In November last year, I commissioned an urgent inspection of children's services in Haringey following the failure of agencies in that borough to intervene decisively to protect a little boy.

Following the joint inspectors' report, I took the immediate actions that I judged necessary to ensure the protection of vulnerable children in that borough. I also asked Lord Laming to provide us with an independent progress report on child protection across the country.

Lord Laming has today published his report. I have laid a copy of it before the House, with my reply to him, which sets out the Government's immediate response. I can confirm that: we will accept all Lord Laming's recommendations in full; we are taking immediate action from today to implement them; and we will set out our detailed response to all 58 recommendations before the end of next month.

I am sure that I speak for the House when I say that we are hugely grateful to Lord Laming and all the experts, practitioners and members of the public who have contributed to his thorough investigation.

As Lord Laming says at the start of his report, being safe is,

"the very minimum upon which every child should be able to depend".

His report finds that the Every Child Matters reforms, which were introduced after the Victoria Climbié inquiry, provide

"a sound framework for professionals to protect children and promote their welfare".

However, he is also clear that

"There now needs to be a step change in the arrangements to protect children from harm."

He further states:

"The new ContactPoint system will have particular advantages in reducing the possibility of children for whom there are concerns going unnoticed."

However, he challenges us to do more

"to ensure that leaders of local services accept their responsibility to translate policy, legislation and guidance into day to day practice on the frontline of every service."

The report makes a series of detailed recommendations to ensure that best practice is universally applied in every area of the country, to improve local accountability and to provide more support for local leaders and for the front-line work force. None of Lord Laming's proposals alone could have prevented the death of baby P, but together they add up to a step change in front-line child protection, because no barrier, no bureaucracy and no buck-passing should ever get in the way of keeping children safe.

As Lord Laming recommends, we will now establish a new cross-Government national safeguarding delivery unit both to support and challenge every local authority and every children's trust in the country as they fulfil their responsibilities to keep children safe and to drive continuous improvement in front-line practice across all services. The new unit will be staffed by experts from across central Government, local agencies and the voluntary sector and will provide an annual report to Parliament, including on the implementation of Lord Laming's recommendations.

To guide the unit's work I am today appointing Sir Roger Singleton, the former head of Barnardo's and a leading expert on child protection, to be the Government's first ever chief adviser on the safety of children. Sir Roger will advise us on how to update and strengthen our statutory guidance for front-line staff to make it absolutely clear to every agency and every practitioner what they need to do to keep children safe.

Lord Laming also recommends that full serious case reviews must remain confidential to protect vulnerable children and ensure the full co-operation of all witnesses. We will strengthen the independence and quality of serious case reviews. The unit will monitor their implementation to ensure both that lessons are learned and that public executive summaries are full and comprehensive.

Effective child protection depends critically on strong local leadership and accountability, so that everyone is clear about who must do what to keep children safe. We are already legislating in the House to ensure that every local authority has a statutory children's trust board to improve all the outcomes for children and young people. We will strengthen the role of the local safeguarding children board both to make it, in effect, the local watchdog for the protection of children and to hold the children's trust and local agencies to account.

We will set out in the revised statutory guidance our presumption that all local safeguarding children boards will have an independent chair. We will also set out that the director of children's services and the lead member for children's services will always be members of both the children's trust board and the LSCB, and that the chief executive and leader of the council will be required to confirm annually that their local arrangements comply with the law. Because keeping children and young people safe is everyone's responsibility, we will open the child protection system up to greater public scrutiny by ensuring that two members of the general public are appointed to every local safeguarding children board in the country.

When children are at risk, it is the skills, confidence and judgment of front-line professionals that make the biggest difference. As Lord Laming says:

"Every day, thousands of children are helped, supported and in some cases have their lives saved by these staff".

But he is also right to say that

"rather than feeling valued for their commitment and expertise, professionals across these services often feel undervalued, unsupported and at risk."

That has to change. That is why the Health Secretary and I have set up the social work taskforce, which will now take forward Lord Laming's recommendations on the training and professional development of social workers. I have already asked the taskforce to review the effectiveness, the procurement and the IT used in integrated children's systems, which it will report on next month, so that social workers can keep detailed records of their cases and spend more time with vulnerable children.

In addition to the longer-term reforms that the taskforce will propose, we will act now to ensure that all newly qualified social workers starting this year will receive a year of intensive induction training, supervision and support. We will introduce from this year a new advanced social work professional status to ensure that the most highly skilled social work practitioners can stay close to the front line and have better career progression. We will also expand the graduate recruitment scheme and attract qualified social workers back to the profession and ensure over time that all practitioners can study on the job for a master's level qualification.

