Education, Children and Young People Committee 10 September 2025
When the care review concluded, we had identified 44 pieces of primary legislation, 19 pieces of secondary legislation and three international conventions that govern this thing that we call a care system. Since the conclusions landed and got cross-party support in the Parliament on 5 February 2020, there has been more welcome legislation. However, the risk at the moment is that a new layer of legislation will add more bureaucracy and reporting requirements on to an already exhausted workforce that is struggling with vacancies but which is committed and determined to keep the Promise. Five years on, I think that there is more support for keeping the Promise, as people understand their roles and responsibilities.
I have come to the conclusion that there are opportunities to streamline some of the reporting and reduce some of the bureaucracy through guidance and in other ways. My view is that, before we get to 2030, there will need to be a process of streamlining the legislation, because it is incredibly complicated.
In some ways, that shows a maturing of this Parliament in terms of what it does as a Parliament with the whole legislative landscape. So many pieces of legislation overlap with one another, and there are multiple pieces of legislation that refer to a single group of people. There is a risk associated with that, but I think that it could be mitigated by actions from officials.