Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We need fewer case loads heaped on to individual social workers, we need more permanent social workers—as opposed to agency or short-term social workers—and we need to free up more of social workers' time, so that they can get on with their job of protecting children and vulnerable families and meeting them face to face rather than being shackled to their computers and assessment forms. That is what Laming, Unison and all other dispassionate observers say is now happening. Some surveys estimate that social workers and child protection workers spend up to 80 per cent. of their time in front of computers and doing paperwork for assessment. We must judge the Bill according to the extent to which it helps, or hinders, our ability to counter the problems that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned. That is why I want to concentrate on bureaucracy. So far we have heard no details of the targets mentioned in new clause 22 from the Secretary of State, but I fear that that new clause, in particular, will heap more targets, and potentially more bureaucracy, on top of performance indicators, rather than replacing them. The performance indicators currently in use for the safeguarding of children are inadequate to the task for which they were designed, which came across clearly in Laming 2, which said:""Discussion with local authorities suggested that this was because of concerns that current indicators focus on processes and timescales, are not helpful in creating shared safeguarding priorities amongst statutory partners, are unclear in their impact upon positive outcomes for children and young people, and do not drive improved services."" That is what Laming said in the opening of his report. Let us look at what others have said about the bureaucracy that has crept into the child protection system, and which I fear may be behind some of these new proposals. Mick Brookes, head of the National Association of Head Teachers, has said:""Government should immediately act to lift the burden of bureaucracy on our public services, much of it imposed as a result of incessant reform."" Christine Blower, head of the National Union of Teachers, has said:""The solutions to preventing future tragedies such as 'Baby P' lie not in top-down bureaucracy but in the provision of proper resources, back-up and training for frontline services such as social work, and in enabling local authorities to construct effective co-ordinated services in the knowledge that they will face tough action if they fail."" That view has been reflected in the observations of a number of commentators who are closely involved in child protection. The 58 recommendations in the second Laming report underlie these new clauses, and will underlie further proposals which the Secretary of State will no doubt unveil tomorrow. Those proposals may or may not require primary legislation, but they will certainly be contained in various regulations. An awful lot of what is being proposed amounts to further bureaucracy rather than the achievement of qualitative outcomes. One example is the establishment of a national safeguarding delivery unit. The national safeguarding delivery unit will report to the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Families, Children and Young People. Earlier, the Secretary of State exalted the merits of greater transparency and public involvement. The problem is that the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Families, Children and Young People is shrouded in secrecy. In response to a question that I tabled to the Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, the hon. Member for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry), asking what reasons were given""not to disclose information relating to proceedings of the Cabinet Sub-committee on Families, Children and Young People; and when the Sub-committee last met"," the Under-Secretary of State replied:""Information relating to the proceedings of Cabinet Committees, including when, how often and for how long they meet, is generally not disclosed; as to do so could harm the frankness and candour of internal discussion."—[Official Report, 30 March 2009; Vol. 490, c. 862W.]" So we do not know what that Sub-Committee actually does, nor how it will respond to the proceedings of the national safeguarding delivery unit. It therefore seems to be an extra bit of bureaucracy, whose merits in achieving qualitative outcomes are questionable—but in any case we cannot question it, because it meets in secret and its minutes are not published. That is a good example of the lack of transparency that some of these proposals will create. Other recommendations underlying the new clauses include the following: that there should be statutory targets for safeguarding and protection, alongside the existing statutory attainment and early-years targets, to be produced as quickly as possible; that the Department of Health must clarify and strengthen the responsibilities of strategic health authorities; that directors of children's services and primary care trusts must regularly review all points of referral; and that all directors of children's services must appoint a senior manager within their team with the necessary skills and experience, and organise regular training and needs assessments. Therefore, a lot of extra bureaucracy will be added to the child protection procedures as a result of following the recommendations of Laming 2, if that is what the Secretary of State is going to do—and given that he has already committed himself to accepting all those recommendations in practice and that we have the first few of them here, it appears that that is the route down which he will go.