Clause 2 - General function
Children Bill [Lords]
3:30 pm
Mr Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister for Children, Family; East Worthing and Shoreham, Conservative)
I have some sympathy with what was said about the amendments. They are part of the diluting of clause 2. We saw much good work in the upper House to give the Children's Commissioner real teeth. The hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre has quite rightly identified certain issues—I agree with him on whistleblowing—that should be covered in the Bill. The Government amendments seek to dilute what we were given in the first place.
I have spent many happy hours in Committees arguing the toss between ''must'' and ''shall'' and I have never won that toss in seven and a half years of Committee work. There are great diatribes of parliamentary code on why ''must'' or ''shall'' should prevail, so I do not want to go over that territory now, but the hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the new element of clause 2—and we will be discussing the rest of clause 2, which we would like to see remain largely unchanged, later. I will be sympathetic to his aims if he is going to push his point, although I am not very optimistic about achieving any change in the language.