HL Deb 06 July 1992 vol 538 cc1033-52

6.3 p.m.

Lord Harris of Greenwich rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what action they propose to take following the report Runaways: Exploding the Myths published by National Children's Home, the Metropolitan Police and the Police Foundation.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I should like to begin by declaring an interest in that I am a trustee of the Police Foundation. However, the trustees have no collective view on this piece of work. It has been carried out on behalf of the National Children's Home, the Metropolitan Police and the Police Foundation, and was prepared by Caroline Abrahams and Roddy Mungall.

If many people had been asked to give their assessment of the runaway problem in the last year or so I suspect that they would have accepted to some degree at least the picture that was provided by one leading national newspaper, which stated: Many runaways continue to be attracted by the bright lights of Piccadilly Circus, but meet instead a world of squalor and degradation. Those who haven't got the bottle to go thieving to feed themselves end up doing tricks with the perverts who come here in search of young boys".

The survey which we are discussing this evening demonstrates that, although just such a situation exists, it represents only a tiny fraction of the entire runaway problem. The difficulty has been that stories of the kind that I have just referred to have tended to divert attention from the need to make a cool analysis of what is clearly a far more complex situation. I refer in particular to why large numbers of young people decide to run away and why many of them do it repeatedly.

First, we have to be clear about the extent of the difficulties with which we are now confronted. The report is based on a survey of five contrasting police forces—Strathclyde, Thames Valley, Northumbria, Devon and Cornwall, and the Metropolitan Police. It was conducted with the co-operation of the local authority social service and social work departments in those five areas.

A computerised database was established containing around 17,000 police missing persons reports. It became clear at an early stage that no satisfactory national statistics existed for measuring the number of runaways because each of the 51 police forces in Great Britain maintained its own records and had developed its own statistical methods. The Metropolitan Police's juvenile index incorporates a missing young person's register. It obtains that information from forms which are completed in London and some, but certainly not the majority, of its information comes from other police forces in this country.

However, on the basis of the research that has been carried out, it is possible to make some calculations of the number of runaways in any year. It has been estimated that probably somewhere around 43,000 young people ran away in England and Scotland in 1990. Some did so more than once. Indeed, some did so on a substantial number of occasions. Just over half of the runaways were boys. The majority were in the 14 to 16 year-old age group. In just about three in every four cases the runaways stayed away for up to 48 hours. But the fact that they were away for such comparatively short periods did not, in some cases at least, minimise the seriousness of the situation from which they were running away.

What was highly significant was that a high proportion of the runaways came from residential establishments. Although considerably less than 1 per cent. of children in this country are in such establishments, 30 per cent. of the runaways came from residential children's homes. Indeed, nearly six out of every 10 runaway incidents from residential care came from about 40 establishments. In one case, a home with 72 places recorded no fewer than 565 such incidents, and another with 56 places had 512 incidents, involving 67 children.

That brings me to the first question that I should like to ask the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, who is to reply to the debate. Given the fact that this part of the problem that we are debating seems to be concentrated in a minority of establishments, what action does the Department of Health intend to take to deal with this situation? Perhaps I may give just one illustration of the sort of problem that can arise. A year or so ago I was in the area of one police force —not one of those which has been involved in this research programme. I was told by the detective chief superintendent and by a number of other officers of that force that one of the most difficult situations that had arisen in that year had been caused by runaways from a local authority children's home. There as a result of court orders, they had decamped regularly, sometimes committing a series of criminal offences, from stealing cars to burglary, before they were recaptured. In some cases the police had the children in custody before those involved in the management of the residential children's establishment were even aware that they had left.

It is not my object today to be highly critical of those who work in residential children's homes. There has been far too much scapegoating of social workers in the past few years. Those who work in a residential setting are often untrained, underpaid and woefully under-resourced. But there is no point in underestimating the degree of concern about this situation among many senior police officers. Some, but by no means all, fear that the problem is getting out of hand. There is a further difficulty. If residential children's homes are not effectively managed and adequately resourced, there is a danger that children who run away and become sucked thereby into criminal activities will, because of the chronic lack of secure places, find themselves in prison; and we know from an answer which I received from the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, only last week that the number of secure places in these establishments has fallen from 353 in 1980 to 288 on 1st January this year.

I do not want to exaggerate the importance of this element of the situation but we have to face the fact that 25 per cent. of the reported runaways in London had previous criminal convictions. That was true of nearly half of those running away from care. Of course not all the children involved in these episodes are in care. Some run away because they have had a row with their mother or father, sometimes because they have arrived home too late, or because their parents do not particularly like their boyfriends or girlfriends and sometimes because they have done badly in examinations at school. Often in cases of this kind they run away to the home of a grandparent or other relative. Often too the difficulty can soon be resolved and is no more than a brief interlude in a child's life. But on other occasions the act of running away can indicate a far more disturbing situation, such as sexual abuse; or it can be that their conduct has come to the attention of the police and they run away in order to avoid a court case.

In any event, the scale of the problem is now sufficiently serious for us to press the Government to explain what action they propose to take to deal with this situation. First, it is clear that there has to be a co-ordinated response by all the agencies involved if we are to safeguard the interests of these children effectively. There is of course regular contact between the police and social services agencies in respect of many child protection cases. However, it is abundantly clear that this does not always include the problem of runaways. There has to be established some framework of joint discussion. In particular, as the authors of the report suggest, there should at least be an interview with the returned runaway, and in some of the more difficult cases, more than one interview.

Secondly, there has to be a clear picture in each police force area of where children are running away from. If it is from one or two children's homes, that has to be established and the problem vigorously addressed. Thirdly, some group or a clearly defined agency should be given responsibility for dealing with this situation in every police force area. At present some police officers find it difficult to find anyone in a local authority social services department to take over the problem of the returned runaway.

Next there is the question of the National Missing Persons Register. I should be grateful for anything the noble Earl can say about that aspect of the problem. I am aware of the situation regarding PNC2 and I am also aware that the authors of the report consider that it is not in many respects satisfactory for all the problems that they have defined. But I should be grateful if the noble Earl would set out as fully as possible what the Home Office has in mind to do to deal with the situation and the timescale of the project as a whole.

Lastly, it seems to me that if we are to improve radically the co-ordination of our response to this problem there will have to be some form of inter-departmental collaboration, probably leading to the issue of a circular from the Home Office and the Department of Health spelling out the details of a new approach. This inevitably will require consultation between the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, ACPO, the Social Services Inspectorate and no doubt the directors of social services. I believe that this is now necessary. The authors of the report have disclosed the existence of a significant social problem far more complex and substantial than we believed we were experiencing. I hope that when the noble Earl replies to the debate he will be able to tell us whether the Government will now respond as swiftly as possible to the disturbing diagnosis which is spelt out in the report.

6.17 p.m.

Lord Murray of Epping Forest

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, for initiating this debate. It is a matter of great satisfaction to the National Children's Home, of which I am vice-chairman and treasurer, that the report should have been produced on the basis of such excellent co-operation with the police by the Young Runaways Project which the NCH established in 1986 to examine the problem of young people running away from home. I join the noble Lord in congratulating the authors of the report and in commending the example that has been set by the Police Foundation and the police forces concerned in co-operating with a voluntary agency to tackle a problem of this kind.

As the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said, what is greatly satisfying about the report is that it starts to get the problem into focus. Running away is not necessarily a great dramatic act. The report shows that the reasons vary from abuse in the home, which, thankfully, does not occur as frequently as one would have thought, to, on the other hand, pure bravado; from taking a day off to homesickness. But what each episode of running away tells parents and the staff of the homes is that something is wrong with regard to the young people concerned. The noble Lord pointed out that the report explodes some myths: that most children do not run away to London—the figure is less than 1 per cent. —that most do not wander around city centres; that most do not commit crimes; and that girls are as likely to run away as boys. The report confirms that these young people are more often running from than running to and, as the noble Lord said, predominantly they are running from residential care—from community homes, CHEs, assessment centres and treatment units.

It is astonishing—at least I found it to be so—to read in the report that 30 per cent. of youngsters who run away, run from residential care establishments which account for significantly less than 1 per cent. of the relevant population of that age, and that each runner runs on average four or five times. There is no doubting the fact that that is one more problem of residential care establishments. The House has often debated the problems of such establishments in the past in the context of child abuse and homelessness. Noble Lords will recall that 40 per cent. of the young homeless are youngsters who have come out of residential care.

It is timely that we should be discussing the matter again, not only in the light of the report which is the subject of tonight's debate but also in the light of the very welcome Howe Report on residential staffs. That report reminds us that working in residential care establishments is one of the most trying and thankless tasks in the whole field of social work. Staff who do such work deserve our recognition and gratitude.

As the noble Lord said, we should not be entirely surprised that residential care establishments should account for such a very high proportion of runners. Many such youngsters are in residential care because they are runners—because they have been running away regularly from their homes or foster homes and there is nowhere else for them to go.

In her report Lady Howe emphasises that a massive reduction in the number of children in residential care has been accompanied by an increase in the average age—over one-third of youngsters in residential establishments are now over 16—and has concentrated into the residential sector youngsters with the most difficult problems; for example, disturbed children, older teenagers and children from ethnic minorities. Moreover, as the noble Lord reminded us, many of those young people are offenders. Indeed, four-fifths of the youngsters in residential care establishments are there by court order and many of them, when they run, are running away from an impending court appearance. Therefore, we are not looking just at young people who are running away; we are looking at young people many of whom we have hidden away. We are looking at young people who are in danger of becoming throwaways in our society.

The report before the House does not give a single, simple, conclusive answer on the characteristics of the institutions from which youngsters run most frequently. However, it puts its finger on some community homes (which it does not name) with educational facilities where there are obviously some appalling problems. From one of them, in the year in question, each resident ran on average eight times; from another, each resident ran on average nine times in the course of the year. The report shows that large establishments do not necessarily produce multiple reported incidents. It also shows that establishments in isolated rural areas do not necessarily lead to a great deal of running. However, what does emerge, and emerges very strongly, is the correlation between running and the distance from one's own home.

The situation is becoming worse as more and more such establishments close. There is, and will be, a continuing need to provide care and control at the appropriate level. As Lady Howe says, the reduction in the number of places intensifies the role of residential care establishments as places of last resort —containers and warehouses and places to which young people are sent after many of them have already had multiple placements. It is the end of the care line for many young people.

The danger is that it will be taken for granted that young people who are sent to such places will run, whereas if youngsters run from home it produces an emotional shock and can lead to some redress. The danger is that if such young people run from residential care establishments it will be greeted with a shrug of the shoulders. That is why the report is so timely and so valuable a contribution to the general discussion of the future of residential care.

The size of residential homes is not in itself an infallible indicator of inadequacy. But there are very strong arguments for developing residential care on the basis of normalisation. That policy is being pursued by the NCH, which has closed a number of big homes in favour of opening smaller ones. Such homes have often been closed faster than was planned because of the fall in placements by local authorities due to shortages of funds.

Therefore, if we are to prevent running, what needs to be done has to be seen as part of a total approach to improve residential care. Here the report before the House and the Howe Report provide much helpful advice. First, the report emphasises that the regime in residential homes must be centred on the child, on the young person. We must accept that there is a need sometimes for separation and for a degree of containment, but that, it is to be hoped, must be seen as being temporary. The aim of having youngsters in such places must be to prepare them for return to their own homes or placement in foster care or in independent living. That means taking their rights seriously. Certainly boundaries have to be set and enforced but the reasons have to be clear.

Secondly, as both reports emphasise, there is the need for effective complaints and advocacy services. That is the Howe Report's first recommendation and is absolutely crucial. Thirdly, there is the need to see running as a performance indicator; in other words, agencies and local authorities should see this as a measure of some inadequacy and regularly monitor the situation. Finally, there must be an established procedure for dealing with runaway incidents, covering notification to the police and the police response and also the response to runners in terms of bringing them back, integrating them into the home and listening to them.

For its part the NCH has produced a leaflet entitled "Is it Worth It?" addressed to young people who might be tempted to consider running away. It warns them about what can happen to runaways. It has also produced a leaflet addressed to parents and foster parents with practical advice on the danger signals to watch out for and how to handle the situation if their children do run. The NCH has also prepared detailed guidelines for all its projects. They cover measures to limit runaway potential; the keeping of records and the monitoring of running; and contact with the police and action on return, including the use of sanctions and counselling. Moreover, as I have previously mentioned in debates on residential homes, the NCH has introduced a comprehensive and independent complaints and representations procedure which can be used by all users of homes—that is, by both youngsters and those who place them in the care of the NCH.

As the noble Lord said, in producing the report the police and the NCH have set a very good example of working together, which is not always characteristic of work in the area of child care either at the level of government departments or at the level of local child protection committees. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us that the response to the report will be set firmly in the context of a co-ordinated approach to residential care by all the government departments involved.

Much more investigative work needs to be done. The noble Lord has reminded us of the endemic nature of the problem of runners in some homes. Perhaps the Young Runaways Project and the Police Foundation could look in depth at some of the issues if confidentiality can be preserved. As was suggested, we need a national database on missing persons and runaways which is accessible to approved agencies outside the police service.

In conclusion, I believe that it is important that we should build on the foundation of trust and confidence which has been established between the police service and the NCH which produced the excellent report that I commend to your Lordships.

6.30 p.m.

Baroness Faithfull

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, for bringing this valuable report before your Lordships' House. There seem to be two aspects to the findings of the report and its recommendations. First, what is to be done here and now? Secondly, how do we prevent, so far as possible and practicable, situations arising where children run away? That is, how do we provide a preventive service?

I support the establishment of a national register. I understand from the report that it would gather the names and addresses, if possible, of the children reported to the police as missing. That is an important aspect. It should be done so that we know and can carry out research on the exact number of children involved, where they came from and the reasons for their absconding. To some extent the report covers that, but we need more detail.

Further, the report recommends that there should be nationally agreed procedures. I also agree with that. Surely we could set up a preventive structure which would deal with problems at source. The Children Act 1989 set out to improve child care services under local authority social service departments. Residential accommodation has been touched on well by the noble Lord, Lord Murray, and the Howe Report made recommendations to improve local authority residential establishments. It made recommendations about the training of residential child care staff.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, who drew attention to the fact that at the moment social workers do not have the best reputation. Many hundreds of them do outstanding work in the field, but I am afraid that their good work is overlaid by the cases of cruelty in children's homes and child abuse which receive publicity.

I have deep sympathy with social service departments. Winston Churchill once said: Give us the tools, and we will finish the job". The Department of Health has been generous in giving resources to local authorities, child care and voluntary organisations. However, the local authority social service departments in this country have suffered cuts due to local authority expenditure and their allocations of resources have been cut. Therefore, it will be difficult for them to give extra services, extra work and extra thought to expanding even further their child care services. Furthermore, next year local authority social service departments will implement community care which, again, will take both resources and, in particular, personnel.

As regards personnel, perhaps noble Lords will forgive me for telling them of a personal experience. A girl ran away from home and her father suspected that she had come to London. He and I came to London one Saturday night and asked the Marlborough Street police station for a list of discotheques in that street and the Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street area. From nine o'clock until two o'clock in the morning we visited every discotheque. I am not good at dancing, particularly discotheque dances, but I danced with every young person that I could and asked whether they knew where to find my friend Susie. I should add that that was not her real name. They were entrancing and co-operative but, as I said, that took me from nine o'clock until two o'clock in the morning, dancing all the time. The police were not best pleased because they thought that they had to watch over me. I did not find the girl, but next day I received a telephone message from a strange voice: "If you meet the train arriving at 4.40 p.m. at Oxford station, Susie will be on it". I went to the station and she was on the train.

This story tells us two things: first, that many of the children who abscond or run away want to be found. If they are given some method by which they can be found, they come back. The second, important, point is the time involved in interviewing parents. I do not suggest that every social worker should visit all the discotheques, but the work takes time. There is also the time involved afterwards in counselling, bringing together the parents and the children or the social services and the child. I believe that the social services have so many responsibilities that they have insufficient time to carry out the job that is required to be done.

Many children wish to go somewhere for help but they do not know where. We could suggest that they go to the social service departments but those departments have neither the time nor the resources in the present circumstances. I suggest to my noble friend the Minister that efforts should be made to draw together all the child care voluntary organisations such as the National Children's Home, Barnardos, the Church of England Children's Society, the Save the Children Fund and the British Council of Churches. We have in this House two representatives of the first organisation—the noble Lord, Lord Murray, and the noble Viscount, Lord Tonypandy. I believe that if the organisations formed a consortium and worked out a network throughout the country, letting it be known to young people where they could go for help and advice (and in some cases where they could be temporarily housed in a hostel while their problems were discussed and worked out) we could go some, though perhaps not all the way towards helping these youngsters. Young people who run away need and wish to be helped. Given the method, they will use it. But at the moment, if I ask a runaway, "Why didn't you go to someone for help?", I regret to say that children such as those at King's Cross say to me, "Where should I have gone?"

I appeal to my noble friend to consider having a consortium set up by the voluntary organisations to cover the whole country. There is the problem of finance and such a consortium would need core funding from the Government; otherwise, I know that a number of the voluntary organisations would subscribe out of their own funds. Therefore, I accept the recommendations of the report but want something more constructive to be done to set up a network to give help to young people so that they know where to go in the area in which they live.

6.40 p.m.

The Lord Bishop of Chester

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, for initiating this short debate on this vast and complicated matter. One of the organisations that has been heavily involved in this problem is the Children's Society. It was the Children's Society that opened the first safe house for runaways in the United Kingdom in 1985. The society did that to provide emergency shelter and counselling for children on the streets and also to mediate between the young person, parents and local authorities. Since that date, the Children's Society has been involved at that personal and direct level with more than 2,000 young people. The society is now concerned about this national problem of runaways.

An experience that might be helpful to us in the United Kingdom is that of the United States of America where the problem of runaways is vast. There are well over I million runaways and missing children there. There was much publicity about this problem in the United States back in the 1970s, and Congress passed the 1974 Runaway Youth Act which was later broadened in 1977 to the Runaway and Homeless Youth Program to acknowledge the critical factor of homelessness. Shelters were set up and food and clothing were provided. A national runaway switchboard was also established. The Youth Development Board, which administers support to runaways and other youth projects and collects statistical information, estimated that as far back as 1975 there were well over 1 million young people who had run away from home.

In 1982 Congress passed the Missing Children's Act and in 1984 the Missing Children's Assistance Act to ensure that funding was directed in the best possible fashion. Organisations such as the Children's Society want a national register to be established soon. That national register has already been mentioned several times in this debate. The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, will remember that he replied to a Starred Question of the noble Viscount, Lord Brentford, in this House on 6th November 1989 and said: We are discussing with the Metropolitan Police the resource implications of establishing a national missing persons bureau as a matter of priority".—[Official Report, 6/11/89; col. 427.] I hope the noble Earl can tell us that that bureau will soon be established as it would offer great encouragement to all organisations working in this field. However, the Children's Society and other organisations would want to underline the fact that the register itself is not enough. What they want is a bureau which can act as a reference point to oversee this development, to interpret the trends and to discuss and consider the policy issues. I believe that is extremely important.

I do not wish to repeat what has been said about the problems in children's homes and the reasons why people run away as those comments have already been made. I wish to illustrate how the system is abused by referring to a particular case. There seems to be an increasing incidence of copycat runaways among young people. It often seems that the DSS is not able to deal with this phenomenon adequately. I know of a true, current case of a girl (whom I shall call Jane) who left home on the day of her 16th birthday. The first her parents knew about this was when they received a telephone call from their daughter's school —she was still at school—to say that their daughter had entered the headmistress's study and told her she was now going to live with her boyfriend's mother.

The same day Jane, with her boyfriend's mother, went to a social security office where she made a statement to the effect that she was at risk. She applied for income support and rent allowance. Three weeks after her 16th birthday her application was granted and she moved into a bedsit. She is currently receiving £33.50 per week income support, and her rent of £34 per week is paid in full. She lives about a mile away from her parents' home. A serious question arises from this case. Jane receives free school meals, free travel to school, expenses towards textbooks and interview, expenses. All of those expenses must be repaid if she does not complete her A-level course.

Jane's case is rather unusual because she is still in education. She has only been able to obtain these expenses through playing the system. I am worried that a young girl of 16 can go to a DSS office and say she is at risk while in her home there is another daughter of 13 and a foster child of three, and yet the DSS has done nothing whatsoever to approach the parents. In addition, the DSS has not allocated a social worker to Jane. If she was at risk of abuse, she should have received counselling from a social worker.

Jane is now living in bedsit accommodation without any supervision at all. Her parents, seeking to obtain information from the DSS, were told they had a choice. They were told if they challenged Jane's statement that she was at risk, an inquiry would be held, Jane's money would be stopped and she would end up on the streets. I wonder what noble Lords would do in those circumstances. Jane's parents now face a huge dilemma. However, Jane herself is considered a heroine and is acclaimed by young people all around her as someone who has played the system and has broken free from her parents at the age of 16 when all that was wrong was a dispute about whether she should be allowed to stay out all night. Jane has been allowed to proceed down this line at a cost of something over £3,000 a year from DSS funds. This has all happened because there has been no attempt to mediate or to check her story.

A bureau could pick up this sort of thing if statistical trends in an area were considered. It could pick up the fact that a string of people, possibly Jane's associates, were doing exactly the same thing. That is a serious matter. I realise that that matter is not directly connected to the report that the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, has drawn our attention to, but it is an issue that is relevant to it. If young people can find a way of playing the system, that will result in an increased number of runaways. That is a serious matter that is not easily addressed, but the situation could be helped if a national register and a bureau were established to interpret the figures. Then perhaps pressure could be brought to bear to initiate social action in cases of this kind.

6.47 p.m.

Lord Morris of Castle Morris

My Lords, the immediately impressive thing about this report is its weight and its authority. It is a combined report of the National Children's Home, the Metropolitan Police and the Police Foundation. It was compiled over a period of three full years and it examined 17,000 cases of young people reported missing in five carefully selected areas from Cornwall to Strathclyde. Its research methodology is meticulous.

It would be difficult to refute the report's findings; and it would be difficult to refuse its careful and practical recommendations. Like all good pieces of research, the report tells us something new. Its title, Exploding the Myths indicates its importance. Like the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, until I read the report, I would have said that most runaways made for London and the bright lights of the big city; that far more boys ran away than girls; and that far more children ran away from home than ran away from residential care. I would have thought that most runaways never went back. However, I would have been wrong on every count.

It is good to have the facts; but we need to ask why we have the myths in the first place. The answer is not far to seek. Newspapers and television programmes have highlighted the salacious and the sensational at the expense of the dreary, sad and unremarkable plight of unregarded youth in corners thrown.

The newspapers have told us with lipsmacking horror of the runaway boy who ends up a prey to perverts outside a West End amusement arcade. They tell us little about the runaways who stayed in their own localities and went back a day or two after they left; yet this report shows conclusively that one category outnumbers the other by 99 to one. The real problem is not in Piccadilly, but on the park benches of the provinces. The real heroes are not the fearless investigative reporters of the tabloids, but the social workers, the child care officers, and perhaps above all the caring and compassionate police officers in every police force in this land. How seldom we congratulate and thank the police for the work they do. Let us do so now. I hope that the media will give full and detailed attention to the report and its recommendations and give full credit where it is massively overdue.

Perhaps one of the report's most striking discoveries is that so many children run away, and run away repeatedly, from residential care institutions. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, gave us the figures. One must not jump to facile conclusions, and condemn residential care. Most carers do magnificent work and children in care are, by definition, in a less stable and predictable environment than those who are not. However, the logic of the report is relentless. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, told us that runaway incidents from just 40 care establishments accounted for 34 per cent. of all runaway incidents in the whole study, and 58 per cent. of all runaway incidents from care. Surely it is the Government's responsibility to ensure a proper investigation of at least those 40 establishments, and not least the one with just over 70 places which had 565 runaway incidents in the year involving 64 of those young people.

Mr. Tom White, the director of the NCH, is reported as saying: Large numbers ran away from the care of Frank Beck", who, your Lordships will recall, was recently given five life sentences for abuse of children at homes in Leicestershire over many years. Mr. White continued: but the local authority missed an opportunity to look at what was behind it". The report offers another opportunity. I hope that the Government will insist, this time, that it is taken.

Mr. White has also called for the Home Office to develop procedures for dealing with runaways to be incorporated into the forthcoming national missing persons' register. The noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, stressed that point. The report highlights how far behind the United States we are in the United Kingdom in that respect, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester reminded us of that fact. It is only now that the scale of the problem of the young runaways is being recognised. We have as yet no adequate mechanism to determine the scale and nature of the problem. The report before us, for example, estimates that around 43,000 young people under 17 run away every year in England and Scotland, generating over 100,000 runaway incidents. That, however, is an estimate, a projection from the study figures in five areas. It is really no more than our best bet in respect of those figures at the moment.

The Children's Society is working daily at the very coalface of this situation. That is why it particularly welcomes the proposal to establish a national database on missing persons as part of the new Police National Computer II. However, the society stresses —and its staff are experts—the importance of establishing also a bureau which will oversee that development and act as a resource point in policy matters. That bureau would be required to collate the raw data from the register so that we could see the regional variations, the proportions absconding from residential care, the local authorities with the highest absconding rates, and we could monitor the trends and changes so that policy can be built on facts, scientifically established, and not on the misty marshes of myth.

One simple reform could happen almost overnight. The Home Office could issue instructions to standardise all missing persons' reporting forms and allow all police to access the PNC II system in order to enter data. There are, of course, perils, in that suggestion. We must bear in mind the requirements of the Data Protection Act. The missing persons register would have to be safeguarded from intrusion by paedophile groups and other undesirables. However, it should not be beyond the wit of man to meet those requirements. The result would be to safeguard thousands of children who are currently at risk.

The report makes it clear that something must be done. It stresses that the police and many voluntary bodies are willing to do something. It is surely up to the Government now to lead the way. Alas, based on antecedent form, that hope looks likely to be a vain one.

As long ago as April 1979 the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted a recommendation that member states should make arrangements, including the appointment of a national office to serve as a centre for the exchange of information about missing persons at both national and international level. The Crime Committee of the Association of Chief Police Officers recommended setting up a national system for recording information about missing persons, particularly children, early in 1989. The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, said in reply to a Question in your Lordships' House on 6th November 1989 (col. 427 of Hansard refers) those words which have already been spoken by the right reverend Prelate and which, sadly, I must repeat: We are discussing with the Metropolitan Police the resource implications of establishing a national missing persons bureau as a matter of priority". That was on 6th November 1989.

Next year the Government will be required to respond to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The United Kingdom ratified the convention on 16th December 1991, with some reservations. Something will clearly have to be done about it very soon. I hope that when he replies the noble Earl will be able to tell the House why, after 13 years, there is no implementation of the Committee of Ministers' recommendation; why the Association of Chief Police Officers' recommendation is still under consideration some three years after it was submitted; and how the Government intend to respond to the United Nations convention.

How can it possibly take so long? The technical and legal problems which must exist are not insoluble. If they were, the Government would have said so. No vast consultations are needed. If they were, they have not been started. The resource implications are not so vast that they required more than a decade to decide them. Can the noble Earl please explain the delay? Of one thing he may be certain: we on this side of the House will not accuse the Government in this matter of any hideous rashness or any precipitate imprudence.

The report's recommendations are simple, sensible, practical, cheap and few in number. But the implications, if we take them seriously, strike deep in every case. If we take, for example, the proposal that returning runaways should be offered interviews with appropriate professionals, which seems a simple recommendation, the question arises as to which professionals are appropriate and what particular training those professionals need. They will need all the counselling skills normal in their profession, plus a knowledge of child psychology, social administration and detailed knowledge of the local situation.

I should like to plead very seriously for one other element in their preparation, and one which perhaps is not often thought of. Let them be trained in their imaginations, in sympathetic understanding of what it feels like to be a runaway. The best way to do that is by serious study of some of the great works of literature which explore the subject. The education department at my old university, the University of York, used to offer a course on The Child in Literature to all would-be teachers and social administrators, to their immense benefit. Similarly, counsellors of runaway children could understand more about the subject from the first 13 chapters of Dickens' David Copperfield than from a wilderness of case studies and statistics.

I have one final question to which I hope the noble Earl will respond. If the Government care so deeply about the nation's children, why is there no children's charter? There is a parent's charter, a patient's charter, a passenger's charter and even a taxpayer's charter for the "customers" of the Inland Revenue. Why is there no charter for the weakest and most vulnerable citizens of our society, on whom, however, the whole future of that society depends? In the phrase made famous by Private Eye: I think we should be told.

7 p.m.

Earl Ferrers

My Lords, your Lordships will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, for providing us with the opportunity to discuss the research which was published recently by the National Children's Home Young Runaways Project. It is an important document. The speech of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and those of other noble Lords have covered a very sensitive area—the area of families and children. It asks: why do children run away, what will happen to them, how will they be found, what has caused them to run away, how will their state of mind which made them run away be improved and how are the conditions which induced them to run away he improved?

This has been a sensitive debate. One is never disappointed in your Lordships' debates and I enjoyed the story of my noble friend Lady Faithfull. It had a pertinent ending. My imagination was put into overdrive when my noble friend said that she had danced in discotheques until two o'clock in the morning. I do not blame the young men. The only surprising thing is that the police thought it appropriate to keep an eye on her. One always finds surprises, even in your Lordships' House.

The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, analysed the report in some detail and I am grateful for that. I shall not go over that ground again. Noble Lords made a number of proposals.

I should like first to speak about the police contribution in dealing with runaways. I join with the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Epping Forest, in hoping that this report will extend the trust and confidence which exist between the police and the National Children's Home. It is very important and everything depends upon trust being secured between not only those bodies but also the other agencies which become involved, whether they are statutory or voluntary.

The police are invariably the first people to whom the relatives of a missing person turn, whether or not the disappearance has anything to do with suspected criminal activity. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, that we should thank the police for what they do constantly, not only in this area but in so many areas of life, which we take for granted. They do not hit the headlines but nevertheless many people depend most closely upon them.

The police have done well in tracing young runaways. The statistics quoted in the National Children's Home report show that. Seventy-seven per cent. of runaways are found by the police within 48 hours and only 2 per cent. are still missing after 14 days. That is quite a staggering statistic. It also shows the importance which the police accord to reports of children missing from home. We all know the immense energy and effort which they put into investigating the disappearance of a child whom they think is at risk of being harmed.

