My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, and agree that Clause 71 should not stand part of the Bill. Among the main reasons for my position is, first, that the delegation of local authority statutory children’s services functions, particularly child protection functions, was approved only very recently, and we simply have not had the time to clarify whether the new arrangements are working. Secondly, the delegation of these functions was approved by statutory instrument, and therefore not subjected to very thorough parliamentary scrutiny—we already have, if you like, an unscrutinised situation, or one subject to inadequate scrutiny, yet these functions are crucial to the future lives of very vulnerable children.
It was presumably no accident that these statutory functions were not included in the Children and Young Persons Act 2008, which provided for the delegation of functions in relation to looked-after children and those leaving care. Those are very sensitive areas of work, and one can question their delegation, but these new functions were not included even then. I should make it clear that, along with members of the College of Social Work, I support the provision of children’s and adult services by the third sector in partnership with the statutory agencies—this is not an ideological point at all—but as recent scandals have shown, the third sector is not immune from providing very poor-quality services to very vulnerable people. It is this risk that needs to be guarded against in equal measure—
I emphasise equal measure—with public services. I sometimes worry that the Government assume that any private service is somehow good, while public services are suspect. That seems to me to be an incredibly dangerous assumption.
I share the concern of the noble Baroness about the limited parliamentary debate about the new regulations and, more particularly, the concern that the removal of the one safeguard from these functions is proposed when the evidence for the efficacy or otherwise of these delegated services is not yet available. Will the Minister explain to the Committee why the Government are proposing to remove the requirement to register with the inspectorate from these newly delegated services? Is this a matter of cost? If so, what will be the annual saving to the Exchequer from this change? Has a cost-benefit analysis been done of Clause 71? Is there any evidence to suggest that the proposal will not lead to a deterioration in the quality of service provided? These really are very important questions for the Government to answer.
It would also be helpful to have some explanation about how the local authority responsibility for these delegated services will work. As I understand it, local authorities will remain accountable to the regulators for the quality of the delegated services, but they will surely need to undertake some form of inspection role in order to satisfy themselves that the services are of an acceptable quality. But will they be funded to do that? We know how hard-pressed local authorities are; if they do not have the funding for a job, they will certainly not be able to do it. If not, is it right that a local authority should be held responsible for poor-quality services that do not fall within its purview? It all feels really very difficult from the local authority point of view and therefore the whole thing feels shaky. Who is going to lose? The vulnerable children, at the end of the day. I hope the Minister will respond to these questions and provide some assurance to the Committee that the Government are not taking unreasonable risks in Clause 71.
4.15 pm