I thank the Minister for that comprehensive reply, much of which I welcome. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, commented on the Yorkshire pilot and the support for voluntary adoption agencies. Given the very sad episode that she related, I could not agree more that permanence has to be the aim when children are being placed. It is not just a question of finding a place fairly quickly but of finding one that both the child and the family have a good chance of making sustainable and, ultimately, permanent. That is what we are looking for. That is why I raised concerns about the Prime Minister’s comment that we should simply look to double the number. It is not a numbers game in that sense. I will raise this issue again in the next group of amendments, but I point out that Clause 13, on the terms of adoption, concerns only 5% of the children in care.
I was pleased to hear the Minister stress what he called the essential role of voluntary adoption agencies—those agencies will also be pleased to hear that—and that he foresees them having a role at the early design phase. That is what they are looking for. I do not doubt the Government’s will in this regard, and nor do the voluntary adoption agencies, but it is a question of how they intend to make it happen. This is a case of walking the walk and talking the talk, and doubts remain about how they will match the intention with the reality. Of course, it is not me, my colleagues or, indeed, the other opposition parties that the Minister needs to reassure on this point, but the CVAA and its member organisations. The CVAA was obviously centrally involved in the Adoption Leadership Board and those discussions can—and I am sure do—take place, but I simply reiterate that that the voluntary adoption agencies need that reassurance.
The Minister said that he agreed with the motivation behind Amendment 6. It is helpful to have his comments on the record that subsection (5)—if I am quoting him correctly—is designed to enable the measure to be used in the way the amendment suggests. That is useful and will be welcomed by organisations such as Barnardo’s, which has real concerns about harder-to-place children and the fact that the numbers are increasing and the resources to tackle that are at least in doubt, although the hope is that additional resources will be made available. The Minister may be able to reveal that in the near future.
I understand what the Minister is saying on the sequential decision-making issue but am slightly puzzled when he says that there is no difference in cost between voluntary adoption agencies and local authorities in this regard. He referred to the Bristol University study. I had not heard of that but, even more surprisingly, it seems to have eluded the Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies, which is saying there are situations where local authorities may have—I will put it no more damagingly than this—a back-scratching operation whereby there might be a bit of a trade-off, such as the whole interagency fee not being required to be paid in
certain situations or an understanding about some future arrangement between the two. Voluntary adoption agencies are effectively excluded from that. The new arrangements will certainly make that more difficult but they may not rule it out and that needs to be taken into account. I will look at the Bristol University survey and see what it says. I very much hope that that is the case but it may not be. Finally, I thank the Minister for the offer of a meeting and I would certainly be pleased to take that up.
5 pm
Turning to the three amendments, the Minister has conceded much of what we are looking for, in his letter and the comments he made. I must repeat one comment that I made in Committee: it is not really me he has to convince but the people involved in this on a day-to-day basis, and only time will tell whether he has done so or can do so in future. But on the basis of our discussion, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.