Clause 96 - Proceedings to be in private

Part of Adoption and Children Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 12:45 pm on 4 December 2001.

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Photo of Tim Loughton Tim Loughton Shadow Spokesperson (Health) 12:45, 4 December 2001

That is entirely the point, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for elucidating it. If the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley had been to the Local Government Association social services conference in October, at which the Secretary of State for Health and I spoke, she would have known that the entire basis of his speech was naming and shaming social services departments that had underperformed. We are trying to ensure that when social services departments' shortcomings are revealed, they are not gagged and prevented from revealing what is obviously in the public interest. The Secretary of State agreed that it was in the public interest for shortcomings in social services departments to be revealed, but he went about it in the wrong way by pointing the finger of blame at certain social services departments, many of which suffer woeful billion-pound underfunding against standard spending assessments under this Government.

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