Because we must do more to support leaders across children's services, I am also today accepting proposals from the chief executive of our leadership college to expand its remit, to introduce a new leadership programme for directors of children's services from September and to create a new and accelerated programme for those with the greatest potential to become future children's service leaders.

Lord Laming also identifies further recommendations for the health service, the police, the family courts and the inspectorates. I can tell the House that the Health Secretary is today announcing a new programme that will provide additional support and development for health visitors. The Home Secretary will now take forward Lord Laming's recommendations further to improve the skills and capacity in child protection in the police. In line with Lord Laming's recommendations, the Justice Secretary is announcing that Mr. Francis Plowden will carry out a review of court fees in care proceedings. If there is evidence that they are a barrier for local authorities when deciding whether to proceed with a care order for a vulnerable child, we will abolish them. And, with Ofsted already strengthening its inspection process and introducing unannounced inspections every year for front-line social care practice in every area of the country, the inspectorates will respond to Lord Laming's recommendations by the end of April.

In its annual performance assessment, Ofsted rated safeguarding services in 101 out of 150 local authorities as good or outstanding. But where children are not being kept safe, we will act. In December, eight local authorities were judged inadequate in their safeguarding of children. We immediately sent in our intervention experts to assess the situation in each of them. As the House knows, Haringey has already submitted its action plan to Ofsted for evaluation. Improvement notices and additional support are now in place in Surrey, Birmingham, Essex and West Sussex, and independent performance reviews are under way in Reading and Wokingham.

The Minister for Children, Young People and Families and I are particularly concerned about the serious weaknesses identified in Doncaster. In recent weeks, we have commissioned an independent performance review, which has concluded that, despite significant investment over the past year and some progress, urgent improvement is still required. On Tuesday, the Children's Minister met the leaders of Doncaster council. Using powers in the Education Act 1996, the Children's Minister has today written to the council giving it a formal direction immediately to appoint Mr. Tony Elson to chair an independent improvement board that will report directly to Ministers, to submit an improvement plan to be approved by the new board and to co-operate with my Department to bring in a new senior management team to take over the leadership and management of Doncaster children's services as soon as practicable.

It is our first duty in government and as a society to do all that we can to keep our children safe. It is also our responsibility to act decisively, as we have done in recent months, as we are doing today in Doncaster and as we will do in the coming weeks to implement all Lord Laming's recommendations. I hope that all parts of the House will support our actions to keep children safe in every part of our country. That is our duty and, as Lord Laming says, it is something that every child should be able to depend on. I commend this statement to the House.

The events that we are reflecting on today were horrific and they still haunt the nation's conscience. Protecting vulnerable children is a duty that I know the Secretary of State takes seriously and none of the questions that I ask today are intended as criticism of him personally. May I thank him for allowing me to read Lord Laming's report earlier this morning and for early sight of his statement?

May I also thank the Secretary of State for the speedy manner in which he has taken steps to rectify problems in both Doncaster and Haringey? We all know that the director of children's services in Haringey was dismissed some time ago. Will he update the House on what has happened to the other officials who were suspended in Haringey at that time?

I also welcome the steps taken today to review the impact of court fees on care proceedings. The Secretary of State has said that he was sure that the high level of court fees was not a barrier to taking children into care who needed that step. We welcome the fact that he will now look again at that decision.

I also thank Lord Laming for his diligent work in the report. He has done a great deal of useful analysis of the weaknesses in our child protection system and his report is powerful in its condemnation of the bureaucratic burden faced by social workers. He reports that

"a tradition of deliberate reflective social work practice is being put in danger because of an over-emphasis on process and targets, resulting in a loss of confidence amongst social workers".

Will the Secretary of State tell us what he will do to reduce the burden of bureaucratic compliance and the number of targets faced by front-line professionals?

Lord Laming spells out in great detail the consequences of the bureaucratic burden. Vacancies in social work departments are running at more than 12 per cent., compared with just 0.7 per cent. for teachers. Turnover rates are high, with two thirds of local authorities reporting difficulties in engaging social workers and three quarters of social workers reporting that case loads have increased worryingly since 2003. Lord Laming reports that front-line social workers experience

"low staff morale, poor supervision, under-resourcing and inadequate training".

They face high levels of stress and there are formidable recruitment and retention difficulties. Social work, he records, is a Cinderella service and we now have, in his words, a "crisis" in social work. Does not the Secretary of State agree that that is a remarkable indictment of the state of child protection in this country? Where does the responsibility for that failure lie?

Will the Secretary of State also tell us what urgent practical steps he is taking, beyond the creation of a new quango, to raise morale, to ensure that resources reach the front line and to reduce red tape? Lord Laming's report is again scathing about the unwieldy and overly bureaucratic nature of the regime currently in place. He reports that the central bureaucratic tool used to help children at risk—the comprehensive assessment form—is

"in danger, like other tools, of becoming process-focused, or... a barrier to services for children".

