Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I thank the Minister for his response and all other Members of the Committee for taking part. On an earlier amendment, when I raised the possibility of triggering a review if a child had more than three social workers in any one year, the Minister said that he did not think that it was necessary to have that in the Bill because it might be that the IRO, when reviewing a case, could bring that to mind. But if the IRO was independent only of the management of the case, but was employed by that authority, he or she may be very loath to say that the practice of the authority is wrong. I was involved in the trust at a teaching hospital, and I know that when we did complaints reviews, the fact that one of us belonged to the hospital always meant that there was a question mark in the minds of the people who sought redress; namely, that we were not giving them the proper due consideration that we should. Even though we were as objective as we possibly could be, in their minds we would always come down on the side of the hospital, and I can understand why. This issue is causing great concern to a lot of organisations. Therefore, I ask the Minister, between now and Report stage, to look at whether IROs should be truly independent of the local authority, rather than independent just of the management of the case. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.