31/10/2011 Daily Politics

Afternoon, folks. Welcome to the Daily Politics. Are councils

failing to find children in care a proper home? The Government has

decided to name and shame the best and worst local authorites which

arrange adoption in England, and says will take tough action against

authorities that fail to deal swiftly with adoption cases. The

fair fuel lobby is still hot under the collar about the price of

petrol. Over 100,000 people say they want MPs to debate the issue,

but will they get the chance? We'll speak to Quentin Willson from the

campaign. And as Syria warns the West not to

intervene in the country's uprising, we'll be revisiting the Arab Spring.

All of that in the next half hour, and with us for the duration, Tony

Blair's former envoy to the Middle East, Lord Levy. He also raised a

lot of money for the Labour Party. Welcome. Thank you. First, let's

talk about growth, because the Government's keen to announce today

which businesses in England will benefit from nearly �1 billion of

Government support. The money is the second and final instalment

from the regional growth fund. The Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg,

says it will safeguard more than 200,000 jobs. Growth is obviously

the key word at the moment, Michael Levy. But do you think the

Government, having talked about cutting the deficit, dealing with

the debt crisis, that that is crucial, that politicians from

across the spectrum have talked down the economy too much and

stopped people spending? Obviously there has been a position where you

were negative, negative, negative, that message permeates to the fact

that people really believe it is so negative, where do we go from here,

what do I do? On the other hand, I do believe that there has to be a

realistic approach to where we are at. Many people are being squeezed,

particularly in the middle income. They really are being hit hard, and

therefore they know their own budgets and they know how difficult

it is for them. It is almost irrelevant what politicians are

saying. People need to assess their own situation and how they can cope

and how they can manage with their own budgets. Do you think then and

do you agree with Ed Miliband and Ed balls that the answer is to

increase spending mead throw boost the economy? I do -- immediately to

boost the economy? I do think there has to be a boost to the economy.

More than the coalition is doing? Probably yes. I believe that our

economy compared to a number of countries in the world isn't in

such poor shape, and die think it does need a boost. -- I do think it

guz need a boost, in a managed way and not something that's going to

be irresponsible, but the economy certainly does need a push at this

moment. Does Labour have a better plan, do you think, for doing that

and for forcing the banks to lend more to businesses, which is still

one of the biggest problems? know, it is always very difficult

when you are in opposition, Jo, because you are really talking, you

are coming up with plans, but they are not being act vaited. It's a

very frustrating position to be in opposition, because it is the

Government that's continually calling the shots. But if we look

over this last period of time, there has only been one message

from this Government - look at Labour did badly. There hasn't been

the message, look what we are going to do positively to change things.

It's been negative historically on Labour, not look at what we, the

Government, are doing to make things better. I think that's where

the problem arises. Briefly, Ed Miliband has hired this property

tycoon as Labour's fund-raising adviser, a job that you did. He is

going to devise new methods of drumming up support through local

groups across the country. Is that going to work? My even message is,

good luck. I thought it might be. Now it's time for our daily quiz.

Today, the United Nations is to announce that the world population

has reached 7 billion, so our At the end of the show Michael will

attempt to give us the right answer. I will trial.

Today is the start of National Adoption Week, where people are

urged to consider the possibility of adopting vulnerable children.

That all sounds well and good, but with over 65,000 children currently

in care in England, only 3,050 were adopted last year. This morning,

David Cameron said things had to change and he's promised tough

action against local authorities which fail to deal swiftly with

adoption cases. Powers already exist to strip local authorities of

their adoption responsibilities, but the Prime Minister has said

he's ready to enforce them, so better-performing councils can take

over, or the service will be contracted out. According to the

latest figures, children wait an average of two years and seven

months to be adopted. And only 60 babies were adopted last year. The

Government has today published league tables ranking local

authorities on how quickly they place children in care for adoption.

York came top, placing 100% of children with adoptive parents

within the 12-month time-frame. Hackney Council, who we'll be

speaking to in a moment, came bottom, placing only 43% of

children in the 12 months. Earlier this morning, I spoke to the

Children's Minister, Tim Loughton, and asked him if he should be

focusing on getting more people to come forward to adopt children,

rather than criticising councils. The real problem is the whole

system, it is not just local authorities who I think need to up

their game. It is also the courts, which are taking far too much time

going through the courts, but it is also a lot of parents are being

discouraged from coming forward. Lots of myths are going around.