Will the Secretary of State tell us what plans he has to simplify this area of bureaucracy?

Lord Laming's report also reveals the significant problem with the information technology systems that are supposed to help child protection. He reports that help for children is being

"compromised by an over-complicated, lengthy and tick-box assessment and recording system".

The IT system that the Government favour—the integrated children's system—is reported by Lord Laming as "hampering progress", with the best local authorities having to

"find ways to work around the system".

One of the best local authorities for children's services, Kensington and Chelsea, has abandoned the Government's overly bureaucratic approach to IT and set up its own much more flexible and professional-friendly system. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to ensure that the IT system that he favours will no longer hamper progress? What steps has he taken to learn from those local authorities, such as Kensington and Chelsea, with first-class child protection records?

Is it not clear overall that we need a shift, led from the centre, in the culture of child protection to put improving the work force ahead of adding to the quangocracy or finding new boxes to tick? Should not that shift in culture mean a significant extra investment in a universal health visitor service? Lord Laming argues persuasively that the role of health visitors is crucially important. He points out that an evaluation of 161 serious case reviews showed that nearly half the children who suffered terrible harm were under one year of age but only 12 per cent. of them were subject to a child protection plan. Many more of those children at risk might have been identified, if we had a truly universal health visitor service supporting children from birth. Will the Secretary of State now offer his support for the proposals put forward by the leader of my party for an expansion of the health visitor service to make it truly universal?

We are, as I have said, very grateful to Lord Laming for his report. It contains a great deal of useful testimony and evidence, but it is stronger in analysis than in recommendation and better at explaining what has gone wrong than spelling out how to put it right. It exposes the problems with the current level of bureaucracy, but far too often falls back on recommending more bureaucracy as the answer.

Crucially, Lord Laming recognises that serious case reviews—the policy inquests that follow the death of a vulnerable child—are valuable tools for learning lessons to enable us to avoid making similar mistakes in future. He points out that the lessons from serious case reviews need to be better learned and more widely disseminated, but he fails to recommend that they now be published in full. Refusing to publish serious case reviews after a child's death is like keeping the information from an aircraft's black box secret after an aviation disaster—it prevents us from learning the lessons that we need to learn and from debating openly how we keep children safe. We cannot have a situation where we keep terrible errors secret because we will not face down those involved. The lessons of the past year are clear: buck-passing and back-covering cannot come ahead of protecting vulnerable children. Will the Secretary of State please think again on this issue and put children first?

I appreciate the careful way in which the hon. Gentleman has responded to Lord Laming's conclusions. I shall respond to his points, and I reassure him from the outset that the new national unit and the appointment of Sir Roger Singleton is not just another quango and another adviser. This will have a real impact on the translation of best practice into common practice in all areas of the country. As the hon. Gentleman reflects on the proposal, I hope that he will be able to support it.

Let me deal with his points in turn. On officials in Haringey, as the hon. Gentleman will know, it was my decision in December to remove the then director of children's services from her position, but the issue of the appointment of staff, their terms and conditions and their continuing appointment is a matter for Haringey council, not for me. These matters are with Haringey at the moment; the council is going through the proper processes, so it would not be wise for me to comment now on the stage they have reached with different officials.

The hon. Gentleman asked me about court fees. I think I set out clearly the reason why we are having a review. It is made clear in Lord Laming's report that there is no evidence to suggest that court fees have led to any change in the number of referrals to the courts. In fact, over recent months, there has been a substantial rise in referrals. As I have cited in the House before, the president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services has said that it is aware of

"no circumstances where a local authority would put court costs as a consideration ahead of the needs of a child".

We will carry out the review and look carefully at this issue, but unless we can demonstrably show that that statement is absolutely true, we will abolish court fees from the beginning of the coming financial year.

On the issue of process and targets, we are going to look very carefully at the national targets in our indicator set, which Lord Laming asked us to do, but I urge Conservative Members to be very careful about how they proceed here. We have made substantial progress since 2004; in that year only half—51 per cent.—of all initial referrals of children at risk were assessed within seven days, whereas the latest figures show more than 70 per cent. doing so, which is a substantial difference. The focus on quick assessment happened because of the targets. It is important that we do not use wrong targets or targets that distort, but it is also right to have rapid assessment of children at risk. I would like to go even further on that, so it will be looked at very carefully by the social work taskforce.

