Transparency and Accountability Bill - second reading

John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD):

 

"There are greater tensions in today’s society. One of the failures of society rests in the tension between the Executive and the legislature... It tends to be very difficult to get anything out of the Executive."

"For example, in the Ashya King case, the father talked of himself as being a refugee from the UK because he was threatened with care proceedings, and we know that there was a wardship application against the family. It was clear that the hospital would have had an emergency protection order had they not left the country. When I raised that with the Prime Minister, he did not understand that I was asking Parliament to have a collective investigation into what is going on..."

"The context of the Bill is to improve transparency and accountability in the public sector, and within that I have included a number of different elements. With regard to the super-complaints proposal from Which?, the idea is basically to give a designated representative body the power to make a super-complaint to regulators of public services to address systemic issues. That sort of thing does go on. There can be difficulties within the health service. It is far better to enable challenge from outside the system. We saw with the Commission for Social Care Inspection and the Care Quality Commission the tendency for even the regulators to cover things up."

"We have too many cover-ups in Britain, and the Bill seeks to reduce their number. ... Under the Enterprise Act 2002, designated representative bodies can make super-complaints to the Competition and Markets Authority about detrimental features of private markets. This power does not currently extend to markets for public services where detrimental features can also arise. We know all about that..."

"Public services are vital to millions of people across the UK, but people’s voices are not always heard when they experience a problem..."

"Another organisation that contributed to aspects of the Bill is the Campaign for Freedom of Information. This relates to closing a loophole in the Freedom of Information Act 2000 that allows contractors providing public services to escape scrutiny. They are not subject to FOI requests in their own right and so provide only the information that they are considered to hold on behalf of the authority..."

"As the director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, Maurice Frankel, said, each new outsourcing contract reduces the public’s access to information because of a loophole in the FOI Act. Information that is vital to the public may be kept secret simply because the contract doesn’t provide for access. The Bill would restore the public’s right to know.".. We need action from the Government, whoever is in government and at whatever stage, to deal with those exemptions, because what are clearly public functions are escaping accountability..."

Family court issues

"Earlier this week, a gentleman from German radio came to see me. He was concerned about the situation in Rotherham, which he had been investigating. Not only did the local authority take children into care, where they were found to be less well protected, but if they became pregnant it put them up for adoption on the basis that there was a future risk of emotional harm... At the moment, in essence, the only really effective audit on family court proceedings, particularly for public family law, is the example of international cases. The advantage of international cases is that two different jurisdictions are looking at the same case. Earlier I cited the King case, where the family went off to Spain and are now in the Czech Republic. Obviously that case was considered by the Spaniards. They were lucky because they managed to get their story out on YouTube and were not injuncted."

"There are similar cases. The Paccheri case is well known—it concerns the lady who was forced to

have a caesarean when she visited the UK whose child was then adopted. When we investigate the medical evidence put to the Court of Protection, we find, looking at the considerations by experts on the internet—that there was a good, detailed critique of the judgment, but it was published only because we found out about what had gone on; it was not published as part of an ordinary process..."

"Had detailed consideration been given to a second opinion in this case, it would have said, "Actually, this isn’t necessary." The traumatic way in which the lady was treated did not help her in the long term..."

"There are two types of international cases: those whereby people leave the UK to escape the system, and those whereby a foreign citizen’s case is decided on by the UK jurisdiction. The advantage of the Paccheri case is that the Rome family court gave a judgment that is publicly available and basically says that it does not understand what is going on in England..."

"We know what happens. The managerial priorities of local authorities determine what their staff do. If they do not do those things, we see what happens. There is the case of Joanna Quick, who wanted to recommend the return of a baby to its parents. She would not do what she was told by the management, so they fired her. One cannot blame social workers who are in that environment for doing what their management tell them to do..."

"(T)here are clearly cases when someone`s litigation capacity has been removed wrongfully. They are then stuck. They are a non-person as far as the system is concerned. If they want to appeal to the court, the application cannot be accepted because they have no capacity. People go down to the courts, but get turned away on that basis..."

"My view is that what we are doing is awful for children and families and, as time goes on. we are finding out more and more that that is the case. .."

"On the maltreatment of grandparents—I went to a Grandparents Plus event, and grandparents are not treated with respect by the system. There is evidence that each change of placement for a child taken into care, including the first change of placement, is psychologically damaging, but obviously at times we need to do that because leaving a child where it is can be worse—although the Rotherham case showed that at times that does more damage than in other circumstances. Going and staying with granny, however, is generally not that much of a problem because it is the sort of thing that has happened and the child is used to it. We should be a little more focused on families and the wider family—aunties, uncles and so on—than the current system, which is very much driven by the system. .."

Full transcript: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmhansrd/cm141017/debtext/141017-0002.htm#14101788000002