What's really important ooct this whole campaign we are doing this

week is the fact we want to encourage people who think they can

offer a foster home or be adoptive parents, urging them to knock on

the Town Hall door and saying we are interested. Why are you saming

your fire at local councils when you've admitted it is not just

about them. The courts are the ones who hold up proceedings and make it

extremely difficult to get a completed adoption order in the

first year? The whole system is not working properly. You are saying to

councils they have to up their game, or else. And I'm also saying to

courts, and we are having the family law review published this

Thursday, where it will make it very clear that there is too much

delay in the courts, there is too much bureaucracy and there is too

much overlap in the courts. That needs to be got right as well. This

is a joint effort. The crazy thing here is we are all on the same side,

whether you are a judge, a social worker or running an adoption

sfrbgs or whether you are a Government Minister. The thing we

all want to see is a better deal for demids care and more kids for

whom it is appropriate to be able to to be adopted to give them a

safe, stable, loving family placement. Too many kids are

missing out on that at the moment. So how should councils up their

game? By looking at examples of best practice elsewhere. We are

publishing 15 different tables today with different performance

figures on how children in care are doing, how well authorities are

doing at getting kids adopted. Things like that. Parts of the

country are doing certain parts of the whole adoption process well.

The trouble is very few people are doing all of it well together.

much should the issue of race for example be taken into account? Is

it no longer important? I have made it clear time and again until I'm

blue in the face, we issued new guidance in March that ethnic

matching must not be a deal breaker An ideal world, if we could find

something approaching an ethnic match it would be nice, but it

shouldn't be a deal breaker. The most important consideration is,

can that perspective adoptive family offer a safe, stable, loving

environment for that child? If it can, then let's get on with it

rather than all this political correctness about getting some

idealistic ethnic match, which usually doesn't exist anyway.

much would you give before you give powers away? Hackney do well around

children in care and keeping families together. You've got to

look ti figures carefully to see where certain authorities are doing

well... So the figures are misleading. By saying councils have

to up their game, you said Hackney is doing well. I said Hackney is

doing parts of its care well but the number of kids they are getting

into adoption is poor. I want them to do all of that process well.

That's story around the country. That's why I'm not producing a raw

comparison. We are producing all the information so people can drill

down into what parts of the whole children in care adoption system

certain authorities are doing well and where they are not. Let's work

on the weak spots. They only need to knock on the door of other

authorities that are doing it much better toe get advice and help to

see how they can up their game. For many adoption isn't the priority.

It is a last resort. We are saying it should be a first resort for

many kids for whom there is no safe way back to their birth families.

Would you take power from councils who do not, as you say, up their

game? Local authorities, who do not do this seriously, if they are

still plateauing if they are poor performers or are trending

downwards, I'm going be serious questions about are they the right

people to continue running an adoption service for children in

their care. If there are not, -- if they are not, there are other

agencies who may be a better option. With us now is Alan Wood, Director

of Children's Services in Hackney, one of the councils at the bottom

of the Government's league table for the number of children adopted

within 12 months. The threat was pretty clear there. Your record is

poor, you are the bottom of this league table, powers could be taken

away. Well, our record is actually very good. How is it very good

compared to what Tim Loughton has been saying? The Minister referred

to a range of data available. The most important piece of data is

when Hackney makes an adoptive placement it sticks, it doesn't

break down. You have to consider all of these issues like timescale,

types of children. We have a deliberate policy of pouring

resources into support children in families. Because of that we have

significantly reduced the number of children loo are in care. Because

we've reduced the number of children in care the width of need

among those children tends to be much more acute and needy. We have

significant sibling groups for example. We have children with

foetal alcohol syndrome, children who are disruptive and missed

places in schools. We are dealing with a much more complex set of

young people. This data is also two years out of date. Authorities'

performance since that time shows a dramatic improvement on timescales.

Timescales a narrow slais of a very complex pie chart of information in

and data. We've got data but little intelligence and am sis. If you've

been so successful in terms of making the adoptions work for the

children you have placed, can't you just speed up that process and

place more of them? We areed about timeliness. We are all in this

together. Our social workers work very hard to get the best

placements for our children, but we are not going to make a prospect

where there's a prospect of breaking down. Let me give you an

example. We made a placement of a large family, including children

with a dibble ty. Trialling -- with a disability. We had to extend this

because the mother schooled a second place from us. Do you not

agree more families would come forward if they didn't think it was

such a cumbersome, long-winded and painful process? I think there is

some sense in that. We don't have a problem of having a number of

families forward. We have lots of people who want to adopt in Hackney,

lots of people from across the range ofeth in thisities. That's

why it is difficult to get the right placement. It is not that we

are losing or don't have adoptive parents but we have complex cases.

How much children do you have waiting?? Thisier we think there

are 25 children. Out of how many? We have 230 children in care. A

small percentage of those will go into it's adoption world. If you

look at last year, we had seven children who were placed for

adoption. We are talking of small numbers. One child who is adopted

after a year and a week makes a complete hash of the percentages.

Michael Levy, are Government tables helpful? I don't think so at all.

