Amendments made: 18, page 47, line 26, leave out from beginning to “in” in line 27 and insert—

“( ) Section 25 (the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care) is amended as follows.

( ) .”

This amendment is consequential on amendment 19.

Amendment 19, page 47, line 29, at end insert—

“( ) For subsection (3A) substitute—

(3A) A reference in an enactment to a body mentioned in subsection (3) is not (unless there is express provision to the contrary) to be read as including—

(a) a reference to Social Work England, or

(b) a reference to the Health and Care Professions Council, or a regulatory body within subsection (3)(j), so far as it has functions relating to social care workers in England.”

( ) In subsection (3B) for the definition of “the social work profession in England” and “social care workers in England” substitute—

““social care workers in England” has the meaning given in section 60 of the 1999 Act.””—(Edward Timpson.)

This ensures that references in legislation to a regulatory body mentioned in section 25(3) of the National Health Service Reform and Health and Care Professions Act 2002 do not generally include a reference to Social Work England.

Consideration completed. I will now suspend the House for no more than five minutes to make a decision about certification. The Division bells will be rung two minutes before the House resumes. Following my certification, the Government will table the appropriate consent motions, copies of which will be available shortly in the Vote Office and will be distributed by the Doorkeepers. I know they will be of very consuming interest to Bob Stewart, who is greatly seized of the importance and content of these matters.

Sitting suspended.

On resuming—

I can now inform the House of my decision about certification. For the purposes of Standing Order No. 83L(2), I have certified the following provisions of the Children and Social Work Bill [Lords] as relating exclusively to England and Wales and within devolved legislative competence: clauses 8 and 9.

I have certified the following provisions of the Children and Social Work Bill [Lords] as relating exclusively to England and within devolved legislative competence: clauses 1 to 7, 11 to 31 and 41 to 67, new clauses 15 to 18 added to the Bill on Report and schedules 2 to 4.

For the purposes of Standing Order No. 83L(4), I have certified the following amendment made to the Bill since Second Reading as relating exclusively to England and Wales: amendment 13 to clause 62, made in the Public Bill Committee.

Copies of my certificate are available in the Vote Office. Under Standing Order No. 83M, consent motions are therefore required for the Bill to proceed. Does the Minister intend to move the consent motions?

indicated assent.

The House forthwith resolved itself into the Legislative Grand Committee (England and Wales) (Standing Order No. 83M).

[Natascha Engel in the Chair]

I remind hon. Members that if there are Divisions, only Members representing constituencies in England and Wales may vote on the consent motion for England and Wales, and only Members representing constituencies in England may vote on the consent motion for England.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83M(5)),

That the Committee consents to the following certified clauses of the Children and Social Work Bill [Lords] and the certified amendment made to the Bill—

Clauses certified under Standing Order No. 83L(2) as relating exclusively to England and Wales and being within devolved legislative competence

Clauses 8 and 9 of the Bill as amended in the Public Bill Committee.

Amendment certified under Standing Order No. 83L(4) as relating exclusively to England and Wales.

Amendment 13 made in the Public Bill Committee.—(Edward Timpson.)

Just a very short intervention, but I always think it is very useful for the Minister to have the opportunity to expand on an issue, rather than just touching the Dispatch Box and moving on.

The Minister and his Government colleagues will be well aware of the fact that we have just had the Assembly election in Northern Ireland. The results were in some quarters a surprise and in other quarters they were not a surprise at all. We now have a very short window of opportunity for the Northern Ireland Assembly to be restored. If the talks are not successful in the next three weeks, will the Minister and his Government colleagues consider extending some of the Bill’s provisions to Northern Ireland? Parts of it are very valuable, and really ought to be extended in the event of a prolonged period of direct rule.

