Anne Longfield has called on ministers to reinstate local authorities’ full statutory duties changed by the Adoption and Children (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 which came into force on 24 April, bypassing the 21-day consultation rule.
The amendments enable councils to relax rules and timescales on issues including social worker visits to vulnerable children, foster care placements and reviews of care placements and children’s home.
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Emergency legislation relaxes councils' statutory duties to vulnerable children
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'Emergency legislation is another attempt to push through exemption clause changes'
Children’s homes have also been given the right to deprive children of their liberty if they show symptoms of coronavirus.
Longfield said: “I would like to see all the regulations revoked, as I do not believe that there is sufficient justification to introduce them. This crisis must not remove protections from extremely vulnerable children, particularly as they are even more vulnerable at this time.”
She added that she had heard anecdotal evidence that “staffing for social care is holding up well”.
“It therefore appears that bringing in these regulatory changes to ease excessive strain on a depleted workforce, and to do so without the opportunity for public scrutiny, is not justified,” said Longfield.
The Children’s Commissioner for England is among sector leaders to criticise the lack of consultation on the changes which many say mirrors attempts to change legislation through the so-called exemption clause in 2017 and through a “myth-busting” guide which was published by the Department for Education a year later and later retracted following a judicial review.
Children’s minister Vicky Ford previously said the changes were passed as part of emergency legislation because “waiting 21 days will put extraordinary pressure on local authorities, providers and services to try to meet statutory obligations while continuing to provide care for vulnerable children and young people during the outbreak”.
However, as part of an urgent question tabled at the House of Lords today (30 April) Lord Howarth of Newport, branded the changes “reckless” and said the government’s decision to pass them using the Coronavirus Bill as a statutory instrument without a consultation and without parliamentary scrutiny amounted to “constitutional abuse”.
However, under-secretary of state for education, Baroness Berridge, confirmed that “minimal changes” had been made by amending secondary legislation to avoid using powers granted to parliament under the Coronavirus Act.
The admission drew further criticism from the sector branding the changes an “opportunistic deregulation on a grand scale”.
Carolyne Willow, director of children’s rights charity Article 39, said: “The minister’s response to Lord Howarth’s charge of constitutional abuse was not at all reassuring.
“The emergency primary legislation was introduced into parliament before the lockdown, yet the Department for Education states in its Explanatory Memorandum that the 100 or so changes to regulations were only drafted in response to lockdown. The more that comes into the public domain, the more this looks like opportunistic deregulation on a grand scale.”
Mark Kerr, chief executive of the Centre for Outcomes of Care, added: “The more we hear from government on their reasons for Statutory Instrument 445, it becomes increasingly clear this is rushed policymaking with no consultation The government has apparently consulted with its ‘partners in practice’, but this a small non-representative group of local authorities. Most of the sector does not support for this deregulation and state these changes are not needed.
“The language, changes and whole narrative around this deregulation, are the same as previous attempts by government to relax or remove child protection duties over the last three years. If the government continues to state that these changes are based on the needs of the sector because of Covid-19, they risk losing credibility, at a time when they need frontline professionals to have trust in them.”