What I really don't understand, if you have got an area where an

analysis and a table shows how well they are doing, it is not about

praising and shaming, it is about how did you get them to help an

area where on the surface it would appear they are not doing well.

Because different circumstances, different children, different

families, different ethnicity groups. There are so many

differences. Why don't we use an area why York, you are doing well,

Hackney, perhaps you are not doing so well, getting them together, how

can they learn from each other's experiences? This is too sensitive

for naming and shaming. This is much more about how do we help each

other to deal with what is a problem that desperately needs

dealing with? What would your message be to the Government?

are all in this together. If we have all of the data available it

is a pity there wasn't much more discussion between local

authorities and Government about this information. I think we could

have put the panoply of information before people. As Michael says,

encouraging local authorities to work together is important. We for

example support other authorities around adoption placements. So it

is not as simple as one slice of a Following the demise of Colonel

Gaddafi, many are asking what prospect is there of direct

military intervention in Syria? 3000 have been killed in eight

months of violence there. This weekend, President Assad warned

against such action, saying that foreign intervention would burn the

whole of the Middle East. Where does the Arab Spring go from here?

If the world watched as a badly injured older man was dragged from

a drainage pipe, brutalised and shot dead, you can be sure in

Damascus the President of Syria also watched the unseemly demise of

Muammar Gaddafi after 42 years of dictatorship. Perhaps as he warned

the West not to intervene, in his country, racked with months of

unrest and oppression, he is thinking what many are asking,

where next? Try to judge what is going to come next is particularly

difficult. We do a lot of work on the Yemen and the Yemeni President

has defied all predictions on his demise. He was nearly assassinated.

People said goodbye to him, and now he is back in Yemen, still rolling.

That suggests that President Al Rashad could cling on for much

longer than Europeans are expecting. -- President Mashhad. -- President

Assad. The third candidate is Bahrain. A country with a deep-

seated religious division that goes back further than any spring of

this year. Perhaps the West was a little optimistic. We saw the

world's media ascend on Bahrain thinking that perhaps this would be

the next place for a revolution. Probably, that encouraged the

protests, with the protesters thinking they would get Western

backing, but the Western governments were not prepared to

back them, particularly once Saudi Arabia firmly sided with the ruling

family there. The story in Bahrain is not over. And there is no doubt

that in a decade, the region has changed out of all recognition. Our

response to it has, too. 41 MP collecting the trappings --

trappings of dictators from their palaces, the mistakes in Iraq,

Afghanistan and the response to 9/11 which he felt have encouraged

extremism, this is fascinating. What I found interesting was that I

found and his smallest -- Islamist commander who have fought in Iraq

and Afghanistan. He said to me that this was the first time the West

has to do with the ordinary people. "We will not forget it." I thought

that was a remarkable comment. It suggests that the actions of

Cameron and Sarkozy and President Obama, that they have started to

roll back the damage done since 9/11. If so, not only do we need to

focus on what to do with Syria, Yemen and Bahrain's regimes fall,

but where else the Arab Spring a touch. We have seen reforms

promised in Morocco and all man. There are questions hanging over

Saudi Arabia and Algeria, which have all the ingredients for bigger

protests to come. Lord Levy is still with us. Should do now be

foreign intervention in Libya -- Syria? Absolutely not. -- should

they are now be foreign intervention. Syria is very complex.

There is a situation. I do not know if people lead -- people read the

interview that President Assad did in the Telegraph yesterday. So many

different factions within Syria, the issue with Turkey and how

Turkey is reacting to Syria. You have the Arab League, in terms of

how that is reacting, you have the UN, where China and Russia would

against sanctions. You are saying it is diplomatically too difficult

queue that it is a very difficult situation. Is it good what is going

on in Syria? Of course not. Is the tragic loss of life in disaster?

Yes, of course it is. I feel that we have to see what will go on,

particularly with Turkey. You have the Syrian National Council

operating from within Turkey, you have the Arab League, where they

are themselves trying to take measures in Syria to solve some of

the issues. You have President Assad saying that he is going to

make changes. Do you believe that? I think it is going to be a very,

very slow process. And in between, the violence continues?

violence is continuing but what would happen if there were Western

intervention? I think that would be a greater disaster. A greater

disaster than what is going on right now. This is not a simple

situation. There is not an end game scenario. This is not one of those

situations. You can see why people would argue that British foreign

policy smacks of hypocrisy. What is new about hypocrisy within most

countries' fallen -- foreign-policy. There is not much new about that.

Libya and Syria are very, very different situations. To have

imposed a no-fly zone in Libya with a UN resolution, with difficulty,

and Arab League agreement, that is a very different situation to the

situation in Syria. You knew his father, President Assad's father.