I hear what the hon. Lady says. Of course we are all looking very carefully at the situation in Northern Ireland and hope that we can achieve a resolution as soon as possible, but in relation to the Bill, we have been very clear about which provisions are appropriate in relation to devolution arrangements. Having said that, I should add that on certain aspects of the Bill, we want to co-operate across the whole United Kingdom. I shall take that up with whoever is in place in Northern Ireland in my reciprocal capacity, so that we can make progress throughout the country.

I was loth to speak in this debate, although I think that I am the main contributor to Legislative Grand Committee debates: I believe that I have spoken in them more than any other Member. However, I did not have a clue what was going on. One of my hon. Friends asked me, “What exactly did the Speaker rule in his statement about the certification of English-only business?” I should be interested to learn whether the Minister knows what it all meant, because my colleagues and I have not got a clue, and that goes to the heart of this nonsense about English votes for English laws. No one knows what is going on. The Constitution Unit examined it in detail, and concluded that it was opaque in the extreme.

No one has much of an idea about what we are actually discussing here. I think I heard something about a procedure requiring double consent. What comes first, the English-only vote or the whole-House vote? I know that I cannot take part in one of the votes, but which one is it? That has not been made clear to us today.

If we are to continue to have these Legislative Grand Committees, we shall need a little bit more than a Minister going to the Dispatch Box, touching it with his hands, and then sitting down again. The Mace goes up, goes down and then goes up again, and nothing is debated and discussed. We were told that English votes for English laws was just about the most important innovation in Parliament when it came to debates in the House, and it is not good enough for Members not to take advantage of these opportunities. I appeal to at least one English Member to stand up and speak about the English-only clauses. If they are so important that we suspend our business, surely they should be addressed.

I hope that in future I shall not have to speak about Legislative Grand Committee motions. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] For once, I concur with Conservative Members. This procedure has reached a stage at which it is beyond a farce. It is bizarre, it is unnecessary, it disrupts the business of the House, and no one is even bothered about making a contribution.

Question agreed to.

The House forthwith resolved itself into the Legislative Grand Committee (England) (Standing Order No. 83M(4)(d)).

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83M(4)(d)),

That the Committee consents to the following certified clauses and schedules of the Children and Social Work Bill [Lords]:

Clauses and schedules certified under Standing Order No. 83L(2) as relating exclusively to England and being within devolved legislative competence

Clauses 1 to 7, 11 to 31 and 41 to 67 of the Bill as amended in the Public Bill Committee including the amendments made on Report;

New clause 15, new clause 16, new clause 17 and new clause 18 added on Report;
and

Schedules 2 to 4 to the Bill as amended in the Public Committee, including the amendments made on Report.—(Edward Timpson.)

Question agreed to.

The occupant of the Chair left the Chair to report the decisions of the Committees (Standing Order No. 83M(6)).

The Deputy Speaker resumed the Chair; decisions reported.

Third Reading

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

This Bill is fundamentally about improving the lives of vulnerable children. These are children who have often faced challenges that most of us can only imagine: they might have faced abuse and neglect; they might have been let down time and again by the people who are supposed to love and protect them; they might be being exploited by perpetrators preying on their vulnerability. So it is right and proper that Parliament should devote time and energy to improving their plight. To that end, I am very grateful to all those hon. Members who have engaged constructively with the passage of this Bill and demonstrated their shared commitment to these critical issues.

This Bill represents an important step forward for vulnerable children. It defines what good corporate parenting looks like, and secures the involvement of the whole council in looking out for children in care or leaving care. It requires every local area to set out exactly what support they are offering to care leavers, making it easier for young people to access support. It extends the help of a personal adviser to all care leavers up to the age of 25. It introduces improved national arrangements for analysing serious incidents and learning from them, and strengthened arrangements for local multi-agency co-ordination of safeguarding. It extends educational support to children leaving care via adoption or special guardianship. It creates the conditions for good placement decisions to be made for children coming into the care system. It introduces a new, bespoke regulator for social work that will be empowered to raise standards in social work and raise the status of this vital profession. It also paves the way for a new system of assessment and accreditation, which will give social workers opportunities to develop and progress in their profession.

