Social Care Minister David Ashford has been forced to give assurances that Tynwald pledges made just weeks ago have not been forgotten.

He made the comments during last week’s second reading of the Children and Young Persons’ (Amendment) Bill, which will regulate procedures for how child deaths are reviewed.

The amendments in this bill do not relate to those promised in combined action plan for children debated by Tynwald last month, including the setting up in law off an independent reviewing officer to oversee safeguarding and a new governance and accountability structure for children’s services.

These will be in a different bill that will introduce further amendments to the Children and Young Persons’ Act of 2001.

Similarly the government has said some of the issues raised in a report on about accommodation for vulnerable young people, including corporate parenting, would be addressed via amendments to the current CYP Act.

The amendment bill presently before the House of Keys, does not deal with the issues discussed last month but Mr Ashford insisted a second amendment bill that would honour those pledges was at the drafting stage,

Lawrie Hooper (LibVannin, Ramsey) said that, in the government response to the children’s action plan, it had talked about two CYP amendment bills in the legislative programme, but only one had appeared and it did not include all the other commitments by government.

He asked: ’Is this phantom second bill real? Is the legislative programme inaccurate?’

As other MHKs admitted their confusion, an attempt by Policy and Reform Minister Chris Thomas to decipher the government’s legislative programme seemed to leave members, if anything, more bewildered.

Mr Thomas said: ’There are multiple parts for the government’s legislation programme.

’For instance, there are the public bills that will be introduced into the branches this year, behind that there are bills that are in drafting this year for introduction in subsequent years, and then there is even a medium-longer-term planning bill and that is the perfectly simple answer to the question that is being asked.’

He followed up that simple explanation by adding: ’Already government has an incredibly ambitious legislative programme of 34/35 Bills and things have got to be prioritised.’

Children’s champion Tim Baker (Ayre and Michael) asked for Mr Ashford to ’bring a bit of clarity after the intervention of the Minister for Policy and Reform, who does not always bring complete clarity around the timings of actions’.

Mr Baker was not the only one scratching his head, while Rob Callister (Onchan) was alarmed at talk of prioritisation.

Mr Ashford sought to clear things up.

The Bill currently before the Keys, which sets up the child death review panel, had been some 18 months in the planning, he said, while the combined action plan and report on accommodation for vulnerable young people, were both debated by Tynwald only a matter of weeks ago

So the next bill amending the Children and Young Persons Act was some way off.

Mr Ashford: ’I said that we would be doing the other changes through, again, an amendment to the Children and Young Persons Act, and they will come forward.

’Around about the drafting instruction stage at the moment is my understanding of where that particular piece of legislation is, and when that comes forward it will include everything that I pledged.’

Members granted a second reading to the current Children and Young Persons (Amendment) Bill.