Damian Hinds
MP for East Hampshire · Conservative · United Kingdom
“There are moments in debates like the one we have had today that are difficult to sit through and listen to, but it is the most immense privilege to be a Member of Parliament and to hear some of these testimonies.”
“Today is once again a day of heavy responsibility for all of us to decide on what we in this House call “conscience issues”. Many of the people who we represent hold strong and immutable views, and we hear from them. However, we represent many others who hold much more nuanced views and we are less likely to hear from them.”
“Members who support the Bill should not have their motives questioned, Members who oppose the Bill should not have their motives questioned, and Members who have reached a different conclusion from one they reached at an earlier stage should not have their judgment questioned either.”
“We have heard from royal colleges and other professional bodies, many of whom have a neutral stance on the principle but raise significant questions about particular aspects. We know from Ministers that there would need to be some reprioritisation of NHS resources, but we do not know the extent.”
“If there is the prospect of the Parliament Acts being used, that would increase the importance and the salience of the text as it is now. Today, it is reasonable and entirely in order for hon. Members to consider information that is available now that was not available in those previous parliamentary deliberation.”
“The Government have said, rightly, that the time taken to implement other schemes is not directly comparable, because none are as in this Bill. This is a free vote on a matter of conscience—there is no party line on either side of the Chamber. No one, I suggest, finds this issue easy.”
The complete record
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“Finally, the Bill sets out that the Secretary of State may add to the definition of the strategic accommodation functions that we have listed in proposed new section 22J(3) of Children Act 1989. What type of additional functions does the Minister have in mind?”
“It might be argued that doing some things at a sub-local authority level makes sense in a very large local authority area, but as I say, it might be possible to do some things as the single local authority, some things at a larger level, and some things—presumably principally in terms of purchasing leverage—on a wider scale again. If regional co-operation arrangements are not materially different in practice from something that already exists in co-operation between local authorities, even if that is on a smaller scale than what is envisaged, is legislation actually necessary? If it is not, we probably should not legislate. I would like to understand a bit more about the legislative basis that is currently missing.”
“My hon. Friend, as ever, makes a very apt point. Where we end up on that continuum of scale depends on what we are going after most. Of course, we want all those things. For purchasing power, a bigger scale is better, but for close and easy working relationships, a smaller scale is sometimes better. When we are talking about children, and the placement of vulnerable children, that may well push us towards the smaller end of the scale. Perhaps it is possible to perform different functions at different levels, with some functions still being performed by the individual local authority. Even then, as my hon. Friend often rightly says, there is an enormous difference in scale between London local authorities, which are actually quite small even though they are in our largest city, and Birmingham, which is one enormous authority.”
“We may be able to get a lot of the benefit we are looking for from restricting someone’s liberty rather than entirely depriving them of it. I wonder if the Minister might say a word about that distinction and about whether the Government have received representations on the change in wording.”
“The Minister might clarify the definition of a secure children’s home and explain what it is that we need to deviate from. My other question is about the change in phraseology. We are talking about moving from the restricting of liberty to the depriving of liberty. I understand from the explanatory notes that this tries to reflect the reality, but it is a legitimate question whether it is a strictly necessary change to make and what the reasoning is. Even when we do deprive people of liberty, we do not deprive them of all their liberty. There are degrees of restriction. We have this as a feature in the criminal justice system, and though this is a different cohort of children, some of the same principles may apply.”
“On the change in clause 10 to allow local authorities to house those children somewhere other than a secure children’s home, the obvious question to the Minister is “Why that, rather than ensuring that a secure children’s home is properly catering to the needs of that cohort of children?” I am not saying that it is the wrong decision, by the way, but I am interested to know, and it is good to have it on record, why it is a better decision to say, “Let’s take some or all of these children and house them in a different type of facility.” What have the Minister and the Secretary of State in mind for the alternative accommodation that would be set out in regulations? For the benefit of the Committee, and again for the record, it might also be helpful to define what is different.”