The police have a lot of experience with young runaways and know a great deal about them. They are also aware of the simple fact that they do not know everything. I am very glad that the police forces took part in the research which led to the National Children's Home project and report. The police know well that, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, said, children leave home for many different reasons. They may leave because they are bored with home life, there are family rows, their parents are too strict, they dislike the institution in which they are or, as the noble Lord said, they want to go to the bright lights; or they leave just because they want to be independent.

The distress which that causes to the family is immense. The child has not returned home. Where is he or she? Has the child been run over, kidnapped or killed, or has the child just run away and, if so, where to and why? What is the matter with the home that we, the loving parents, have created which makes our child want to run away?

The first and immediate reaction is that of needing to get the child back and to talk. That is quite right. But, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester said, some people who run away know how to play the system. But getting the child back is not necessarily the end of the problem, nor does it necessarily solve it. The child's return frequently sets off a whole new cascade of problems. If the relationships between the parent and child were difficult before, they may be even worse now. The actual absconding by the child is like crossing the Rubicon. It is a deed that has been done and cannot be undone. It is one thing to think of running away and even to threaten it; it is another actually to do it. If either party, parent or child, thought that there were difficulties before, they now know that there are.

When the child returns, he or she may return unwillingly or sheepishly. The parent may react in hurt or anger. More rows can start, rows which go far beyond those who are immediately involved; namely, the mother, the father and the child. People in the family begin to take sides as to who is at fault in this unhappy saga. So the return of the child can, but obviously does not always, create a whole new set of problems which are different from those which the original absconding created.

Children who return to residential homes may not go back to the same kind of family traumas, but for them too there will be problems. There will also be questions for those in charge of the home. If a child is in a home for protection and support, what is he or she indicating by running away—especially if the child goes back to his parents who do not want him or were considered unfit to care for him? The police therefore are often dealing with muddled or traumatised youngsters. In some instances they can do little to persuade the children to return home. Sometimes there may be good reasons why the police should not communicate the whereabouts of the child to those who quite understandably want to know where their child is. A child may have run away from home because, for example, he or she has been consistently beaten or abused. If the child knows that it will be beaten or abused again on its return, it may well be desirable and totally understandable that the parents should not know where the child is.

The noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, referred to the necessity of standardising the reporting of missing persons. That is something we are discussing with the police. They want it and I hope that we can introduce something along those lines very shortly.

The National Children's Home report refers to a gulf which apparently exists in the police service between the uniformed officers who are required to deal with missing persons' reports and the specialist teams who are responsible for child protection matters. It argues that the lines of communication between the two often mean that there is inadequate follow-up once the runaways appear at home. The argument goes: they have returned; therefore the case is closed. No one finds out why the child ran away in the first place. The cause may still be there. So what happens? The child runs away again and the police have to find the child and return him or her yet again.

I have some sympathy with the arguments of the National Children's Home in that respect. We may be doing too little for children who face problems which are too difficult for them, though they are not actually being ill treated. If they are being ill treated, the law can apply. Under the emergency powers which the police have under the Children Act, an officer can take into his protection any child whom he believes to be at risk of significant harm. Having done so, he must ensure that the case is inquired into by an officer who has been specifically designated for that purpose. In practice this means that where the police are genuinely concerned about the welfare of a child, they are required by statute to ensure that the necessary questions are asked and that the appropriate authorities are told. The difficult cases are where, for example, a child runs away from home and stays with his friend for two days. On the face of it, that may not seem an unreasonable thing to do. But underlying it there may be reasons of a more sinister nature which caused him to do it.

Another criticism of the report is the lack of reliable national data. This makes it very difficult for anyone to know the extent of the problem with which they are faced. Officials from the Department of Health recently met representatives from the National Children's Home in order to discuss the possibility of research into the problem to which the noble Lord, Lord Harris, referred: why some residential establishments have a far higher incidence of running away than others. It is an important point and we hope that the meeting will uncover some of the reasons why people run away.

However, the loudest call of all is for the establishment of a national missing persons' bureau. The noble Lords, Lord Harris of Greenwich and Lord Murray of Epping Forest, my noble friend Lady Faithfull, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester and the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, joined in that call. People worry about people who intrude into their homes and steal. They are quite rightly worried. The anxieties of people subjected to that treatment are terrible. However, the anxieties of people whose children run away or who lose their children probably last for the remainder of their lives. They somehow go far deeper and are far more personal.

I am bound to say that in my view a missing persons' register could be of enormous benefit and significance in trying to deal with the problem. The right reverend Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, enjoyed quoting my words; they are entitled to do that. But the reason that I believe that such a register is important is that a person can abscond from one force area and end up in another and there is often no automatic means of communication between the two other than by chance. A person may be found dead in one area but it may not be known that he is registered as having gone missing in another area.

I have no hesitation in saying that our resources in terms of a missing persons register are inadequate at present. We intend to rectify that as soon as we can by having a missing persons facility on the new Police National Computer (PNC 2, as it is called). The report says that even that will not improve significantly our existing arrangements. I am bound to say that I find that a little pessimistic. The register on the Police National Computer will operate primarily as a matching facility. It will match, for example, the physical details of a person whom the police have found with the details of those who are recorded on the system as missing.

