Baroness Spielman (Con)

My Lords, for several reasons I support Amendment 37 from my noble friend Lady Barran. She and others have spoken about the enormous amount of change being imposed on the sector, both to current structures and prospectively with local government reorganisation and with many processes through these reforms. We have now heard from enough people here and outside to think that there is good reason to be concerned about poor decision-making arising from the blurring of early help, targeted support, work with children in need and child protection. There are potentially parallels with the SEND reforms a few years ago, when a new model was expected to simplify and reduce costs, and reduce numbers in the system, but has, sadly, done the opposite. On the points that have been made about the blurring of accountability, there is again reason to be concerned. I was part of a national implementation board after the care review and, in that process, I was struck, more than in most government processes I have been involved with, that many people seemed to find it hard to say what they really thought to Ministers. They perhaps pulled punches a little bit. It is incredibly important to make sure that there is a report that all can see and that is really transparent about how these reforms are working in practice.