Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

The Government will have—as they always have had—the full support of the Opposition when they can make the case that their proposals will make children safer and add to child protection effectiveness. Those are the simple questions that I am asking the Secretary of State. If we are to be asked to give him wide-ranging additional powers to set targets—which social workers at the sharp end tell us prevent them from doing their job, distort their job priorities and make them spend more time with their computers and paperwork than with the vulnerable families and children that they went into the profession to help—it is reasonable for us to ask those questions at this stage. The Secretary of State has been unable to give us any details of a single target that is likely to be introduced under the new clause that he is asking the House to accept today, and that is very worrying. He has completely misunderstood some of the advice that has been given by Lord Laming and he is unable to give us any indication of the targets he would like to see, notwithstanding the consultation that he says we will have. He says that we have already had consultation, but in terms of the Opposition that has amounted to a two-page letter to my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State. It would appear that we will get no further with the Secretary of State on new clause 22. Either he does not want to tell us or he just does not know. Let us turn then to new clause 23, which deals with adding laypersons to the membership of local safeguarding children boards. As I have said, we are in favour of strengthening them and making them more independent. The Secretary of State needs further to define the role of local safeguarding children boards. There is certainly a degree of confusion among practitioners about the relationship between the LSCBs and children's trusts, too. We see the LSCBs as punchy, powerful scrutineers of the child protection process within local authorities, and it is right that that should involve bringing together various local agencies. Let us remind ourselves who is already on the LSCBs as a result of the Children Act 2004. We supported the Act and we supported the setting up of the LSCBs that took over from the area child protection committees, which were deemed not to be effective enough. The LSCBs should include representatives of district councils in local government areas that have them, chief police officers, probation boards, youth offending teams, strategic health authorities and primary care trusts, NHS trusts, the Connexions service, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, the governor or director of any secure training centre and the governor or director of any prison in the local authority area. They should also involve the coroner service, dental health services, domestic violence forums, drug and alcohol misuse services, drug action teams, housing, culture and leisure services, housing providers, local authority legal services, local MAPPA—or multi-agency public protection arrangements—services, local sports bodies and services, the local family justice council, the local criminal justice board, other health providers such as pharmacists, representatives of service users, sexual health services, the Crown Prosecution Service, witness support services and so on. The members of the LSCB are already sitting around quite a large table. My simple question to the Secretary of State concerns the fact that the appointment of two lay members to those boards would, in principle, appear to be a good idea. However, they will be two lay members among a cast of thousands. I want to ask the Secretary of State—when he listens—what effect those lay members will have. Will they have different powers from the other agency members around that very large table? Will they have the powers to question serious case reviews? Will they have the powers to publish serious case reviews, if they take issue with them? Will they have the powers—[Interruption.] I am asking a series of questions of which the Secretary of State appears to be taking no notice. Will they have the powers to issue separate serious case reviews if they take issue with the serious case review that has been commissioned by that LSCB? Those questions are important. What we do not want as a response to Laming is tokenism. If placing two lay members on to the LSCBs is tokenism, there are serious questions to be asked about the role of the LSCBs.