In addition—again with thanks to the Members across this House who have supported the Government on this—the Bill now includes important measures on relationships and sex education and PSHE. We need to recognise that the world in which children are growing up is changing rapidly. As policy makers and implementers, we need to keep pace with those changes, and ensure that children are well equipped to cope with each new opportunity and challenge they are likely to face. I am delighted, therefore, that this House has supported the Government amendments to put age-appropriate relationships and sex education on a statutory footing. This will be a very significant step to promote the safeguarding of all children in England.

As I said earlier, the changes to be delivered through this Bill reflect my personal passion and commitment to improving the lives of vulnerable children and families. My pledge to the House is to implement these changes as expeditiously as possible when the Bill has completed its passage through Parliament and received royal assent. I thank all Members who have engaged with, and contributed to, this Bill, including Mrs Lewell-Buck, who cannot be with us here today but shares that same passion.

Of course, we would not be where we are without the dedicated work of all the officials and Clerks of this House, and the many officials in my Department who have worked tirelessly to make the Bill’s passage as smooth as possible. I take this opportunity to thank them all, in particular the Bill team and my private office, and I commend the Bill to the House.

I echo the thanks given by the Minister, particularly to my hon. Friend Mrs Lewell-Buck, who cannot be with us today. She did a tremendous amount of work on the Bill. I also thank the Committee members who contributed to the Bill and all Members from across the House who have made it a much better Bill. I commend the Government on the work they have done towards finding consensus within the House on the Bill. I also thank all the organisations that have contributed to the Bill throughout its passage.

We have had a fantastic debate. I am disappointed that we have not managed to add new clause 14 to the Bill, but I hope the Minister was listening in particular to Heidi Allen when she talked about the model of good housekeeping in the amendment we voted on. I hope the Minister will look at that and see how we can make progress on it in later stages.

I voted in support of new clause 14. I should like to say again on behalf of the people of Northern Ireland and those in my constituency that we want to be able to welcome refugee children just as much as England, Wales and especially Scotland, which has already done so much. If the Minister is going to look at this issue, will he also remember that the people of Northern Ireland would like to have been included in new clause 14? The new clause was lost, but I know that the Minister has taken note of it.

I thank the hon. Lady for reminding us of the great contribution that Northern Ireland makes to this place.

I echo the Minister’s points about the progress that has been made on relationships and sex education and on PSHE. This is a tremendous step forward, although there is still work to be done. Many of the Select Committee members who have taken part in the debates today have done a tremendous amount of work on this, and I commend them for that. I also welcome the Minister’s earlier contribution on new clause 3, which dealt with sibling contact. That is going to make a massive difference to vulnerable people. On new clause 7, we know that a cycle of deprivation can be created among vulnerable children, who can grow up to become vulnerable adults. If nothing else, we should be trying to break those cycles. That is where the cross-party efforts in this place to achieve a true meritocracy come in.

I want to mention clauses 32 to 39, the so-called innovation clauses. There was huge resistance to those measures from care leavers, adult survivors of abuse, social workers, academics, children’s rights campaigners and charities. The Together for Children coalition has 53 organisations, more than 160 individual experts and 108,000 signatures from concerned members of the public. On top of this, organisations as diverse as the Magistrates Association, the Law Society, the Family Law Bar Association, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the GMB trade union, which represents foster carers, as well as some of our oldest children’s charities, including Action for Children and the NSPCC, warned of the grave dangers to our country’s most vulnerable children and young people of allowing councils to opt out of their statutory duties. I therefore commend the Minister and the Secretary of State for accepting those arguments and removing the relevant chapters from the Bill.

On new clause 17, we have some concerns about the way in which the Secretary of State will decide to discharge her duties with respect to the registrar, and specifically about the extent to which Social Work England will be able to exercise the necessary independence with respect to accrediting the courses leading to registered social worker status. I hope the Minister will take note of those concerns.

