Clause 7
Children and Young Persons Bill [Lords]
12:00 pm
Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister, Children, Schools and Families; East Worthing and Shoreham, Conservative)
I am grateful for the Minister’s comments. She did give us slight prior notice of her intention, and that was helpful. I shall make some comments about why the principle behind clause 7 is important, and welcome, cautiously, what the Minister said.
Clause 7 was added to the Bill in the other House, when an amendment moved by my noble Friend Baroness Morris of Bolton received widespread support from all parts of the House and was passed by more than 50 votes. So, there is widespread support for its inclusion, and those of us who were around for the proceedings of the Children Act 2004 had a debate then about whether it should have been included on the list in what is now section 11 of the 2004 Act. Section 11 contains 13 different agencies on whom there has been placed a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, ranging from the obvious, such as children’s services authorities, to strategic health authorities, youth offending teams and so on. We had a lot of debate about which of those should have been added.
Four years on, this Bill represented the next opportunity to place a duty on the immigration services, and some would say that it has been four years too long, that we should not have to wait any longer and that we had hoped that it would go through in clause 7. However, having said that, I appreciate that clause 7 is technically deficient. The Minister alluded to the fact that the Border and Immigration Agency has become the UK Border Agency, and it cannot be covered because it is a UK-wide body that the Bill does not therefore deal with. There was a problem with the way in which clause 7, which was perfectly well intentioned, was fashioned in the other House. The problem needed to be dealt with, and clearly, those who supported the inclusion of the clause will need to see the detail that the Minister has promised to produce in draft with the Bill in July—before the summer recess, I hope. We are taking a deal on trust, but one is heartened by the Minister saying that it is the right thing to do and that she is intent on introducing the duty in principle.
Importantly, however, if the provision is to be effective, it must lead to a culture change in the immigration service. We are dealing with very vulnerable children who come to this country seeking asylum as refugees, and with trafficked children. This is a group—in some cases, unfortunately, a growing group—of very vulnerable children who desperately need all agencies with whom they come into contact, placed under a duty to safeguard and promote their welfare, to act in their best interests.
It would be useful to firm up the Minister’s commitment that a duty equal to the weight of that carried in section 11 of the 2004 Act would be introduced in the new legislation. As there are two Departments involved—the Home Office, with which the Minister has personal experience, and the Department of Children, Schools and Families—it might be useful to know which is to be the lead Department. In that way, children’s interests will not be swallowed up in the Home Office and the DCSF will have an ongoing role in monitoring how this duty pans out, as it has for the 13 other bodies already covered under the 2004 Act.
Given that the Bill to be produced before the recess is a draft Bill for the Queen’s Speech, we are looking at the actual Bill being published in December. We could be waiting at least another year for it to come into effect after the passing of the legislation. We could be looking at a delay of more than five years from the first opportunity to include the immigration authorities within the Bill in 2004.
Will the Minister assure us, insofar as she can be responsible for Government timetabling of Bills, that this will be seen as a priority? Can anything be done in the meantime in terms of clear guidance from her Department, or jointly with the Home Secretary—not backed up by statutory duty yet—so that the immigration authorities can at least prepare on the basis of a strong likelihood and a firm intention by the Government that a formal statutory duty will be placed upon them in the not-too-distant future?
I do not wish in any way to denigrate or undermine the important processes that currently happen within the immigration service, greatly under pressure as it is. We have to balance what is achievable and practical without placing the service under undue pressures, which might have knock-on effects.
We are dealing with perhaps the most vulnerable subsets of children and it is imperative that this is taken seriously and introduced unequivocally on an equal basis to the current section 11 arrangements. Everything possible must be done to speed up its introduction. Any comments from the Minister on that score would be greatly appreciated.