On integrated children's services and bureaucracy, I have made it clear that hiding behind a computer screen or bureaucracy and procedure is not the right thing to do professionally if we want to keep children safe. That would be the wrong thing to do, and I have asked the social work taskforce to look at all those issues, including the operation of integrated children's services, and to report by the end of April. We are going to move quickly. Only last week, I was in Derby talking to social workers in that city, where I heard their concerns about ICS and saw it operating in practice. I know that many authorities in the country are finding that that system is actually leading to more effective and efficient decision making, speeding up the way in which they can comprehensively get on and do their work. I do not want to throw out the baby with the bathwater here, which is why it is important we do this properly. The social work taskforce will take this forward.

There is often confusion between the common assessment framework and integrated children's systems. In my experience and from what I hear, CAF processes are working well around the country, but if the hon. Gentleman has a different view, I would be happy to hear more about it.

On the issue of health visitors, it is right to have significant investment, and we have put significant investment into our health system. In fact, my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary is announcing today that, as we prefigured in the child health strategy a few weeks ago, there will be a significant increase in the number of health visitors. I am happy to assure the hon. Gentleman that we will ensure that that happens, but I have to say to him that absolutely the wrong way to do it would be to cut the Sure Start budget, which is there to ensure early intervention and protection of children.

The fact that many children who come to harm are not known to the authorities should be addressed by our children's centres. To cut children's centres—to be honest, to cut the children's budget more widely—would be absolutely the wrong thing to do. I ask the hon. Gentleman to have a word with the Leader of the Opposition and suggest to him that he may need to realign his thinking on that particular point.

The hon. Gentleman has been consistent in his view that serious case reviews should be published. He has also been consistently isolated in holding that view. Not only Lord Laming, but the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the Children's Commissioner, as well as pretty much every expert in the field, disagree with him. They all agree that a public, fully comprehensive executive summary, alongside a confidential full report, is the right way to go. The hon. Gentleman—probably badly advised—dug himself into a hole on that issue in the first few days when it came to light. I say to Conservative Members, "Sometimes, if you get it wrong, just change your mind. You are absolutely wrong on this particular issue."

That takes me to a wider issue. As Lord Laming's report says—there is a widespread consensus that is reflected across the country, across experts and across professionals—the 2004 Every Child Matters framework is the right framework for child protection. Our challenge is to implement it effectively in every area. I know that the hon. Gentleman does not agree, and therefore disagreed with the idea of Lord Laming being asked to produce the report in the first place, but again I say to him, "Read the report, reflect and think again." I do not think that to go back on the 2000 reforms would be the right thing to do and, with the exception of the Conservative party, neither does anybody else.

The right thing to do is ensure that the framework is properly implemented, which is what we will do. In his press conference this morning, Lord Laming said that he hopes that his report has enough compelling logic, enough compelling urgency and enough compelling determination that people can sign up to it. I believe that this is a compelling vision, and we will, with determination, ensure that all the recommendations are now implemented, which is the right way to keep children safe.

I welcome the Secretary of State's statement and congratulate Lord Laming on a thoughtful report. I also thank the Secretary of State for early sight of it.

It will take time to absorb the 58 recommendations of this well-argued report, but may I make a few points to the Secretary of State? First, one notices that Lord Laming is frustrated when he says, "Now just do it." He thought that in his first report. If we are just going to do it, many of the things in the statement are part of just doing it. Furthermore, just doing it also means a lot of resource implications. Social workers who are better trained, better energised and better respected will cost a lot of money. That needs to be done quickly.

Lastly, if we are to keep the new protection of children post in the limelight, can that person report to Parliament through the Select Committee? That would give them a much more independent status, and we would provide public accountability, which many would welcome.

I can assure my hon. Friend, whose Committee has great responsibilities in these matters, that Sir Roger Singleton, the new chief adviser, will report directly or give evidence to his Committee. We will ensure that Sir Roger gives evidence on his annual report. There must be proper scrutiny of that report and that must happen in the House. That is our commitment.

It is also right, as my hon. Friend has said, that we need to raise the training, morale and effectiveness of the management of and support for social workers across our country. Often without public recognition, they do difficult, dangerous and sometimes brave jobs each day to keep children safe. We will ensure that the proper resources are there to support the expansion not only in the numbers, but in the training and support for social workers.

We announced in November a £73 million investment in the next three years and we will add to that to ensure the proper training in the first year after qualification, plus the return of social workers to the profession, plus advanced social worker status, plus the new masters qualification. For the long term, there will be a reform and revamp of the whole of social worker training—all that has been done and is properly resourced.

It is important not only that we challenge social workers and their managers, but that we support them in doing that difficult job. That is what we will do, and we will ensure that it is properly resourced.

I, too, thank the Secretary of State for providing sight of the Laming report and of his statement. I also add my thanks to Lord Laming for producing this timely report.