I should like to end by echoing the comments of many Members throughout the passage of the Bill about the great unsung heroes who work in our children’s services. The Minister has rightly said that social workers make an important positive contribution to our communities. I must add that my niece is a social work manager who looks after children, and she does a tremendous job, as do every single one of the workers in that field. They are at the forefront of helping children, families and disabled and older adults who are distressed, in difficulty and perhaps in danger. Most of their work goes unseen, without recognition or celebration, but they deserve our thanks for the major contribution that they make every single day.

The Bill is groundbreaking in making sex and relationship education compulsory. The Government have listened to the evidence from Select Committees such as the Women and Equalities Committee, which I chair, and the Minister’s team is to be congratulated. The Bill will benefit millions of children, three quarters of whom believe that they will feel safer as a result of our decision this afternoon to give sex and relationship education a statutory basis. I thank the organisations that have supported and assisted the work that my hon. Friend Mr Burrowes and I have done—Barnardo’s, Plan UK, and Girlguiding are but a few.

When the amendments go to the other place, I hope that careful consideration is given to the fact that the sex and relationship education amendments were made without the need for a vote in this place owing to the cross-party consensus. The Bill is important in many respects, but it will be often cited in this place because of the progress made in that area. I again put on the record my personal thanks to the Minister for the work that he has done over a long period of time. He must be a very pleased man indeed.

I congratulate everyone involved in the Bill’s progress. It is fair to say that I have come to it very late indeed, largely because my hon. Friend Marion Fellows has other parliamentary duties to attend to today. I thank her for her contribution during the Bill’s passage. No one would argue with the Bill’s stated goals, but these issues are devolved matters, so I will leave it to Members from English constituencies to debate the extent to which those goals have been achieved.

There are two main clauses with implications for Scotland. The first is clause 10, which reinstates procedures to place children in secure accommodation in different parts of Great Britain. I agree with the shadow Minister that how those procedures operate in practice demands significant scrutiny. Transfers from one constituent part of Great Britain to another or placement in a secure unit should not be routine or the first option, but it is right that it should remain an option in appropriate circumstances.

The second is clause 40. Both the SNP here and the Scottish Government recognise the need for procedures to support staff in raising concerns to ensure a safe and secure environment in the children and social care sector. Any proposals that strengthen whistleblowing procedures and help to protect employees and service users across the public sector are welcome. We regret the missed opportunities for additional social security support for care leavers and for assessing the capacity of local authorities to safeguard children in new clause 14. However, I have no doubt that we will return to those issues in due course.

I come in at the end of the Bill’s progress, having been in at the beginning on Second Reading, but I want to pay tribute to the hard work that has gone into the Bill and to crave your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, in talking about something that did not make it into the legislation.

Having had experience of children’s Bills over the past 15 years or so, I find it interesting that they have a propensity to be hijacked by things not present on Second Reading that then become the headline in the final stages. True to form, that has happened again with amendments about sex and relationship education, which I fully support—I added my name to that amendment—and about child refugees, which I also support but which did not make it into the Bill in the form that some of us had hoped for. In many respects, that is a shame because it takes attention and focus away from the really important meat of the everyday experiences of vulnerable children, particularly those who find themselves in the care system through no fault of their own. Successive Governments have strived to do much and have achieved much for those children, but we still need to do much more. In welcoming the Bill, I draw the House’s attention to the really good things in it that we did not have much time to discuss today. They were perhaps the more important parts of the Bill as it went through its various stages.

I, too, welcome the addition of the sex and relationship educations clauses. As my right hon. Friend Mrs Miller said, that is ground breaking. Some of us have banged our head against brick walls in various shadow ministerial and post-ministerial positions over many, many years, and the need for it is so screamingly obvious, yet, for all sorts of reasons that I have never quite understood, the measure fails to make it into legislation.

