Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for that detailed response to these concerns raised by me and other Members of the Committee. I am particularly reassured by his point that it will be the local authorities that decide whether to extend the pilots. It seems to me that the Government have underestimated the effort required to improve outcomes for looked-after children. From 1997 they were determined to improve the lives of these children. They recognise that they have been poorly treated by society, but the inputs that they have made have not given the outputs that they wanted. The previous Prime Minister recognised that we have not done enough for these children. We as a society have underestimated the job that social workers have taken on. We have underestimated the demands of doing this job. I remember what Paul Fallon, a member of the eminent group that Professor Le Grand pulled together, said about his success in reducing the vacancy rate for social workers in Barnet from 30 per cent to 3 per cent in three years. Every day, the first thing he thought about was, ““What am I doing for my social workers? What am I doing today to make the lives of my social workers better?”” I spoke to the publisher of Compass magazine, a recruitment magazine for social workers. He commented on Paul Fallon’s approach to recruiting new social workers. He said, ““This man is quite amazing. He will find new recruits and say, ‘Come around, let me give you dinner and I’ll talk to you about social work’””. As soon as anybody expresses an interest in social work, he is there to encourage and incentivise that interest. It requires such dedication and commitment to make these things happen. I recognise that there was a very eminent group working on this, and I welcome that. My concern is that the political impetus to making these pilots happen will be great. This project of extending the diverse market to all areas of public services has been very much at the heart of the Labour Government over the past 10 years. My concern is that this minnow will turn into a very large fish, and it will be difficult to stop that motion forward because of the political investment in it and because it fits so well with the Government’s philosophy. Debates like this are very helpful in gaining some reassurance and some notion of how the pilots will work. I hope that my fears will not be realised. It is very important to concentrate on the basics and get them right. I thank the Minister for his response to these concerns. Clause 1 agreed to. Clause 2 [Restrictions on arrangements under section 1]: