Young Futures Hubs

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Thursday 24th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I hope the noble Viscount will look back at the responses that I gave, in considerably more detail than I will be able to do today, on a Question precisely about financial education about six weeks ago. The important point is that there are opportunities in the school curriculum already—in maths, citizenship and other areas—to develop financial literacy. It is of course also important that we find other ways and support them, and the answers that I gave previously outlined some of the partnerships we have and some of the ways we will use other resource to improve financial education for young people.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, can the Minister say a word about the role of the voluntary sector in these hubs? Often those are the organisations most trusted by young people. I take this opportunity to wish her a very well-earned break over recess.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. In thinking about the partnerships and the existing provision on which Young Futures hubs will be built, the voluntary sector will have a really important role to play—as she says, quite often reaching the parts that the statutory sector cannot reach. It is precisely those sorts of partnerships that will make Young Futures hubs effective. I take the opportunity to wish her a good break too, because I know we will spend several days together when we return in September.

Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement made by her right honourable friend earlier today. Of course, we welcome the Government’s focus on early intervention and support for children in their early years before they go to school. Clearly, some key elements of the Government’s strategy formed part of the previous Conservative Government’s approach, including the major expansion of free childcare and the development of family hubs. That is why, although I appreciate that the tone in the other place is a bit different from here, and I do not know whether or not the Minister felt uncomfortable at the tone of the Statement, but I thought it jarred slightly. This is an area where long term-policy is hugely important, so the continuity is welcome. I think it was Ronald Reagan who said there is nothing you cannot achieve if you do not mind who takes the credit.

We acknowledge that the Government plan to go further and, if they are successful, it will improve the start that many children get in life. That is something that we want to see across all Benches in this House. So my questions will focus on some of the detail and aim to get clarity from the Government on how they plan to deliver on their ambition.

The strategy document talks about a best start family hub in every local authority. The Minister talked about her pride in the Sure Start children’s centres, but I am not clear whether the hubs will be a physical location in every local authority and how they will differ from the current family hubs and Start for Life teams. Obviously, one of the key ingredients—supported by the evidence, which the Minister rightly referenced as a driver in the Government’s approach—is that they offered support to a much wider age range of children. The Minister referred to the joy mixed with a little fear in bringing home one’s child from hospital; in my experience, that joy mixed with a little fear can continue for some time. So it would be good to know what will happen to the support that was offered to older children, including those in care, under the Government’s new plans.

Will the Minister set out briefly for the House how the additional expenditure will work? How will the £500 million annually that the Government have talked about break down? How much will go to family hubs, how much will go to the others that the Government have referenced, and roughly how much will each local authority receive?

I thought one of the Statement’s harsher moments on the “pledge without a plan” line was about the family hubs. There are currently 641 hubs, so I do not think it is a pledge without a plan; it is actually hubs on the ground. I am assuming that those hubs will continue within the Government’s target of 1,000, so perhaps the Minister can confirm that and that there will be 360 new ones.

We welcome the aim in the plan to build stronger links between nurseries and reception classes, but I am not clear how the Government intend to recruit additional teachers for early years settings outside the 20 disadvantaged communities, where there will be an additional payment to teachers working there. How many teachers do the Government plan to recruit, and will that have any impact on their target for 6,500 more expert teachers in our secondary schools and colleges?

The Government have published the best start in life goals. Can the Minister say anything about the Government’s vision for how screens will be used by very young children? She is aware from our work on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that there are real concerns about the introduction and presence of screens in very young children’s lives. I wondered whether she could confirm that screens will not be used as part of the delivery of those goals.

Can the Minister also clarify the Government’s plans for SEND support in early years settings? Again, this is obviously a major workforce challenge, but the Minister knows that there are two elephants in the Chamber—if they would both fit. The first is perhaps a slightly smaller, but still quite large, elephant, which is the impact of national insurance contributions on the financial stability of our nursery providers. The Government’s decisions in relation to national insurance have left nurseries up and down the country close the brink financially, with 95% of providers being forced to increase childcare fees and one in 10 facing closure. I am not clear how the Government can deliver their objectives without addressing the fragility of nursery providers.

The largest elephant is the future of education, health and care plans. Around the House we recognise the need for reform of the SEND system, but parents are worried and need clarity. The Minister spoke about the importance of promises and Governments keeping their word. Will she confirm the Government’s intentions in relation to EHCPs?

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Secretary of State’s Statement. We welcome any measures to tackle child poverty and improve the early years support which families receive. Early years have for so long been seen as just an add-on, but they are actually the most crucial part of education, including the early identification of any problems or issues and early support for any problems that are identified.

The ambitious aims of the strategy must be matched with sufficient funding to ensure its effective implementation. The additional funding for early years specialists is welcome. But with schools currently finding efficiency savings from existing budgets—mention was made of national insurance rises—and the Government’s new early years funding contract, which has led to nurseries refusing new children, there is a real risk that the investment will simply paper over the cracks rather than deliver lasting improvements. Without a comprehensive review of funding across the entire early years system, many settings will continue to struggle to meet demand or retain experienced staff. My colleague in the other place, Tom Morrison, has campaigned tirelessly following the heartbreaking death of Gigi Meehan, who lost her life in the care of a nursery that failed to follow correct procedures. We welcome the announcement that Ofsted inspections will become more frequent in early years settings and nurseries.

Giving children the best start in life also means giving parents the flexibility and support to make the right decisions for themselves and their childcare arrangements. Currently, low rates of statutory maternity and paternity pay are not high enough to give parents a real choice, while the UK’s two-week statutory paternity leave lags behind far more advanced economies.

High-quality early years education is the best possible investment in the future and the most effective way of narrowing the gap between rich and poor children. As we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, the Early Years Alliance reported that one-third of providers are at risk of permanent closure in the next year, and four in 10 said they would reduce the number of funded places for three and four year-olds. Early years education provision is so important. It needs to have high-quality provision with well-trained staff. They need to see a career strategy, training and all staff having or working towards an early years qualification.

Childminders are a valued part of the early years system. Will the Minister consider replacing the three different current registration processes with a single childcare register? Given the staffing crisis in early years education, what assurances can the Minister offer that there will be sufficient qualified professionals to staff 1,000 hubs by 2028?

Best start family hubs will make a real difference to children and families. The new investment will take the total number, as we have heard, to around 1,000 by 2028. It will be supported, as we have heard, by the new digital family hub to be launched by the National Health Service. However, does the Minister think that we need to consider measures to ensure that the most disadvantaged families actually access the services offered by these hubs?

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much support what the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, has said, as the Minister will know from my numerous amendments later in the Bill, which I look forward to discussing with officials.

I have three amendments in this group. Amendment 204 inquires after the process in subsection (3) describing condition A. I hope that the Minister can describe today what the Government’s reasoning is in making this change. When it comes to what the process is going to be and whether there is the capability in system to do it, I am happy to leave that to discussions with officials.

Amendment 210 questions the meaning of “without undue delay”. If the hereditary Peers Bill was amended to say that we were leaving without undue delay, I would regard that as a plus. Such phrases in the mouths of government tend to mean quite a long time. I would have thought that in these circumstances, where the education of a child is concerned, something tighter might be advisable.

Amendment 221 says that, if this is what it looks like, the parent really needs access to a tribunal. If a local authority is on song and doing things quickly and it all goes smoothly and fairly, fine, but there are a lot of local authorities—my noble friend Lord Wei named the most notoriously worst of them—where this is not the case, often just temporarily because of staff changes or short-staffing. In those circumstances, the parent needs some recourse, because it is the child that matters.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group. Amendment 204 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Lucas would narrow the scope of local authority powers to withhold consent to home education, in this case to exclude children in special schools. The driver of this—I looked at the Explanatory Notes but could not see anything that explains why special schools are all included—is that we seem to be treating parents of children with special needs in the same way as parents where there is an active investigation from children’s services and that feels disproportionate. There is also a risk of a conflict of interest where home education could be discouraged if the costs of providing therapeutic support to a child might be higher in that setting than in a special school, even if that was in the child’s best interests.

My Amendment 219 is a sort of common-sense amendment on an issue that I hope the Minister can clarify at the Dispatch Box. It seeks clarification that, if a local authority was to refuse consent to a parent to educate their child at home, it would need to provide the parents or carers with a statement explaining the reasons why, including the costs and benefits to the child. I assume that this would be good practice anyway, but if the noble Baroness can confirm that, that would be helpful.

I am sympathetic to the clarity that Amendment 210 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lucas would bring in terms of timings, but I think that Amendment 215A would be unduly onerous for local authorities. The noble Lord, Lord Hacking, expressed concerns about the complexity of Clause 30. I am with him in that I think there is work to be done on Clause 30. He also focused on Clause 31 in his remarks, but I will cover those points in the next group.

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, I am sorry; I missed my turn to jump up. I wanted to make two remarks. First, the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, has drawn the big picture of a range of issues that concern us all and I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, that we can hopefully work through those in meetings or in Committee in a bit of detail. There are many points to come back to on that.

The one that I want to pick up on is Amendment 221, from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and others, on the right of appeal. It goes back to a point that I made earlier: the relationship between local authorities and home-educating parents is the vital one in all of this. In the end, we are providing the legislative framework within which that will operate. At a time when there is clearly a lot of suspicion, confusion and so on, a right of appeal will help to deal with that situation. It seems common sense to have a right of appeal to a tribunal.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 206. My concern here is that Section 47 has a very broad class of orders. Some are extremely serious and some, frankly, are irrelevant to whether someone should be concerned about a child being home educated. The amendment is to get some sense, which I am very happy to leave to further discussions, of how one deals, for instance, with spurious complaints from a former abusive parent who just wants to mess up the other parent’s life.

The overall statistics show that home-educated children are twice as likely to be referred to children’s social services, yet are much less likely to have a child protection plan result from that referral. There is a prejudice towards referring children who are home educated or whose parents are thinking of home educating them. We need to understand that in order to provide some circumstances that allow officials in local authorities to feel comfortable about taking informed professional decisions, rather than feeling vulnerable doing anything other than refusing. I look forward to discussing this at a later opportunity. I beg to move.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 207. Ever the optimist, I hope the Government will take it seriously and bring it back on Report with a “g” in front of it.

The amendment has two parts: the first extends the right of a local authority to withhold consent to home education for a child or their family who is in receipt of services under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989; the second extends this to children who have ever been classified as a child in need of protection under Section 47 of the Act. To be clear, both parts would give local authorities just the discretion to withhold consent on a case-by-case basis. Clearly, I am not proposing a blanket refusal, but, as drafted, the Government’s position is not altogether clear, although I suspect that the noble Baroness will tell me that my drafting is not altogether clear either.

All children who are in special schools would now be within scope, as we debated in the earlier group, of the local authority’s right to withhold consent, but not those under Section 17 where there are safeguarding or neglect concerns. That just feels the wrong way round in terms of priorities. I appreciate that my drafting could focus more narrowly on those children defined under Section 17 of the Act to focus on safeguarding and neglect, but it is curious not to focus on those children. Unlike my noble friends, I do not think it is easy to get either Section 47 or Section 17 status and I worry that the bar is too high with just the current Section 47.

On the inclusion of children who have ever been subject to a Section 47 child protection plan, we talked earlier about the tragic case of Sara Sharif. The Minister in the other place said that

“we cannot say for sure what might have made a difference, but we will learn lessons from the future … local child safeguarding practice review”.—[Official Report, Commons, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee, 30/1/25; col. 297.]

I think I am right in saying that Sara Sharif had been put on the child protection register at birth. She came off the register and, as we know, was removed from school and died, tragically. Without the changes in my amendment, the one thing we can be sure of is that the proposed law as drafted would not have made any difference to her.

I know that both Ministers on the Front Bench want to get this right; I am just trying to state the reality that if a child has ever been considered to be vulnerable enough to be subject not to a Section 47 investigation but to a child protection plan at any point in their short life then that is a massive red flag that needs to be removed before consenting for them to be educated at home. I respect the probing Amendments 205 and 206 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lucas, but I support the Government’s approach to giving local authorities the power to withhold consent in cases involving child protection.

[Lord Frost (Con)]

I want to underline the points made by my noble friend Lord Lucas on Amendments 205 and 206, which I have also put my name to. Section 47 is obviously a very difficult area for the reasons the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, just underlined, and it obviously needs to be taken seriously. At the same time, as my noble friend Lord Lucas said, a debate needs to be had about where we are drawing the borderline, whether there are areas where Section 47 need not be an automatic barrier to home education, whether there needs to be a further process, or whether the process is different in some cases compared with to others. At the moment, it is a very broad and straightforward yes or no test. As we know, as has been said and no doubt will be said again, there is evidence that this Section 47 process can be hijacked in certain circumstances and in certain kinds of relationships just to disrupt, cause trouble or make life more difficult, so we have to be sensitive to that.

I certainly think that, again, it is something perhaps better explored in these famous August discussions than necessarily in the detail now, but it is important not to take a completely black and white view on this. I will not labour the point, but I also think it underlines the need to have a proper appeal process and tribunal to take the sensitivities of the particular cases properly into account.

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[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

In group 4, we have an interesting combination of some amendments suggesting that the Government are going too far in their proposals around the hurdle for having to seek consent to home-educate and others suggesting that they are not going far enough. I will try to find a way through the centre of this, because what they all have in common is seeking to explore the rationale for the local authority to have to provide consent before a parent can withdraw a child from school to home-educate—in this case, where the child is subject to a child protection inquiry

I turn to Amendments 205 and 206. Just to be clear, the Government believe that the consent measure with respect to Section 47 inquiries provides an important but proportionate safety net for children subject to child protection inquiries and plans. To clarify something that the noble Lord, Lord Frost, said and to reiterate this, the consent provisions are not an automatic bar to these parents home-educating. It could well be the case that, notwithstanding the fact that a child was subject to Section 47 inquiries or even under a child protection plan, the local authority felt it was appropriate for, or was willing to give consent for, that child to be home-educated. To reiterate what I said, it is a requirement for the local authority to consider the circumstances of that child, given that they have come under the auspices of children’s social care through Section 47 of the Children Act. Our view is that this should be done as part of its wider decision-making on whether a child needs protection and the planning that follows that.

There is some suggestion, which I really disagree with, that local authorities would find it easy to jump to a Section 47 inquiry simply to prevent a parent being able to home-educate their child. There are a lot of consequences to undertaking a Section 47 inquiry. I would find it hard to understand why a local authority would be so keen to prevent a parent home-educating if there were no reasons to stop them or want to get itself into the burdens around a Section 47 inquiry if it did not think it was important to do that. Of course, it is not just what a local authority believes about the circumstances of a child. For a child to be the subject of a Section 47 inquiry, they will have already hit a threshold of actual or likely significant harm. That is a high threshold. An inquiry should certainly not be initiated purely because a parent has decided to home-educate.

I note the understandable concern of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, about how this measure could be used in an abusive relationship, where false or malicious allegations regarding the safety of a child, for example, might be made to continue to control or harass an individual. The sad reality, of course, is that it is not only with respect to issues about home education that that might happen. It could happen, and does happen, in many circumstances where local authorities are making decisions about children. For that reason, we are confident that this would not be something unusual or unheard of for local authorities, and that they do have robust policies and processes in place to consider information and evidence about child protection concerns, including recognising and handling malicious allegations. Perhaps the noble Lord could be provided with some more examples of how local authorities would handle this type of circumstance, to provide some reassurance. Given that a child will be the subject of a Section 47 inquiry only where there is actual or likely significant harm, it is reasonable that checks should be undertaken before such a child can be removed from school for home education.

Amendment 207, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, focuses on bringing all children receiving support and services under Section 17 of the Children Act, known as “children in need”, and any child who has ever been the subject of a child protection plan in the past into the scope of the consent measure. We share her commitment to ensuring that all children are protected from harm, and recognise that, while home education is not an inherent safeguarding risk, it can of course mean that some children could slip under the radar. However, we believe that this amendment would be disproportionate. “Children in need” is a very broad group of children and many will receive services which are nothing to do with safeguarding concerns or particular educational needs.

I think the noble Baroness was suggesting that there might be ways in which it would be possible to have a definition that looked at different elements of Section 17 concerns, and perhaps I can come back to her on that point. I think one of her reasons for suggesting it is that she understands, of course, that, for example, all children with disabilities are automatically included under Section 17. We certainly would not want to suggest here that any child with disabilities whose parents wanted to home-educate them would necessarily need to seek consent. I also draw her attention to the deliverability of a measure that includes both children in need and children subject to child protection activity in the consent measure.

In the year to the end of March 2024, there were 399,500 children in need, compared with 224,520 child protection inquiries and 49,900 children on child protection plans. As noble Lords can see, it would be both disproportionate and overly burdensome on local authorities to make a consent decision for every parent who wished to withdraw their child from school for home education where that child is receiving help under Section 17: it would be roughly a doubling of the potential number of children who might need it.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

From memory, are there not 400-and-something thousand children with an EHCP who will be within the kind of consent framework? Obviously, the vast majority of the 400,000 children who are under Section 17 are not going to be home-educated. I take the noble Baroness’s point; I am just trying to say that we have one group that is in and another group, where we suspect potential abuse or neglect, that is out. That just feels like an odd split.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I recognise that point. On the special school point, it is not sufficient to have an EHCP to need consent to withdraw your child to home-educate; it is if they are in a special school. The rationale there is that you are changing their schooling and removing them, by definition, from something that contains very specific levels of support, otherwise it would not be a special school. It is the consideration of that impact that is the reasoning behind the special school intention here.