There is an increasing online threat to our children. Shockingly, they are being lured into many things with which we would never have been confronted in our teenage years—just a few years ago in your case, Madam Deputy Speaker, but slightly longer ago for others. Children are exposed to those threats on a daily basis, and the best way to give them defences against those threats must surely be, at an early age at school, to educate, inform, warn and support them against the hazards out in the wider world and the wider web.

By way of example, there was a shocking interview with a teenage girl on “Woman’s Hour” a few years ago. She had been in a relationship with a teenage boy—I think both were under the age of 16—and he had forced her to watch and act out violent pornographic videos, and she had gone along with it. It is shocking that, at her young age, she was under pressure to do that and that it was deemed to be common practice. What was really alarming is that, when the interviewer asked, “Why on earth didn’t you tell him to get lost and report him?” her response was, “Well, I didn’t think I had the right.” If sex and relationships education is anything, it is about giving confidence and empowering young people, particularly young women, that theirs is the choice to say yes or no, and theirs alone.

If we can develop what has now become part of the Bill into an empowerment exercise for our young people so that they respect other young people and have the confidence to say no—with no meaning no—we will have done this generation of children and future generations a huge service. We have taken a major step forward with this Bill, although the step was not intended on Second Reading, but fortunately it made it in at the last moment with wide cross-party consensus, which is excellent.

The House of Lords is forming a habit of disagreeing with the House of Commons, but I hope that in this case it does not disagree with us. When Ministers formulate the important guidance that needs to go with this legislation, I urge them to be sensitive because this is a big move for many people that will need to be handled carefully and cautiously.

There are many other good things in the Bill, including the local offer for care leavers. In our debates on the Bill we have heard numerous times the figures on the poor outcomes for children in care and for care leavers. The very small proportion who make it to university shows that we still have a long way to go. There is still a large gap in the educational achievement of children in care and others. The gap has narrowed a little, but we need to go so much further. The Government’s support for children in care and adopted children through the pupil premium is a small part of trying to level the playing field.

I welcome the measures, some more controversial than others, on regulating social workers and the need for continuing professional development, but the problem remains that we have a growing shortage of experienced child protection social workers. Work by the all-party parliamentary group for children—I will allude to the study in a minute—shows huge divergences between the experiences in different local authorities. At its worst, one local authority has a 57% locum rate for child social workers. How on earth can we have continuity of care and empathy of care for deeply traumatised and vulnerable children when they are being looked after by non-permanent social workers? That is a huge challenge, and we still have a lot of work to do.

The refugee amendment did not make it into the Bill, but I hope that the spirit of that amendment, which had great support on both sides of the House and on which many undertakings were given by Ministers, will not be forgotten as the Bill’s measures are turned into practice.

Clauses 32 to 39, on the so-called powers to test different ways of working, are no longer in the Bill. I congratulate the Government, because this is a good example of their listening to people from across various professions—academics, practitioners, children’s charities, politicians and others, including me—who were seriously concerned about the huge principles that would have been at stake had the clauses passed into law. There are no parallels for allowing a local authority, or, indeed, other agencies to step outside primary or secondary legislation effectively at the whim of the Secretary of State of the day. That has not been tried with adults—there are no examples of parallels in the Care Act 2014, the Mental Health Act 2007 or the Mental Capacity Act 2005—so why on earth would the Government risk using vulnerable children as guinea pigs to experiment with a new model of working?

I am all in favour of innovation and of being creative in how we get better outcomes and better support for children who most need it, particularly in the care system, but I just do not think we need to remove primary and secondary legislation that has been built up since 1933, on a whim and without consultation. Whatever the safeguards we were promised, at the end of the day it would mean a postcode lottery for the rights of children and for the responsibilities towards those children of different local authorities, depending on when those children happened to be in care.

Back in 2010, one of the first things the coalition Government did in the Department for Education was to recruit Professor Eileen Munro and appoint her to head the complete overhaul of child protection social work. I was pleased and proud to be part of appointing her and implementing her recommendations. We reduced social work legislation from something like 760 pages in the “Working Together” manual, which had accrued over years and years during which the solution to better child protection was more legislation. In the end, that got in the way of social workers being able to use their professionalism, instincts and training to do the right thing by the child. Instead, they had constantly to look at the rule book and over their shoulders.

