Part of Adoption and Children Bill – in a Public Bill Committee am 11:00 am ar 18 Rhagfyr 2001.
The Minister talks about transparency and not making a profit, but a local authority has the incentive in the case of adoptions from care of an extremely expensive child leaving its books. There is no such incentive on fees. She must know that a large proportion of the cost of social work is in overheads; profit is an intangible concept. There is no incentive, without Government regulation, for local authorities to keep their fees to a reasonable level. Indeed, they have every incentive to fill some of the gaps in their budgets by charging high fees for such work.