We really have to ask today, "Are things going to change?" I recall discussing these issues in 2003 before the Children Act 2004. We all said, "We must have more social workers, more training of social workers and more training in multi-agency working. Six years on, and nine and a half years since the tragic death of Victoria Climbié, it is significant that the first recommendation of Lord Laming's report refers to national leadership, which is quite an indictment after all these years. I might justifiably ask the question, what training will there be for Ministers and senior civil servants in multidisciplinary working?

I welcome today's statement on Doncaster, but reflect on the fact that, since 2004, there have sadly been seven deaths of children. I also welcome the national safeguarding children unit. I have two questions. Will early intervention be an integral part of the work of the unit—which is all important if we look beyond the deaths to the wider issue of child abuse, with so many children being affected—and will serious case reviews be reported through the Select Committee in the way that the NSPCC requested, in a biennial report drawing out lessons from serious case reviews?

Training for children's services directors and lead members is welcome, but what about opposition members? My hon. Friend Lynne Featherstone reported how difficult it is for opposition councillors, and indeed for her, to get information, although they were asking questions. There is a place for considering the role of scrutiny in local government, as well as that of lead members.

I would like what has happened with adult social services to be taken on board in relation to the reorganisation and children's services. We give somebody one and a half jobs, and then put adult social services on the side. Vulnerable children become vulnerable adults, and I understand that 15 authorities are pulling adult social services back, but one at least has a very low rating. Lord Laming has one paragraph on that matter, which should be looked at as a matter of urgency.

There have been a number of U-turns, which I welcome. Most of all, we need to consider the training of social workers and, indeed, of all front-line professionals who come into contact with children—for example, teachers need to be trained to recognise the early signs of child abuse. I want to be reassured that we will no longer hear of heavy case loads for social workers. How can newly trained social workers do their work with heavy case loads and limited supervision? I really feel that we have reached a point where a lot has been done, but there is so much more to do. There has to be genuine commitment.

I also repeat my request to the Secretary of State that, over a longer period, we should have fresh eyes looking at the whole system. Lord Laming set up the system and has reviewed it, but those fresh eyes—perhaps reporting to the national safeguarding children unit, a multidisciplinary team—will, I hope, add to the safety of our children.

While I was, of course, disappointed that the Liberals' shadow spokesman could not be here, the hon. Lady has great expertise in these matters and her points are well made. I will take them all very seriously.

The hon. Lady is right that things must change, and Lord Laming says that too. He also says:

"A great deal of progress has been made... and the Government deserves credit for its policy of Every Child Matters."

It is important to recognise that there has been substantial improvement in child protection in many areas of the country. The fact that we have more than 100 authorities that are good or outstanding is good news, but it is important to say that it is not yet good enough. It is no good having good practice in some or many areas. We want the best practice in all areas. That is our challenge and what Lord Laming drives us on to do.

I must also say to the hon. Lady that there is a real commitment from central Government, not just from my Department but from the Health Secretary—who was previously the Secretary of State for Education and Skills—the Home Secretary, the Justice Secretary and others, to work closely with the national unit to ensure best practice everywhere. I take her point that we need to do more, but the new unit is a step forward.

On scrutiny, the hon. Lady is right. As I said in my statement, it is important that we open up the arrangements for child protection to wider public scrutiny. The local safeguarding children board should therefore become the watchdog for child protection, and it is important that lay members of the general public sit on that board. Effective and proper scrutiny of what is happening should be provided not only by the House but by local councils around the country. If we need to do things to improve that, and to improve training for members involved in scrutiny, we are happy to consider that as part of our work on statutory guidance in the coming weeks. That is the best way to ensure the fresh pair of eyes at local and national level.

I agree with the hon. Lady that it is important to focus on the training, progression and numbers of social workers, but also on their pay and morale. It is concerning that these days we do not keep social workers in the profession in the way that we keep teachers in teaching. That is partly because we do not currently have a proper way for social workers to progress and develop in their professional understanding without moving out of social work practice into management. That is why the advanced social worker status is very important.

It is also incumbent on management in social work to do their bit. Lord Laming said at his press conference this morning that we must move away from a situation where the most junior member of staff feels the full weight of responsibility for child protection, and that is right. Front-line social workers deserve not only better support and challenge, but understanding and engagement from management throughout social work, up to director of children's services level. That is an important part of our response to Lord Laming's recommendations, and an especially important remit for the social work taskforce.

Several hon. Members:

rose —

Order. It is clear that a large number of hon. Members seek to catch my eye. Unless both questions and, hopefully, ministerial answers are considerably briefer, an awful lot of hon. Members will be disappointed.

May I ask the Minister what steps are being taken to improve the training of Ofsted inspectors and Ofsted in general? He may be aware that serious abuses have just been revealed at the Gatehouse special school in Milton Keynes, yet in 2006 the Ofsted inspection commented favourably on the school, and missed the fact that its recruitment procedures were so poor that unqualified staff who had not been properly checked were widespread and that restraint of behaviourally challenged boys was a first resort of staff rather than a last resort. Ofsted needs to be better trained.

