Children, Schools and Families Bill

As the hon. Gentleman knows, there has been a downward trend over recent years, but if there was a greater rise in notifications last year, we will need to examine and understand it. I am aware of that matter, but I do not believe one can say that it is a consequence of the events that happened a year ago. I turn to particular issues raised by the new clauses and amendments. As I have said, Lord Laming reported last spring and talked about our having""a sound framework for professionals to protect children and promote their welfare"," but stated that we needed a step change in how it was applied consistently across the country, particularly 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."" He stated that that was the only way to ensure that children were safe. The measures that we have debated today will take forward Lord Laming's recommendation in two areas—further strengthening the serious case review process and improving the working of local safeguarding children boards. We also debated those matters in relation to new clauses 1 and 21. The statutory guidance "Working together to safeguard children", which we have updated in recent months in line with Lord Laming's recommendations, is an important step forward. We have already strengthened the requirements in that document to have thorough, comprehensive serious case reviews whenever a child is seriously harmed and to ensure that immediate lessons are learned and implemented before the publication of the executive summary and the completion of the full review. I know that there is debate in the House about the publication of full serious case reviews, and it has arisen again in recent weeks because of the executive summary of the Edlington review following the tragic events in Doncaster last year. It is important to say that the executive summary of that serious case review, which Ofsted rated as a good summary, was drawn up under the old, more restricted guidelines for the preparation of executive summaries. It would not be state-of-the-art today. The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole made powerful points about her reaction having read the serious case review, and I had the same reaction. I was shocked and surprised by the extent of multiple engagement of children's services in Doncaster with the child in question. Under the new guidelines, that would be more fully set out in the executive summary than it was under the one drawn up on the old basis. I say to the hon. Member for Stone that it was clear in that case that the children who had perpetrated the crime, for whom there can be no excuse, had themselves been subjected to either witnessing the physical harming and abuse of the parent in their household, or to physical harm and abuse themselves from the adults there, over a number of years. It is important to say that in the context of the remarks that we heard earlier about the importance or otherwise of children learning boundaries through punishment and physical harm. Those boys did not learn boundaries, and they lost any moral sense because they grew up in a family in which there was none. That was part of the problem. The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole has read the serious case review, but it would have been impossible to publish it even in redacted form without putting into the public domain the details of the harm suffered not just by those boys but by other siblings in the household. Those details could then have been seen by other children, young people and adults in the same part of Doncaster. That would have been the wrong thing to do not only for the boys who perpetrated the crime but for the victims of the crime, whose suffering is there for us to see in the serious case review, and for the other siblings, who were not named in the court case but are named in the review. The harm that they suffered, which is material to the case, would have been there to see. I defy the hon. Lady to say to me that the serious case review could be published in a redacted form without putting those children in jeopardy. I make that argument about publishing serious case reviews on the basis not of my judgment but of advice that I receive. I cite my usual sources—Lord Laming, the child protection expert; Sir Roger Singleton, our child protection adviser; the Association of Directors of Children's Services; the Association of Chief Police Officers; and the NSPCC. They all agree that publishing full serious case reviews would be wrong, because it would put children at risk and make it very difficult for professionals to co-operate in what is not an independent inquiry into who did things wrong but a process to ensure that lessons are learned. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said, "This will not be good enough. What we are going to hear is the same old excuses trotted out by children's charities for whatever reasons." I have to say that he does the NSPCC a disservice when he belittles its view on the publication of full serious case reviews. The NSPCC wrote to me at the beginning of February—in the public domain—after those issues were raised in the House, to say that it does not agree with the publication of full SCRs. In the letter, the NSPCC states that it believes""that the proposal does not take into account two important consequences: the possibility of further harm to surviving and subsequent children of the family; and the hesitancy of children, young people and their families to cooperate with the review process."" The NSPCC is right on that point. I urge the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole, who is an expert in these matters, to think hard again about the proposal to publish the full SCR in the face of all the advice of all the experts, including the NSPCC, which thinks it would be the wrong thing to do in the interests of the safety of children.