“I take a moment to pay tribute to the staff; it is an extraordinary career decision to go into that line of work, and they do it with amazing dedication. The welfare bed part of the secure children’s home sector is where somebody has had their liberty restricted not because of something they have done, but because of something they might do—because of the danger or threat they pose either to themselves or others. It is an enormous decision to take to deprive anybody of liberty on those grounds, but particularly a child. As with those children who are in the criminal justice part of the secure children’s home sector, these are typically extremely troubled children.”
“To speak on justice beds briefly, there has been a big fall in this country since 2010 in the number of children who are locked up in the criminal justice system: the numbers are down from about 2,000 in 2010 to only around 500 now. That has partly been because of a fall in crime, and in the particular types of crime for which young people used to be locked up, but it is also because of the good work of youth offending teams. Most of those children are older and would typically be in a young offenders institution when aged 15 to 17, or indeed, 18 to 21. The very small group of children who are in the secure children’s home sector are a very difficult and troubled cohort of youngsters with complex pasts.”
“Clause 10 will amend the Children Act 1989 such that local authorities can authorise deprivation of liberty of children other than only in a secure children’s home, and will change the term “restricting liberty” to “depriving of liberty”. In the secure children’s home sector, a distinction is often made between what are called justice beds and welfare beds. There are also children detained under the Mental Health Act 1983 on secure mental health wards and in psychiatric intensive care units, or on non-secure wards. I am assuming that we are talking today only about what are known as welfare beds—I say “beds”, but normally the entire facility is either one or the other.”
“Because the previous Government widened eligibility, one in three children could get a free school meal in 2024, compared with one in six in 2010. That was despite the fact that 600,000 fewer children were growing up in workless households and that the proportion of people on low pay had halved. Will the Minister commit that this Government will maintain those levels of eligibility?”
“I hope the Government can say more about how the multi-agency child protection teams and the supporting families programme would work together, particularly since that programme, which used to be in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, is coming or has come—I do not know if it already has—into the Department for Education, so there are great opportunities for good working with children’s services.”
“The creation of that programme straddled the previous change in Government: it started in pilot and research form before 2010 and came into being fully after 2010. Louise Casey is now Baroness Casey of Blackstock and still very involved in incredibly important work. Some of the work of that programme is on the key upstream stage where, sadly, we sometimes end up in child protection territory. Some of the common features identified in Baroness Casey’s report, “Listening to Troubled Families” —abuse, institutional care, violence, mental health problems, drug and alcohol abuse, and so on—are incredibly prevalent in this group.”
“Relationships are incredibly important, and so is the willingness to appropriately share information, and these days that can arguably be done without colocation in ways that it could not in the past. As far as I can make out, the clause does not adopt the principle from what we used to call the troubled families programme, which is now the supporting families programme, of having a designated key worker for each family. Can the Government say why that is, or if it is their intention that that should be the case? More generally, it would be interesting to hear how this programme works with the supporting families programme—probably still better known to many as the troubled families programme.”
“I said that these things are not new—I remember that in 2012, when I was on the Education Committee, we did an inquiry in this area. We visited a couple of different MASHs and had a couple of local authorities, one from Devon and one from Leeds, at a Committee hearing. One of those authorities had a MASH; the other had actively decided not to because it felt that there were better ways of achieving some of the same aims. That highlighted the importance of what is done operationally and what is done in practice. We were frequently told about the advantages of physical colocation —simply being in the same room facing each other across the desk—but that does not guarantee that people will work as well together as they could.”
“Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston said, there is quite some variety in the way these things happen. Will there be more guidance in terms of operations to stress the importance of following process and procedure, but also recognising the centrality of professional curiosity and taking ownership of problems through to their solution? I am keen to understand better from the Government the extent to which what the clause proposes is different from multi-agency safeguarding hubs, commonly known by their acronym, MASH. Is it the same, or is it for a subset of higher level cases? Are we drawing a distinction between safeguarding and child protection? MASHs themselves have worked in quite different ways.”