It was right that we reduced that rule book and that manual and gave greater freedoms and flexibility to social workers, but at no point did that require us, or was it required of us, to remove any of the duties that make up the safety net of primary and secondary legislation. Professor Munro never asked for it, we never considered it and it was never done. It would have been absolutely inappropriate to do it now, so it was completely appropriate that Professor Munro did not give her support to the Government’s previous proposals. I am pleased that they have listened, and I am grateful to Lord Laming and Lord Mackay in the other place, and to my hon. Friend Kelly Tolhurst today, for putting that message across to Ministers.

The Bill has to address the huge variations in practice and outcomes for vulnerable children in care throughout the country. The all-party group for children is about to produce a report on the state of children’s social care. Last year, the average rate of referrals to children’s services was 532 per 10,000 children in the local population. The lowest rate for a local authority was 187 and the highest was 753 per 10,000 children—that is a difference of nine times, just depending on where the child happened to be. Last year, the average national rate of children becoming subject to child protection plans was 54 per 10,000, but the lowest local authority rate was 16.5 and the highest was 180.5—a difference of 10 times. Our report highlights huge differences in experiences and outcomes for children in care, depending on what local authority they happen to live in. That is the biggest challenge that we face. We owe the same duty of care and responsibility to a vulnerable child in care regardless of whether he or she lives in Yorkshire, Sussex or Cornwall. Those clauses that are now no longer in the Bill would have just widened those differential experiences. The Government’s priority now must be to narrow those gaps to make sure that we are doing an ever better job for every child in care in every part of the country.

In closing, may I say that I welcome this Bill? I also welcome the fact that the Government have listened, that the debate has contributed to a great strengthening of some of the measures in this Bill and that some additional measures have been included, but, at the end of the day, we owe our thanks, our respect and our regard to the social workers on the frontline who do an exceedingly challenging job in very challenging circumstances, often dealing with very challenged children and families. We owe a duty of care, thanks and respect to the many foster carers and, increasingly, adoptive parents coming forward to give those children a second chance of a safe, stable and loving home. If there is one upside from our debate on refugees and the publicity about refugees, it is that more people have come forward to offer themselves as foster carers and adoptive parents both for refugee children coming to the county and for the indigenous children for whom we still have a large shortage of places in foster care and for adoption. Those are the people on the frontline who make the difference to children’s lives. We have a lot more to do. We owe much greater care to our vulnerable children, but this Bill is a very good step in making that achievable.

It is a pleasure to follow Tim Loughton. I very much agreed with the latter part of his remarks about the challenges, the so-called innovation clauses and the debt that we owe to social workers.

I realise that it is customary to make congratulatory remarks at this stage in the proceedings, but, to be perfectly honest, this is a good example of a piece of legislation that has really rather lost its way. As John Pugh, who is no longer in his place, put it earlier, the Minister said nothing to indicate that he had a problem with new clause 14, but he still urged his colleagues to vote against it. He was left looking like a Minister vulnerable to senior colleagues at the Home Office rather than the Minister for Vulnerable Children. [Interruption.] There you go, Minister. Never mind they will look after you.

The Minister then proposed new clause 15; his colleagues warned him to guard against smuggling sexual education content into relationship education. I welcome the comments of Mrs Miller, but surely the Minister either believes in such education to safeguard children in this day and age or he does not. I wonder whether new clause 16 will ever see the light of day or whether his more atavistic colleagues will have it kicked into the long grass before the election.

