once we have the outcome of this year's spending review.
Virginia Bottomley (South-West Surrey) (Con): Much of this debate has been about funding, but I am not clear whether there is a relationship between child abuse and funding. There are two key issues: data sharing, and how one requires a child to be seen whose parents are not producing the child. Will the Minister require a child to be produced for a school nurse or health visitor when there is concern about its well-being?
Margaret Hodge: The hon. Lady is correct to draw attention to those two very important points. I shall cover them as I move on. I wanted to set a context, because vulnerable children will be supported to develop their opportunities only if their lives in the round are supported by action from government in the round.
Since we launched our Green Paper we have seen the richest and most significant debate on children's services for over a generation. I in no way apologise for having engaged in that debate and having had a wide consultation, which enabled us to listen to many voices as we formulated the Bill that we presented in the other place this afternoon. We received 4,500 responses to our consultation. Most gratifyingly, two thirds of the responses were from children and young people themselves. That, I hope, reflects the way in which we intend to work over the coming period.
We are dealing with vital but difficult issues. We shall succeed only if we ensure that children's voices are at the heart of our endeavours and if we work closely in partnership with all our stakeholders, so that together we can build on what we learn works to improve the outcome for all our children, particularly vulnerable children. That approach, of working in partnership and having children's interests at the centre of our concerns, will inform all our reforms.
Social services departments have not, as the Opposition suggest, been kept in limbo, waiting for the Children's Bill. They have been fully engaged in working with us to make sure that our proposals are soundly based, workable and right, and that they will help to bring about a step change in the opportunities for the safeguarding of all children.
I accept that we have much left to do. Lord Laming's report on the events leading up to the death of Victoria Climbié and the joint chief inspectors' report, "Safeguarding Children", set out a number of challenges. However, we have not, as the Opposition suggest, failed to act since Lord Laming published his report. Indeed, of the 708 recommendations, only one has been rejected. We have fully implemented 60 and we have started work on all the others, but I accept that we need to go further.
We need to tackle the issues identified in both reports, of ill-trained and overworked staff, often not properly supported by their managers.We need to do more to recruit, retain and train good-quality staff to work throughout the children's work force. We need to ensure that senior managers, right up to chief executives, accept responsibly and accountably for the actions of their staff. We need to address the weaknesses identified in the way in which area child protection committees work, with insufficient authority and few resources to carry out their functions. We need to become better at sharing information across professional boundaries and within professional organisations, and across local authority boundaries, so that children are less likely to fall through the net.
Mrs. Laing: Given what the Minister has just said about sharing information, on which I entirely agree with her, do the Government propose to amend the Data Protection Act 1998?
Margaret Hodge: We shall ensure that, as we have laid out in the Green Paper, there are no inhibitions within the Act that will prevent the necessary sharing of information between professionals and across local authority boundaries.
We need to develop the very difficult multi-agency working that we know makes sense, and we need to ensure that individual agencies are clear about their roles and responsibilities in protecting children. We need further to shift from intervening after things have gone wrong to supporting children and their families to prevent things from going wrong.
Most important, we need to make sure that the well-being and welfare of children are at the centre of the assessment process and the decision-making process. Nobody asked Victoria Climbié what she wanted or how she was. That must not happen again.
Our Children's Bill sits within a much wider context of reform. As part of that work, we are preparing the budgets for the next spending review period, and we will sharpen accountability with a more coherent system of targets and a better performance management system with stronger inspection levers. We are creating much simpler and more flexible funding mechanisms, with decisions being taken as close as is practicable to the front line. We will ensure investment in the skills, leadership and motivation of all who work with children, young people and their families. We are strengthening partnership working by developing the children's trusts, children's centres and the extended schools programme and by legislating on duties to co-operate.
Mrs. Annette L. Brooke (Mid-Dorset and North Poole) (LD): I understand that some children's trusts are now in operation. Given sufficient time, will a full evaluation of their work be published?
Margaret Hodge: It is extremely important that, throughout the reform programme, we evaluate all the initiatives as they move forward and learn from that evaluation.
However, it would be dilatory to wait until we have a full evaluation before moving on to the next step and it might lead to accusations of not working in the best interests of children as quickly as possible. We will continually evaluate and amend what we do to in the light of what the evaluation tells us.
We shall also support the culture change and the improvement that we want with a programme of support, coupled with proportionate intervention in areas where children's services fall below acceptable standards. As we have already outlined, the Bill will support our reform agenda.
In a historic move, we intend to establish a children's commissioner for England, and children will help us to choose the first one. The commissioner will be independent of both Parliament and the Government, ensuring that the views of all children, particularly the most vulnerable, are gathered and that they influence the development of policies for children, young people and families.
Our Bill will ensure that all the agencies that are important in children's lives work together to improve children's well-being and safety. We shall strengthen the safeguarding of children by creating statutory local safeguarding boards with specific duties on the key agencies both to safeguard and protect children within their own organisations and in partnership with other local agencies. The Bill establishes clear accountability for children's services with the appointment of a single director for children's services and a lead member in every local authority, building on the good practical experience on the ground in counties such as Essex.
Our Bill not only introduces statutory duties on organisations in the public, private and voluntary sector to work together, but removes the barriers that prevent them from doing so. We are legislating to establish an integrated inspection framework so that services are judged against common standards and are assessed on how well they work together to achieve better outcomes for children. We are providing for new intervention powers for children's social services to bring them into line with the powers that we already have for education. We are also legislating in the difficult area of establishing a framework to enable better sharing of information across all services. Finally, the Bill also contains proposals to improve the educational attainment of looked-after children and to beef up and improve the regulation of private fostering.
The Bill is a crucial piece in the jigsaw of reform. It stands alongside the development of children's trusts, which will provide a joined-up approach to the planning, commissioning and delivery of children's services. It stands alongside our commitment to create more extended schools, providing a range of services—often beyond the school day—for children, families and the wider community. We see the development of such structures as supporting our standards agenda and our social inclusion agenda. Only by supporting every child can we raise achievement levels in every school, and only by raising the educational achievement of vulnerable children can we help to ensure that they are given an equal opportunity in our society.
The Bill stands alongside our work force strategy. We have already raised the number of people choosing to train as social workers. We are looking at new routes into working with children, and are developing training programmes so that all professionals share a vocabulary and an understanding of child development, which will enable them to fulfil their statutory duties properly. We are developing leadership programmes and establishing sector skills councils to help us drive our reforms forward.
Our programme for change is wide in its range, strong in its component parts and innovative, exciting and important in what it means in terms of better outcomes for children and their families. It is not a hotch-potch of unrelated and opportunistic points to be scored in the comfort of a debating chamber. It is not an incoherent set of gripes cobbled together to little purpose. It is not a less than honest statement that pretends to care about vulnerable children, while being intent on cutting investment in the very services we have to protect and safeguard the future of children.
Ours is a radical and coherent set of policies and programmes that will help to ensure that every child in our country enjoys the opportunity to realise their potential and really grows up safely to be healthy, to enjoy their childhood, to benefit from a good education, to contribute positively to their community and to find economic well-being. Ours are policies that will ensure that children do not fall through the net.
All Members who sincerely wish to protect the most vulnerable children in our community have no option but to reject the ill-thought-out proposition put forward by the Opposition and to support the amendment in the name of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and other members of his Government.