“It is very good to see you in the Chair, Sir Edward. I think everybody agrees with the principle of this clause, and there is undeniable valuable in having all the relevant agencies working together. I am afraid it is invariably a conclusion of reviews that, when things go badly wrong, part of the issue is that working together has not functioned as well as it could. The Bill does not invent multi-agency working—that is not a new thing—but it does write something very specific into primary legislation, and that is welcome. Amendment 19 is good and important and requires reporting back on the work and impact of multi-agency teams. What we need to focus on is actual practice. It is one thing to set out that so-and-so must talk to somebody else—no one would argue with that—but as my hon.”
“I think amendment 19 has a lot of value and I hope it will be agreed. I want to ask about resourcing. My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston has rightly asked about cash resourcing—how much there will be—and there is of course the new burdens principle to follow, but I want to ask about staff availability. It is one thing to legislate for people to do a certain thing, but if it is very difficult to hire those people, that is obviously an impediment. To what extent and, if it is possible to quantify, by how much, does this programme create a new human resource requirement? How many more person days per year are we talking about?”
“I hope that the Minister does not mind me intervening to ask this question, but I genuinely am not clear on it from reading the legislation and the explanatory notes. Is the multi-agency child protection team replacing or in addition to any multi-agency safeguarding hub that exists today?”
“For clarity, could there be a local authority in which there is both a multi-agency safeguarding hub and a multi-agency child protection team?”
“I am really sorry. I am genuinely not trying to be difficult, but I do not quite understand. I think we all agree, and absolutely support the hon. Lady in what she says, that of course this should build on the existing best practice in a MASH and everything that has been learnt from supporting troubled families. I am trying to understand whether it will make existing MASHs—although they do not happen everywhere and work differently sometimes—a bit more consistent and give them a new name? Alternatively, is it taking whatever the MASH does—which might be looking out for safeguarding review cases for a broader group of children—perhaps at a slightly lower level, and then adding something new called a multi-agency child protection team, which will exist in parallel? Will it replace an existing MASH or become subsumed into it?”
“Friend also referred to lines 31-33 on page 6, which mention that “the duty imposed by subsection (2) does not apply if the relevant person considers that the disclosure would be more detrimental to the child than not disclosing the information.” That is very difficult for any individual. From the point of view of being inside one agency—in this case a school—making a judgment without knowing what the police or social workers may know is very difficult. But it is helpful that the provision gives the legal basis.”
“Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston has already said, lines 11 to 15 on page 7 suggest that there could be a difficulty in terms of the balance. That part of the text states: “A duty under this section to disclose information does not operate to require or authorise a disclosure of information which would contravene the data protection legislation”, but we all know that often when people say, “Such and such wasn’t shared with another agency”, the reason given is data protection. I do not necessarily have the answer to how the Government should do this, but to the extent that it is possible, it would be helpful if they could create some clarity so that that balance could be understood. My hon.”
“It is stated in lines 24 and 25 on page 6 of the Bill that the proposed new section applies where a person “considers that the information is relevant to safeguarding or promoting the welfare of the child.” There is a question about whether we are talking about disclosing a particular piece of information that is directly and specifically relevant to an individual child—an incident, or an observation made by a social worker or teacher with eyes on that child—or whether we are talking about data more generally. For example, do we mean that if there is a particular indicator in a dataset that is relevant to the question of safeguarding for all children in the local authority area, then the entire dataset should be shared with other agencies? Assuming it is the former, as my hon.”
“Historically, people have identified problems with the concept of a mandatory duty to report sexual abuse—the same principle applies more generally to neglect and other forms of child abuse—and it has not only been people in government; for a very long time one leading children’s charity had a stance against mandatory reporting, citing the possible effect on the relationship between a child and a trusted adult and on the child’s willingness to open up to that adult, given what doing so might trigger. I am sure that the Government have been through the issue in a great deal of detail, as it is a serious and difficult area, so I wonder whether the Minister might say a little more on that point. The matter of the practicalities of sharing information takes us back to the semantic question.”
“The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse of 2022 put forward the mandatory duty—which, to be clear, I support—and in 2023 the previous Government committed to introduce a mandatory duty to report sexual abuse for those working or volunteering with children, although the Criminal Justice Bill then fell with the Dissolution of Parliament before the election.”
