MPs told Baby P-type tragedies 'impossible to prevent'

It will be impossible to prevent another Baby P tragedy, the chairman of the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee warned today.

Labour's Barry Sheerman delivered the stark message during a Commons debate on his committee's report on children in care.

He said it was important that there was an appropriate response when such tragedies occurred.

Opening an estimates day debate on the Department for Children, Schools and Families, he said: "It is only the most thoughtless politicians that would tell you that there would never be another child death.

"I think anyone who serves on our committee and anyone who knows anything about this, with the level of mental illness and alcohol abuse and drug abuse, there will be other child murders and child deaths and they will be horrific.

"And we will have to be aware that that will happen and react in the right way when those tragedies happen, find out what went wrong and how you minimise it.

"What I would suspect, and what my colleagues suspect, is that you will never be able to eradicate them, you will not."

Even in Denmark, which the committee visited to learn from its well-regarded child protection and care system, there was still a "fairly serious" problem.

He said it was important not to have a knee-jerk reaction following a case like Baby P.

Mr Sheerman told MPs: "There is sometimes a danger that all the resources, after a tragic death, are rushed into child protection and can actually starve the resources for the support of families and good quality social work."

In Denmark, Mr Sheerman said the committee found children taken into care were often housed in small residential units where their parents could still visit, whereas in the UK there was a greater reliance on foster families, adoption or larger care homes.

He said care for children should be "absolutely fantastic" but this could mean more pay and better training for social workers.

"If this is a litmus test of how civilised we are as a society, we have got to persuade our constituents that pay the money to make that level of sacrifice in this sector," he said.

Shadow children's minister Tim Loughton said that while extra money did go into training and childcare in Denmark the cost of housing children in a residential home was around £56,000 a year.

"That is actually half the average cost of a residential home per child in the UK. So it needn't actually be more expensive," he said.

Mr Sheerman said the care system "just seems so unpredictable".

He told MPs: "It shouldn't be up to luck the quality of care a child gets.

"It should be a first class service guaranteed anywhere in the country...I think that with vulnerable children of this kind, we must have that commitment."

He criticised the system for allowing 16-year-olds to immediately become independent, and suggested they should continue to receive care until they were 25.

Many middle class families had children who now remained at home until their late 20s or even 30s, he said.

"Why should children in care be kicked out into the outside world at 16 with very little support?

"Indeed some of them are put into the most vulnerable positions in our towns and cities."

He added: "I believe the care package for these vulnerable children, to whom we owe so much, should go right through to 25 in my view."

For Liberal Democrats, David Laws welcomed the committee's report.

He noted that judgments made on whether a young person should go into care differed across the UK.

Too many young people had been moved from home to home during their lifetimes, he added.

"We have to be able to think more imaginatively and we have to be able to look at the experiences of other countries to see whether we can provide settings that do give ... stability."

Mr Laws said he shared the "surprise and dissatisfaction" of Mr Sheerman at the lack of care available to young people after they leave the system at 16.

Keith Vaz, chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, raised the plight of youngsters who were the victim of human trafficking.

The Leicester East MP said between April 2008 and December 2008 a total of 957 children who were suspected victims of child trafficking were picked up by local authorities.

He called for an assurance that the Metropolitan Police's human trafficking unit would receive sufficient funding.

Mr Vaz said Prime Minister Gordon Brown had recently promised him the unit's money was being increased.

But he said: "The letters I have sent out indicate that nobody has received this money the Prime Minister thinks has been increased."

The Labour MP added: "I'm sure if the Prime Minister announced it at the despatch box it will happen, but it would be nice to know if it's not been received by the organisation, that it is in the post, on its way, about to be transferred, because this is crucial in our fight against human trafficking in this country."