Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I support the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. I say at the outset, because it is early in our proceedings, that, having been a profound sceptic about the whole process of a Committee stage in the Moses Room, I have been converted. As a hard-nosed politician, as I like to think of myself professionally, I used to feel that the trouble with the Moses Room procedure was that it was nothing: you had a lot of talk but you did not take things to a vote; what did that really add to the whole legislative cause? I have now come to see that it has a very great potential value as a kind of pre-legislative consultation. It gives my noble friends who are Ministers the opportunity to take very seriously the arguments put forward, which have been brought forward with great experience and effectiveness this afternoon, take them away and think: if there is a valid point, how can it can best be met? That is a very sane approach to legislation and I hope that we will make full use of it. We know what sort of people my noble friends are, so I am sure that they will respond in that spirit. The second thing that I want to say about our work in general, which starts with the amendments, is that, as has already been said, there are considerable resource implications to an awful lot of what we are talking about: human resource and cost resource implications. We all know that local authorities are under incredible pressure on expenditure. That is a real challenge that we see repeatedly in social policy: because of our failure to give priority and finance to the strategic things that need to be done, we are using vast amounts of public expenditure to deal tactically with the consequences of that failure. In the long term, it is therefore a totally illusory saving. It is counterproductive; it actually increases the cost. However, although those financial implications are very important for us all and need to be thought about, we in this Committee are all primarily concerned with the children. Here, I want to make just two points in support, however inadequate, of what the noble Baroness said. The first thing that troubles me about so much of our social work, in whatever dimension it is taking place, is that so often we are dealing with the symptom of the real social issue. I hope that the great champions of children will not mind my saying that sometimes we have not only to see children as children—which is crucial—but to see the predicament in which they find themselves as a symptom of something more profound. In that sense, the great strength of the approach in this amendment, and others, is that it allows us to look at how to address a total situation and deal with the root causes rather than simply the symptoms. Finally, some very telling points have been made. For a child with an already disturbed life, it is right that we should avoid a feeling, a sense, by the child, however inarticulately expressed, that he or she is somehow being systematised and being handed over to a system—however enlightened and committed, and no one doubts the enlightenment, dedication and commitment—for dealing with such children; as distinct from, in the best sense, a more spontaneous, emotional situation in which he or she still can feel that they belong and are a part of the situation. From that standpoint, these amendments have to be taken very seriously. I am certain that my noble friends will give them that degree of priority.