So we are confident that the consent measure, as drafted, is focused on the right groups of children and that it is proportionate. I hope that I have demonstrated the proportionality of this measure and that it is part of a wider set of activities that we have discussed previously on the Bill, about strengthening requirements to protect children at the earliest opportunity. I hope therefore that noble Lords will not press their amendments.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Even more briefly, I did not hear the Minister’s response in relation to children who have been on a child protection plan. Could she be very kind and write to me, in the interests of time, because that is also extremely important?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Yes, I recognise that. There are still questions about burden there, but I understand the noble Baroness’s point, and particularly her reference to the Sara Sharif case. On that case, we are still awaiting the detailed review from the safeguarding panel in order to be able to determine the causes there, but I understand her point and will write to her about that specific group of children.

On that basis, I hope noble Lords will feel able to withdraw or not move their amendments.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much support what my noble friend said about young carers. We ought to be much better at collecting information on what is going on with young carers. The whole business of collecting information is getting easier with AI. The government AI team is a sight to be seen. I have not, in government, come across such an enthusiastic and effective team. I very much hope that the Department for Education will make contact and make use of the blockers. When you are faced with a difficult problem and need to find a way of collecting data that does not put a burden on the organisations that are having to do that data collection, and it is diverse and complicated, AI is a really good approach. I urge the Government to help look after young carers by taking that step.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, there is a large number of probing amendments in this group and, in the interests of making progress, I will not comment on most of them. I am very sympathetic to the intent behind Amendment 209 in the name of my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham. I would hope very much that a child who is a young carer would be supported to stay in school, given the obvious risk that their education would suffer and conflict with the care needs of their parent if at home, but I have no further comments on the other amendments in this group.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to the amendments in group 5. These amendments mainly concern the requirement to seek consent should a parent wish to withdraw their child from school in particular circumstances. Just to reiterate, we recognise that most home-educating families provide safe and suitable education in the best interests of their children. The consent measure applies only to specific groups of children—where there are child protection concerns or the child has a special school placement. We are confident that this is a proportionate response to help to ensure that these children’s needs are met and are protected.

With respect to the detail in the amendments, I turn first to Amendment 208, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, which would remove the requirement for a school to notify the local authority responsible for the child if that is different from the local authority where the school is located when a parent intends to withdraw the child to home educate. To be clear, schools will hold the child’s address; therefore, they will know which local authorities to notify. Working Together to Safeguard Children, the statutory safeguarding guidance, is clear that schools should be included in child protection activity and planning, and therefore should also be aware of which local authorities should be contacted. It is crucial that schools retain the responsibility to verify whether consent is needed for home education. Without this, children in scope of the consent process could be mistakenly removed from school rolls without permission, or the consent decision could be delayed.

Turning to Amendment 209, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young, which has rightly received the most attention in this group of amendments and would require a carer’s needs assessment before the child is withdrawn from school, I commend the noble Lord on championing the needs of young carers. To be clear, I certainly do not demur from his overarching argument—and that of other noble Lords, such as my noble friend Lord Watson—that young carers are in need of specific attention, care and consideration from local authorities because of the enormously difficult position they find themselves in.

The local authority will have ample opportunity to fully consider the child’s circumstances as part of the consent decision-making process. In fact, that is the whole point of having that process. Of course, under Section 436C(2), which we touched on in, I think, the group before last, local authorities will also be able—be expected, in fact, I would suggest—in the case where a child is a young carer and is being educated at home, to record and keep relevant information about that child. If they were being home educated, the fact that they were a carer would be an important part of the information that a local authority should record about them, precisely in order to make sure that they are getting the support that they need.

The Children Act 1989 already provides robust safeguarding measures for young carers, who may be recognised as children in need, ensuring that their support needs are assessed by their local authority. Of course, we will ensure that our reforms to both education and children’s social care work for all disadvantaged children and young people, including young carers.

I think it was interesting that some people, in responding to this amendment, were arguing that being a young carer should not be a reason why a child could not be home educated, and others were arguing that it would be better for that child to remain in school, with support, and be able to learn without the relentless role, as I am sure it is, of being a carer. I think this suggests that there are probably differing circumstances for young carers, and it reinforces the general point that local authorities should take seriously their responsibilities to fully consider the needs of young carers and to ensure that their support needs are being assessed.

Turning to Amendments 216 and 217—

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[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, the idea that the best interests of the child would be judged by the state is one that is reasonable under certain circumstances. It comes back to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. Does it have enough resources to do this? Does it have the structure? If the Minister could tell us, now or in a letter, what criteria, what resources, will be put forward, everybody would be a little bit more comfortable with what is happening here. But I am afraid that the fact of the matter on special educational needs is that it is the parent who often struggles to get the help they need. We all know why—we have all been through the system and we understand it—I just want to know the process by which we get there. If we get one that sounds reasonable, I am happier.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friends and the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, have made a powerful case for the point of principle that underpins this group of amendments. I confess to agreeing with them only in part. The point of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, that there may be a muddle in the drafting, may be a fair one because of the discussion we had earlier on my Amendment 204 about the automatic inclusion of children in special schools within the framework of local authority consent. So I am sympathetic to the points my noble friends and the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, make on children in special schools and the idea that the state knows what is best for them.

Where I am not sympathetic—I respect their opinion and I think they have a point—it is because, on balance, when a child is subject to a child protection plan or a child protection investigation, we have already established that it is either confirmed that the child is at risk of significant harm or there are serious concerns that the child could be at risk of serious harm. Whether the “best interest” is the best way of framing it, I do not know, but I think that at that point and for that group of children—

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

The amendment I have proposed uses almost the same words as those the noble Baroness has just used: rather than using the phrase “in the child’s best interest”, why not refer to being at risk, and abuse, as found by the tribunal? It seems much clearer to do it that way, and I wonder whether she would agree.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord is right and I am grateful to him for again drawing my attention and that of the Committee to his drafting. I guess one would then need to consider the group of children in special schools, because I would be surprised if the noble Lord’s drafting applied to so many of them.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

At the heart of this group of amendments is the concern about the use and definition of the expression “best interest of the child”.

The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and others suggested that the use of the “best interests” ground in Clause 30 is a fundamental change to parents’ rights. I reiterate the quite narrow scope of the use of “best interests” in this clause. Remember that what we are dealing with here is not the fundamental decision about whether a parent has the right to remove their child from a school to educate them at home. They have that right, unless some very specific circumstances are met—when they may still have the right, but we introduce a process for the local authority to consent to whether it is appropriate for that to happen. I do not think I need to run through once again that narrow category of children and circumstances where, as we are proposing here, the local authority should be enabled at least to consider the issue of whether, in those circumstances, it is appropriate for the child to be removed from school.

I know that some noble Lords do not believe that there should be any need for consent and therefore do not believe that the criteria that the Government have chosen of Section 47 inquiries, child protection plans or special schools are appropriate. I accept that but, if you do have a consent system—and there is quite a lot of support for the idea that an additional stage is appropriate for children in these circumstances—you then need to decide the criteria for the local authority’s decision-making. New subsection (6)(b) makes it clear what those criteria should be in these very specific circumstances.

It does not feel unreasonable to me that those criteria should be what the local authority believes to be the best interests of the child. We can assume that the parents believe in the best interests of their child, but in these very specific circumstances, because of the nature of the children, we think the child’s rights might override the view of their parents.

So the first criterion is what is in the child’s best interests; the second is whether or not there are suitable arrangements made for the child to receive education, other than at school. I understand that some noble Lords do not believe that those are the right criteria, but I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that this is somehow a fundamental change in the rights of parents. We recognise that most parents have their children’s best interests at heart and tirelessly advocate for them, often in difficult circumstances. That should be the basis on which parents are able to make decisions, in most circumstances, about whether or not their children are removed from school to be educated otherwise.

However, there are situations where a child could receive a suitable education at home but it is not in their best interests to do so—for example, if there are concerns that the child is being exposed to domestic abuse or extremism. In those cases, the school can act as a protective factor that enables issues to be escalated quickly.

I hope that my argument about the reason for the choice of those criteria also covers the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. He recommends that a local authority should automatically refuse consent for any child where the local authority has concluded that they are suffering or likely to suffer significant harm following a child protection inquiry, but child protection is complex and practitioners must gather a range of information and evidence from multiagency partners and others who work with the child and their family, and children can experience harm from both inside and outside the home. Therefore, it would not be appropriate to prohibit all such children from being removed from school for home education.

The consent measure rightly requires the local authority to consider the individual circumstances of each child. It is probably worth reminding ourselves that the consent measure is not preventing parents in these circumstances from home-educating; it is simply saying that the local authority should consider whether that is appropriate and use the two criteria that have been set out in the Bill.

Amendment 212, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wei—

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[Lord Wei (Con)]

I can fully appreciate that, given the scope here, if there was a safeguarding concern then one might want to pursue the route the Minister is talking about as the officer in question is trying to make that decision. However, the way that this is worded, even if the parents or family subject to Section 47 have found a way to provide suitable education, gives the officer the room to say, “I am concerned about the safety of the child”, when it is more that they do not like the education being provided.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think I might speak for others in the Committee in saying that this level of detail could be better dealt with face to face with officials, which would allow us to do another group before the House rises.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Amendment 212, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, seeks to raise the threshold for the local authority to refuse consent to home-educate. This would mean that, if a parent was concerned that their child was being harmed by attending their current school, the local authority would be unable to refuse consent unless it provided evidence of a standard sufficient to satisfy a court that withdrawal would result in greater harm.

Let me be clear that parents’ concerns regarding bullying or their child’s mental health are serious, and these issues should be discussed with the school and local authority. I can quite understand why parents might want to remove their child from school in those circumstances.

However, it is important to remember that the requirement for local authorities to consent to home education relates to a specific set of children who are subject to a child protection plan or inquiry or who are in a special school. This measure is intended to ensure that the local authority takes a considered, proportionate and informed decision for these groups. Eligible children should not be withdrawn from school for home education if it is not in their best interests or if education outside school is not going to be suitable. I want to be clear that local authorities must evidence their decision-making, but requiring it to the degree that the amendment suggests is totally impractical. Local authorities are well placed to make this best interests and suitability judgment. They possess the required information and have access to multi-agency expertise as part of their child protection and education duties, and parents’ views will be taken into account by local authorities as part of their decision-making process.

Amendment 215, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, seeks to ensure that a refusal to grant consent to home-educate is taken against the background of the characteristics of the school that the child might attend. Just to be clear, the consent process is not intended to keep children in a specific school or to keep children in a school that is not right for them. Parents remain free to remove their child from one school to attend a different school that they believe can better support their child’s needs, for example. I hope that assures the noble Lord that there is no intention that a child could or should be forced to remain in a specific school, so the need to compare different schools is unnecessary. I hope noble Lords feel that I have provided sufficient assurance and that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, will withdraw his amendment.

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[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Wei, on all these amendments, but particularly on his Amendment 423. At an earlier stage in these proceedings, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, who is no longer in his place on the Benches, was very critical of home-schooling, alleging that there were poor results in home-schooling. Anything that home-schoolers can do in order to show the success of their home-schooling is to be encouraged. For that reason, I particularly support Amendment 423.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, all the amendments in this group in the name of my noble friend Lord Wei seek to find exemptions to the basic principle that there should be a register of children not in school; therefore, I cannot support these. First, the point of the register is to ensure that the local authority knows which children are not in school, and these amendments would undermine that. Secondly, and importantly, it allows home-educating parents to access support where they need it. I hope we might spend a bit more time on that in future groups. Finally, these amendments make an assumption that, in these conditions, it may be preferable to educate the child at home, and this could well be right, but, in my opinion, it remains reasonable and proportionate to record which children are not in school.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I think I have to correct myself, because I have said, on behalf of home-schooling mothers, that we favour the registry. I said that two years ago and during the Schools Bill of 2022. I did not comprehend that these amendments by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, are anti-register. I therefore cannot remain loyal to what I have just said in support of them, because I think the register is important, but Amendment 423 still stands good and I continue to support it.

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[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I am so sorry to intervene on my noble friend again but, having introduced the group, he had a chance to make the points he needs to make. I think now is the time to hear from the Minister.

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Hacking for the clarification that he has just made, and the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for a very clear explanation of why she is not supporting these amendments. As a former lead member for children’s services for the second-largest metropolitan authority in the country, I find it very difficult to recognise some of the comments that have been made tonight, and I emphasise the dedication and hard work of so many people whose primary, indeed sole objective is to make sure that all children in this country are safe from harm. It is so important to reference that as we go through.

I am not sure how many more times Ministers need to stress that there is total recognition of how many parents are out there working extremely hard to provide a suitable education when educating their children otherwise than at school. We have heard examples of the successes of so many of them, and we recognise that many of those children are thriving.

I emphasise that parents have no reason to fear the prospect of having to include key information on local authority children not in school registers. This information is vital to help local authorities discharge existing responsibilities and ensure that the education children receive is suitable and safe. As we have heard, without the registers, too many children and young people are at risk of falling through the gaps.

I will respond briefly to the amendments in this group, which are all tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wei. They suggests exemptions for why a child’s information should not be included on a local authority’s children not in school register.

Amendment 254 seeks to ensure that, if a child does not fit the eligibility criteria, their parents would not be required to provide any information. This is unnecessary. If a child is not eligible to be registered, their parents would not be under the duty to provide information.

Amendments 230, 323, 324 and 326 seek to limit which children must be registered on a local authority children not in school register. A key objective of the registers is to aid local authorities in their existing duty to identify, as far as it is possible to do so, all children in their areas who are not registered pupils in school and are not receiving a suitable education. These amendments would prevent this.

Amendment 230 would exempt children if the parent is able to provide a sworn affidavit from an experienced home educator that the home education being provided is suitable, if the parent has arranged for the child to sit at least three national qualifications, or if the child is enrolled in certain educational provision. None of these proposed reasons for exemption would give a local authority enough assurance that the education being provided is suitable for an individual child.

Amendment 323 would exempt children who are temporarily residing in the UK with a permanent residence elsewhere. Where a child is living in the local authority’s area, even if only for a short time, the local authority has education and safeguarding duties towards the child.

I am particularly disappointed to see Amendments 324 and 326, where the noble Lord suggests exempting asylum-seeking families and families affected by war, natural disaster or economic collapse from registers. These are some of the very children who registers will most benefit. Where local authorities are aware of these children, they can offer support to ensure that their education continues undisrupted. The registers would simply not work if the exemptions that the noble Lord proposes were to apply.

Amendment 325 would enable children aged 14 or over to be exempt from being included on the register if they register as self-directed learners. Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 is clear: it is the responsibility of the parents to secure a suitable education for their child. Parents, not children, must remain accountable for this. As we have heard, most parents are fulfilling this duty, but registers will be a crucial tool in identifying where this is not the case so that these children can be supported into suitable education.

Finally in this group, Amendment 423 seeks to allow parents to discharge their duty to provide suitable education when their child is providing services, mentoring or trade-related activities. The Government’s guidance on home education for local authorities and parents sets out that a parent must provide their child with a full-time, efficient, suitable education. Parents therefore have the flexibility to educate their child in whatever manner they deem best for their child, provided it is suitable. This may be able to be achieved through school-type work or through practical education, such as the noble Lord mentioned, depending on the needs of the child. For the reasons I have outlined, namely that exemption of any eligible child for inclusion in the registers would mean that children who may be in receipt of unsuitable education fall through the gaps, I kindly ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I think there are two things on which all in this Chamber can agree. First, school uniforms are important. I think the phrase used by my noble friend Lord Mohammed was that they give confidence to learning, and I think they give a sense of identity to young people. That is the first thing that we can all agree on.

Secondly, we can all agree that we have to ensure that school uniforms are affordable and that parents of children from poorer families do not feel discriminated against. I want to give two practical experiences. I should declare an interest as a governor of the King’s Leadership Academy, Wavertree.

My first practical example is that, when I was a deputy head teacher, the school governors did not believe in a school uniform. That was not a particularly good decision, because young people from well-off families would wear the latest trainers and show off the latest T-shirts, designer gear and so on.

My second example is my own daughter. She went to King David High School and had a very simple uniform of a sweatshirt, a polo shirt and a grey skirt. A new head came along, who was anxious to make the school stand out, and the uniform changed to a kilt, a blue blouse, a V-neck pullover with the school colours in the V-neck, a blazer with a badge and a tie. The cost went through the roof, so that was clearly stupid.

If you want to deal with this issue, the current proposals from the Government are a bit of a dog’s dinner—or Eton mess might be a better phrase. I just do not see how it is going to work. My first question to the Minister is: what about the poor old book bag? In my school, infants carry their little, green, nylon, £3.20 book bags and it means so much to those children; they encourage them to value books and to read. That would be included as one of the branded items and presumably would go. Primary and infant heads would have to decide whether the book bag is going on the altar of correctness in terms of uniform.

My second concern is that this is just not workable. If a school decides that it wants other branded items, it can write to parents and say, “This is the law of the land but, if you want additional branded items, it is up to you”. Is the Minister going to enforce this and say to parents, “No, you cannot have this additional item”? Of course they are not.

Sport was mentioned. You see teams playing in the dominant school colour. Let us say that it is red; they will play their football, rugby, hockey, lacrosse matches or whatever wearing red. What happens if they turn up for a match and both schools have the same colour red? They have to notify teams beforehand which colour to wear, which is absolutely nonsensical. If you want pride in schools, you will also want pride in sport. I do not see this happening at all.

If you really want to deal with this issue, two things should happen. My noble friend Lord Mohammed talked about the Sheffield situation. I think that it was either the Macmillan Government or the Wilson Government that brought in school uniform grants, by which every local authority could provide money for families in poorer circumstances. This was not just in Sheffield; in Liverpool, Birmingham or elsewhere, this happened. But my noble friend’s two points are absolutely right: it is not about trying to limit the number of items, but about trying to get the costs correct. If the Government were serious about this, they would reduce VAT on clothing and they might look at an acceptable level of expenditure.

The noble Lord, Lord Agnew, was right to talk about the “magic three”. Imagine the Government saying, “We want to do something about this but how can we do it?” The civil servants and Government would get together and say, “We don’t want to go back to grants because the budget would go through the roof. We want to keep VAT; if we go down that route, there will be requests for other items to be excluded. I have an idea: why not limit the number of items that can be branded?” That is not the way it works; it will just not happen in the future.

This is totally different, but I am reminded of when in the Blair Government there was talk of school assemblies. The Government of the day said that every school had to have a collective act of worship every day and that it had to be mainly Christian. You go into schools today and that does not happen because it is totally unworkable, as people come from different circumstances and faiths. I am giving that example to the Minister to show that legislation has to work—and collective worship did not work in schools. That is the point I am trying to make.

If this is carried, it just will not happen. If we really want to make a saving for children and families, we have to support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 195A, 195B, 198 and 199, and Amendment 199ZA, from my noble friend Lady Sater, which I have signed. We all recognise that the Government committed in their manifesto to bringing down the cost of school uniform by limiting the number of branded items of uniform and PE kit that schools require. I wonder whether those who wrote the manifesto might now, having listened to this debate, wish that they had phrased it slightly differently and just stopped at committing to bringing down the cost of school uniforms full stop.

The amendments in this group, as we have heard, all seek to find ways to give schools more discretion and flexibility in the uniform they require pupils to wear, particularly regarding branded items, while meeting the Government’s goal of keeping costs as low as possible. As we have heard, Amendments 202A and 202B seek to limit the environmental damage from branded uniforms.

We have heard, very eloquently, from across the Committee, about the value of uniform, the sense of community it brings, the safety it provides for children travelling to and from school, the fact that it saves parents money and encourages participation in sport, and—a new one to add to my list that appeals to me a lot—the subtle rebellion point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton.

The Government’s approach raises a number of questions, particularly given the recent Private Member’s Bill, now an Act, passed under the last Government and sponsored in this House by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, who is not in her place, and the fact that, as my noble friend Lord Agnew said, the current guidance states:

“Schools should keep the use of branded items to a minimum … ensure that second-hand uniforms are available”


and avoid using items that are available only from a single supplier. The guidance is very clear:

“Parents should not have to think about the cost of a school uniform when choosing which school(s) to apply for. Therefore, schools need to ensure that their uniforms are affordable”.


A real merit of the current guidance is that it talks about the cost of the total uniform and not just the branded items, because that is what parents pay for. As we have heard, the cost of branded items has fallen significantly in real terms in recent years.

Furthermore, the definition of “school uniform” in the Bill is very broad. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, made the case for the nylon school bag—I have several of my children’s in cupboards at home, fondly full of school reports. It also includes any clothing required for extracurricular activity, including items without a logo but which are only available from “particular suppliers” and have a “distinctive characteristic” such as its “colour, design” or “fabric”. We know from the Answer to a Written Question that, based on the department’s Cost of School Uniforms Survey 2023, which surveyed parents, an estimated one-third of primary schools and seven in 10 secondary schools will have to remove compulsory branded items from their uniforms to comply with the proposed legislation. The impact of the Government’s changes will be felt far and wide but not, it appears, in reduced costs to parents, which is rightly the Government’s objective. Given all the recent legislation and guidance, it is hard to see how this is the best use of time for school leaders, governors and trustees.

Amendment 200, in the name of my noble friend Lord Agnew, would achieve two goals. First, like the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, it approaches the issue from the perspective of cost, rather than being prescriptive about the number of branded items a school is allowed to require its pupils to wear. Secondly, it addresses the issue of responsibility for the cost of school uniform and makes it absolutely clear that this should rest with the members in an academy trust and the local authority for a maintained school, rather than with the Secretary of State. Both these points are important; cost is at the heart of the issue, but so too is the need to keep responsibilities clear and delegated to the responsible bodies, rather than centralised. It is extraordinary to imagine that the Secretary of State has any time to worry about book bags and ties. That is why, although I agree with the principle behind Amendment 195, I believe that my noble friend’s amendment is stronger as it captures both points.

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[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to the amendments in group one. Just to be clear, the Government believe that uniforms have an important role to play in our schools, for many of the reasons that noble Lords have outlined, but we are committed to cutting the cost of school uniforms for families. This is why we have chosen to support families by limiting in this Bill the number of branded items that schools can require pupils to have. This will enable parents to buy more items from a range of retailers, including high street retailers, allowing them the flexibility to make spending decisions that suit their circumstances.

On Amendment 195 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, we want to ensure that any action we take provides schools and parents with clarity and offers parents choice in how to manage the costs of school uniforms. Ensuring that parents can buy more items from a range of retailers gives them that flexibility. The argument has been made that a cost cap is simpler than the Government’s proposals. I cannot see that argument. A cost cap would mean that schools would have to review uniform policies annually, as the noble Lord said, to ensure that they remained within the cap. It could mean schools changing their uniforms more frequently, thereby increasing overall costs and restricting choice for parents. A cost cap would be complex for schools and suppliers to administer, and the need to meet a particular price for items could also increase a school’s reliance on specific suppliers, whereas a competitive market benefits all parties, allowing parents to take advantage of lower prices, better-quality goods and services, new and innovative products, and greater choice.

Responding to the points made about the school uniform grant, we recognise that parents are struggling with the cost of uniforms—that is why we are bringing forward these provisions—and that in England some local authorities provide discretionary grants to help with buying school uniforms in cases of financial hardship. We are facing difficult choices about how we best support families. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, in a rather dismissive comment about government officials, which has been a bit of a regrettable theme this afternoon, suggested that it was somehow unreasonable of the Government to be considering the cost of the proposals they are bringing forward. A national grant, even if targeted to those most in need, would be a considerable commitment in the current financial climate, so, rather than subsidising expensive uniforms through a grant, this Government have chosen to reduce the cost of uniforms for all parents through these provisions.

On Amendments 195A and 195B in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, as previously mentioned, it is a key priority of these provisions that we provide clarity on what the measure means for parents. These amendments could create confusion for parents about whether a given branded item of uniform would be captured within the statutory limit, depending on how it was acquired. There is also a risk that schools may subsequently attempt to charge parents for expensive replacements if branded items provided for free are lost or damaged. Furthermore, allowing schools to set different uniform policies depending on the school’s ability to provide or source branded items for free could also risk increasing inequalities between schools and pupils.

Amendments 196 and 197 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, seek to increase the number of items that secondary and middle schools can require from three to five, or six if one of those items is a tie. We believe that the limits in the measure that the Government are bringing forward provide the best balance between reducing costs for parents and ensuring that schools, parents and pupils can continue to experience the benefits that allowing a small number of branded items can bring, while ensuring that schools retain the flexibility needed to set uniform policies that work for them. Increasing these limits would significantly limit the impact of this measure, depriving many parents of the opportunity to enjoy greater choice in where to buy their child’s uniform and the flexibility to make spending decisions that suit their circumstances.

Amendment 197A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young, is, as written, as opposed to some of the points the noble Lord made, which I will come to, unnecessary as the measure does not restrict the ability of schools to offer branded items for sale or to provide or loan branded uniform items, such as competition kit, as long as these items are optional. This is an important point, because there has been some suggestion that it would not be possible for schools to offer branded items or to provide or loan branded items. It would be, but they would have to be optional. If wearing the item is optional for participation in the activity, it is not counted in the limit of branded items.

We also do not want to place an undue burden on schools by suggesting—

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am sorry, perhaps the Minister is about to come to this: that is what normally happens when I stand up. I think my noble friend was saying that in the CCF, you have to wear the CCF uniform. Similarly, if you are representing the school in a sports competition, I am not sure it is really optional. But maybe the Minister is about to clarify that.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

On the sports competition, I think it is wholly possible to envisage that the school would provide a set of branded uniform for the school sports team, while not suggesting that it was compulsory to wear it. Of course, I understand all the arguments for wanting to have a clear identity for the school while you are doing sports. On the point about cadets, which I was specifically coming to—sorry, I will make one other point before I come to cadets. There is a challenge. We do not want to place an undue burden on schools by suggesting that they should routinely be supplying additional, expensive, branded uniform items to their pupils at no cost.

The point about cadets is important. We do not intend the legislation to prevent cadets, and we will consider how to make that clear. Our view is that the legislation does not do that, but we understand the point being made and we will ensure that that is made clear, because of the benefits of students being able to take part in cadets in the way in which the noble Lord outlined.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Just to be clear on this, I heard the Minister say that, in the case of cadets, where wearing a uniform is required and it is given for free, the Government will clarify that that is acceptable. She also said that she does not want to place undue burdens on schools, understandably, but, in a sports competition, whether pupils wear the kit that is provided for free is going to be optional. That feels unworkable and very inconsistent.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

What I said was that this measure does not prevent schools providing or loaning branded uniform items, such as competition kit, but, if that were to be compulsory, that of course would need to be included in the three branded items. As long as those items are optional, I do not think it is too difficult to envisage that schools might be able to make that work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I thank the noble Lord for that point; I am sure that the Minister is listening and learning. Again, I hope that, between Committee and Report, we can be sure that what we legislate for will be workable, clear and as unbureaucratic as it can be.

Finally, I will deal with the point that the noble Lord, Lord Frost, made at the very beginning made about flexi-learning. I have some slight experience with that, because, as I think I have mentioned before in your Lordships’ House, I had a pupil who was school-phobic; he literally would not come into school. His mum was a nurse and did not have the opportunity to home-educate, so we home-educated for her. Gradually, by that home education—which, I suppose, was a type of flexi-learning—we were able to bring the boy back into school.

I hope that, at the end of debating these many amendments, the most important thing will be that we ensure that we know where every child is, that every child is learning and that every child is safe.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for the clarity she brought with her earlier remarks. She set out the objectives of the Government and her commitment, on behalf of colleagues in the department, to work with Peers across the House—it looks as though that will be in August—to explore their concerns and, where possible, to address them. I also thank my noble friend Lord Lucas for the constructive tone of his opening remarks.

The principle of having a register for children not in school has long held cross-party support and, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, described, there are very different groups of children who are educated at home. What the debate has started to explore is that, in our eagerness to safeguard vulnerable children, which we must try to do well, and to support those children who have struggled in mainstream school, we must also make every effort not to stigmatise, or to treat with suspicion, parents who make a positive choice to home-educate their children.

This group and many of the others which follow highlight the complexity of creating a home-schooling register and the multiplicity of details that need to be considered. I note that Amendments 202C, 227, 227A and 286 and the opposition to Clause 31 standing part of the Bill are all probing, and I look forward to the Minister’s clarifications. I thought, unsurprisingly, that my noble friend Lord Frost made some very valid points on the risk of duplication of supervision and safeguarding in relation to children who are flexi-schooled.

On the individual amendments, there are two in this group which we support: Amendment 226 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Meston, and Amendment 279 in the name of my noble friends Lord Nash and Lord Agnew. With regard to children missing education and Amendment 226, most people would be surprised if it was not already a duty to inform the court if proceedings relating to the welfare of the child were under way and that child was not in school. It seems to me highly relevant information for the court to take into consideration, since there is a lot more risk attached to a child who is classified as missing education as opposed to a child who is electively home-educated. I am not sure about the practicality of consistent arrangements to address persistent non-attendance or irregular attendance, as the noble Lord’s amendment sets out, but I absolutely support the spirit of his amendment that the family courts should be made aware of the child’s situation and the risks that accompany it.

Amendment 279 in the names of my noble friends Lord Nash and Lord Agnew raised the important point of what a local authority can do if it has concerns that a child is not receiving a suitable education or, indeed, any real education at all. I hope that the Government have thought about this and have a plan for it. There is a great deal of detail in new Section 436C in Clause 31 of the Bill, but nothing about the actual education that a child receives, just the time spent and with whom.

On Amendment 233A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, I remember very well the meeting with a group of home-educators—in fact, I look below Bar and there they are again, in the same place as last time; it is like Groundhog Day. The amendment would remove new Section 436C, which defines in detail the content and process for maintaining the proposed children not in school registers. While I agree with the noble Lord that the drafting appears unnecessarily detailed and potentially intrusive, it is important to have clarity about what will be recorded and how it will be kept up to date.

I also cannot support my noble friend Lord Lucas’s opposition to Clause 31 standing part of the Bill, although I appreciate that this was designed to give the House a chance to explore the principles that the Government intend to follow, which we have heard from the Minister. My noble friend will remember that, in the 2022 Schools Bill, we were very clear that a register for children not in school was necessary. I think the current Government have improved on our original proposal in one way, with the increased focus on safeguarding in Clause 30—although, as I said in relation to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, I regret the extent of detail that is required in the Bill. Of course, we will probe in subsequent groups the balance between the clear right of parents to educate their children at home and the right of a child to receive a suitable education, but the principle of a local authority register for children not in school has very broad support.

My understanding is that the remaining amendments in this group are also all probing amendments. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My Lords, as we have heard, this group of amendments relates to the purpose and scope of children not in school registers. As the first group in consideration of these clauses, it has, rightly, raised some broad issues of principle as well, so I will speak for slightly longer than I will, I hope, on subsequent groups to put some of the important principles on the record and, I hope, to begin to allay some of the concerns expressed.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for the important points he raised. I want to address the principal points, as I say, before turning to other noble Lords’ amendments in this grouping. During today’s debate, we will hear much about parents’ rights, so I want to be clear up front again that parents already have and will continue to have a right to home-educate their children, in line with their preferences, values or religious beliefs. On some of the specific points that the noble Lord raised, we will give further consideration in Clause 36 to the nature of the places in which children are educated and whether they should be further inspected and regulated.

The noble Lord is right that we are attempting here to make sure that we know where children are and that they are seen. It is not about preventing them being educated elsewhere than in schools or necessarily seeing that as a risk. It is important that we do not, as some noble Lords have suggested, view the register as a statement that there is something illegitimate in the choices made by many parents to educate their children. It is about ensuring that every child, however, is seen. It is also important that we do not lose sight of parents’ responsibilities and children’s rights. The noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Nash, made this point very well. Parental rights are not absolute. They must be able to be evidence to local authorities that education is suitable. That is the existing position and the Bill does not change it. Children not in school registers will help ensure that children’s right to a safe, suitable education is protected. It is the Government’s ambition that no child falls through the gaps in this respect. The information that we are asking parents to provide for the registers is underpinned by that very singular goal.

To be absolutely clear, the registers are not intended to drive a wedge between local authorities and parents. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and other noble Lords that positive engagement between parents and local authorities is essential. I also recognise the concerns of noble Lords that we are careful about the burdens and the process for gathering and recording information for the register. This is an area where looking at it in more detail with officials in my department may well help provide some assurance to noble Lords.

Information recorded on registers and shared with the department could increase transparency and accountability; for example, by improving our understanding of reasons for home education and local authority practices. Why people choose to home-educate and accountability for local authorities are both important.

I understand that data protection is a concern for many and we take it very seriously, including our data protection obligations. We are committed to high standards of information security, privacy and transparency. All data will be processed only for a specific purpose, which in this case is regarding a child’s education, welfare or safeguarding. Local authorities will also be subject to the UK GDPR as the domain data controllers. We will talk in more detail about the nature of the information collected and its use in some later groups.

I will now move on to address in more detail other points that have been raised by noble Lords, beginning with Amendment 226, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Meston. Tackling persistent absence and ensuring that we can trace and support children who are identified as missing school due to persistent absence is a very important part of our mission to break down the barriers to opportunity. I thank the noble Lord for raising this important issue. However, it is not necessary to set up a new system to track and trace these children. Schools are already required to return the information outlined in the noble Lord’s amendment to their local authority. Schools are also required to share information on attendance with the Secretary of State through the school census and the department’s daily attendance data collection. As outlined in the department’s statutory guidance Working Together to Improve School Attendance, local authorities are expected to use this information to identify attendance problems and to take appropriate action. Expectations include facilitating support for families where that is required, such as in the family courts.

