Children, Schools and Families Bill

I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker—I was addressing my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central. His points are important, and they have been addressed by Lord Laming's recommendations. Amendments 35 to 40 are on whether we should list agencies that contribute to SCRs. We are clear that the executive summary needs to have a much clearer time line of what has happened in cases. I do not think that that happened fully in the Doncaster-Edlington SCR, but it will under the new guidelines. Practitioners must be confident that they can disclose relevant information in co-operating fully with SCRs. I do not believe that any steps should be taken that would reduce the willingness of individuals to contribute to SCRs. That is not the right way to go. However, it is important—Lord Laming highlighted this in his report—to ensure that all information can be given in the SCR process. The measure clarifies that position. The amendments would mean that such information is provided only to SCRs. However, there will be occasions on which LSCBs have an obligation to collect information for reports that are not SCRs. For example, following the death of a child, the LSCB must ask professionals to provide information, so that it can produce the child death review, which it must now provide after the death of every child. That can go widely to involve, for example, deaths from road traffic accidents or sudden infant death syndrome, when it is important to get information from general or hospital practitioners. It is also important for the LSCB to know—this relates to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North—that adequate safeguarding procedures training is being done in our schools for full-time and temporary staff. Again, that is a matter for the LSCB. To restrict the collection of information only to SCRs would undermine child death reviews and that important staff training function. Again, I therefore urge hon. Members not to press their proposals to a Division. On amendment 88, which is on requests for information related to an SCR, it is important to ensure that the LSCB has proper information-sharing arrangements and protocols, and that they are properly kept under review. We are speaking to the agencies on those matters, and we will clarify the situation and revise statutory guidance to ensure that that is done properly. Again, we can do that without the amendment. Amendment 48 and consequent amendments are, in our view, unnecessarily restrictive on Ofsted's role. It is clear what the role of Ofsted is in inspecting the effectiveness of LSCBs. We will ensure that that happens through the regular area-wide reviews. We can also ensure that Ofsted looks at the compliance report that we will produce one year on after every SCR. However, in our judgment, we do not need to place the restrictions on Ofsted that are proposed in amendments 48 and 90. In a few weeks' time, we will publish our progress report, a year on from Lord Laming's report. We now have the national safeguarding delivery unit up and running, which is a step forward. We have already revised "Working Together", and will do so further following the input of the NSPCC and other organisations, to ensure that we have full, state-of-the-art executive summaries for serious case reviews, and that actions are properly implemented and monitored. We think that the restrictions in the amendments are unnecessary, and in particular we believe that to publish the full serious case review as a matter of policy—in the face of all the expert advice from all those people working in child protection—would be a backward step for children. It would put their safety at risk and mean that they, their families and other professionals would be less likely to co-operate. That would mean that we would be less likely to learn the lessons of terrible incidents in the future. It would be a retrograde step for child protection, and I urge the House to reject new clause 1.