Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I found this section rather incomprehensible, so I am reassured that the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, with her sharpness, also finds it difficult. My problem was that I could not understand whether this was to do with the technical start and end of the process or the length of time for which this might happen; the five years. If that is so in operational terms, the anxiety that I have at that point is that a contract—I disagree with the noble Baroness on this—of less than five years to set up these practices would cause considerable difficulties. Anyone who sets up operational services on the ground knows that it is six months from the start date of the contract before you are really going, it is a year before you can begin to really assess how you are doing, and if the limit is three years you are winding down half-way through before any hope of a service. If you are going to have the practices, you will need them for five years, and hopefully the local authorities will set their contracts for that good time, because as noble Lords know there has been a great deal of criticism of short-termism in local authority contracts. I may be under a complete misunderstanding as to what this section means and whether it is more technical.