School Libraries

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Baroness consistently argues for freedom of speech and the opportunity for people to engage with a whole range of different arguments and views. It is important that that is represented in our school libraries. On the point about whether or not books in libraries are age appropriate, the point about the school library is that it almost certainly includes books for the whole age range within that school, so it is difficult to argue that books may or may not be age appropriate. The noble Baroness has also identified the way in which censorship limits our ability, and children’s ability, to engage in arguments. That is something that, while working closely with parents on what is being provided in schools, we should aim to safeguard in our schools.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, as the Minister said, this survey was based on a very small number—under 100—of our 22,500 schools, so she is right to be cautious about the conclusions one can draw. Can she say something about the timing of the Government’s publication of the new RSHE guidance? The bigger issue is that parents do not feel confident that they know what their children are being taught in this area. The consultation closed a year ago. In March, the Minister said that the Government were taking their time to get this right. I wonder how long parents will have to wait.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

It will be important to ensure that the RSHE guidance, which of course the previous Government also took a very long time to consider, is appropriate and provides the right guidance for schools and parents. To be clear on this, schools should ensure that parents are able to view on request all curriculum materials used to teach RSHE. We are currently reviewing the RSHE statutory guidance. We are doing that in a way that ensures that we provide appropriate guidance for schools and consider the safeguarding of children and the appropriateness of their education at all stages. We will publish this guidance soon.

Independent Schools: Tax Changes

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend is right about that. In fact, as of May 2024, 84% of primary schools and 76% of secondary schools had one unfilled place or more. I know that people have been concerned about whether there would be an impact on state schools and the ability of parents to gain their first choice. I am pleased, therefore, that the latest data shows that there has been no change in the percentage of children getting their first choice of school. The rate of children getting a place at one of their preferred primary schools is the second highest on record, and it is the highest since 2016 for those going into secondary school. At the same time, we have seen primary class sizes falling.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister has twice said that the Government are focused on investing in the 93% of children who go to state schools, but on 11 June the Prime Minister wrote on X:

“In the budget last year, my government made the tough but fair decision to apply VAT to private schools … Today, because of that choice, we have announced the largest investment in affordable housing in a generation”.


So is it housing or is it teachers? Maybe the Minister can clarify.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I entirely agree with what has been said. You cannot imagine how it must be for a child or young person to suddenly arrive here on their own and not have any knowledge of how they progress or what to do.

Liverpool used to be a centre for children who were just sent to the UK, although I think there were a number of places. I remember vividly a boy who arrived in Liverpool at the age of seven. The local authority, which happened to be Knowsley, immediately found foster parents for him. His life was completely changed; he came to my school not speaking a word of English, but when he did his key stage 2 SATs in maths, he got fantastic results. The sad thing was, of course, that at the age of 18 he had to be sent back home.

I do not understand the difference between a local authority dealing with this problem and organising foster parents and providing a guardian. There must be something so that young people who arrive in this country through no fault of their own are supported.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 166 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, would amend the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and, as I understand it, would complement the role of the independent child trafficking advocate in these cases with the right to an independent guardian. It would also expand their remit to include children who are separated from those with parental responsibility or the equivalent in their home country.

As the noble Baroness knows, probably better than anyone else in the Committee, there is existing statutory guidance for unaccompanied migrant children and child victims of modern slavery dating from 2017. It is clear that, in common with all looked-after children, unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are entitled to independent advocacy support. The guidance stresses that this might particularly be the case for this group of children.

The Refugee Council has a very helpful flow chart on its website showing the asylum process and clearly highlighting the role of independent advice at two stages in the application process. As we heard from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the independent child trafficking advocates have only partially been implemented. It will be interesting to hear what the Minister has to say about full implementation.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for sharing the recent research from the LSE and the University of Bedfordshire with me. As she described very emotively, this paints a picture of real inconsistency in the response that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children receive. It makes a number of recommendations, including this one. However, as the noble Baroness knows, implementing independent legal guardians would require significant investment in training, establishing oversight and case management systems—although I acknowledge her cost-benefit point. I presume that there would also need to be some form of proper accountability and oversight of these guardians.

There is a case for making the existing law work as it was intended before amending it and introducing an alternative. I absolutely respect the noble Baroness’s deep and long-standing concern and work in relation to the welfare and rights of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, but there are profound questions to be asked about her amendment. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 166 was tabled by my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett. I echo the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and compliment her, as always, on the eloquent and moving way she described the plight of so many children and young people coming into this country. I know that she is a very passionate advocate in her own right and speaks to many people across the piece.

Specifically on the amendment, although other issues have been brought into the discussions today, it seeks to provide support, via independent child guardians, to all separated children. That would be in addition to trafficked and exploited children. It would also initiate the support on consideration of a referral, rather than when an initial decision has been made that a child has been potentially exploited. This amendment also sets out limited functions for the independent guardians but, crucially, it removes the ability to amend these functions through regulations or statutory guidance.

Currently, the existing independent child trafficking guardianship service is a specialist provision for trafficked and exploited children, operating in two-thirds of local authorities across England and Wales. We are moving forward towards a national contract, planned for tender in the summer of 2025, building on the work from the Modern Slavery Act and from the very first authorities that were brought into scope in 2017. As we have heard, this is currently funded by the Home Office but delivered by Barnardo’s. It is important to note that we will look at best practice all the way through the piece as we move forward. Modern slavery engagement forums are absolutely critical in this, and I will go on to speak about the Minister’s role as well.

As my noble friend Lady Lister is aware, the needs of trafficked and exploited children are complex, ever evolving and ever changing. Defining functions directly in the Bill would reduce the flexibility for the Secretary of State to adapt the role through the statutory guidance or regulations as it needs to evolve. We would not wish to limit the functions of guardians in this way and would instead continue to provide the detail for their role in statutory guidance or regulations. We believe that this is the best way we can move on and acknowledge changes in circumstances as we move forward.

I recognise my noble friend’s intentions in extending the independent guardian provision to all separated children, and I acknowledge the words of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, in this space as well. This would significantly expand the scope and, unfortunately therefore, strain resources, which could delay support for exploited or trafficked children who need urgent help. Separated children will not necessarily be trafficked, and there is a risk that this provision will overlap with the existing support, causing confusion or duplication in some places, as well as providing unsuitable services for some separated children.

The arrangement for unaccompanied asylum seeker children is, as we know, that they are looked after by local authorities in keeping with the arrangements for all children in the United Kingdom. Unaccompanied asylum seeker children are provided with a professional social worker and will also have an independent reviewing officer to oversee their care arrangements. They are also entitled to legal assistance in pursuing their asylum claim. These arrangements ensure that children are provided with independent support and advice; the addition of a guardian to this framework, as I have said before, could risk adding another level of complexity to existing arrangements. Instead, we have worked to provide additional support specifically to vulnerable children who may have been trafficked. We therefore do not consider that expanding or bringing forward the point at which support is initiated would be in the best interests of meeting the needs of exploited and trafficked children.

That is not to say that we do not recognise the work that needs to continue. I am pleased to say that Jess Phillips, the Minister for Safeguarding, has regular meetings with the ICTG service. She holds round tables, bringing everyone together to make sure that we can bring the role of advocates into this mix and continue the essential conversations.

I completely recognise the need for stable relationships, as outlined by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. We can only imagine the disruption, upheaval and separation, and the impact that that has on these very vulnerable young people. The importance of this is that the child will have access to an advocate. Unlike the social worker and IRO, the advocate is not required to have a prescribed social work qualification; their primary purpose is to represent fully the views and wishes of the child. As part of this function, they can assist the child in obtaining legal advice in the same way as the social worker and IRO—and, indeed, the foster carer, where that is appropriate.

I understand the need to continue the conversations. I hope that my noble friend will recognise that those conversations will continue. I completely acknowledge that there is no room for complacency at all in this very important area of work. With those reassurances, I hope that my noble friend will feel content to withdraw this amendment.

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So the evidence is mixed, but I suggest to your Lordships that, when we leave Committee, we look really carefully at what we want to do. Whatever we want to do, it has to work. There is a part of me which agrees with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that maybe we need to gather the evidence and be sure that we go on the right path.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, we have had the privilege this afternoon of listening to some very powerful and well-informed speeches, and I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. I shall speak to Amendment 458 in my name and those of the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and to Amendment 177, which I was very pleased to co-sign with my noble friend Lord Nash. I note the widespread support evidenced by the popularity of my noble friend Lady Penn’s Amendments 183CA and 183CB, which prevented me from adding my name to those as well, which is testament to the cross-party recognition of this important issue.

Noble Lords across the House have witnessed first-hand the dedication of teachers, parents and school leaders, who work tirelessly to create environments where our children can thrive. Today, I speak to an issue that threatens to undermine their best efforts. Amendment 458 would require schools to implement comprehensive smartphone bans during the school day, with carefully considered practical flexibilities for children who need smartphones to access their medical devices—for example, for diabetes—for boarding or residential schools and for sixth forms. This is not about a blanket prohibition without thought; it is about creating the conditions that are necessary for our children to succeed academically, socially and emotionally.

I note Amendment 458A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, and would be delighted to talk to him after this debate in a bit more detail, but I also note the remarks made by my noble friend Lady Spielman about the benefits of using a school-owned device in these cases, and actually did not hear any examples that could not be done on a desktop or a tablet.

There is genuine urgency to address the profound impacts of smartphones on the health and well-being of our children. I am afraid I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that the evidence is mixed. I think one needs to look very carefully, and I thank my noble friend Lady Jenkin for this advice when I sent her an article suggesting that the evidence was mixed. She pointed out who had funded the researchers who were writing the article. We have to be scrupulously careful about both the scale of the sample size in some of these studies and who is funding them.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, said on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, it is crucial to take both the personal and professional experience into account when designing policy. The desire for change, including, perhaps most importantly, as we have heard this afternoon, from children themselves, is very clear. We have to reset the social norms around smartphone use among young people before we lose another generation to screens.

The Government have argued that existing guidance on phone use in schools is sufficient, pointing to the fact that every school has a policy. But speaking as someone who was part of the previous Government that created many drafts of that guidance—as the Minister can imagine—perhaps we are uniquely positioned to acknowledge that, while it may have been the right place to start, it has proven insufficient. Good intentions without enforcement mechanisms do not protect our children from the sophisticated algorithms designed to capture their attention. As the noble Lord, Lord Russell, said, we need to move with speed and clarity. Some have questioned—

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

That point has been raised by a number of Members, so perhaps I might ask the Minister, because I am genuinely unclear what the thinking is. I know it is not that no harm happens to children using smartphones outside of school. You do not know who is in the bedroom with them; you do not know who they are talking to. I think that is our starting point. I am not clear from those who are supporting this amendment whether they are saying at least they will have those hours a day when they will not be subject to smartphones or social media. I do not know whether that is sufficient, or whether there are further plans in those Members’ minds as to how to cope with the rest of the week. My view is that that is where most of the damage happens: outside school, not inside school.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right that a smartphone amendment on its own is not sufficient. As the Minister said a couple of times on previous days in Committee, I will be coming to that later. I will try to address the noble Baroness’s points. If I have not done so by the end of my speech, I ask her to please intervene again.

Some have questioned why we favour freedom and discretion for school leaders in areas such as curriculum and staffing yet seek to mandate action on smartphones. The answer lies in a couple of areas. The first is about accountability. When school leaders make decisions about teacher pay, qualifications or curriculum, they are held accountable through Ofsted inspections, public examination results and parental choice. The consequences of their decisions are measurable and visible. Smartphone policies operate in an entirely different landscape. Here, schools face external actors: powerful social media companies with business models that are predicated on capturing and monetising our children’s attention. These companies employ teams of neuroscientists and behavioural psychologists to create algorithms designed specifically to keep our children scrolling, clicking and consuming content that ranges from the merely distracting to the genuinely harmful. We can all think of cases that, tragically, have been fatal.

The facts surrounding smartphone usage among children paint a sobering picture. A quarter of the UK’s three and four year-olds now own a smartphone—these are toddlers whose cognitive development is being shaped by screens before they can properly read. This figure rises to four in five children by the end of primary school. We are witnessing the digitisation of childhood itself. The emerging evidence linking smartphones and social media to the explosion in mental health problems among young people cannot be ignored. Research demonstrates that the average 12 year-old spends 21 hours a week on their smartphone, which is equivalent to a part-time job. One in four children and young people uses their devices in ways that are consistent with behavioural addiction.

Beyond mere time-wasting, smartphones fundamentally disrupt sleep patterns and concentration, as we have heard from a number of noble Lords. Applications are deliberately designed for addiction, through sophisticated dopamine triggers, as my noble friend Lord Bethell said. This pattern appears consistently across western nations, with research showing that earlier smartphone acquisition correlates strongly with poorer adult mental health outcomes, particularly affecting girls.

The academic evidence is equally compelling. The OECD data reveals that two-thirds of 15 year-olds, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, report phone distractions during their mathematics lessons, with distracted students performing three-quarters of a year behind their peers. Even brief non-academic phone use can require 20 minutes for students to refocus on learning. We are not talking about minor inconveniences. We are witnessing a systematic undermining of educational achievement.

Experimental research has moved beyond correlation to establish causation. Studies where students are randomly assigned different conditions—one of which I will send to my noble friend Lord Lucas and the noble Lord, Lord Knight—prove that simply having a smartphone in one’s bag, jacket or desk reduces attention capacity and cognitive performance. Students with device access during lessons achieve measurably poorer results because the very presence of these devices is profoundly distracting.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

I do not disagree with a word that the noble Baroness has said about these weapons of mass distraction. I am not saying that young people should be able to carry them around—I was advocating the use of lockable pouches. However, is it not possible that there are some circumstances where a teacher, for legitimate educational reasons, would want those pouches to be unlocked and for phones to be used? If that were to happen, is it right that it would be illegal?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am not a teacher and probably never will be, sadly—although probably happily for children. My answer to the noble Lord is what was behind my offer to sit down and talk to him. When I talked to teachers prior to this debate about the noble Lord’s amendment, they reacted a little as the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, did or suggested that much of this could be done on existing school devices. If there are gaps in that, of course I am very happy to listen to the noble Lord’s expertise. I will press on, or I will be growled at by the Front Bench for going over time.

--- Later in debate ---

I noted that the Education Select Committee is concerned about the ability of parents to be able to contact their children on their travel to and from school. We have already heard about some of the exemptions that are necessary for children who have to use their phones to access assistive technology or deal with health conditions such as diabetes. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, introduced those exemptions into her legislation, but a piece of legislation that enables the exemptions necessary for all the different circumstances that schools and pupils might need for the way in which they use mobile phones rapidly becomes—

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank the Minister for giving way. Presumably, all the countries that have introduced mobile phone bans in schools have found ways around this. It cannot be beyond the wit of the Government to find a way through this.

I also wondered whether the Minister was going to comment—perhaps she will come on to this—on the power of the social media companies. In her remarks so far, she has come up with what were, in a former life, perfectly respectable and effective solutions, such as that parents should set boundaries with their children. But we, as parents or grandparents, are now competing with social media companies that have a great deal of power and expertise to disrupt all those good 20th century-type responses.

Lastly, I wonder whether she feels that the figures she gave on schools adopting phone restrictions tie in with the evidence from Teacher Tapp about the level of disruption in lessons that my noble friend referred to.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

On the point about regulation, the reason why I started by referring to the Online Safety Act was precisely to identify the need that was manifest in a piece of legislation that came through this House before my time but which presumably some noble Lords around the Chamber were engaged in and which was precisely about how to regulate the use of social media for children and young people. That legislation did not happen in the last century; it is literally only just on the statute books. I was making the case that it is important, and that it is right for the Government to ensure that it is working properly as a first priority.

The issue of how we support schools to be able to have within them the type of calm behaviour that they need is, of course, absolutely crucial. In response to the question about when we will publish the survey on behaviour, it will be later this year. To come back to the point I made at the beginning, although I very much doubt that the only factor influencing behaviour within schools is mobile phones, everything that head teachers might need to put in place the restrictions on mobile phones that will, along with the other necessary things, enable them to have strong behaviour policies and practice, is, rightly, available to them in order for them to be able to ensure that that is happening.

Lastly, I turn to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Knight. I have already said that I see the point of the exemption he has proposed. However, my point is that you have two routes here: the legislative route, which has already begun to be unravelled by the inclusion of a whole range of exemptions; or a positive set of guidelines for head teachers to use to design and develop, in consultation with parents, their staff and the young people in their schools, the appropriate policies for safeguarding children, protecting behaviour and delivering what individual schools need. At this point, the Government believe that the latter is the most appropriate way forward to ensure that children have the protection from mobile phones they need and in a way that recognises the flexibility that will be necessary.

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[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, we have had another excellent debate and I too thank everyone who has spoken. It is a pleasure to speak on this group because it is, as we have heard, so important to give children the best possible start in life and to prepare them for school. Other speakers, led by my noble friends Lord Farmer and Lady Cash, have already set out the case very effectively for supporting babies, very young children and their parents.

Listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, talk about her experience of canvassing—when the door opened and a cloud of smoke came out, revealing a young mother and baby—reminded me of being involved 21 years ago in a piece of research on domestic abuse called Safety in Numbers. We looked at the cases of 2,500 women and their 3,600 children, all of whom were living with very severe levels of domestic abuse. Half the children in that sample were under five, and the average length of relationship before those women had got help was five years, so half those children had lived with severe domestic abuse from the womb. That was my equivalent of the door opening and the smoke billowing out.

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Moved by

[Baroness Barran]

183C: After Clause 26, insert the following new Clause—
“Court ordered reportsAny court ordered report produced for the purposes of either private or public law cases in family court proceedings under the Children Act 1989 must be done by a qualified social worker.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that all court ordered reports are produced by qualified social workers, for example those under Section 7 of the Children Act 1989.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly to Amendment 183C, which is in my name.

Last year, the revised Working Together guidance removed the requirement for Section 17 assessments—or children-in-need assessments—to be done by a qualified social worker. At the time, although the change was welcomed by the Association of Directors of Children’s Services and others, some groups, including Ofsted and the British Association of Social Workers, expressed concerns about the change. This was, in part, because they felt that these practitioners—including family support workers, domestic abuse workers and youth workers—already held high caseloads, and, in part, because they do not typically have the necessary qualifications to do this to the required standard needed by the courts, given the gravity of the decisions taken that are based on these reports.

My Amendment 183C is very simple: it seeks to probe, and get on record, confirmation from the Government that only qualified social workers will be able to prepare reports ordered by the courts. There is real concern that this should be the case, and the new arrangements, which are being brought in to merge targeted help and child-in-need provision, could lead to a change in approach.

A court-ordered report for private law proceedings would not generally meet the threshold for child protection and is therefore likely to be held in the team, which includes non-social work qualified practitioners. As the court will order an assessment, I argue that there should be—and my amendment seeks to probe whether there will be—parity with other private law reports and assessments ordered by Cafcass, which are undertaken by qualified social workers. This work is of course highly contested and complicated, so can the Minister confirm that these concerns are unfounded? I beg to move.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I do not question the proposition that substantive court reports should be done by qualified practitioners. Such reports are valuable, and often essential, to the court, providing information, analysis, assessments and recommendations—and not just to the court but to the parties who are thereby helped to settle their differences without a full contested hearing.

Until I heard the noble Baroness’s introduction, I wondered at the nature or extent of the problem that prompted her amendment. Most final reports nowadays—and I mean final reports—are well written, well researched and well reasoned. Substantive reports are prepared by the allocated Cafcass officer—or social worker, in my experience—and social workers often state their academic and professional qualifications. Sometimes, the worker has to be a substitute or a trainee, but in those circumstances the report will be checked and countersigned by a team leader. So, although I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say, I do not believe there is problem.

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For those reasons, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I put on record how much I welcome the noble Baroness’s last comments about a round table, and meeting and talking to a range of directors of children’s services. It is reassuring and the right thing to do, and it builds our confidence in the Government’s commitment to get this very important area of policy right. I appreciate that enormously, because I know that ministerial diaries do not have a great deal of slack in them.

On this amendment, just to be clear, I appreciate the noble Baroness’s clarification regarding child protection. However, I was not worried there was a risk of someone who was not a qualified social worker writing a report in those cases, and I was not talking about independent social workers, nor about particular experts, such as the example the noble Baroness gave of someone with specific medical expertise. I was thinking more about the situation of merged targeted help and child in need teams writing reports when Cafcass is not writing the Section 7 report. In that situation you might have, for example, a youth worker or someone who does not have the expertise and training preparing court reports—I am not saying they could not have it, but traditionally they have not had that expertise.

I will reread Hansard, but I think what I heard was that they will be able to write those reports but under supervision from a social worker. If I have misunderstood and they will not be able to, maybe the noble Baroness could set the record straight now, or maybe she would like to go away, double check and write me a very short letter. I would appreciate that. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 183C withdrawn.

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[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I too support the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, on this. She was asked whether this affects the child’s well-being, since the money does not go to them. Of course it affects their well-being.

I can tell your Lordships of a family that I know. I know that hard cases make bad law, but theirs is pretty typical. The husband disappeared. There were four children at home. Those children have survived only because of the determination and hard work of the mother. If she was not the strong character that she is, those children’s well-being would be a lot worse than it is now. There is no question that it affects the children’s well-being. I quite agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, that it is a disgrace. If anything can be done to improve the situation, whether it is the noble Baroness’s amendment or something else, I will be right behind it.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friends Lady Coffey and Lady Stedman-Scott, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, have made an incredibly strong case for the importance of this amendment. As my noble friend Lady Coffey said, the Lords Public Services Committee has a live inquiry into this very important topic.

The statistics are stark, as we heard, with over a million children covered by child maintenance agreements but enforcement still not being effective enough and too many parents making no payments at all, paying irregularly or paying insufficient amounts. When I was running the domestic abuse charity SafeLives, non-payment of child maintenance was incredibly frequent and caused huge problems in the lives of children and their mothers. As other noble Lords have said, at its simplest, non-payment exacerbates either the risk of poverty or the actual poverty that so many single-parent families face. In cases of domestic abuse, non-payment was often used as a means of coercion and control over a mother and her child, raising the risk of harm to them both. The anxiety that this creates, and the pressure that this puts on a mother, directly impact the well-being of her child.

We also saw the longer-term impact, in physical and mental health problems for the child. The Institute for Public Policy Research has found that child maintenance currently lifts around 140,000 children out of poverty across the UK. Conversely, when payments are not made, the impact is devastating. Finally, we know that child maintenance is not just a private matter between separated parents but a fundamental determinant of a child’s well-being and future life chances. When maintenance payments fail, society bears the cost through increased demand on public services, educational support and healthcare interventions.

As my noble friend so simply and clearly put it, there are two pieces of legislation on the statute books that need to be commenced. I hope very much that the Minister will confirm that the Government plan to do that and that we can make progress on unlocking the £700 million that belongs to our children.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I am not surprised that the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, managed to persuade those in a position to be persuaded that this amendment should have the opportunity to be discussed this evening. There is something refreshing about the idea of the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey and Lady Stedman-Scott, rightly pursuing people who owe money for their children and who have that responsibility. I have no doubt that my noble friend Lady Sherlock and the current Secretary of State will be equally relentless in making sure that families are paying for the children for whom they have responsibility, and that is quite right.

I know from what the noble Baroness said that the intention of this amendment is to probe and push on the progress being made with each of the pieces of legislation that she talked about. I hope to provide some reassurance on that.

First, the powers within Section 34 of the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act enable debt owed to parents or the Secretary of State to be transferred to other parties, including debt collection agencies. This power was introduced as an option to deal with the £3.8 billion debt burden that had accrued under the former Child Support Agency. A proportion of that debt was owed directly to the Secretary of State, and I am assured that the issue of Child Support Agency debt has now been resolved. The Child Maintenance Service has strong and effective enforcement powers, including imposing prison sentences for non-payment.

On the specific point about debt collection agencies, there is no evidence that using debt collection agencies would actually secure more child maintenance than current enforcement powers. In fact, a previous trial absolutely demonstrated that, so there is no evidence that commencing this power would have a positive impact on children’s well-being.

Secondly, the Child Support (Enforcement) Act 2023 introduced powers that, once commenced, would enable an administrative liability order to be made against a parent with outstanding child maintenance arrears. As the noble Baroness says, this introduces savings in court costs and time. I am pleased to confirm that progress is being made to implement the necessary legislation to bring this power into force as soon as possible. The Government are working with His Majesty’s Courts & Tribunal Service and the Scottish Government to establish a process for implementing ALOs, and plan to introduce regulations to Parliament by the end of this year.

The Child Support Collection (Domestic Abuse) Act 2023 recognised that direct pay may not always be appropriate for victims and survivors of domestic abuse. The Act intended to provide them greater protection when using the Child Maintenance Service, by allowing them to move to the collect and pay service but only where there is evidence of domestic abuse. The Government recognise that removing opportunities to use the Child Maintenance Service to inflict economic abuse will benefit the well-being of children. However, many victims and survivors would be unable to provide that necessary evidence as required by the Act. For those who could, there are risks that providing evidence of their experience of abuse and reliving events could lead to further trauma.

That is why the Government today published our response to the consultation, Child Maintenance: Improving the Collection and Transfer of Payments. It sets out plans for reforms to introduce a service that protects all parents from financial abuse and, importantly, includes no requirement for victims and survivors to provide evidence of their circumstances. These reforms, therefore, go further than the provisions contained in the 2023 Act to protect victims and survivors of domestic abuse. They will have a positive impact on children and their well-being, as more child maintenance liabilities will be enforced, leading to more money going to children, which I know is the objective of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, in moving this amendment.

I hope that I have provided sufficient reassurance for the noble Baroness to withdraw this amendment, although she has already identified that she has other ways to put pressure on the Government to ensure progress, and I have no doubt that she will continue to do so.

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[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I do not think that the amendment says that it should not be qualified practitioners who carry out the assessments. We already know, in general terms, that 85% of young offenders have special needs. It is important for their future journey that the type of special need is identified by a qualified practitioner.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As drafted, the amendment explicitly suggests what my noble friend referred to. Proposed new subsection (2)(b) says that the strategy must set out

“the accredited training police officers and legal representatives of the children must complete to support the child’s wellbeing and to aid recognition of SEND and neurodivergence”.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I am grateful for that clarification. Maybe this could be picked up on Report, but it is hugely important. As my noble friend Lord Addington said, there is a young offenders centre in Wavertree where qualified staff assess pupils and provide for their needs.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to this amendment, which was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. I thought, from the original groupings, that we were also going to talk about Amendment 502T, but I gather that is no longer the case, so the Committee will be relieved to hear that my speech will be even shorter.

Like my noble friend Lady Spielman, I do not support the noble Lord’s amendment, although I accept absolutely that it is a real sign that a child or young person has been failed by both their family and the services designed to support them if they end up in police custody. But the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s guidance regarding the treatment of children in police custody is clear. It already states that children should not be held overnight in police cells, suggesting that time will typically be very limited in police custody. It is also clear on the role of the local authority where there are concerns about the child’s welfare, and the child’s right to have an appropriate adult present to explain their rights and help them understand the situation.

In practical terms, even if we could magically find an educational psychologist to go to the police station, I question whether that really is a good time to assess a child for special educational needs and disabilities, since it is a particularly stressful situation. As my noble friend Lady Spielman said, very specialist skills are required for this. To reiterate, there is no high-quality definition of special educational needs and disabilities and no clinical definition. My noble friend already said that there is no clinical definition for neurodivergence. Currently, definitions of SEND vary from school to school and within different forms of SEND. This confusion would open the door to misinterpretations. For example, a child could have ADHD, but that does not mean that they are incapable of making decisions. With respect to the noble Lord, who is not in his place, I suggest it would be very hard to make the amendment work in practice.

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 183CD is in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for stepping into the gap so that we could have a brief discussion on it. I am disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, is not here because he has a lot of experience of, and a background in, this field. It would have been helpful to have heard from him. I will move to the end of the comments I was going to make to reassure him: there are no plans to set up a separate system.

I echo the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. On screening for special educational needs, disabilities and neurodiversity, it is important to bear in mind that police custody is primarily a place of safety and investigation. Normally, a child would be there for a very short time. There is a high likelihood of a very stressful situation and an unfamiliar environment. For those reasons, we do not believe that police custody is likely to be an appropriate setting to assess special educational needs and disabilities, or neurodivergence.

The amendment would require the Secretary of State to publish a strategy intended to protect and promote the well-being of children in police custody, with a particular focus on provisions relating to children with special educational needs and disabilities and children who are neurodivergent. The Government’s manifesto was clear that particular care must be taken when the police are investigating children. Children should be detained in custody only when absolutely necessary, and where there are opportunities to divert children away from custody they should always be considered. It is, as we have heard, particularly important where the child has special educational needs and disabilities or is neurodivergent.

More broadly, the Government’s young futures programme is about intervening earlier to ensure that children and young people who are facing poorer outcomes and are vulnerable to being drawn into crime are identified and offered support in a more systematic way. Effectively identifying the right young people early enough and ensuring that they are accessing evidence-based support is what prevention partnerships will aim to do.

The rights and entitlements of children in police custody are clearly set out in a statutory code of practice, code C to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. Under code C, all children in police custody must be provided with an appropriate adult whose role is to safeguard their welfare, rights and effective participation. When a child is detained in custody, the custody officer must notify a parent or guardian as soon as practicable, explaining the reasons for the child’s detention and where they are detained.

In addition, all detainees, including children, have access to health care professionals while in custody. These professionals play a critical role in identifying vulnerabilities and ensuring appropriate care. Interestingly, as we have heard, different police forces are looking at different ways they can train their police officers. Distraction tools such as books, colouring books, puzzles and foam balls have been provided for some police custody suites by organisations such as the Children’s Society and UK autism charities. These help a child to settle while they are in custody. We are of course always looking for examples of good practice.

I am also aware of the work under way in some violence reduction units, such as London and Cleveland, which provide custody navigators for young people in police custody involved in or at risk of serious violence. Custody navigators offer support to those young people at a time of crisis, or at a so-called reachable moment—a moment when otherwise hard-to-reach demographics are away from their usual environment and are potentially more willing to engage with offers of support. Even though we have explored the issue of the appropriateness of some of this work in those settings, it is important to recognise that police officers and legal representatives need to undergo training that equips them for working with vulnerable suspects such as children who are neuro-divergent.

The College of Policing has also published an extensive neurodiversity glossary of terms, intended for all police officers, staff and volunteers, to raise awareness and enhance understanding of neurodiversity. The National Police Chiefs’ Council has a dedicated neurodiversity portfolio chaired by ACC Matt Welsted of West Midlands Police, who has established a neurodiversity working group. Its work includes supporting police officers to design and deliver a service to be proud of, relating to neurodivergent victims, witnesses, suspects and residents. We are all aware that there have been distressing examples where such manifestations have not been recognised; everything is now being done to recognise them.

In the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, I turn to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and ask him to consider withdrawing the amendment that he has moved on the noble Lord’s behalf.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Longfield (Lab)]

I beg to move.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 142A to 142C, 504A and 505A are in my name. I will not speak to Amendment 142 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, and I thank her for giving me advance notice of her intentions. I will also probe the merits of Clause 15 standing part of the Bill.

Amendment 142A mirrors my earlier Amendments 138D, 138E and 139A, which would have excluded natural persons with a role in the management of a business from receiving personal financial penalties. I have reread the Minister’s remarks in Hansard from our debate on Tuesday, and I confess I am still not entirely clear about the status of a natural person who is registered at Companies House. The Minister said earlier that the figure of 10 operators out of over 2,700 was based on Companies House data. Forgive my ignorance, but I do not know what legal status an organisation registered with Companies House has if it is not a company. If it is a company, I am not sure what the status of a natural person is.

The reason for these amendments is simple, as I set out before. It is based on a concern that, without these amendments, the Bill will limit the number of people who are prepared to take senior management responsibility in such providers and will lead to providers exiting the sector. I may have misunderstood what is meant by “an operator”—namely, that it is the owner of a business rather than the senior management—but perhaps the Minister could clarify both those points when she sums up.

Amendments 142B and 142C would limit the maximum fine for a provider to 10% of its turnover and, if imposed on a natural person, to £100,000. We have heard that margins in the children’s home sector average 22%, although in the LGA-commissioned report this figure is taken from, the range of margins is very wide. If we took 10% of a company’s turnover and accepted an average margin of 22%, that would be almost 50% of its profits, which surely is a very strong incentive to avoid being fined. Can the Minister set out what level of fine the Government expect to impose and what the criteria will be for different levels of financial penalty?

Amendments 504A and 505A would delay the commencement of Clause 15 until the Secretary of State has published a report that sets out the current levels of capacity in independent children’s homes, independent fostering agencies and, perhaps, based on the Minister’s remarks on Tuesday, supported accommodation. Again, I wonder whether she could confirm that last point.

The report would also need to have an impact assessment on the number of available placements in relevant homes or agencies. I am definitely not an expert on regulatory impact assessments, I confess, but the Government’s own regulatory impact assessment has, to my amateur eyes, clear gaps; hence the need for my Amendments 504A and 505A.

In the section of the document titled “Expected impacts on businesses”, it states:

“It is not possible for the department to monetise the impact of any future profit cap at this stage. This is because the impact will depend on both the level at which any future cap is set and the market conditions—including profit levels, supply and demand and diversity of provision—at the time that a cap were introduced. Attempting to include straw man figures at this stage—far in advance of any decision about whether or not to introduce a profit cap—would be unhelpful and would have the potential to adversely impact the market by driving providers to make incorrect assumptions about the future level of any future cap based on such figures”.


My amendments would bridge this gap by requiring the publication of an impact assessment when the Government are clear on what their approach to a profit cap will be and by capturing the baseline data on capacity so that the impact of a future cap can be analysed and understood.