The Minister then formally deleted the entirety of what he was stoutly defending in Committee as the “innovation” clauses, but without a single word of explanation. My hon. Friend Angela Rayner was typically charitable and generous to the Minister, but I am really keen that the House should hear why he changed his mind. I would love it if the House had some explanation for why these clauses, which he claimed had so much support from so many notable experts just a few months ago and were so essential to new and innovative approaches to children’s social care legislation, had to go. The House would like to hear what happened. Was he wrong in Committee? Has something changed his mind? It would not do him any harm to offer the House an explanation. It is good to know that the Government listen, but we would like to know what they were listening to, and what had an impact on them.

May I clarify, at this late stage, whether the provisions on training in Government new clause 17 include—[Interruption.] Yes, this is Third Reading, which I understand allows me to speak on the entire contents of the Bill.

Order. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct: on Third Reading, he is perfectly entitled to debate anything in the Bill, but not anything that is not in the Bill; if he could restrict himself to the former, that would be great.

That is exactly what I am attempting to do, Madam Deputy Speaker; Government new clause 17 is in the Bill, and I want to ask whether it covers those doing initial training at higher education institutions, or whether the Government plan to exclude initial training from it.

I am sorry that this does not suit some Government Members, but if ever there was an example of the Government needing to prepare a bit more before rushing to legislate, it is the Bill. I do not for a second doubt the Minister’s good intentions, but it is absolutely clear, if one looks at the Bill from its start point to where we are now, that his Government are utterly confused in their objectives.

It is a pleasure to speak after my hon. Friend Tim Loughton; with his expertise and knowledge in this area, he has been a great source of information and guidance to me.

I was elected two years ago, and I have had great involvement with some of the most vulnerable children in the country, and particularly in my area. When I was a local councillor, I saw some of the decisions taken around the cabinet table on looked-after children; my sister is a social worker; and I continue to be an independent visitor for a looked-after child. I am extremely proud that this Conservative Government have brought forward a Bill that seeks to improve outcomes for our looked-after children, and children in need. I pay tribute to the Ministers; it is because of their dedication to improving outcomes for our looked-after children that the Bill is being championed.

I welcomed the Minister’s comments on sibling contact, including when the children are not looked after, although I have not once met a social worker or foster carer who has denied a young person in care an opportunity for contact with their siblings. I have seen some of the damage done by contact with parents. Parents have legislative rights to contact with their children, and I have seen really damaging outcomes from forcing newly looked-after children to have such contact, which they do not always want; I hope that that is always taken into account, and that the best interests of children are always to the fore when decisions are taken.

On Second Reading, I welcomed the introduction of the local offer in the Bill, and I continue to do so today. I also supported the amendment that was brought forward. The local offer should always be about more than just financial support, and it should be more than a box-ticking exercise. In my experience, young people need guidance and support during their transition from being looked after to going it alone. From what I have seen, local authorities, due to budget burdens, will only ever deliver what they are statutorily obliged to deliver. Therefore, as we evaluate the implementation of the Bill, I would like to see greater prescription of the services we would like local authorities to provide for care leavers, which will hopefully take into account accommodation, training and finance.

Investment in our young people will always pay off. From my experience, people leaving care sometimes lack the necessary experiences and training, because they have often been wrapped in a safety blanket—more so than people’s biological children—so it is important that we do enough for young people in care to make sure that they are prepared. In some of the cases I have seen, that has not always taken place, and I hope we now have an opportunity to further the local offer.

I want to mention new clause 14 briefly. On Second Reading, one Opposition Back Bencher made a speech; I was pleased the Chamber was a lot fuller earlier, when we spoke about refugees, than it was on Second Reading. However, I would have liked to have seen a real championing of the need to find foster carers and social workers to look after the children we are already struggling to place in some parts of the country. We are not selling the fact that becoming a foster carer is an amazing thing to do. We also need an acceptance that when somebody becomes a foster carer, there is a mountain of assessment and training to go through before they are, quite rightly, qualified to look after young people. It is exactly the same in relation to unaccompanied young minors, and it is right that we have the same high standards for them. I therefore welcome what the Minister said about reporting to Parliament, but the way we look after refugees and our looked-after children must be on a par.

