Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

My Lords, I commend the amendment, to which I have put my name, for serious consideration by the Government. We shall come later in our deliberations to the United Nations convention, but underpinning all that we do should be our commitment to it. Therefore, local authorities should be expected to do everything possible to fulfil the objectives of the Bill. Not for the first time, nor, I suspect, for the last, I respectfully underline—I hope that Liberal Peers present will forgive my making this point—that putting aspiration into a Bill is one thing; if we are serious about this, we must use all our endeavours to persuade our colleagues in local government to make it a reality, and there will be a Bill attached. If the nature of local politics is how one can keep the rates down better than anybody else, we will not be able to do these things. Therefore, there is a job of education to be done about how we have to be prepared as a community to pay for the services and the objectives which we are say are worth while. With that reservation, I support the spirit of the amendment. I have not put my name to the amendments on evaluation, but they are pretty innocuous and the Government should consider them seriously. I say again that it is one thing to set out on a course, but the setting out on a course is not the fulfilment of the objective. So often, intention becomes a substitute for effective results. Therefore, it is important to have built into legislation arrangements for how we monitor how far what we in good faith try to do is delivering the goods. There is a lot of good sense behind the amendment; I hope that the Minister will, in his usual, thoughtful way, be reassuring in his reply.