The issue is raised by Lord Laming in his report, the chief inspector is alive to it and the Select Committee has raised it. Compared with last year, there has been a real change in the way that inspections are being done. We will no longer have desk-based inspections, but unannounced visits. Lord Laming makes the important point in his report that inspection of social care and child protection must also be about learning, and needs to be more engaged than the school-type inspection that Ofsted has done in the past. The chief inspector will include that issue in her response to Lord Laming's report by the end of April.

One of the major failings of the court system involving children in child protection is the movement of cases from one judge to another—from hearing to hearing—and the lack of judicial continuity from start to finish. Will the Secretary of State raise that issue with the Justice Secretary, to ascertain what measures can be put in place to ensure better provision of judicial continuity, especially for care proceedings involving our most vulnerable children?

Lord Laming does not raise that issue particularly in his report, but we will make sure that we keep a close eye on all these matters. A substantial amount has happened in the past year to improve the operation of the family courts, but we are happy to keep the matter under review.

Thousands of words have been written about cases that have tragically gone wrong. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that greater focus is given to identifying good practice, looking at what works, ensuring that that information is properly collated, and importantly, celebrating social workers and managers who are keeping children safe, because that will be part of properly valuing social workers?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and has great expertise in these matters. The doctor who performs a life-saving operation, the police officer who solves the crime, the firefighter who saves a life—those are all examples celebrated in our newspapers. The fact is that a social worker who protects a child from harm does not get the same praise and recognition publicly—perhaps inevitably, to protect the identity of the child. But we need to do much more to celebrate the great work of many social workers around the country. That is a priority for the unit, in order to ensure that the best people come into social work in future.

Does the Secretary of State share my concern that it was not necessarily always a good idea to merge education and social services departments, and that it is not always a good idea to split up child services from adult services? Does he agree that giving local authorities the flexibility to decide how such services can be most effective is the right way forward?

As I pointed out in my response to the Opposition spokesman, there is a widespread consensus on the importance of the Every Child Matters reforms in the 2004 Act, but regrettably the Conservative party is outside that consensus. As Lord Laming says, there is no doubt that bringing such services together under one local authority department has provided a more integrated approach to support children. It is clear that we have further to go, which is why we will ask the National College for School Leadership to expand its remit to support directors of children's services. But do I think that there should be local authority discretion to deviate from the 2004 Every Child Matters framework? Absolutely not.

I very much welcome what my right hon. Friend has said, but does not the fact that we keep returning to the issue mean that there is a more general lesson for all of us? When we have crises, scandals and issues, it is easy to pass a new law, set up a new body or institute a new procedure, but if nothing changes on the ground we have not done very much. What makes organisations as they are is their culture. There is something going wrong with social work, and unless we rebuild the social work profession in a serious sense, we will keep returning to the issue.

The fact is, though, that there has been great change on the ground, and we will ensure that that is accelerated in future. From time to time, as we have seen in recent weeks, parents do evil things to children, and sometimes there is deception of social workers as that happens. But when that comes to light in authorities there must be action, and that did not happen in Haringey. We need to sort that out for the future.

The Secretary of State will know that there has been a high turnover of front-line staff in children's services, particularly in inner-city areas. What more can he do to promote social work as a career of choice for those seeking a professional career? What more can be done to keep them in that profession and allow them to progress without so many of them leaving because of pressure of work?

The answer is the advanced professional status that we have announced today. It is important that social workers can have career progression without having to move from the front line into management. We need to improve that in the way in which we pay and promote social workers.

Crawley residents were horrified to learn that West Sussex was on the list of those authorities whose services were deemed to be inadequate for safeguarding our children. Will my right hon. Friend reassure us that there is an absolutely priority to ensure that the 58 recommendations are urgently implemented in West Sussex to supplement the work already being done by his Department?

It is important for the recommendations to be implemented not just in West Sussex but in every other local authority in the country, but owing to our specific concerns about that authority, the spotlight of scrutiny will shine on its area in particular.

Following previous tragedies such as that of Victoria Climbié, there have been many inquiries and reports. All have shown good intentions, but sadly many authorities have not implemented their proposals, with the result that—as was pointed out by Dr. Wright—we keep returning to the issue. What assurance can the Secretary of State provide that, on this occasion, the proposals will be implemented? Is there a time frame within which they must all be implemented, so that this report does not just lie in their in-trays?

It might be more helpful if Conservative Members did not urge local authorities not to implement the recommendations. The Every Child Matters framework should be the law in every area. Although 101 authorities are already considered to be good or outstanding, we want 150 authorities to merit that description. Those authorities should be implementing the law and best practice now, and we will drive the system until we can be assured that that is being done everywhere.

