Children in the Social Care System: England
House of Commons · Westminster Hall · 3 Sep 2026 · 13 speeches · Official Report
Joint Committee on Human Rights
Select Committee statement
We begin with the Select Committee statement. Peter Swallow will speak on the publication of the second report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, “Human Rights of Children in the Social Care System in England”, HC 161, for up to 10 minutes, during which no interventions may be taken. At the conclusion of Peter Swallow’s statement, I will call Members to put questions on the subject of the statement, and call Peter Swallow to respond to them in turn. Questions should be brief and Members may ask only one question each. I call Peter Swallow on behalf of the Joint Committee on Human Rights.
Thank you, Mrs Barker; it is an honour to serve with you in the Chair. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting the time for this statement, and my fellow members of the Joint Committee on Human Rights for asking me to make it. I am also grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), for his attendance. As he knows, I never miss an opportunity to raise with him the progress of my local special educational needs and disabilities school, but I am getting that in at the start of my speech so that we can focus on what we are actually here to talk about: the very important matter of children’s social care. This statement sets out the work done and recommendations made by the Joint Committee on Human Rights in the report “Human Rights of Children in the Social Care System in England”. It goes without saying that the state’s ability to intervene in families to remove children where, and only where, deemed absolutely necessary for a child’s welfare in the first instance is among the gravest and most serious of its responsibilities. But the responsibility the state takes for that child and how they are cared for next, which has the capacity to shape the rest of their life, is equally as serious. No parliamentary speech can do true justice to the experiences of the care-experienced young people whom the Committee spoke to during its work on the report, in Leeds, in York and at a roundtable...
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee and other hon. Members involved for their recommendations. Some of the stories that the hon. Gentleman referred to in setting the scene are indeed harrowing and incredibly worrying, and yet transparent and physical change can be made. Things can get better. My question to the Chair of the Select Committee is this. The protection of children is incredibly important. Will the Select Committee, and ultimately the Minister, share their findings and recommendations with us back home in the Northern Ireland Assembly, where this is a devolved matter, so that we can also implement the necessary changes?
The hon. Member has done me the great honour of promoting me: I am not, in fact, the Chair of the Select Committee. That is my noble Friend Lord Alton in the other place, because we are a Joint Committee of both Houses. Nevertheless, I will pass on the hon. Gentleman’s request, and I am sure that the Committee can send a copy of the report to all relevant persons in Northern Ireland. I thank him for his interest.
I thank my hon. Friend for that introduction to the Select Committee’s work. I have a particular concern, having met with the National Association of Child Contact Centres this week, about the ability of children in social care to continue to have supervised and appropriate contact with wider family members, particularly in the context of wanting children to see more of their siblings, which everyone would absolutely welcome. My concern is that contact centres have been closing at a huge rate. Is that something that we have tracking information on? Could we look at perhaps using family hubs as locations to resolve that issue?
My hon. Friend makes a really good point. As I said, I welcome the amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, which gives some assurance to those at risk of family separation through the care system. However, the proof of the pudding will be in the implementation. As my hon. Friend highlights, there are real practical barriers to that. I hope that the Minister has heard her point and will make sure that it is addressed as we seek to implement that law, which is now rightly on the statute book.
I listened with great interest to my hon. Friend’s report on the Committee’s inquiry. Will he join me in urging the Minister to look more widely at the issue of looked-after children who spend the vast majority of their lives on in-patient wards in paediatric hospitals? A small number of children have spent the majority of their lives living on in-patient wards because they are ill. If they had a traditional nuclear family, they would be at home and cared for by their parents or carers, but because they are looked-after children, it is far too difficult to find suitable placements for them due to their medical needs. That represents a fundamental lack of care for some of the most vulnerable members of our society. Will my hon. Friend support my call for that to be looked at in greater depth?
My hon. Friend gives me the opportunity to reference another report that the Human Rights Committee undertook, as pre-legislative scrutiny of the Mental Health Act 2025. We very much looked at this issue, and particularly the issue of vulnerable young people being placed on adult mental health wards, and urged changes at that point. It is absolutely the case that vulnerable people who are care-experienced and are also facing mental health crises face a double vulnerability, which heightens the duty of the state to those individuals even further. Some of the measures we have suggested to reform the rights of disabled children can absolutely play a part in that. I will also highlight something that I did not get a chance to mention. There are recommendations in the report to strengthen the complaints system, including by making sure that there is no wrong door when a care-experienced young people is making a complaint and that they all have an opt-out right to a legal advocate. That would go some way to making sure that children, particularly those facing a mental health crisis, have an advocate in the way that is also envisaged in the Mental Health Act 2025. I hope that if the Government listen to some of the recommendations in the report, we can go some way to addressing the very real concerns that my hon. Friend has raised.
In my constituency, the care-experienced young people who live in Fulham benefit from the fact that the council recognises care-experienced as a protected characteristic. That means that council housing teams and schools and recruitment processes inside Hammersmith and Fulham have to actively check that their decisions do not disadvantage care leavers. They have to track outcomes, and care leavers have the right to recourse. Currently, this only happens if decent councils such as Hammersmith and Fulham choose to do so. Is there an argument for pressing the Government to make care-experienced a protected characteristic in law?
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point; it gives me another opportunity to place on the record again my thanks to everyone who hosted us in Leeds and York, where we saw some fantastic work being done to support care-experienced young people. I know that that is replicated in councils across the country, including, may I say, in Bracknell Forest, whose children’s social care services were recently rated outstanding by Ofsted-I got the local plug in there. I pay tribute to all those working tirelessly to support children in the social care system. The shortcomings I have highlighted today in no way take away from the many people who have dedicated their working careers to supporting the most vulnerable in our society. My hon. Friend makes a very interesting point. Making care-experienced a protected characteristic in law is something that we explored as part of the inquiry. The responses that we received on that point were mixed. Some felt that that would be singling care-experienced children out in some way, when in reality what they were hoping and asking for was to be treated no differently from anyone else, so that as they enter adult life, they can leave behind the fact that they are care-experienced and go forward with their lives. Others felt that the proposal would be beneficial. The evidence was mixed. If I remember correctly, I think we settled in the report on not having that as a recommendation -I will correct the record if I am wrong, but I think that was...
Sitting suspended.