Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I declare an interest as a member of the Independent Asylum Commission, which is due to report later this year. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, on the coverage that she has given to many aspects of this hugely important issue. I commend, too, the noble Lord, Lord Judd, on the seriousness that he has attached to it, and I agree with everything that has been said. I wish to draw attention to two groups, both of which have been covered. The first is the group that the noble Baroness referred to as ““the missing””. It was mentioned during the study of the inspectors’ second report on safeguarding children. We do not know precisely how many of these children there are, but no one has responsibility for finding out how many there are or where they are or for doing anything about them. At the time of that debate, it was suggested that this matter should be delegated to local authorities, which should have to conduct a census in their areas and do something about them. The second group that worries me is the children whom we do know about and for whom these guardians are being appointed, because there is currently a huge difference in the ways in which they are treated in different parts of the country. In some areas they are merely dumped into bed and breakfast accommodation with nothing else being done for them, in some areas they are fostered and in some they are extremely well looked after. I hope that, in agreeing that they should all be given a guardian of some kind, some attempt will be made to produce a series of standards on how these children should be looked after so that consistency can be restored. The inconsistency results from the fact that, instead of putting them in the care of the authority in the area in which they surface, they are allocated around the country in a sort of ““fair’s fair”” arrangement so that everyone has a group to look after. That does not seem to be very sensible, however equitable it may seem to the authorities.