We have already reached agreement with the Data Protection Registrar—to which the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, referred—that records can be maintained on the system even after a person has returned home. This information may well be of use to the police in tracing a child who goes missing again and in revealing wider patterns of runaway behaviour. But I have to tell your Lordships that for technical reasons we are regrettably still some way off introducing the register on the Police National Computer. It is unlikely to be done before 1995. I am afraid that the computer is simply oversubscribed. The physical process, if I may use the intolerable word, of inputting information into the new Police National Computer is colossal. Important though it is—and I recognise that it is very important—the missing persons' application has had to give way to other priorities which the police service has indicated to us as being of more importance.

Decisions over priorities are always uncomfortable, and I find it particularly so in this case. But the police will be the users of the computer, and it is only right that we should take account of their requirements. However, it is intended that a national register—which will be based on the existing missing persons' register in New Scotland Yard but will be extended to cover all forces—will be available within the next year. In the meantime, Home Office officials have opened discussions with the police in order to determine what improvements can be made to the existing procedures before the new national database is available for use. We hope to come up with some proposals for this interim period very shortly.

I know that the delay in providing a national database has caused considerable disappointment. Frankly, it is a disappointment in which I share. But it will at least give us an opportunity to digest some of the recommendations which have been put to us both by the National Children's Home and by others about the kind of information which they would wish to see included on the register. I hope that that will ensure that we make the best possible use of the facility when it eventually becomes available.

I have a nasty feeling—I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich—that the problems that we see of missing people are merely a fraction of the totality. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, said that the report uncovered a significant social problem of greater dimension than we envisaged. I agree with him. We hear of people who have gone missing, but we do not know them all, nor, I suspect, do we even know the majority. We do not know the causes. We cannot possibly evaluate, even if we can imagine, the sorrows, the anguish, the mental turmoil, the distress and the disruption for ever of the solace of people's lives which is caused by children running away.

Nor do we know, I suspect, more than a fraction of the evil and of the criminality which attach to this whole area and the reasons for them. My noble friend Lady Faithfull stated that she would like to see a consortium of voluntary organisations to help people in their local areas. That is an interesting suggestion that I shall ensure is considered. We shall continue to do our best in government to draw back the carpet and disclose and discover what is underneath. It will not be easy. It will not be a short-term exercise. It will be demanding on resources, but we shall do our best. I am glad that my noble friend Lady Faithfull praised the social workers. They need praise. If more needs to be done in that area, of course more social workers will have o be found and trained; and social workers do not grow on trees. We all want more people and I do not underestimate the number of people who are required, nor the resources, if it is to be done properly. It is a very substantial commitment and one that we shall have to tackle as best we can.

The noble Lord, Lord Harris, has given us some pointers along the road. He suggests that there should be active discussion between the social services, the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Association of Directors of Social Service and Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary. I agree with him. I shall do my best to ensure that such a meeting takes place as soon as possible.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester referred to a missing persons' bureau as opposed to the register. We have always intended to set up a small additional bureau which would provide specialist help in the case of difficult searches. We have not so far planned a multi-functional bureau which might, for example, initiate research and could undertake some publicity. But that is clearly a matter that could be addressed by the meeting between the Government, police, social services and voluntary organisations which we shall be arranging. I shall ensure that that possibility is discussed.

The noble Lord, Lord Harris, suggested that there should be a co-ordinated response involving the police and the social services. It will be the task of officials, together with the police, social services and others who have a legitimate interest, to decide exactly what is lacking in our existing response and how it can be bettered. He suggested a joint Home Office/ Department of Health circular. Such a circular might well result from those departmental discussions.

As did the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Epping Forest, the noble Lord, Lord Harris, referred to the management problems in residential homes. A range of action is being undertaken. The framework for the provision of residential care is provided by the Children Act 1989 to which my noble friend Lady Faithfull referred.

The Utting Report into the action being taken to improve standards of care in children's homes is under consideration. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health has ordered a national inquiry into the selection of staff in children's homes and the support and guidance which is available to them after their appointment. The inquiry will report in the autumn. A wide range of other action is being undertaken, including the funding of residential child-care training through the training support programme. Development work is being undertaken, as is the preparation of practice guidance.

The noble Lord, Lord Murray, referred to the Howe Report. The inquiry into residential staff and their pay and conditions of service reported last month. Its 30 recommendations were directed mainly at local authorities. The Government have undertaken to consider sympathetically the recommendations which were directed at the local authorities.

The noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, referred to the Frank Beck residential care question. The Government fully recognise the serious anxieties about children's homes. We are acting upon them. As I said, the Secretary of State for Health has ordered a national inquiry into the selection of staff for children's homes.

The noble Lord, Lord Harris, referred to secure accommodation; it is an important point. The Department of Health has set up a national steering group to look at the implications for local authorities of the new juvenile remand provisions of the Criminal Justice Act. The work of the group is well advanced. An interim assessment has already been made of the likely additional secure resources required. That is being used as a basis for more detailed discussions with groups of local authorities in order to identify how the additional secure provision might best be made.

Your Lordships have pointed to a number of important facets. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, for having asked the Question. I have no doubt that this is an exceedingly important area of family life. That which we know happens I believe to be only a fraction of what actually happens. It is incumbent upon all of us—indeed, upon government—to do our best to try to help those who are in such an unfortunate and distressed state.

I am grateful to your Lordships for providing the opportunity of discussing this difficult and indeed mysterious subject this evening.