Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I am sure that it is in the Printed Paper Office, but because I am always anxious to provide the maximum possible support to Members of the Committee, I have a box of copies of the report with me. I thought that Members of the Committee might find it useful to read the whole report for themselves and, on the basis of what is said in the report, to consider carefully the arguments made. As I said, the argument is made for potential gains addressing a real and fundamental problem that we face in providing properly for children in care. The question that we then face is: on the basis of that report on those potential gains, which are suggested by an eminent group including directors of social services and other experts, is it sensible for Parliament to enable the policy to be piloted? On the basis of the report, we believe that it is. Many of the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, are addressed in that report, but I shall deal with one or two of the specific points that were raised. As regards how an inspection would be carried forward under the pilots, I can tell the noble Baroness that social work practices will be within the scope of annual assessment by inspectorates, including the chief inspector, from 2009 through the new comprehensive area assessments and through programmed inspections of services for looked-after children. I did not fully follow the noble Baroness’s remarks about pump-primed funding and whether this would create a playing field that was not level. That point was raised also by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. The reason I do not follow it is that the scale of the support provided in terms of activities is so vastly different in the two cases. We are talking about funding for social work pilots over the spending review period 2008-11 at an average of £2 million per annum, some of which will be used to enable local authorities themselves to meet the costs of commissioning and managing contracts. So we are talking about very small levels of central support which are being provided to enable these pilots to happen. As I say, this stands against the £5 billion provided to local authorities in respect of children’s social care, so we do not believe that there is an issue of a playing field that is not level. A local authority that wished to use its resources to provide similar support to that provided in social work practices for its own social workers in the way that it recruits them, manages or trains them, would be entirely at liberty to do so. Local authorities have very large budgets with which to do that.