My reason for questioning the approach to capping profits as set out in Clause 15 is based partly on the concerns expressed by the Competition and Markets Authority. It was very clear in its report that

“taking measures that directly limit prices and profits, would further reduce the incentives of private providers to invest in creating new capacity (or even to maintain some current capacity)”.

I wonder what assessment the Government made of this risk which led them to ignore the CMA’s advice. Can the Minister set out what impact the department believes this measure will have on investment in sector? What do the latest figures show?

More broadly, there is an important point of principle here. As David Rowland, the director of the Centre for Health and the Public Interest, wrote in a blog published by the London School of Economics in December 2024, if the Government decide that one sector has excessive profiteering and will cap the level of profit in that sector,

“there is no good reason for it not to be extended to other areas as well”.

I wonder what other areas the Government might be considering. David Rowland’s work has highlighted other areas where companies are profiting from—I quote the right honourable Secretary of State for Education—the trauma and abuse of

“some of the most vulnerable children in our country””.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/11/24; col. 27.]

This includes in the management of sexual assault referral centres which serve children, where he cites one business as generating 25% margins after tax—much higher than the 22% margin on earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation generated by the average children’s home. Might this be an area in which the Government are considering profit caps?

It would also be helpful if the Minister could confirm what operating margin, as opposed to EBITDA margin, the Government think is acceptable for operators of children’s homes, independent fostering agencies and supported accommodation. What is the figure for operating margins today? The figures in the LGA-commissioned report that the Government reference in their regulatory impact assessment are for earnings before interest, depreciation, amortisation and tax, and date from 2023. They are for around the 20 largest providers only. Why have the Government not done their own analysis of profitability across the sector, rather than relying on an external document that is two years old and looks at only part of the sector?

On Tuesday, after I gave my back-of-the-envelope figure of, from memory, £500 million or £600 million, the Minister quoted the sector as having a combined EBITDA of £310 million. But this figure from the Government’s own report, which is taken from the LGA’s analysis, covers just the 19 largest providers of children’s homes. The report goes on to say that the top 22 providers own 40% of children’s homes. That, of course, will not necessarily equate to 40% of profit, but it seems clear that £310 million is not the right number. The Minister should set the record straight at some point—if not now, then in a letter.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Longfield (Lab)]

I have already indicated my intention to withdraw my amendment.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply.

On the point of principle—why you would put a profit cap on one area of the economy where you think there is profiteering on the back of vulnerable children, but not on another—the Minister said that there was no intention to extend this; indeed, she said that she hoped it would not be used. I certainly agree with that, but I do not really understand why, where children have been sexually assaulted or raped and companies are making far higher profit margins than the ones we are talking about here, the Government would choose to apply a profit cap on one and not the other. That does not feel very coherent to me.

I also felt that the Minister was slightly selective in the quotes she chose to identify from the Competition and Markets Authority report. The CMA was clear that it thought that a profit cap was not a good idea. I would also like to clarify something for the record. I think the Minister suggested that I said that current margins were driving supply. I said that current margins, according to the recent data, are uneven and actually falling, so I did not suggest that they were driving supply.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Baroness cited analysis that expressed a concern that by capping profits, you would somehow or other reduce supply in the market. I was simply making the point that the converse—that is, excessive profits—has not driven supply in the market.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I understand that, and I stand by what I said. There is a risk that this will result in an exiting of capacity, and that the reverse of what the Government rightly want to happen will happen: that in some areas that will put even more pressure on capacity and price. I do not accept that you can say on the one hand that these margins are unacceptable, but, on the other, you cannot say what is acceptable.

What we are seeing is a failure of commissioning. One of my amendments in an earlier group—I think it was Amendment 119ZA, but I may be wrong—sought to align the interests of children and those of operators. The commissioning model we have today is not working, and that needs to be fundamentally addressed. Maybe the Government could reconsider their response. We have examples in defence and pharmaceuticals of commissioners setting what is an acceptable margin, and providers bidding or not bidding based on that margin. I do not understand why the Government cannot say what an acceptable margin would be.

I accept that the Minister’s response to my Amendments 504A and 505A goes at least some way towards what I was aiming for. I was more troubled by her response on natural persons. I thought we were talking about 10 sole traders, but we are now talking about finance directors in businesses, so I think that my concerns are entirely valid.

On financial penalties, my recollection, which may be wrong, is that we have a limit on fines in the Online Safety Act. The Minister will correct me if it is in regulations but, if it is in that Act, I do not see why it cannot be in this Bill too. That matters because we need local authorities, charities, social enterprises or the private sector to add capacity in those areas and, without certainty, they could be forgiven for hesitating.

A striking omission in the Minister’s remarks—perhaps she could respond in writing on this—concerns what was said at the Dispatch Box on Tuesday about the level of profitability in the sector. I think I am right in saying that the figure was for 19 businesses and not the whole sector. I repeat: the financial regime that the department wants to introduce is very sophisticated, and I do not think it fair to send a Minister to the Dispatch Box with out-of-date and incorrect data.

Amendment 142 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

Debate on whether Clause 19 should stand part of the Bill.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, this stand part notice is to probe, and therefore understand, what changes the Government intend to make to the regulation of agency social workers and how those changes will work in practice.

I am very well aware of the concerns about social worker recruitment, but I was in fact slightly surprised when preparing for this debate to find that, as of 30 September 2024, there were 34,300 children and family social workers in total, which I gather is the peak since data started to be collected in 2017; and 6,500 agency social workers, which is the lowest since data collection started. Vacancies fell by 6.9% year on year, there was a drop in staff turnover of 13.8% and the average caseload fell to 15.4%. The vacancy rate is still high at 17%, but down from 22% in 2022, and 76% of vacancies were filled by agency social workers. Retention has improved, with the number leaving to work in an agency falling by 38%, while the number of social workers leaving the profession entirely fell by 5.3%. So I know the situation on the ground is extremely difficult, but I think it is helpful to have a bit of context.

As I understand it, in terms of the current regulatory environment, agency children and family social workers are covered by the Agency Rules: Statutory guidance for Local Authorities on the Use of Agency Child and Family Social Workers of September 2024. As I understand it, this has the same aims as the proposed regulations: to control costs, improve quality, reduce turnover and ensure that governance is retained by local authorities. Two main requirements are planned to be implemented this year: first, there must be data collection by local authorities on the number of agency workers, with the first submission having happened in April and May 2025; and, secondly, that local authorities must submit plans on locally agreed price caps by this October. The main thrust of Clause 19, therefore, is to make regulations for what is already covered in statutory guidance.

The department’s policy summary says that the Government intend to regulate

“a broader cohort of agency workers than child and family social workers including, but not limited to, social workers”—

forgive me for being slow, but it is not the clearest explanation. The summary goes on to state:

“The regulations are likely to include similar provision to the current statutory guidance which currently applies to social workers only, but to a wider cohort of workers”.


Sir Humphrey would be proud.

In the other place, the Minister for School Standards said on 28 January that this could include

“agency workers delivering targeted early intervention or family help”.—[Official Report, Commons, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee, 28/1/25; col. 234.]

I therefore ask: are the Government’s plans restricted to these two groups only, and if not, who else will be covered? How many of those workers are there nationally? And what is the current cost of agency workers in the different categories to local authorities? The proposal to expand the replacement regulations to a wider cohort is not defined anywhere in the Bill or the accompanying policy summary, so it would help to understand the Government’s intentions better.

Can the Minister also explain how the regulations will differ in terms of local discretion from the current statutory guidance? I am unclear on this, but perhaps suspicious that it might result in a more directive approach from the department and less discretion for local authorities themselves. Can she confirm that there will be exceptions to the specific requirements detailed in the regulations, for example for payments above the national rate if there is a local staffing crisis?

The Minister knows that the use of agency workers varies greatly across the country, but the powers in this clause are wide-ranging and—yet again—are going to be set out in regulations. The powers in new Section 32A(4)(b) and (c) appear to be very broad indeed, including about how social workers will be managed and the terms on which they may be supplied, including the amounts that may be paid under such arrangements. This would allow the Secretary of State to set payment rates from Whitehall. I wonder whether the noble Baroness can explain to the Committee why this is a good idea.

The fundamental problem underlying this clause is, as we debated in the area of children’s homes and foster placements, a shortage of capacity. No local authority is using agency workers other than because it has no choice but to do so. The previous Government had taken steps to address this with the Step Up to Social Work scheme and the creation of social work apprenticeships. Can the Minister update the House on the progress of these? I beg to move.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, gave the background in terms of the statistics and figures, which make for quite a salutary understanding. Agency workers are, as we know, three times more likely to leave a case mid-assessment compared with permanent staff, which obviously would increase risks to children. Let us remember that local authorities spend £500 million annually on agency social workers—on average 60% to 70% more per worker than on permanent staff. Inconsistencies of local policies allow agency staff to move frequently between councils, undermining safeguarding and continuity and, of course, causing resource churn—what a phrase, “resource churn”.

Some rural and high-need areas rely on agency workers due to staff shortages, with poorly defined regulation risks shrinking this vital stopgap workforce. Do we ensure that the training, supervision and caseload standards for agency workers are the same as those of permanent staff? I worry considerably that we see permanent local authority staff taking early redundancy payments and then reappearing as agency workers. In some cases—I do not know whether this is the case with social workers; my research has not shown me that yet—they are then reappointed by other local authorities. That surely cannot be right.

The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, is right to raise that, but—I hope she will not take this the wrong way—the figures that she cited are as much the responsibility of the previous Government as they are figures that the present Government have had to inherit. Towards the end, she mentioned some of the initiatives that her Government had started; I do not know whether the Minister has a briefing on them, but it would be interesting to know whether they have at all been helpful.

One thing I cannot understand—well, I can understand it—is that many public services face a shortage of public service workers. It is not just social workers; it is right across the board—teachers spring to mind. Yet at the same time our universities face shortages of students wanting to come to university. Surely, that is a way of sorting that out. Why do people not want to go into social work? I know why; you know why. Why do people not want to go into teaching? I know why; you know why. That is the answer to the problem: we want to make people want to be teachers and social workers, and we want our higher education and further education sectors to be geared up to that. The Government’s mantra, which we all agree with, is, “Training, training, training”, but training is no use if people are not prepared to take it up. This is a classic example of the problem we face.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My Lords, through the introduction of a regulation-making power, Clause 19 allow the Government to take stronger action to alleviate the significant affordability and stability challenges that have arisen from the increase in the use and cost of agency workers in local authority children’s social care in England. The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, identified some of the progress being made in the staffing of children’s social care. I can confirm that the current level of agency use in the sector stands at 16.2%, a small fall on the previous year, but she is also right, of course, that this varies considerably from authority to authority.

What I would say about that 16.2% is that, in essence, more than one in eight of the people who are working in children’s social care do not have the long-term association with their employers that we would expect to see in any service where we were able to provide the training, the stability and the certainty about future costs that we would want. It is considerably higher than in similar sectors, whether in the health service or in education.

Agency work continues to be a considerable issue within children’s social care. That is not to say that there is not excellent work being carried out by individual agency social workers—I know from my previous experience in Sandwell Children’s Trust that there are many excellent agency workers. Nevertheless, the cost and stability issues that I have outlined remain serious for local authorities and those providing children’s social care. This clause ensures that while agency workers will remain an important part of local authority children’s social care, they will not become a long-term replacement for a permanent, stable workforce. It will allow the Secretary of State to introduce regulations on the use of agency workers in English local authority children’s social care services.

I accept that progress has been made since the introduction by the last Government of the statutory guidance relating to local authority children’s social care services, but that was limited specifically to social workers. We want to extend the framework beyond social workers to the wider local authority children’s social care workforce, including workers such as those delivering early intervention or family help.

A new phenomenon has come into the workforce, and particularly agency provision within children’s social care: that of project teams, where agencies provide not just individual workers but teams to respond to particular challenges. In doing that, partly through the associated management costs and partly through the range of different workers, there are even larger uplifts in the amount of money charged to local authorities. I have seen from personal experience that it is not unusual for social workers and other staff in those teams to be earning £50 an hour or upwards. We may well think that people who are doing this important work are worth £50 an hour, but that is a considerable and, some might argue, unaffordable premium over social workers and other workers who are employed on a permanent basis with teams.

There is a broader range of workers that we should cover here, and a requirement to strengthen some of the principles in the statutory guidance, both by widening it and by this legislative provision. We will of course work in partnership with stakeholders across the system, including agencies, to ensure that the proposals implemented are proportionate and effective. They will make clear to local authorities, the recruitment sector and agency workers what they should expect from one another, and the consistency that this brings to the market will benefit all parties. If we are able by doing this to reduce local authority spend on agency workers, that will allow local authorities to invest more in services supporting children and families and enhance the offer to permanent employees.

I take the broader point that one important way of solving this problem of agency workers is to ensure that those permanently employed, either as social workers or doing other work in children’s social care, get the rewards that they deserve, receive the training that they need in order to get the career satisfaction and progression that they would want, and are employed by local authorities and children’s trusts in ways that value them and provide them with the resources they need. All those things are important, and the Government are addressing them all, but that does not remove the requirement that we believe exists for a stronger ability to make regulations covering children’s social workers and to broaden the scope of those regulations, which is what this clause enables us to do.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank the Minister for her response and her explanation. I think I understand now the scope that the Government intend in terms of the wider social care workforce, although I did not hear her give the Government’s estimate of the number of agency workers involved in that area and the cost to local authorities. Maybe if the department has that data, it could write to us and put a copy of the letter in the Library.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, rightly raised the issue of social workers retiring and then reappearing, magically, as agency social workers, and the noble Lord, Lord Meston, highlighted the impact of that in a court setting, with the obvious cost to the local authority and the disruption and lack of continuity. Given that this builds very much on the statutory guidance that we prepared when in government, we hope that this works really well for the Government in achieving greater affordability and continuity of staff.

I guess we are in a world where the working environment has changed, and social workers can now do a couple of days a week of agency work and work from home the rest of the time. Those are challenges that I am sure the Government are wrestling with, and we wish them every success in so doing.

Clause 19 agreed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

I am grateful to be able to respond, as this is Committee. With the child protection authority, the question is about what scope that will have. If it is to have an inspectorate function, which is what was recommended by IICSA, will it have a role to inspect out of school settings? That is the way that, I would say, it comes within the scope of the amendment. But I accept it is a probing amendment. We need to make sure that we put the DfE and Home Office together to keep children safe .

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, on his powerful speech. I listened to his maiden speech, and this is the second time I have heard him speak. I see that he will be an important addition to the expertise in your Lordships’ House.

In relation to his Amendment 159, I am slightly puzzled and look forward to the Minister’s response. As the noble Lord said, the Government have accepted the recommendations of IICSA to create a child protection authority and this will initially, as I understand it, form part of the child safeguarding practice review panel. My noble friend Lady Berridge made good points about out of school settings although, in general, I worry about the extent of regulation that might fall on very small organisations and the impact that might have. I remember thinking about this when in office. One of the organisations we met with said there were no incentives in the system today to encourage organisations to do the right thing; there are just penalties if you get it wrong. Maybe that is a constructive path for the Government to consider.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Storey (LD)]

It is wonderful to be surrounded by so many supportive people, including someone in the Official Opposition, who has just told me it should be the other way round.

What I originally said should have been the other way round. You have only to look at the NHS to see that: when we had clear targets in the NHS, we could see the progress that was being made or not being made. As soon as we did away with targets, we did not know how successful or unsuccessful we were. I support this amendment because it says, “If we are going to deal with child poverty, we need to say what we want to achieve and the targets we want to set”, and we can monitor them and know whether we are successful or unsuccessful. I apologise for misleading the Committee.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by stressing that reducing child poverty is a goal that we clearly share across the House, and tackling the challenge of child poverty must be a priority for every Government. This Government have been very clear on that point.

Understandably, the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Bird, reflects his desire to drive forward real progress on this issue, and he brings extraordinary experience from his own life. My remarks and caution about the noble Lord’s amendments are in the spirit of honesty and respect to the noble Lord and in no way diminish the aims of his amendment but raise, I hope, reasonable questions about the approach.

As the noble Lord said—I have never heard the phrase used like this before, but I thought the concept of inherited poverty was very helpful—we know that child poverty stems from a number of different interconnected factors, including employment patterns, housing costs, structure of families, educational opportunities and regional economic conditions. My overriding concern is that having binding central targets risks oversimplifying this very complex challenge and could overlook local interventions that genuinely improve children’s lives. The challenges and underlying causes of a child living in poverty in Hackney or in Jaywick are significantly different, despite them being only about 50 miles apart. In fact, I would argue that, for a child growing up in poverty, the differences between Bristol and Weston-super-Mare, which are on each other’s doorstep, are also very great.

We have seen repeatedly how targets can distort behaviour and priorities. When governments and local authorities face binding targets, there is a risk that they are driven to pursue interventions that improve statistics rather than outcomes. This can lead to short-term fixes that artificially move families just above the poverty threshold without addressing the underlying causes; somewhere back to the empty stable and bolted horse that the noble Lord, Lord Bird, referred to. However, I absolutely recognise the reality behind the call that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, made to make particularly deep poverty more comfortable—a slightly curious concept, but I think we all understand exactly what she means.

