Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

In preparing his report, which I asked him to begin in December, Lord Laming held a wide range of meetings all round the country with practitioners and professionals. It was on that basis that he recommended the proposed statutory targets. We have obviously consulted our key partners, as well as Opposition Members and Departments, on the fact that we intend to implement that recommendation. When Lord Laming issued his report in March, I said that we would implement his recommendation, and today we are taking the power to do so. The detail of how we will do that—that is, both the content of the secondary legislation and, importantly, the detailed statutory targets—is something on which we will consult over the coming months and in the autumn. There will therefore be a full consultation on how we enact those powers, but the fact that we are enacting them is a consequence of Lord Laming's consultation and his report. Government new clause 23 amends the Children Act 2004 to require local authorities to open up the child protection system to greater public scrutiny by ensuring that two members of the general public are appointed to every local safeguarding children board in the country. An important part of our response to Lord Laming's report was to say that we needed greater transparency and public involvement, not least because safeguarding children is the responsibility of us all, not just professionals. Government new clause 23 will allow best practice to become common practice and will ensure that we can implement that recommendation in a sensible manner. In line with Lord Laming's recommendations, we have already said that we will revise our statutory guidance in "Working Together" to set out our presumptions that the director of children's services and the lead member for children's services will always be members of both the children's trust board and the LSCB. The chief executive and the leader of the council will have an obligation to confirm annually that their local arrangements comply with the law. Government new clause 24 will require the local safeguarding children board to publish an annual report and to submit it to its local children's trust, in order to provide an honest assessment of how those arrangements are being implemented and ensure that resourcing, organisation and co-ordination issues are being properly addressed by all agencies in the children's trust, thereby allowing proper and effective scrutiny.