“The existing statutory guidance on safeguarding says: “Anyone who has concerns about a child’s welfare should consider whether a referral needs to be made to Children’s Social Care and should do so immediately if there is a concern that the child is suffering significant harm or is likely to do so.” It is not a legislative requirement, therefore, to report abuse, but there is the expectation that people who work with children will do so, unless there are truly exceptional circumstances. Of course, people in particular roles also have additional codes of conduct set by their professional regulatory body.”
“The word “share” can mean different things, and its common English usage has probably changed somewhat over the past 20 years or so. “Share” used commonly to mean something held in common between two parties, but more recently—this has a lot to do with social media and the internet—it has come to mean “pass something on to a wider group”. Those are different things. I think that we are using the word “share” in the title of the proposed new section more in the sense of disclosure than of holding in common, but I would be grateful for some clarification. Although it is a semantic question, this will be primary legislation created by Parliament and precision is therefore important. What is the link or overlap with mandatory reporting? Is what we are talking about today exactly the same as mandatory reporting or something different?”
“I rise in support of the clause, for all the compelling reasons that the Minister gave in her rationale. We talked earlier about the value of multi-agency working, and the sharing of information is fundamental to that. As she outlined, there have been too many cases in which the heart of the problem was the lack of a way of identifying that two agencies were talking about the same child. The unique identifier will help to address that. These are never things that we are likely to disagree about on party political lines. However, the clause raises some big questions, which I hope the Minister will take in the spirit in which I mean them. The first may sound like a semantic question, but I think it is important. It relates to the phrase “Duty to share” on page 6, line 19.”
“I note that paragraph 4 of proposed section 23ZZA(4) of the 1989 ACT introduced by clause 6 puts a strategic duty on to virtual school heads; it is not about individual children. The bigger number of children there is, with that dilution effect, there is a risk that some of the benefits of the virtual school heads program reduce. We can counter that, to a degree, by upping the resource. My real question is therefore about what resource will be behind this measure, to make sure that the maximum effect can be felt from virtual school heads. As we talked about earlier on multi-agency working, it is actual practice that matters. People have been working in different ways, and we can learn from what works in different places, but what work will there be to propagate the best and most effective practice between places across the country?”
“Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, rightly said, there is still a yawning gap in attainment and all manner of life outcomes for this group of children. Previously, looked-after children were added to the virtual school head cohort in 2018. There was a pilot to include children in need in 2021. From 2023-24 onwards, pupil premium plus was extended to age 16-plus. Once again, this is a policy area where there is no difference between us; the current Government’s work builds on previous Governments’ work, and we welcome that. We also note the successes of the virtual school heads concept. My question is about the danger of dilution. In terms of orders of magnitude, there are 80,000 or 85,000 children in care—looked-after children, but there are 400,000 children in need, so that is a big increase in number.”
“The clause extends the role in legislation of virtual school heads to children in need, previously looked-after children and children in kinship care. The virtual school and virtual school heads concepts are not new. The concept was first piloted in 2006 in Liverpool. It was the Children and Families Act 2014, which we both remember well, Sir Edward, that required all local authorities to administer pupil premium plus. The Oxford University report on the virtual school heads concept noted that there had been improvements in outcomes at key stage 2 and key stage 4 for looked-after children and a marked decrease in permanent exclusions. However, as the shadow Minister, my hon.”
“In some cases it will be obvious that a child should not be present, but beyond that it is perhaps difficult to generalise. Of course we trust professional judgment, but I wonder about the extent to which further guidance may be useful. I am thinking particularly of children with learning disabilities, who sometimes feel that things are done that affect their lives in a big way and they have less of a say than other children, because somebody has made that judgment when perhaps they did not need to. Secondly—this is a minor point in the grand scheme of things—I wonder why the legislation and the explanatory notes do not say that a child may be present for part of the meeting. It may be appropriate to have part of it with the child and part of it without them.”