What you would -- what would you advise David Cameron to do now in

dealing with his son? I have also met the sun on a number of

occasions. My advice would be worked through the UN, work closely

with the Arab League, work closely with Turkey and evaluate the

position on a very regular basis. The informant continually. -- be

informed continually. The UN, the Arab League and Turkey, working

with them and watching those spaces continually, that would be my

advice. Will he go voluntarily? No. Do you regret how close the Blair

Government got to Colonel Gaddafi? There are two issues here. Do I

regret the fact that one was able to wean Gaddafi and the regime off

WMD or the potential of WMD? No. I do not have crept that at all. -- I

do not regret that. Two why feel that the subsequent closeness that

manifested as a result of that was wrong? Yes. I think there was an

issue, winning him off of WMD. There was an issue, can Britain do

business? You have a big difference between Syria and Libya going back

to the government issue. One has oil and one has vast reserves. The

other does not. You may remember that last week we

were talking about Europe. After a backbench MPs called for a

discussion in the Commons. A petition attributed to debate on

documents relating to the Hillsborough disaster. Although

getting 100,000 names on a petition is not a guarantee for a debate, it

does help. Why is a cut in fuel duty not on the agenda, which has

also gain signatures? The rising cost of fuel has been a long-

standing problem. In 2000, fuel protests paralysed parts of Britain

for seven days causing a crisis in the NHS, emptying supermarket

shelves and even closing schools. The protesters have won concessions

from the Government. But then Gordon Brown announced that duty

rates would be frozen, up till April 2002. But it was not enough.

In the 11 years since we have seen the motorways go-slow,

demonstrations at oil depot has had been seen. I am joined by Quentin

Willson, the motoring journalist. I'm also joined by Natascha Engel,

chair of the Backbench Business Committee, responsible for

scheduling the debate. Affair fuelled UK campaign has 100,000

signatures, the amount needed to look at the debate. When will it

happen? -- the FairFuelUK campaign. I'm glad to be given the

opportunity to come and explain this. We meet as a committee once a

week and once a week only, on a Tuesday. We are allocated time to

schedule debates by the Government. The FairFuelUK campaign came to us

in the form of Robert Huth and Fenby, to ask for time to debate

the petition. To have a vote, we have to have a debate in the

chamber, not Westminster Hall. If we were not allocated time in the

chamber which was why we could not have the debate. That is the

technical explanation but I suppose, in a way, the Government has raised

expectations. The public now expects, as you understand, that if

they get 100,000 signatures on an electronic petition, they will have

a debate. That's right. You have made the distinction between what

is the Government and what is the backbenchers. We do not have time

or power, we cannot say that we want to have a debating chamber. We

have to wait for the Government to allocate time. -- have a debate in

the chamber. The Government have brought in this system, of which is

welcome, but we do not have the time for the debate. Quentin will

not have this debate? We have not said that. The next time we are

allocated a day in the chamber, we will look at it to get -- look at

it again. Are you satisfied with that? I understand that Natascha

Engel is between a rock and a hard place. We have the expectation of

consumers thinking that they will get the debate if they get 100,000

signatures. This is sending out the wrong message about government

accountability. I know you cannot say this on air, but I need to know

that we will get a debate, because there is hardship out there.

you do everything you can and assure him that he will get the

debate? Actually, tomorrow we meet at 1pm and there is the electronic

petition on fair fuel but there are also other debates that have been

brought to us. It all depends on what it is that comes before us. I

would hate to say that, as the chair, I will decide what gets

debated but having said that, this is such an important issue. I

represent a rural constituency and this is one of my number one Paul

Spike issues. It has a high chance of being debated. You surely have

the power to say look, let's do it? We are all very supportive of the

process, but it is a committee of seven people. There is a high

likelihood we will do this. I want the Government to say Rosslea that

we are going to talk about this because it is affecting growth and

prosperity. The price of petrol has come down just recently. Only

slightly. We have two more duty rises next year, 8p. You have

Morrisons, as a, NCP car-parks, Tesco's, all saying that footfall

has been affected by higher fuel duty. -- ASDA. You say you are

supporting the electronic petition but a picture in a difficult

position. Is this the right way to go? I think it is the wrong way to

go because this has the potential to destroy what we do on the

business committee. Increasingly, we are only looking at debate

brought to us that have 100,000 signatures attached. I think we

need to separate out what his backbench business and what are

electronic petitions. If you have electronic petitions, you do not

have direct action. That is the spectre that is facing us. If the

committee says no for whatever reason, what is your next step?

will go into hiding! Prepare for the worst! A mildly phrased letter

was delivered to Downing Street this morning. We will get more

rockets. I am not saying direct action. God forbid. Let us do this

through the political process and get a statement from the Government

that they will look at this. We just want a debate. You could be

here again on future issues. But I will have to wind it up. Well, just

time before we go to find out the answer to a quiz and the question

was, what was the population of the world when Lord Levy was born? What