We have seen increased levels of referrals, especially to independent fostering agencies. Speaking from my own experience, we often see large numbers of referrals in Kent of young people from London, and we have also seen that with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. We hear that many local authorities around the country have capacity, and I hope they will continue to support counties such as Kent. I hope they will take part in the national transfer scheme and help Kent, as well as Croydon and other London boroughs.

Let me turn to the clauses that were removed from the Bill today. In some parts of the country, as I have outlined, there is great demand for intervention and support for looked-after children and children in need. We have seen growing demand for intervention for young people, and especially those with complex needs. The strain on local authorities in terms of providing high-quality support and placements is still there. There is great variation in the quality of service and practice throughout the country, as my hon. Friend outlined, and outcomes for our young people remain poor.

I welcome the fact that the Government have the desire to get behind innovation in the children’s social care system and to drive and encourage the reviewing and sharing of best practice. I am sure this is not the end and that the Government will continue to look at ways in which they can improve things, because the Minister is extremely passionate about doing what he can for young people in our care. I would like to see vast improvement across the country in the delivery of children’s social care. This should not be—I am glad it will not be—the preserve of local authorities that may have been judged to be good; it must happen in other parts of the country where innovation is much needed.

I look forward to the Minister making further proposals on meaningful reform, after consultation with frontline professionals and care deliverers. For example, I would like IROs—independent reviewing officers—to become truly independent of local authorities, enabling them to make decisions and face challenges on the outcomes for our looked-after children without the demands of budgetary pressures. We still need to tackle social workers’ caseloads because there is such a vast difference in the number of cases that social workers will have in different local authority areas. Local authorities are struggling to keep up with demand, and when there is higher demand, caseloads are greater. We need to protect our workforce and enable them to carry out their role knowing that they are safe when doing so, with the personal capacity to deliver good-quality services to the young people they are charged with looking after.

There is a high burn-out rate for professionals dealing with child protection cases, and many social workers are leaving frontline social work due to the stresses involved. Local authorities are relying heavily on agency workers, and this impacts on the continuity of some of the decision making that takes place subsequently. In turn, there is lots of churn in the system. I have seen examples where looked-after children may have 10 to 12 different social workers over a very short period, and that is just not right. We need to be bold. I hope that the Government come forward with further recommendations and further work in this area, and I am confident that that will happen.

My final point is about social worker regulation. Social workers, in my opinion, have never had the credit that they deserve. They are sometimes the forgotten public servants. They are vilified when something goes wrong, but we never hear about all the good work they are doing day in, day out in protecting families. Social Work England is a positive way forward. Social workers need a stand-alone body to make sure that they are held in the high regard that they deserve. I would like the Secretary of State and Ministers to work with the professional bodies to make sure that the qualifications and continual professional development is right and is acceptable for these workers. It is true that we see variations in the standard and quality of the delivery of social worker practice among individual social workers. I have had some first-hand experience of that.

Although there is some concern from the profession about these changes, I really do believe that they rightly put social workers in the position that they deserve. I hope that the Government will continue to work with them to make sure that they, as a profession, can continue to carry out their job knowing that the Government—this Conservative Government—are fully behind them and all that they are doing for young people in this country.

I very much support the ambitions of this Bill. As we have all seen, there have been a number of changes during its passage. I want to be assured by the ministerial team that, notwithstanding those changes, we are monitoring the outcomes of safeguarding for those in residential care and those in boarding schools—not just those sent because of the care system but those who attend. Some of my constituents have raised concerns about that. I would very much welcome the Minister’s comments.

I can offer my hon. Friend that reassurance. The care plan outcomes of every child who is in care have to be closely monitored to make sure that, whatever their setting, they are achieving what the plan sets out. Of course, I am happy to discuss that with her further and to provide her with more detail about how we can do that in the future and keep a close eye on the issues that she has rightly raised.

I thank the Minister.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed, with amendments.