My Lords, I want to speak briefly on what might appear to be a rather discordant note. I support the government amendments for the following reasons. I have great sympathy with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord McColl, which has been supported. However, when the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, raised the issue about child exploitation, we talked about the spectrum of people with needs.
In local authorities there are individuals with as high a level of need as some trafficked individuals—and I am not saying that trafficked individuals do not need a specialist service. I work with some of the relevant organisations, and a specialist service is needed. There are numerous sexually exploited young people who the local authority is attempting to support—the Children Act 1989 was as special as this legislation is—but because of cuts in local authority spending, children’s services are unable to provide the level of service needed, particularly in mental health support services, hostels for runaways and a whole range of services that we would expect to be given to asylum seekers. It is therefore difficult to set a standard for one group of individuals and say that we are not going to meet it for others.
I would be delighted if the Minister were able to say, “We are going to set this standard, and it should be for all individuals who have these needs”. However, under the 1989 Act, children who are described as being in need—there are thousands on local authority books—are simply not receiving those services. I wanted to inject that into the debate because someone has to speak for the local authorities, which are continually derided as not providing services appropriately. I speak as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, but that is neither here nor there. I simply hear from social workers and people in communities who are attempting to deliver services but against all odds. If there are specialist advocates who can give a high-quality service, such as guardians ad litem—I was eight years in CAFCASS, and I know all about the services such specialists are able to give—we need to look to enabling local authority social workers to give such services to every child in need.