Children and Young Persons Bill [Lords]

The hon. Gentleman says that he knows that, but I will explain why. Exactly the same challenges that are facing us now in making a notification scheme work will apply in relation to a registration scheme. Those children who we are most worried about who are not currently being notified to the local authority and who are in a privately fostered arrangement will not necessarily be registered with the local authority. The local authority would be faced with the same challenges of raising levels of awareness, building relationships with minority communities and making sure that everyone registers who should. It is not a panacea for that precise reason. The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) challenged us to say what we are going to do in the meantime. There are three things that we need to do. First, we need sufficient evidence before we make a decision and proceed. That is simply not available in the time scale, not because we have been tardy, but because it was never going to be available in the time scale. We have two full years of data on the notification scheme for 2006-07 and 2007-08. We have yet to get the third year that we always said we needed. Inspection data are also important. We set in place a three-year inspection programme started by the Commission for Social Care Inspection and continued by the Office for Standards in Education. The third report will not be completed until November 2009. The Welsh care and social services inspectorate is also undertaking a national review that will not be published until 2009. Secondly, while we get that evidence, we need to ensure that we can push to the wire to see whether we can make the existing notification scheme as effective as possible. In that regard, we have already done a number of things. When my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan) was the Under-Secretary of State, he wrote to all directors of children's services asking them to do all they can to raise awareness of the scheme and to maximise notifications. Similar efforts have been made in Wales. [Interruption.] He wrote last month to all directors. Government offices will be working closely with local authorities in those areas where notifications are low, identifying them and targeting them. We are developing a national communications strategy to raise awareness of the current requirements within the children's work force and we have provided £50,000 to the British Association for Adoption and Fostering to sponsor a national private fostering awareness week in January. The Welsh Assembly Government are also providing support to BAAF in Wales to do a similar thing. Those measures together will help us to test the current system and give it its best chance of success. Thirdly, and most importantly, we are giving very careful consideration to the best long-term solution during this period. This is not a clear-cut issue. We need to understand much better what added value, if any, a registration scheme would bring and how it would work, recognising not only the potential impact on local authorities, but—the hon. Gentleman touched on this but did not elaborate—the potential disadvantages for many ordinary families making normal and straightforward arrangements that we would not want to bring into the purview of a registration scheme, and the penalties that would flow from not registering such an arrangement. It is not clear that registration would be any more successful in encouraging registration from those who do not currently notify and it might even deter some people from registering their private arrangements. We want to work with an independent expert group that will advise me over the next couple of years on these important matters. The first meeting of the group was held on 29 September and I am looking forward to announcing shortly, I hope, the appointment of a very senior, independent chair of the group, who I know will have the confidence of all Members. The group's role will be to advise the Department on raising awareness of the strengthened notification scheme, on assessing the evidence of impact, on options for further strengthening the notification scheme and on developing models for a registration scheme in advance, if that is the decision made. The group consists of representatives of the Association of Directors of Children'sServices, Ofsted, the British Association of Adoption and Fostering, the NSPCC and the Home Office. We will invite others from Wales to join us. The group will be meeting regularly and will present its final report to Ministers in March 2010 when we will make a decision. I will publish the conclusions of the group and will make a statement to the House. I have not abandoned the idea of a registration scheme, but I make no apologies for wanting to get this right. It is therefore important to retain the option of introducing a registration scheme for a further three years, so if the case is compelling, it can be introduced at the right time. Significantly, the British Association for Adoption and Fostering agrees that we should seek first to improve the current arrangements and evaluate them more fully before deciding whether to introduce a registration regime. BAAF shares our reservations about the introduction of a registration scheme at this point. That has weighed heavily with me in deciding whether to include the provision in the Bill for extending the period to three years. I will not accept the amendment, which would not give us a well worked out registration scheme. That would be very dangerous. New clause 23 would require local authorities to publish a charter setting out the authorities' responsibilities with regard to foster carers within their area. There are some technical reasons why this would be both difficult and confusing. One is that foster carers enter into a foster care agreement with their provider, but in addition they enter into a foster placement agreement with the local authority placing the child. For instance, where a provider is not a local authority, the proposal would be extremely confusing. The kind of measures that we have introduced are much more important in assisting foster carers. Similarly for a registration process, foster carers are selected, recruited and trained locally and, of course, a national registration scheme would impose on them all of the conditions that a registration scheme now imposes on social workers. I am afraid that I cannot accept those amendments, either.