Member

I was very pleased that, at the moment when the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, was making a point about local authority reorganisation, my noble friend Lady Taylor was sitting next to me. She reassured me that there is already such a provision in the plans for local authority reorganisation, and great care is being taken to make sure that while long-term reorganisation is going on, short-term transition and activities are also clearly being carried out and planned for. Although some people might always wish for a period of calm in which to make any change, I am afraid that, in my getting on for 40 years in a whole range of child-related public services, there has never been a period when everything has been calm and unchanging and you could therefore safely and easily introduce a change. So I am not convinced that waiting would best serve children or all the professionals working in these areas at this point.