Child poverty, as noble Lords know, manifests differently across England—from rural communities that face challenges with transport and access to employment, to urban areas grappling with housing costs and concentrated deprivation. What works in Manchester would be inappropriate for rural Devon, and I would argue that local authorities, combined authorities and community organisations are perhaps often better placed to understand and respond to their specific poverty challenges than central government.

Setting binding targets risks creating a hierarchy of government priorities which may not reflect emerging needs or, indeed, changing subjects. Such targets risk us focusing on specific areas rather than the underlying causes of child poverty. So again, I do not agree with the approach set out in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, but I do agree with his ambition; and I also agree with the call of the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, for action as well as words.

As I said in opening, I know that the Government are very focused on reducing child poverty, and I look forward to the Minister’s remarks.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, may I just ask her why she thinks that all the charities working in the field and with local authorities, as well as academics, are calling for legally binding targets, if they would have the effect she says and would not help to address the systemic causes of poverty?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Obviously, I respect their opinions, but there is plenty of evidence—and the noble Baroness will know this in other contexts, not necessarily about child poverty—where targets have distorted behaviour, not always delivering on the aspiration of those who recommended them at the time.

Before I sit down, I would like to put on record a clarification about my closing remarks earlier on the first group that we debated today. I remain very concerned about the lack of a comprehensive and up-to-date dataset and analysis of the financial position of independent providers won from the Government, but I was wrong to say, in the earlier debate on Tuesday evening, that the figure the Minister quoted regarding the profits of the independent children’s home sector was for the whole sector. When I reread Hansard, possibly for the third time, it was clear that she had stated that it was for the largest 20 providers. In fact, the figure was for the 19 largest providers, but none the less I apologise to the Committee, to the Minister and to officials.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, can I inject one further thought that she might agree with? While the sentiments adduced in this debate are entirely right, and the concern is absolutely an important concern, does she agree that, in that discussion of centrally imposed targets versus the removal of targets, looking at the particular circumstances is profoundly important? The targets were removed after what those of us who do financial services call the global financial crash, when GDP declined considerably—in fact, we are still seeing the effects of what happened in 2008—but, because child poverty is relative, a decline in GDP has a material impact on whether child poverty goes up or down. I wonder whether that should be part of the consideration of where the targets fit. My own view is that some targets are important, but it is more important to get GDP going, which I think is the Government’s intent in this case, so relative child poverty of itself becomes less of a problem.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a very helpful point, and I absolutely agree with it.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

Very briefly, I support my noble friend Lord Hampton in saying that education is fundamental here. You do not resolve poverty unless a child is put through education successfully. Therefore, my plea is that the main message from this debate should be that local authorities should prioritise promoting education for children in poverty. That is actually the way to a successful resolution of this problem.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash (Con)]

The care sector is slightly different, for the reasons people have mentioned. But what are we going to do—nationalise it for nothing? Are we going to become a communist country? Are we going to pay for it, and if so, where will that money come from? Anyway, even if you deal with the ownership issue—obviously, I do not agree with the idea of nationalisation—threatening people who operate them with fines just does not seem reasonable. That is why I support the amendments on limiting fines and not applying them to natural persons, as opposed to corporations.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 140A, in my name, and propose that Clause 14 do not stand part of the Bill.

Before I turn to my own amendments, I add my support to my noble friend Lady Sanderson’s Amendment 134A. As we have heard, it would bring much needed transparency to the children’s homes market and help to level the playing field for smaller and larger providers. Of course, this transparency would help the negotiating position of local authorities and regional care co-operatives in future. I thank my noble friend Lady O’Neill of Bexley for making it real and giving us very practical examples.

Equally, the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, made important points about the level of profit in the area of supported accommodation. As I understand it from the CMA report, it has some of the highest margins in the sector and today provides about two-thirds or three-quarters as many places as children’s homes do, at just over 6,000, or 7% of the market for looked-after children.

Amendment 141, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, seeks, as we heard, to extend the profit cap to independent special schools. As the noble Lord understands extremely well, this is a very complex area, and one has to be careful, given the range of provision. Some of these homes offer short-term respite to foster carers, for example, so any changes would need to be thought through carefully to avoid unintended consequences.

Along with others, and not just on my Benches, including the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, I cannot support Amendment 174, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. Our starting point is that there needs to be greater capacity to limit price increases and ensure a choice of suitable care. We were very clear when we were in government that we do not condone profiteering in this market, but we have concerns about how the transition in Wales will work to a market where there are no for-profit providers. Obviously, the problem of very high pricing will only be exacerbated, as my noble friend Lord Nash just explained, if sufficient new capacity is not created quickly or even if capacity is withdrawn. Such an approach cannot be considered in England until the Government have invested in new, not-for-profit or social enterprise capacity, whether that be in the local authority or in the voluntary sector, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, very ably outlined.

I confess that it is slightly curious to be in a position of challenging the Government’s attempts to regulate and limit the profits of some actors in this industry, which have rightly drawn criticism from the CMA, local authority leaders and indeed many in your Lordships’ House. My amendments to this clause and the others in this area are definitely not about defending a group of companies that can well defend themselves; I am simply trying to test the viability and impact of the Government’s proposals. It is important, because there is such a level of frustration with the behaviour of some of the actors in this sector that we risk having a confirmation bias that anything we change it to will be better. We need to test these proposals and be confident that the solution the Government propose will work.

As we have discussed at numerous points in Committee, there is a fundamental problem with the lack of residential care capacity, whether that be in relation to fostering, children’s homes or supported accommodation. The Competition and Markets Authority described the current shortfall as a “fundamental failure” in market functioning, imposing, in its words,

“severe limitations on the ability of the 206 local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales, who purchase placements, to engage effectively with the market”.

We need a clear plan to address this shortage. My fundamental concern is that the measures in Clauses 12 to 18 will not have the desired impact that the Government seek—and that, across your Lordships’ House, we all seek. Amendment 140A is simply an example of why I do not think the plan for a financial oversight regime as presented in the Bill has been properly road-tested and that we can have confidence in its impact.

New Section 30ZI, to be inserted by the Bill, gives the Secretary of State the power to arrange for an independent business review by an external qualified person. You would assume that, in such cases, almost the first thing that they would look at, if it existed, would be the recovery and resolution plan set out at new Section 30ZG, but it is not even mentioned. There is a list of things that they should look at, but the recovery and resolution plan is not mentioned. It would be fundamental for them to look at that plan, given that it covers, according to the Government, the

“nature and extent of any risk to the financial sustainability of the person … the action the person proposes to take”

to address this, as well as

“impacts on local authorities, and children”.

That makes me lose confidence that this has been properly thought through. I hope that the Minister can either add it to the list of things that independent business reviewers will look at, or, more importantly, reassure me and the Committee that this area has been properly considered.

My opposition to Clause 14 standing part of the Bill is probing. The proposed financial oversight scheme for children’s social care represents part of the regulatory response to the market failures identified by the CMA. As with many parts of the Bill, much of this scheme will be set out in regulation. The scheme requires information from parent undertakings, but, as the Minister knows, private equity structures are notoriously complex and opaque. I wonder whether she is concerned whether providers might restructure to minimise oversight burden—how will the Government mitigate this? I am not clear how the scheme will address jurisdictional limitations on enforcement for offshore-based organisations. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain that, or write to me if the answer is particularly technical or it is not at her fingertips. It is reasonable to question whether the DfE has or will acquire the specialised financial and private equity expertise needed to analyse complex corporate structures and financing arrangements effectively—I think this fly in the Chamber has been sent in by a private equity firm.

Similarly, is the Minister confident that local authorities have the capability to respond to advance warning notices? Is she concerned that the act of alerting local authorities about the financial fragility of a provider could lead to them withdrawing placements, leading to the financial collapse that the scheme seeks to avoid? I would be grateful if she could set out how the Government think that the contingency planning will work. I wonder whether the Government have had conversations with providers about how they expect to create realistic plans, given the prevailing market conditions. Surely existing supply shortages will make rapid replacement extremely difficult, and emergency placement costs are already unsustainable.

There are a lot of questions about the impact that this will have on the shape of the market. Will it actually result in more concentration in the market, because the 40 largest providers will have gained the confidence of local authorities? Could it result in financial pressures on smaller providers where there is less transparency?

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Barran]

135: Clause 12, page 17, line 34, leave out “Improvement plan notice” and insert “Requirement for inspection”

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 135 to 138C in my name. Clause 12 introduces the provider oversight scheme, which, according to the department’s policy summary, creates the ability for Ofsted to act at scale and pace when there is poor quality in multiple settings and agencies owned by a single provider group. It will require providers of two or more homes or agencies to implement an improvement plan where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the registration of two or more of their establishments or agencies should be cancelled.

We support in principle the approach of giving Ofsted the power to intervene at a group rather than an individual home level. However, I have three main concerns about the clause. My overarching concern is that this approach may not be effective in getting providers to meet the required standards. Rather, I fear that it risks turning into a letter-writing competition between Ofsted and the providers. I am thinking of a similar approach to independent schools that do not meet the independent school standards, frequently in relation to the teaching of RSHE. These schools face sanctions, and they are required to improve and present a plan for meeting the standards. But during my time in the department, despite the best efforts of officials, the names on the fairly long list barely changed. I appreciate that the context and the reasons for non-compliance are different, but I hope the Minister can convince me that this regime will be more effective.

Secondly, the policy note talks about required standards not being met. Surely there is a spectrum of standards breaches: some that will require the cancellation of the registration, as the Bill is drafted, and some that will require an improvement plan. While I understand that Clause 12 is intended to sit alongside the existing regulatory regime for individual homes, it is unclear how they will mesh together. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain that.

My Amendments 135 and 136 would require an immediate inspection where the breaches of standards indicate concerns about the safety of children. My Amendment 137 would encourage Regulation 44 visitors to make an unannounced visit to establish whether there are lower-level breaches. If these are established, the visitor could make a recommendation to Ofsted about what they have seen—which, of course, it is not obliged to accept. The idea I am trying to get across is that having immediate eyes and boots on the ground, so to speak, is essential where there are serious safeguarding concerns.

I remember a case from when I was in the department where two homes of a particular children’s home group were judged to be inadequate. I requested that all the other homes in the group should be immediately inspected, and that happened. The Minister may say that these amendments are not needed, but it would help to have on record the Government’s explanation of how they expect this to work in practice.

Thirdly, my Amendments 138A to 138C would require the department to communicate with local authorities that might be commissioning a provider, where there are concerns, to make sure that these are shared. I appreciate that this might be difficult in reality. But as we just discussed, there is a similar provision in the financial oversight regime, so I assume this is something the department has considered.

Finally, I have a number of specific questions that sit behind my Amendment 138, which might form the basis of some tidying-up government amendments on Report. I do not expect the Minister to have the answer to every one of these; if she would like to write to me, that is absolutely fine.

On page 18, line 8, how is “reasonably suspects” defined? Is that from a recent inspection—and if so, how recent—or is it from wider intelligence? Secondly, how is an individual with

“a significant role in the management of the parent undertaking”

defined? Is that a director? Do they have to be registered at Companies House? What happens if it is an offshore holding company?

In new Section 23A(7) on page 19, line 3, can the Minister confirm that the Bill is correct where it says:

“The period mentioned in subsection (4)(d) must not be less than … 28 days”?


Should it not say that it must not be more than 28 days? I read this about eight times and am still not clear on what it means. The point is: do we not want to receive improvement plans as promptly as possible?

Should new subsection (8) not clarify that the CIECSS—or Ofsted to its friends—can withdraw an improvement notice only if it has strong evidence that it is no longer needed? What evidence does the Minister expect Ofsted to require before it withdraws an improvement notice? In new Section 23B(2), on line 22, should it not be clear that Ofsted must inform the parent undertaking and any subsidiaries within 28 days, and should this not be mirrored for all the stages of the process?

Can the Minister confirm whether the timeline for the communications listed in Clause 12 will be set out in regulations? At the moment, it is not clear what the maximum time periods are for each stage of the improvement notice process, including for Ofsted to inform and respond to the provider. It would be useful for this to be as clear as possible.

In new Section 23B(5), I wondered whether a step is missing from the processes set out in the Bill. Surely the parent undertaking needs to inform the chief inspector when the plan has been fully implemented within an agreed timescale, which is currently not stated, and then the chief inspector should arrange for an inspection or take whatever appropriate action to confirm that that is the case. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

As always. That was the point that I was making. For all the reasons given, I would kindly ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank the Minister for her very detailed reply and for her commitment to write; that is much appreciated.

To respond to the Minister’s remarks, the reason for tabling Amendments 135, 136 and 137 is that the improvement plan is for the parent company or parent undertaking, but it is for when there are concerns about two or more of their establishments or agencies, in the language of the Bill. I understood that to mean, given the severity—that Ofsted suspects that there are grounds for cancelling the undertakings registration—there could within that be concerns about the safety of children in those homes. So the spirit of Amendments 135, 136 and 137 was that we should have really experienced people, either inspectors or Regulation 44 visitors, going in, not to inspect the parent—I am sorry if my amendments were unclear in that regard—but to inspect the subsidiary undertakings. Maybe when the Minister comes to write, she could just reflect on that point.

In the reference to Regulation 44, the amendment should have stated that

“Ofsted may issue an improvement plan notice”,

not

“the local authority may issue an improvement plan notice”.

Of course, the Minister is absolutely right—the local authority cannot issue an improvement plan notice. But again, it was just trying to get at the idea that, if there was a variation in the levels of concern and the level of breach, for a lower-level breach, a Regulation 44 visitor could advise Ofsted. There is an urgency, if it is thought that an undertakings registration should be cancelled, which will not be met by the improvement plan approach on its own.

In relation to the Minister’s remarks about Amendments 138A, 138B and 138C, I think the answer is that, if the process works reasonably quickly, the proportionality that she set out is completely reasonable. If it gets bogged down, and it comes down to, “We sent you a plan, Ofsted doesn’t think the plan is fit for purpose”, and it goes back and forth and back and forth, we would not get the speed that might be needed to prevent other local authorities commissioning a provider when there are grave concerns, as set out in the Bill. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 135 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Barran]

138D: Clause 13, page 22, line 11, after “person” insert “(except natural persons)”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to limit the financial penalties that can be imposed upon the operators of children’s homes to exclude natural persons.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, Clause 13, as we have heard, introduces monetary penalties for non-compliance with an improvement plan or for running an unregistered children’s home or fostering agency. My Amendments 138D, 138E and 139A seek to exclude natural persons from the power to impose financial penalties on individuals involved in the management of these organisations. As my noble friend Lord Nash said earlier, there is a reasonable concern that this will result in a dearth of people who are prepared to take such a risk, particularly as the financial penalty regime is being set out in regulations and could therefore be altered at any point. Having said that, given that the fines, as I understand it, are currently unlimited, perhaps that is not the greatest worry, but obviously if that concern were to materialise, it would have an impact on provision.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

There is a deafening silence. I turn to group six and the amendments, all in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, which concern Clause 13: Amendments 138D, 138E and 139A. They seek to exclude natural persons from the provisions relating to the issue of monetary penalties. Clause 13, as drafted, gives Ofsted an additional power to issue monetary penalties to providers that have breached requirements set out in, or under, the Care Standards Act, including operating a children’s home without registering with Ofsted, which they could also prosecute as a criminal offence.

Ofsted will also be able to issue a monetary penalty to provider groups for failure to comply with new requirements set out in Clause 12 of the Bill. This measure will ensure Ofsted has a full range of enforcement powers so that it can act proportionately and at pace, which will act as a deterrent. This includes individuals who operate children’s homes, other establishments or agencies. It is difficult to see why a natural person running a children’s home, other establishment or agency should not be subject to the same enforcement powers as a partnership or organisation when they have breached the law, and where Ofsted could prosecute that natural person for the relevant breach.

Furthermore, based on data from Companies House, these amendments would result in Ofsted being unable to fine 10 individuals who currently operate children’s homes if they breached the law, compared with the 2,738 companies that operate children’s homes. Ofsted have told me directly that it strongly opposes any amendment that would exclude natural persons and limit who financial penalties can be imposed on for illegally operating children’s homes without being registered. Individuals will—and do—gain financially from illegally operating children’s homes without being registered, and should not be excluded from the potential consequences of doing so. All the discussions in Committee have been about protecting children and making sure that they are safe. We have to make sure that, in this area, in spite of the comments made by the noble Baroness, children and their safety are at the forefront of our minds. It is also worth noting that it is common in legislation for natural persons to be subject to financial penalties in the same way as operations and companies.

For example, the Tenant Fees Act 2019 enables fines to be imposed on landlords, who may be natural persons, for breaching the ban on letting fees being charged, and the Data Protection Act 2018 enables the Information Commissioner to impose fines on persons, including natural persons, who have failed to comply with various notices issued by the ICO.

