I beg to move amendment 1, in clause 3, page 3, line 33, leave out

“the director of children’s services for”.

This amendment and Amendment 2 make minor changes relating to local authority nominations to a multi-agency child protection team.

With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments 2 to 5.

Amendments 1 to 5, in my name, relate to the nomination of individuals by safeguarding partners for multi-agency child protection teams. These important amendments ensure that primary legislation is consistent. To be consistent with the Children Act 2004, the reference to those who nominate should be to the safeguarding partners, not to specific roles. It is, after all, the safeguarding partners who are best placed to make the nomination for individuals, and have the required expertise in health, education, social work and policing. We will continue to use the statutory guidance, “Working together to safeguard children”, to provide further information on safeguarding partner roles and responsibilities, which will include nominating individuals in the multi-agency child protection teams.

These amendments ensure consistency with the Children Act and set out that safeguarding partners are responsible for nominating individuals with the relevant knowledge, experience and expertise to multi-agency child protection teams.

I have nothing to say about these amendments. I will reserve my comments for our amendment, which is in a different group. I completely understand what the Minister is doing.

Amendment 1 agreed to.

Amendment made: 2, in clause 3, page 3, line 36, leave out

“the director of children’s services for”.—(Catherine McKinnell.)

See the explanatory statement for Amendment 1.

I beg to move amendment 19, in clause 3, page 5, line 3, at end insert—

“16EC Report on work and impact of multi-agency child protection teams

(1) The Secretary of State must report annually on the work and impact of multi-agency child protection teams.

(2) A report under this section shall include analysis of —

(a) the membership of multi-agency child protection teams;

(b) the specific child protection activities undertaken by such teams;

(c) best practice in multi-agency work; and

(d) the impact of multi-agency child protection teams on —

(i) information sharing;

(ii) risk identification; and

(iii) joining up services between children’s social care, police, health services, education and other agencies, including the voluntary sector.”

This amendment would require the Secretary of State to report on the effectiveness of multi-agency child protection teams.

With this it will be convenient to discuss clause stand part.

Members will know that we are extremely supportive of this principle and agenda. We generally welcome the clause and think it is sensible, but we of course have questions, and we have tabled an amendment.

Members know that a huge amount of good multi-agency work is already going on to safeguard children, and it has the potential to address some of the really serious information-sharing gaps that have been so visible in pretty much every serious case review, from Victoria Climbié to the present day. Although we welcome the introduction of the multi-agency child protection teams, we have some substantive questions about them.

First, will the Minister set out her expectation for the activity of these teams? Teams can have a formal meeting, but then there is what they really do. If there is just one team in a local authority, that team may become a source of advice but not really generate new activity. I have a question about the scale of different local authorities and how many teams there will be in an area. This might seem a bit specific, but obviously there is a huge difference between Rutland, which is a single unitary authority with a population of 40,000, and Birmingham, which is also a single unitary authority. We need to ensure—I will come back to this in a second—that we can have provision for these teams to meet and work on a geography that makes sense.

The Government are building on a lot of activity that already exists, but they are slightly changing it in various ways. Will the Minister be specific about what these teams will do that is not being done today? How do they relate to, and how are they different from, existing multi-agency safeguarding hub teams? Linked to that, should we assume that they will be resourced to deal with all section 47 referrals? If they are not, it will potentially become another gatekeeping process—they would be making judgments in good faith, but not necessarily with the information to make them safely. I hope that the Minister can reassure me that the teams will be expected to do things like carrying out home visits, attending strategy meetings and having a much clearer view of health information.

There is also the crucial area of private law proceedings, where children are all too often invisible. I wonder what the expectation is for the involvement of these teams in private law cases. There are real concerns, as we heard the other day, that when CAFCASS makes a referral to the local authority in these cases, it looks like the threshold is not met because of the lack of social services and police involvement with the family in the past. Particularly in cases of domestic violence, we know that those kinds of appearances can be deceptive.

The clause makes provision for two or more local authorities to work together to deliver multi-agency child protection teams, and the explanatory notes state that that would enable police and health services to work within local authority boundaries to make the best use of their resources, which they do not always do. I can see the sense in that. To go back to our neighbours in Rutland, they come under Leicestershire and Rutland for the police and for health, and they have a lot of cross-border students in their schools. However, I want to check that the reverse is also true, and that there will be no impediment to having multiple teams within a local authority, and no sense that the police or health services with a bigger geographical footprint should not be expected to service more than one team in a large local authority. That question is about the geography.

Another question is about the timeliness of meetings, which is crucial. The best possible group of people in the world could be down to attend a meeting, but if they do not meet often enough, things will go wrong. Does the clause give the Government the power to specify in regulations how often such meetings take place? Do the Government intend to specify that kind of thing, or—maybe perfectly reasonably—not? Will they try to establish some norms around the frequency of these teams meeting? I do not have an incredibly strong view; I am just interested.

I also have some questions about the cast list, which was the subject of the last group of amendments; we went from a named person with a specific role to someone from a particular organisation. Subsection (4) lists a social worker, a police officer, a health professional and so on. Is the assumption that it will be the same person who attends each time? What happens in the absence of those people? Presumably, a person of the same category can be substituted for a period—for example, if the policeperson on the team goes off sick, someone can be substituted.

Although I am not an expert, I think that having the same cast list each time is broadly the right model. It is a much better model than one where, for example, the social worker for that case turns up once and perhaps do not go to that meeting ever again or for another year, meaning they are not in a position to join the dots. However, there is always a risk that appointing specialists within a team deskills others on the team. That sense that everybody has to stay alert and maintain professional curiosity gets a bit lost, and there is an assumption that the specialists on the team will deal with it. That is obviously not what the Government intend, but can we get some reassurance that they have thought about how to avoid that?

In oral evidence on Tuesday, we heard from—[Interruption.] May I ask you, Sir Christopher, whether we are going until 1.30 pm? The Opposition Whip is looking anxiously at the clock.

The Opposition Whip may be looking at the clock, as indeed am I. Under the rules that have been agreed, the Committee will meet again at 2 o’clock. If people wanted to have a reasonable time for lunch, normally, by convention, the Committee would adjourn at 1 o’clock and come back at 2 o’clock. That is obviously in the hands of the Committee itself—

rose—

But I detect that Vicky Foxcroft wishes to move a motion.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Vicky Foxcroft.)

Adjourned till this day at Two o’clock.