My Lords, I thank my noble friend. Her last point—about the proposal in my amendment having little to no effect—carries considerable weight coming from someone with her considerable experience as the leader of one of England’s largest city councils; something which she did with some distinction, to put it at its lightest. Her words carry weight. She also talked about—as did the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman—the addition of further duties. The question is whether those duties are appropriate and whether they fill any void that experience shows must be filled.

You can talk in generalities, but there are a number of occasions that have been referred to earlier today about local authorities. I do not doubt for one moment that any local authority sets out to do anything other than its best. But there are situations, such as those I mentioned in the debate on my earlier amendment, where local authorities move children out of their area, separate them from siblings, and, on certain occasions, move them just before they are due to sit GCSEs or A-levels, which can have such disruptive effects, and put them into foster care or adoptive care and then do not provide the resources for that care to be properly effective. There are ways in which councils can say, “We’re doing our best”, but, in actual fact, that might not be enough.

I am slightly troubled by the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, that “We’re just adding extra details and duties on to local authorities”. I know she has had experience at Ofqual and Ofsted, but that sounded more like a comment coming from the business part of her career, because it sounded a bit like corporate jargon—not to add on extra duties for the sake of it. The question is, are those duties looking to prevent what can sometimes go wrong in the council’s care of children? I would argue that they can, otherwise, there would not be the sorts of stories that we get all too regularly about local authorities or those funded by local authorities putting vulnerable children in some pretty dire situations.

While I bow to the experience of those who have spoken in the debate, there are issues here that need to be looked at further. In introducing this, I asked: why should it be that a local authority can take a child away from their birth parents, become their corporate parents and yet then not have the same responsibilities for them? That just does not seem right.

I thank those who contributed to the debate, and I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 69AB withdrawn.

Clause 5: Information: children in kinship care and their carers