Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

There is undoubtedly an unanswerable case for the precept that is represented by the amendments and I do not think that anyone could gainsay anything that has been said by both noble Baronesses and articulated by the half a dozen or so distinguished children’s charities. The case against such an amendment is, broadly speaking, that it is probably not appropriate time and again to overclutter a statute with detail of this nature. I think that that might well be the Minister’s attitude to the amendment. My next point is relevant not only to this amendment but to the vast majority of amendments that are proposed to the Bill. In my speech on Second Reading, I referred to what lawyers and no doubt other persons call the green baize door syndrome. That is the door that comes down on a child’s life when a care order is made. He is handed over to the care of the local authority, the door comes down and, with very few exceptions, the court has no authority to supervise beyond that point what happens to that child. In 1995, if I remember rightly, the matter was challenged in the courts; it went through the Court of Appeal and came to the House of Lords. The Court of Appeal had suggested that a court could perhaps preserve a concurrent authority to oversee what was happening to that child by introducing a system of what it described as starred milestones. ““Not so””, said this House. ““When statute allows a body that is recognised by statute to take over full responsibility, you have to trust that authority. You cannot day by day look over its shoulder to see whether it is doing its duty””. Sitting in the jurisdiction of family matters, I often felt that a court would dearly like to have that authority, but not because it wanted to interfere or snoop day in, day out at what is happening in local authorities, which in the main I have no doubt are conscientious and are worthy of trust. There are situations that no human agency could possibly foresee that may well develop in relation to a child where a court would feel that it was only right and proper that it should be able to have that authority. If one looks at the situation in law prior to the Children Act 1989, often in those cases you had wardship. It was the very conflict between wardship and care that made the Act in the first instance an absolute necessity, as a result of the case of Liverpool Corporation and A. In wardship, you had the High Court judge in the situation of parens patriae, who was able at each stage to overview what was happening to the child and to intervene constructively if necessary. That is not now possible. The logic of the decision of this House may well be such that it is not possible for there to be anything of the nature of starred milestones and that, even if you had legislation, it might not be utterly appropriate. As a family judge, I felt that when a care order was made and one dispensed with the services of the guardian ad litem, a bridge between the child and the authority was inevitably destroyed. There was often such a relationship between a guardian ad litem, a child, the family and the local authority that one felt that only good could come from prolonging that relationship in some way. That, again, is not possible, save in exceptional circumstances where one deals with a contact matter or something of that nature. I apologise for making a very obvious point, but it is something that we should bear in mind as a background to considering how much we should spell out in statute. If concurrent authority was vested in a court to be able to supervise from day to day what happens to a child, if needs be, this measure would not be necessary. However, that power is not there, which is a powerful consideration in relation to this and, indeed, other amendments.