I have already stated the reasons for the need and intent of these additional powers. However, I add that the clause ensures that Ofsted has an alternative to prosecution where that is currently the only enforcement action. Ofsted will not be able to impose a monetary penalty on a person for the same conduct where criminal proceedings have been brought against them in relation to that same conduct. Further, and importantly, to act as a deterrent and to ensure transparency for the public, the clause gives the Secretary of State the power by regulations to require Ofsted to publish details about the monetary penalties it has issued. Ofsted must also notify local authorities when a monetary penalty has been issued, as it is currently required to do in relation to other enforcement action it takes. A monetary penalty may be used by Ofsted as grounds for cancellation of registration.

I assume it will come as no surprise to the noble Baroness that I will have to write to her on the financial assessment and the other questions she raised on the specific requirements in place. I am more than happy to do that, and to share it with any interested parties. Therefore, for the reasons I have outlined, I kindly ask the noble Baroness not to press her amendments and that the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank the Minister, and I will keep my remarks brief. It was very helpful of her to set out the examples of where natural persons are fined, as in data protection and with landlord and tenant. I did not quite follow, but I think she said there were 10 people who might escape this, which seemed like a small number in the totality. I suppose I would still argue that criminal proceedings could be brought, even if they could not be fined, but it was helpful to get those examples and I look forward to her letter. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 138D withdrawn.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Since we are forming a set for Amendment 117, I will stand up now, having attached my name to it, and will focus chiefly on that amendment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has stolen my starting line with her final line: nothing about us without us. I first used that phrase in a debate on rather similar amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill. I think that your Lordships’ House and the country are increasingly coming to realise that we have to listen to children far more.

In this context, I will cite an interesting case from the past week, where a 14 year-old who had been tricked by his parents into going to Ghana took his parents to court. The Court of Appeal ruled that he should have the right to come back to Britain, as he wanted to do. That is an interesting court case that shows how, generally, our legal system is starting to listen more and more to children. It is important that our legislation does so and that that is in the Bill.

This raises issues that I will come back to on a later group, but the basic point about the regional care co-operatives is that they will take decision-making further away from local authorities. People have been studying this, and the care review evidence group, for example, said that

“care will need to be taken that these structural reforms do not dilute local accountability mechanisms”.

Making sure that children are actually heard in the making of regulations is in some way a counterbalance to the risk that quite a lot of experts have identified in taking this approach.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 116A, 117A and 119ZA in my name. As we have heard, the proposals to create regional care co-operatives came from the independent review into children’s social care. In principle, we support them. However, we are aware that a number of regions are already using informal co-operation agreements, so I question whether we need more legislation to make this happen. Maybe the Minister can comment on this when she sums up. The Secretary of State is taking the power to direct areas to create one of three models of co-operation, but it is important that we understand how this will work in practice, because, presumably, if areas are not adopting this approach voluntarily, there would be significant barriers and potentially good reasons for doing so. Can the Minister clarify those few points when she closes?

The Local Government Association has stated its support for the narrower requirements of a regional care co-operative, as being used by the pathfinder areas —namely, on

“strategic planning and placements for children with more complex needs”.

However, the Bill states in proposed new Section 22J(3)(c) that regional care co-operatives will be responsible for commissioning

“the provision of accommodation for children being looked after by the local authority”.

There is a real worry about mission creep and confusion over responsibilities, which I have tried to address through my Amendment 119ZA, as has my noble friend Lady Cash through her Amendment 117B.

Will the Minister comment on the concern expressed by organisations such as Barnardo’s that this model will squeeze out some of the smaller providers, increasing even further the dependence on independent providers in the private sector, many of whom, as we know, have a combination of very high profitability and high debts?

Can the Minister confirm the start date for the pathfinders, and when there will be publicly available evidence from them, either via the evaluation or from any other data? Does the department have an idea that it can publicly share of the likely size of each of the areas? The two pilot sites, Greater Manchester and the south-east, are both very large, with about 3 million people within them. Is that the size the Government expect to be typical?

Amendment 116A would remove a power equivalent to a Henry VIII power from the Bill. Clause 10(2) defines strategic accommodation functions as

“(a) assessing current and future requirements for the accommodation of children being looked after by the local authority,


(b) developing and publishing strategies for meeting those requirements,


(c) commissioning the provision of accommodation for children being looked after by the local authority,


(d) recruiting prospective local authority foster parents and supporting local authority foster parents,


(e) developing, or facilitating the development of, new provision for the accommodation of children being looked after by the local authority, and


(f) any other functions relating to a local authority’s duties under section 22A, 22C or 22G that are specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State”.


New Section 22J(3)(f) gives the Secretary of State a power akin to a Henry VIII power to add to the above list of strategic accommodation functions by regulations. In justifying the power, the department goes on to say:

“The Department has sought to achieve the right balance between confining the scope of the delegated powers through primary provisions and leaving necessary matters of detail to regulations. This is the first time the Secretary of State has sought to bring local authorities together to collaborate in the delivery of their strategic accommodation functions. Regional co-operation arrangements (known as Regional Care Co-operatives) … are currently being tested via pathfinders … in two local authority regions. When the pathfinders are evaluated, the Secretary of State may need to prescribe additional functions. There may also be a need for additional functions to be specified in the future depending on the needs of a particular area and to keep pace with the changing children’s social care placements market. The power has been limited to one which enables additional functions to be added to the list in the future. It does not enable the Secretary of State to amend or remove any of the functions already listed in the clause and so it is not a Henry VIII power”.


My amendment is a probing amendment, as this feels like another example of the Government introducing legislation before they are quite ready. Why not wait until the pathfinders are evaluated to be clear what additional strategic functions might be needed? Maybe the Minister can inform the House if the department is aware of any gaps in the current strategic powers that have been identified in areas using this approach already. It would be good to understand whether the Government have in mind any particular powers that might be needed, or whether this is a belt and braces, “just in case” kind of power, without having anything particular in mind.

My Amendment 117A seeks to ensure that Ofsted inspects regional care co-operatives. It is obviously important that we have an independent assessment of their effectiveness and impact and whether they are achieving the Government’s goals—and, perhaps even more importantly, the needs of children. There may be other ways of achieving this and, if so, it would be helpful to understand what those are.

More specifically, my amendment aims to bring a spotlight on the use of unregistered provision. My understanding of the regional care co-operative approach is that it will anticipate and commission capacity in a more effective, and cost-effective, way. One outcome of this would be a drop in or complete removal of the use of unregistered provision, something I know local authorities are keen to see, as are noble many Lords across the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, before I turn to the amendments in the first group, I want to be clear, as many noble Lords have recognised, that the measures in Clause 10, together with those that we will come to later in Clauses 12 to 18, are part of an overarching, broad-ranging strategy to fix the market for placements for looked-after children.

The review conducted by my honourable friend Josh MacAlister, which several noble Lords have quite rightly referenced, and the report from the Competition and Markets Authority were explicit that the placement market is dysfunctional and that some private providers are making excessive profits from placements for our most vulnerable children. We are now taking concerted action to address this, including through measures in the Bill, but also through a wide range of non-legislative measures, to deliver a broader range of providers in the market so that local authorities have more options when finding the right place for children in their care. These must be the right homes in the right parts of the country, so that children do not have to move miles from their communities and support networks, as many noble Lords have referenced in this debate. These homes must be delivered at a sustainable cost to the taxpayer by providers no longer making excessive profits. A failure to address the dysfunction in the system has led to many of the issues that noble Lords are rightly identifying today, which they hope and expect us to respond to—not only, I suspect, in these clauses relating to regional care co-operatives but more broadly in the action that we are taking to fix that dysfunctional market.

Amendments 108 to 116 in the name of my noble friend Lady Longfield seek to amend the definition of local authorities’ strategic accommodation functions as defined by this clause to ensure that it meets the current and future needs of looked-after children. This and my noble friend’s contribution exactly get to the crux of the problems we are trying to solve here. She is correct, as I have already suggested, about the issues raised by the lack of sufficiency caused by the current placement market for children. Children being too far away from home; too big cost pressures; inappropriate placements: those are all things that this provision and the other elements of our strategy are aimed at addressing.

Amendment 119ZA from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, sets out the principles that local authorities that have formed a regional care co-operative, following a direction from the Secretary of State, would have to adhere to when commissioning accommodation for looked-after children. She is right that the provisions in this clause relate to the direction powers for the Secretary of State in circumstances either where local authorities have refused to take part in regional arrangements or perhaps where regional arrangements have been set up and local authorities might not have managed to be part of any of those arrangements. I certainly think it is already the case that authorities are trying to bring themselves together into regional arrangements, precisely to be able to solve some of the issues that we have outlined.

The Government completely agree that there must be sufficient accommodation for all children who are looked after by their local authority and that in future this accommodation must meet their needs and provide appropriate support. It should allow them to live as close to home as possible, where that is in their interests. That is precisely the reason for trying to ensure that the market operates more effectively.

But it is also the case that there are existing legal requirements on local authorities to the effect of some of the understandable calls that have been made in these amendments and by other noble Lords. Local authorities already have a general statutory duty under Section 22G of the Children Act 1989 to take such steps, as far as is reasonably practicable, to ensure that there is sufficient accommodation within their area to meet the needs of looked-after children. They are also under a duty, via Sections 22 and 22C of the same Act, to provide accommodation that meets the needs of looked-after children by ensuring it is consistent with the child’s welfare and has due consideration to the child’s age and understanding, as well as their wishes and feelings. Finally, they have a statutory duty under Section 22C(8)(a) and (9) of the 1989 Act to ensure they provide accommodation that allows children to live near their home, unless it is inconsistent with the child’s welfare or not reasonably practicable. Those duties will all remain.

The problem is not that there is no legal recognition of these issues and the need for them to be taken into consideration in providing sufficient accommodation and placements for children. It is that the market has prevented local authorities being able to fulfil their statutory requirements. That is why regional care co-operatives, which in the legislation are called “regional co-operation arrangements”, will assist local authorities in meeting these duties, including by analysing what accommodation is needed for children across the region, publishing sufficiency strategies, recruiting and supporting foster parents and commissioning care places, as recommended by both the review conducted by Josh MacAlister and the report from the Competition and Markets Authority. They will support local authorities to carry out their strategic accommodation functions but, as I have suggested, these functions are not new and are already in law, including the duty to take steps, as reasonably practicable, to ensure sufficient accommodation for looked-after children. Any decision-making responsibility for where individual children are placed, however, will continue to rest with local authorities.

Amendment 116A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, would prevent the Secretary of State adding to a local authority’s strategic accommodation functions for regional care co-operatives. I would like to reassure the noble Baroness of the safeguards in place regarding the power to add to the list of strategic accommodation functions to be exercised through regional care co-operatives. I slightly lost track of whether she was accusing the Government of currently having a Henry VIII power within the legislation— I will go back and check.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I was aware that my remarks may not have been clear that, in the department’s own memorandum, it describes this power as being akin to a Henry VIII power.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I will certainly take advice and look carefully at that, but I assure the Committee that the appropriate committee, the name of which escapes me, has of course looked in detail at the delegated provisions within the legislation and we will be responding to the committee and covering off any issues that might be of the sort of concern that the noble Baroness raises.

I hope to provide some further reassurance on that. First, the scope of regulations is limited to those local authority functions covered by specific sections of the Children Act 1989, namely Section 22A, the duty to accommodate looked-after children; Section 22C, how looked-after children should be accommodated by the local authority; and Section 22G, the duty to ensure sufficient accommodation for looked-after children.

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[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, that all these amendments would enhance the life chances and life opportunities of looked-after children, and they should be seriously considered.

In the 21st century, the words “unregistered” or “unregulated” should never enter into our dialogue or vocabulary. It is not acceptable for our schools or our children; whether it is an unregulated school or an unregulated home, it should not exist. I wish that I had signed the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and I apologise for not doing so. The noble Lord is absolutely right to call it scandalous. Noble Lords should have a look at the BBC “Panorama” programme from two or three years ago that looked at looked-after children in unregulated schools. Never mind caravans—some of them were being housed in barges. Imagine that in the winter. Unregulated provision is never inspected, and anything can go on in them. The children are not safe—we should not allow it to happen. Of course, Ofsted does not inspect them either. We owe it to our children to give them something better than that. I agree with my noble friend Lady Tyler that we cannot do that overnight, but we can make a stand and say that we are not going to have children in unregistered provision and we will phase it out. That would be a testimony to the current Government.

On Amendment 129 from my noble friend Lady Tyler, to which I added my name, everything that she says almost ties in with that of the noble Lord, Lord Watson; they are very similar on what they say.

I turn to Amendment 119 from the noble Lord, Lord Agnew. I think that the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Bennett, are looking at a stereotypical view of boarding schools. I would like to take them both to Liverpool College, which was an independent school and is now an academy, and where the local authority buys in places for looked-after children. The children get accommodation of high quality, but they also get adults who properly look after them, and they get sport and they get clubs and activities as well as outdoor pursuits. What is more, they go to the school and get fantastic results. I agree that not every boarding school would be suitable, but if it is a choice between being on a barge or in a caravan or some other dump, as some of the unregistered schools are, a boarding school would be a better prospect.

I had not thought about the link between schools, GPs and looked-after children moving into a particular area. Presumably, in a digital age, when we are about to move to a new registration system, probably linked to NHS numbers, there is a real opportunity for us to be very joined up. When children move into those areas, the doctor and the school will be notified, and it can only benefit the child as well.

I like the idea from the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, of a national plan to ensure that there are sufficient places for children and we are not in the same position that we are in currently. We cannot wave a magic wand and expect this to happen overnight, but all of us in this Chamber want the same thing—we want the best possible opportunities for children, including registered schools and proper provision properly inspected. As we have said time and again, we also want the children to be as close to their locality and their family and friends as possible.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, this has been an excellent debate on a range of specific amendments, all of which either seek to improve the residential care provision for children and young people or, in the case of Amendment 165, require notification if a child is placed in temporary accommodation. This group has been named the “Why wouldn’t we?” group.

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Moved by

[Baroness Barran]

119A: Clause 11, page 16, line 19, after “local authority”, insert “or who has an EHCP and is in receipt of residential care”
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to include children with EHCPs in residential care and allow residential schools to use deprivation of liberty in specific settings for specific children rather than moving them to a residential home.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, Clause 11 epitomises both the responsibility and the privilege that we all share as lawmakers in ensuring that the law works as well as possible for children who are extraordinarily vulnerable through no fault of their own. I put on record my gratitude to the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory and the Nuffield Foundation for their expertise and meticulous work in this area, and to Homes2Inspire, the Shaw Trust and Somerset County Council for allowing me to visit a home where up to two children deprived of their liberty can live, so that I could understand these issues better.

Children deprived of their liberty face severe and immediate risks from their own actions or the actions of others. They typically face six different types of restrictions and are under constant supervision, and two thirds experience restraint. The majority live on their own. Currently, under Section 25 of the Children Act 1989, children in care can be placed in registered secure accommodation. When this is not possible, local authorities can apply to the High Court for a deprivation of liberty order through their inherent jurisdiction. This often leads to crisis-driven placements in unsuitable settings, does not address the harmful effects of restraint and isolation and is clearly intended as a measure of last resort.

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[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this important debate. I echo the noble Lord, Lord Storey: the House of Lords was at its best with the expertise that was shared generously by your Lordships. I also thank the Minister for her comprehensive response. I believe she addressed —or is going to come back on—the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, regarding the use of handcuffs, as well as the specific gaps in relation to children who are not looked after, which was raised by my noble friend Lady Berridge. I think she also gave a very positive response to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, in relation to his amendments. So it is so far, so good.

In relation to my amendments, there were some genuinely positive and helpful responses. In relation to Amendments 119A and 119B, there was a category of response. I understand—the Minister is obviously telling the truth—that these duties already exist, whether it be in relation to children receiving education or therapeutic support, or, indeed, that they are in registered accommodation; but the Minister knows as well as I do that that is not working in real life.

It may be that the problem is a difficult one to solve, but it still needs to be solved. These children are not typically getting an education; although I would agree with her that, if they are nearer their community, they have a better chance of doing so. We know that these children have frequently been in unregistered accommodation and that, as I said in my remarks, they often do not meet the criteria for CAMHS to provide therapeutic support.

I also felt something distinctly promising about her tone in relation to my Amendment 134C, so I live in hope.

There are two amendments that I want to touch on briefly. In the case of Amendment 124, I believe the Minister said that she agreed on the need for clear safeguards, and that the same powers would be available to the Secretary of State as exist today for children in secure accommodation, but those powers will be set out in regulations. That was the bit where, if I have understood correctly, I stopped feeling comfortable because, obviously, regulations can be reversed, and I cannot see why you would not want the same safeguards for these children on the face of legislation as for those in secure accommodation. But I will read what she said and, if I have misunderstood, she is welcome to intervene on me.

Similarly, in relation to my Amendment 132 regarding the independent reviewing officer, the Minister said that those powers already exist, but my amendment would explicitly extend and strengthen those powers. I would be grateful if she could perhaps reflect on that in her comments in relation to Amendment 132. We need proper scrutiny and oversight, we need proper therapy and care for these children, and they need to be in the right accommodation. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 119A withdrawn.