Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

The noble Baroness raises precisely the point that I was going to raise with the Minister. I raised three issues. The first was that of timing. I must say that I very much agree with the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and the Minister that we need a longer period for a pilot. We tabled the amendments, which came from UNISON, because we generally agreed with them but, on thinking about it, I know all too well how long it takes to set up a proper pilot, so I agree that the five-year period is required if we are going to include the evaluation in it. What the Minister did not answer but has now begun to is the point that I made about the need to have control experiments—that there are other ways to do these things. The difficulty faced by local authorities is that it takes time to set up a trial or a pilot. That is recognised, because the Government are putting aside £6 million—a very small sum, but nevertheless enough to help the pilots forward. The point that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, was making is that if there are to be other pilots, there needs to be a little bit of money in the system to help them forward. It might be appropriate that other experiments should be carried forward to see what might be best practice. My second point was on the whole process of the evaluation. Amendment No. 12 was the substantive amendment, rather than Amendments Nos. 9, 10 or 11, and it concerns two matters. First, the evaluation should be reported back before an order is made by the Secretary of State putting Clause 4 into effect. The evaluation should be considered by Parliament rather than just as an order. Secondly, the evaluation should look at a number of specific issues. The Minister did not reply to that point.