Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

Over the past few days, people around the country will have been horrified to read that one of the defendants found guilty in respect of the death of baby Peter has also committed another vile and disgusting crime against a small and vulnerable child. There is nothing that we can do to take away the suffering caused by such terrible crimes, but it is our responsibility to do everything that we can to ensure that there are the best possible child protection arrangements in Haringey and across the country. In November last year, I asked Lord Laming to provide us with an independent progress report on child protection across the country. In my statement to the House on 12 March I confirmed that we would accept all Lord Laming's recommendations and set out the immediate action that we were taking to implement them. In his report, Lord Laming concluded that the Every Child Matters reforms provided""a sound framework for professionals to protect children and promote their welfare."" However, he also stated that there now needed to be""a step change in the arrangements to protect children from harm."" He challenged us to do more to ensure that leaders of local services accept their responsibility to""translate policy, legislation and guidance into day-to-day practice on the frontline of every service."" As I said in my statement to the House a few weeks ago, in that report Lord Laming made a series of detailed recommendations to ensure that best practice is universally applied in every area of the country, to improve local accountability and to provide more support for local leaders and the front-line work force. Tomorrow we will set out our detailed response to Lord Laming's report and our new vision for the new national safeguarding delivery unit, as well as the first recommendations of our social work taskforce to improve front-line social work practice. Today, we have tabled three new clauses that will help us to go further towards implementing Lord Laming's recommendations in this Bill, and I thank Opposition Members for their co-operation in agreeing to the new clauses coming forward on Report. They will introduce new statutory targets for safeguarding and child protection and require local safeguarding children boards to appoint two members drawn from the local community and to publish an annual report on their effectiveness. New clause 22 will insert a new section into the Children Act 2004 to allow us to introduce the statutory targets that Lord Laming recommended in his report, to ensure that safeguarding and child protection are the top priority in every area. Of course, there is a national role in the setting of those targets, but the vital thing is for local agencies to be consulted on those targets and then to ensure that they are properly driven forward locally. That is why they must take account of local performance and circumstance and why we expect local authorities to consult all local agencies and to propose challenging targets to us. We will bring forward secondary legislation to address the details of how those targets will be set, alongside the review of the range of safeguarding targets, and will publish a new framework in the autumn.