In his statement, my right hon. Friend said that improvement notices and additional support were now in place in Birmingham. Meetings attended by Members with both Ofsted and the city council have featured a spirit of openness and co-operation, but as my right hon. Friend said, serious case reviews must remain confidential. How can it be ensured that organisations do not return to their instinctive practice of using the need for confidentiality as a reason to be extremely inward-looking, and thus to avoid accountability?

Every serious case review must be subject to a full, comprehensive and public executive summary, and when case reviews have proved to be inadequate we have required authorities to conduct them again. It is important for the work to be done in a spirit of openness and co-operation, and we believe that opening up the process by appointing lay members to the safeguarding board will achieve that.

The Secretary of State has accepted Lord Laming's recommendations and taken action to implement them as a matter of urgency, but may I press him a little further? Can he give us an idea of the overall time frame within which they must all be implemented?

We will have responded to all the recommendations by the end of April. In the spring we will change our statutory guidance, which is the way in which we ensure that the law is implemented as a matter of urgency. We are making decisions today that will allow us to start implementing some of the recommendations immediately, and that will be done at the fastest possible rate consistent with doing it well.

I welcome the emphasis on training in both Lord Laming's report and my right hon. Friend's statement. I also welcome the establishment of a social work taskforce by my right hon. Friend and the Secretary of State for Health, but would it be possible for it to include the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills? Reading university is currently planning to close its social work education department, which means that there will be no such department in the whole of Berkshire. Oxford university has already closed its social work department, as has the London School of Economics. There is a crisis in quality social work education in our universities.

It is vital for undergraduate education in social work to be of the highest quality, and to prepare professionals for practice on the ground as well as teaching the theory. That will be a priority for the taskforce, and I will ensure that its members examine the capacity of the system to train social workers as well as the content of the course. I am sure that they will reflect on what my hon. Friend has said.

Abacus, in my constituency, is one of the first health-led Sure Start centres, and its success in involving local parents lies in that focus on health. One of the problems encountered by social workers trying to monitor the well-being of children living with parents who have multiple problems, including drug and alcohol addiction, is the difficulty of persuading those parents to co-operate with statutory agencies, but they may be more responsive to health professionals. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that children's centres retain that strong health focus, and that social workers have the necessary powers to ensure that children whose parents cannot meet their social and emotional needs can benefit from the excellent child care provided in such centres? I believe that that would make better monitoring possible.

We will accelerate our efforts to ensure that it happens. My hon. Friend and I have met to discuss the issue, and I know that she has great expertise in this area.

In the case of family intervention projects and, more widely, Sure Start, when children are at risk—when they are on the child protection register, or are subject to a child protection plan—it is important for them to be given all the support they need. That is partly a job for health visitors, but Sure Start has a vital role to play, and we will ensure that it is given that role.

As was pointed out by my hon. Friend Ms Stuart, there is a great need for transparency in Birmingham. While it is in no one's interest for anyone to be pilloried, it is important for Members to be kept informed of what Birmingham city council and others are doing. So far the signs are fairly good, but the council has a habit of claiming credit for anything that seems to be going right and finding someone else to blame when something goes wrong. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that that does not happen in this instance?

I will. The improvement notice applying to Birmingham is critically about public confidence, which must mean involving the public and Members of Parliament so that they can see that not only is progress being made, but proper diligence is being applied to the important work of child protection.

I welcome my right hon. Friend's response to the report, but will he say a little more about the issue of prevention? Given that social workers and teachers provide children's services side by side, will he think carefully about how money can be restored to primary schools so that they can continue to carry out their important work of supporting children and parents in the community? If they are to do that, more funding is needed.

The local safeguarding children board has a vital role, not just as a watchdog for children who are subject to a child protection plan, but in ensuring that the children's trusts are properly resourced and can work together on prevention and early intervention. Because it is vital for that work to include schools as well as the health service, we are legislating to give schools a duty to co-operate with the trusts. That is an important step towards achieving the objective identified by my hon. Friend.

There has been a damaging lack of clarity in regard to the training, responsibility and status of social care and health care workers with a duty to protect children. How will my right hon. Friend ensure that in future all of us, politicians nationally and locally, remain engaged long after the headlines have gone, in order to provide the necessary consistency and clarity?

That is something that I have challenged the taskforce to consider. It is an important responsibility for the new unit. While it is incumbent on the Select Committee and the House to keep these issues under the public spotlight, that is also a responsibility for the social work profession, which needs to speak with a louder and clearer voice on the issues with which it deals. Practice and procedure should not only be subjected to external scrutiny; the profession itself should speak out with more confidence.