“Of course I agree with and entirely support the spirit of what the Government are doing. It forms part of the strand of development intended in the “Stable Homes, Built on Love” strategy; across the House, we share similar motivations on all these matters. On the comments from the hon. Member for North Herefordshire on reunification and amendment 49, I do not think an amendment to a Bill is the moment to introduce such a thing, but I am sure that in their continuing work, Ministers and officials will look at how the reunification process can be improved for all the reasons that she rightly gave. I have a couple of questions on the inclusion of children in meetings, which is relevant to clause stand part and to amendment 36. My first question is: what guidance will accompany the new provisions?”
“It is also extremely important that that happens systematically across local services and in any area in which we can respond and adapt services to meet the needs of children. Generally, we feel that it is extremely important that wellbeing measurement is advanced and made more systematic and consistent.”
“Q We talked earlier about the measurement of wellbeing. There are surveys of children’s wellbeing by various organisations now: the Office of the Children’s Commissioner—your old office, Anne—does something, the King’s Trust does something, UNICEF has done an international survey and so on. What would the output of the surveys you envisage be used for? Could you also say a word or two about the mental health of children and young people survey, wave 4 of which was most recently published by the NHS and the future of which is uncertain? Would you like to see that series of surveying and reporting carried on? Dr Homden: Yes, we would. It is incredibly important that we are able to account for the implementation and for whether the Bill actually helps us to improve children’s wellbeing.”
“Q I want to ask about elective home education, but first, very quickly, we are going to legislate in this Bill for the provision of breakfast at primary schools. Has either of your organisations received any guarantees about the future of existing support for breakfast clubs in secondary schools, or the future of the holiday activities and food programme? Ruth Stanier: We very much welcome the provisions in this Bill around breakfast clubs. We think it is incredibly important that—”
“We absolutely strongly support that continuing for the most vulnerable children.”
“Forgive me, but that is a different question. We know what the legislation proposes for primary school breakfast, but my question was about whether you have heard anything—whether you have had any guarantees—about the future of existing support for breakfast clubs in secondary schools in underprivileged areas, or for the holiday activities and food programme. Ruth Stanier : On the first of those issues, I am not aware of any such guarantees or representations. I can see the point you are making, which is important. In respect of holiday activities, I have seen recent media coverage that seems potentially positive. Clearly, we very much want that support to remain in place. Andy Smith: My view would be similar to Ruth’s. The evidence and the impact of HAF are so tangible.”
“Notwithstanding whether there is currently too much detail, if we think about the practical things around visits, understanding the offer, trying to understand what is happening to children and building up that picture, there would need to be sufficient capacity to get sufficient workers in post across places to do that, and they would need be sufficiently trained. That is probably more important in terms of the line of sight on the child than having a huge amount of information and detail about mums and dads and carers.”
“Clearly, there would need to be a new burdens assessment on any changes, because you cannot do these reforms on the cheap. It is really important to make that point. From previous surveys that we have done with local authorities on elective home education, it is evident that over the last 10 to 12 years, the capacity has been hollowed out. You are often talking about not even a full-time post. In my authority, for example, we have less than one full-time equivalent worker on EHE, who goes out and knocks on doors and tries to talk to parents. If you superimpose the changes envisaged by the Bill, that provision would be significantly insufficient. This is much more than an administrative task. Some councils have an admin-like role that undertakes this function.”
“Q Turning to elective home education, as Munira Wilson said, there is a great deal of detail in the Bill about information that will be required of parents—for example, the allocation of individual parents’ time dedicated to the education of that child, and so on. Andy, I think you rather diplomatically said that perhaps we needed some reflection on the text. I wondered if you might reflect out loud, and say if you think it goes into an unnecessary level of detail that might be considered rather onerous for parents who are home educating—sometimes in very difficult circumstances—and indeed for your colleagues in local government. Have you made an estimate of how much cost would come with this system? Andy Smith: We have not made a estimate about how much cost would come with the system.”
“We need to work that through based on the research. We need to try to co-produce that with parents. We need to do that in a way that we think will be broad enough not to tie parents down, but to ensure some consistency, particularly in terms of what the local authority role is and understanding the impact of that. Ruth Stanier: I want to stress that if it were to be mandatory for councils to pay for exam fees, because clearly there is a case for that, it obviously would need to be funded.”
