In my experience it is amazing how many facts do not get into the public domain and how many times it is Members of this House who question what happened and ask how a power was used. I am therefore not persuaded by the right hon. Gentleman’s argument.
The Minister said in Committee that it was his intention to change our adoption arrangements by consent and persuasion, and that the powers in the Bill were intended as a backstop to be used sparingly. If that is the case, an annual report to Parliament will not involve too many examples of their use and could hardly be regarded as onerous or unduly bureaucratic. Consequently, I hope that the Minister will have no difficulty in accepting the amendment.
An annual report is important because, although I accept the good intent of the Minister for Children and Families, Ministers and Secretaries of State come and go. The powers that we are granting today are extensive
and it is not right that Parliament should lose all control over a matter that affects such vulnerable young people. We are the people who should ensure that there are safeguards. We need to have confidence that the new adoption arrangements are fit for purpose and improve on the existing arrangements.
We can deduce that in cases where the Secretary of State uses the powers of direction, it will be because she has failed to achieve the consensus and the voluntary arrangements that the Minister says are his ambition. In those circumstances, is it not right that Parliament should know what happened and what persuaded the Secretary of State of the need to exercise her powers? An annual report would give parliamentarians access to that information.
We discussed the role of voluntary adoption agencies extensively in Committee. The Minister gave assurances that he wanted to protect such agencies and that he recognised their expertise, particularly in finding families for what are sometimes called “hard-to-place children”. That might mean children with disabilities or learning disabilities, or it might cover a situation where there are several siblings. For years, small, specialised voluntary adoption agencies in this country have pioneered that kind of work. I do not want new consortiums to be developed by local authorities to protect their interests if it leads to a squeeze on those small, influential agencies. That concern was raised by several witnesses who gave evidence to the Committee. We know that when adoption agencies were reorganised in Wales into five regional groupings, smaller voluntary agencies were the casualties.
The Minister was not able to tell us in Committee what steps he would take to protect the voluntary agencies. It is therefore important that we are able to see, in a report to Parliament, what has happened to the voluntary sector so that we can judge whether the Minister has taken adequate steps to safeguard that vital element of our adoption service. It is also reasonable that the report should comment on the effectiveness of the monitoring and inspection arrangements for any new adoption consortiums.