As this article explains, Nadhim Zahawi was interviewed on Newsnight on Wednesday following an investigation by the programme into the placement of young people over the age of 16 into homes outside of the area from which they had originated. The challenge is that many of these young people have been placed into homes that are unregulated and whilst the owners of the homes have been assessed using DBS, that the local authority cannot tick all of the boxes needed to satisfy the rules. So Zahawi has chosen to blame the Directors of Children’s Services for failing to get it right. The reality is that when a family or a child needs to be transferred from their current home to a new home outside of the area, the Department responsible is faced with a number of challenges, many of which are entirely in the hands of the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Children and Families, or in the hands of his colleagues in his Government. The reality is that most Social Services Departments are under resourced and the rest are significantly under resourced. A second element is that local authorities have limited influence over what happens in other local authority areas. The third is a linked aspect to the first two in that to take care of children or indeed anyone who is located in an area outside of the local authority area demands high levels of resources and each of these people represent a tiny proportion of the whole cohort of the people being cared for. Thus it is asking for a huge response to take people who are already overstretched in their role to travel long distances to visit people who may not be at home or at college or wherever they should be at a given time. If Nadhim Zahawi had any credibility he would have started off by admitting that his Government has failed to fund social services adequately enough to deal with such complex challenges and indeed that has been the case for nearly a decade. He could then point out that one of the weaknesses of political parties dominating Central and Local Governments as they have done for many decades is that political conflict causes barriers to emerge when it comes to a range of public services. The barriers benefit no one apart from party campaigners looking for negative examples to blame on other parties and they create huge problems for many people who are affected directly or indirectly. For any Government to demand that Councils led by various parties including their own should work together in areas that are already short of resources without providing suitable infrastructure when the same group frequently demonstrates how incapable it is of working with others nationally, shows how much change is needed. The same lack of cooperation is demonstrated by Government departments failing to work in a coherent manner together because of the desire to retain their silo based approaches. It is clearly vital that Nadhim Zahawi revisits this issue and admits the failing of his party and their policies and sets out to do things in a more constructive manner.