Children, Schools and Families Bill

I, too, shall commence my remarks by talking about serious case reviews. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) reminds us that we are approaching the 10th anniversary of Victoria Climbié's death. It is a time to reflect on how much has been learned. If we look at the history of serious case reviews, we will see that Ofsted has judged that the quality of a very large proportion has been unsatisfactory. In many cases, the summaries have been criticised for not reflecting the issues behind the cases, and their timeliness has been incredibly suspect, with many occasions on which one has waited for years after a shocking event. There are also doubts about Ofsted and its inspections within the children's services framework. Some time ago, we had a briefing from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which remains concerned about the full publication of serious case reviews. However, it made several proposals that it thought would improve the process, including working on the summaries, improving the quality of the serious case reviews and putting in a compliance or audit check so that an arm's length body can pick up on recommendations and check up on subsequent action 12 months after publication. Just before we came into the Chamber today, my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) picked up a letter that we had been sent. The letter is from the Secretary of State to the NSPCC. No doubt, in due course we will hear on the Floor of the House exactly how the Government propose to improve serious case reviews. The letter says that the Government will try to improve confidence in the quality of serious case reviews. Ofsted seems to have been put in charge of that, even though we are not yet that confident of its operation in the realm of children's services. Compliance reports should be made publicly available, setting out the actions to be taken in response to serious case reviews, but there is no indication that anyone will take an independent look at compliance. The reason why I want to emphasise that point is that subsection (2) of new clause 21, standing in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil, highlights the need for independence in checking the responses to a serious case review. The letter to the NSPCC also refers to the NSPCC's desire that executive summaries should be improved. It is therefore interesting that even now the Government are not going the whole way and are not even responding to the NSPCC's concerns about putting that independence into the equation. I thank the Secretary of State for allowing me to read the serious case review on the Edlington boys. I read it on behalf of my hon. Friend, and I have to say that I was genuinely surprised at how I felt after reading it. Members who are present are well aware that I work closely with the NSPCC and that I am really concerned about child protection. However, I can put my hand on my heart and say that I came out of the room—my locked room—after reading the review and I thought that pages and pages of it should become compulsory reading for anybody working in the children's work force, including teachers and children's social workers. I was surprised at my reaction. The review was leaked, of course, to the BBC and the press. I will quote from them, rather than from my recollection, so that I do not reveal anything. There were 31 occasions on which nine different agencies failed to act on the two brothers, aged 10 and 11, who were convicted of torturing and leaving two boys for dead. That is 31 occasions on which there were communication problems, and there are other examples—Pearl Harbour is a classic example—of where all the signals were there but nobody put them together. In order to learn something we have to go through the communication failures. Trainee workers need to read all the points that were missed. Of course it is easy to be clever in hindsight—I am not making judgments about the people involved—but the lessons were there for training the work force. I say that with some passion, because I am surprised that I now feel even more strongly that we should start from the premise that we publish as much of the serious case review as we can without harming members of the family or other individuals who might be involved. I, too, picked up the points about the fuller publication of serious case reviews, which the British Association of Social Workers is supporting. I ask the Government today to reconsider the issue. I am not here to make political points: when I read that serious case review, I was staggered by the things in it that should be revealed to people already in the work force and those entering it. We cannot move on unless we learn those lessons. We on the Liberal Democrat Benches will therefore support the Conservatives' new clause 1. We would have liked to combine it with our proposals, but the point will be made that if we are to learn the lessons, there is a strong case for making more information public. I understand from reading the serious case review from Edlington that it was the eighth such review that Doncaster had carried out in recent years. This leads me to ask what lessons have been learned from the previous cases, given that they have not been published. Not very many, it seems. Of course I take on board the enormous pressures on social workers, the lack of training and the high case loads, but if we picked up all those elements with total transparency, it would lead to a bigger commitment from society to addressing the deficiencies in the system rather than the people. We are therefore absolutely convinced that we need to move in completely the opposite direction. We cannot improve matters by a drip, drip, drip method of doing a bit more here and there. We need to start from the other end. Let us publish as much as we can without risking injury to anyone and without damaging reputations, perhaps of members of the wider family. I should like to touch on the Conservatives' amendments 35 to 45. I, too, looked at the representations from the British Medical Association and the General Medical Council; what sensible representations they were. In clause 28, proposed new section 14B(2) states:""The first condition is that the request is made for the purpose of enabling or assisting the Board to perform its functions."" That seems a very wide request. I looked at the Bill's explanatory notes on the clause, but they left me none the wiser—[Interruption.] I am relieved that I am not the only one who thought that they confused the issue, rather than clarifying it. Although I quite understand the point that members of the medical profession are making—and I agree that the Government need to look again at this part of the Bill as it makes its progress through the other place—I am concerned that the Conservative amendments would narrow the options down too much. I believe that local safeguarding children boards will need to share information on issues other than just the serious case reviews. Those reviews might well be the most important aspect of the work, but they take place after something has gone wrong, and LSCBs should also be involved in prevention. Information should be shared, for example, in cases of child abuse and the sexual exploitation of children. A serious case review might have been undertaken on one member of a family, but information about another member of that family—baby P's sister, for example—might also need to be shared. I acknowledge what the Conservative amendments are trying to do, but they have been drafted too narrowly to achieve the necessary improvements in information sharing. Also, they do not take on board the fact that, if other functions are to be carried out properly, they will require the information to be shared fully.