When considering child protection issues, will my right hon. Friend heed the worries about informal fostering arrangements, particularly the arrangements made when a parent has gone to prison and, in the asylum-seeking community, when children have arrived unaccompanied and are living with people who are not their natural parents? Does he agree that, at local level, we ought to know exactly who every child is living with, and whether the people concerned are the appropriate people to care for those children?

That is a critical responsibility for the local authority and the children's trusts. In the case of Haringey, some of the informal arrangements were a problem, which was highlighted in the serious case review and will be highlighted when it is published again. We need to keep a close eye on the issue.

Those who harm children by using intimidation and violence against them often act in the same way towards the professionals who deal with them. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that the taskforce focuses carefully on intimidation by dysfunctional, dangerous, violent, aggressive and generally unpleasant and devious families? While I welcome the changes in the system that my right hon. Friend has announced and consider them necessary and appropriate, unless social workers out there in the field, or at the coal face, can apply them, that work will have been in vain.

My hon. Friend is right. He, too, has great professional expertise in this area. It is vital for us to provide proper training and support for front-line social workers who, as I have said, do what is often a dangerous job that may involve both deception and intimidation. The social work taskforce must examine that issue explicitly. Today the Health Secretary and I will write to every social worker in the country, telling them what we have announced today but also encouraging them to participate in the work of the taskforce. We hope that social workers throughout the country will take up our invitation.

I entirely endorse the remarks of my hon. Friend Fiona Mactaggart regarding the disgraceful closure of the social work courses at Reading university. It gives me no pleasure that the Secretary of State named in his statement two local authorities in my area—Reading and Wokingham—but does he acknowledge that significant progress has already been made in Reading in improving the safeguarding of children, with Ofsted saying:

"Lead councillors and the new chief executive are providing strong leadership by driving through urgent measures to ensure rapid improvement"?

As I said, Reading is one of the authorities where we have sent in our diagnostic team—and I must say that in all the areas where we have done that, there has been real co-operation from the local authority leadership involved. Although the report has not yet come back to Ministers, I know that there is real and substantial engagement from the local authority, and a determination to make sure that any things that need to be changed are changed with speed and determination.

I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend's statement, but I ask him to acknowledge once again that social workers are often overworked and face extraordinarily complex situations, and that, added to this mix, they frequently face parents who, as my hon. Friend Dan Norris said, can be seriously devious and can hide the abuse they are perpetrating. This is a very complex area, and training, personal mentoring and support for social workers is an absolute requirement.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I have said, social workers are often unsung heroes doing a very difficult job, but to make sure that they can do their job with confidence and determination requires us to look at both resourcing and management, and the front-line support they get from management. We need to address this; we cannot simply leave individual social workers to do the job on the front line. They need more support and training, and we are determined to make sure they get it.

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. He referred to the compelling logic behind the report published by Lord Laming—compelling logic that was contained in his last report, and which I think all Members must be fearful will be contained in the next report. The question I have for the Secretary of State concerns Ofsted. What steps will be taken to strengthen its capacity and competences to undertake the serious work of inspecting in respect of safeguarding children? Will he also answer the question that my hon. Friend Annette Brooke asked him about training and national leadership, and will he seriously consider submitting himself, his ministerial colleagues and senior officials in his Department to the training he expects others to undertake?

I was clear that supporting the training of leadership, management and front-line social work is a priority. I do not claim to be able to second guess that professional judgment and professional leadership, as these are people who have studied and have had experience on the front line for many years, but of course it is important that we at the national level play our proper role to make sure that local leaders and social workers can do the difficult job that they are asked to do. I would also say to the hon. Gentleman that it is important that we as a House recognise not only the challenges we face for the future, but the substantial progress that has been made since 2004. Lord Laming is clear about that, and all of us in this House should be clear about it today.

Does the Secretary of State accept that the best time to safeguard a child is in the generation before that child is born rather than immediately afterwards, by ensuring that when potential parents are babies, children and young people they have the appropriate social and emotional bedrock to be able to grow up and be parents? Will he therefore support alongside a late intervention policy, an early intervention policy, so that we not only continue to swat mosquitoes, but drain the swamp?

I am not sure that I am fully happy with my hon. Friend's last analogy, but I agree with what he says about early intervention and prevention. It is vital that that is central to the thinking of our children's trusts and safeguarding boards, and of professionals throughout the country. It must also be central to Ofsted's thinking—and it is very important that Ofsted responds properly, as I am sure it will, to all the recommendations in this report. There is a real responsibility on Ofsted to make sure that it is also inspecting that there is sufficient capacity and leadership to have effective early intervention and prevention. As my hon. Friend says, that is, in the end, the only way to make sure we can both genuinely keep children safe and allow them to fulfil their potential.