“There should be some consistency around what those expectations are. We know that parents provide some fantastic enriched opportunities for their children through EHE and they are able to also sit exams, and there will be some learning from that. The challenge in this space is that we are not starting with a level playing field. We have moved from a context where we were maybe 10 or 15 years ago, where you had parents who were EHE because of philosophical reasons around that being important for children and for their particular lifestyle. We are now often talking about kids who are not in school because they have been sidelined or discriminated against, because they are SEND or because they are being bullied. There needs to be some expectation and understanding around their starting points as well as what a good offer looks like.”
“Q A question that often comes up with electively home-educating parents is about the support that is or is not available to them in their efforts. The Bill does make provision for support to those parents, but on page 55, it says: “The advice and information to be provided is whatever the local authority considers fit”. You mentioned a moment ago that there would be some benefit in having more consistency across the country. Would you give a few thoughts on what you think “fit” is in terms of that support? In particular, a question that often comes up from parents is about entry into examinations. Andy Smith : What constitutes a good elective home education offer will be very different depending on the parent and on the context, and depending sometimes on the rationale around why parents decided to implement EHE for their child.”
“Q I did some rough calculations, and I think 3.1% of full-time equivalent teachers do not have QTS. In 2010, which happens to be the year the data series started, it was 3.2%. On pay and conditions, no one seems to have come forward with any widespread evidence of schools paying less than what might be this floor condition. In your estimation, what problem are the Government trying to solve with these two measures? Paul Whiteman: I think you are asking the wrong people. I do not know what is in the minds of Government.”
“Core is a better term and it suggests not a minimum but a core entitlement, and I think that is right. On pay and conditions, yes. We hear from our members that some of them have exercised some upward flexibilities and they are keen to able to continue to do that, and to recognise the context in which they are operating. They are keen to maintain that while keeping that core. QTS is a very small number, but where that number exists, there might be reasons for it. It is important to recognise the balance between wanting a fully qualified professional and some of the nuance there.”
“The whole point of having an independent pay review body to establish what the floors should be has worked in that regard but we need it to offer more, and obviously we would always say that. Where I would phrase it slightly differently, on the question of whether we would ask for an amendment for a floor and not a ceiling, is I would talk about a core rather than a floor. There should be a core of terms and conditions that means a teacher or school leader is agile within the system and portable. We do not want people being stuck and unable to move because the terms and conditions vary so widely. That would work against our ambition of delivering the very best education system and getting the best teachers in front of children. Julie McCulloch: I would not disagree with anything there.”
“Q Paul, you like to speculate—come on. Paul Whiteman: Damian, you know me too well. I cannot answer what was in the minds of Government. Broadly speaking, as I have said, I think it is a legitimate expectation of parents that a teacher in front of their child is qualified to teach them. On the push from both your Government and this Government for standards to be the voice of parents, and in talking about doing this for the expectations of parents, I think that gets alongside that ambition, so it is welcome. On the pay flexibilities, the debate is louder than it needs to be because of the point that you made—we have not really deviated much from the STCPD.”
“Q I think a lot of people see the measures in the Bill on flexibilities for schools, on academies and on the national curriculum as quite a dramatic change, or a dramatic undoing of reforms made to the school system over the course of multiple Governments over the last couple of decades. Paul, you said in your opening remarks that this is not “a revolution”. My question is: come the revolution, what should we expect to see in Labour’s next Bill? Paul Whiteman: As a trade union that is politically independent and speaks to all of you, I have no insight into what might be in Labour’s next Bill.”
“We have three pots of children: children with special educational needs who went off in 2019 and have not come back; children with mental health/anxiety concerns; and children who really have just gone, who are at risk of CSE. We really need a register. We have another problem, which I have investigated. I looked at last year’s roll and compared it with this year’s roll, and we found at least 13,000 children who we could not account for, plus another 10,000 who were CME. They had gone to be home-educated, because they did not feel that their needs were being met in school and they felt that they were driven to that. We absolutely need a home register.”