Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Baroness Butler-Sloss and Lord Russell of Liverpool

Tuesday 17th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

I put my name to Amendment 129 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, which I am happy to do. She has made a strong case for amending the sufficiency duty or doing something similar to make it clear that moving children beyond a certain geographical distance from their normal base is deleterious to their well-being and health in every way possible.

I also put my name to Amendment 144 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson. We have all heard what is going on and I think we all agree that it is unconscionable and appalling. The question, as was put very aptly by the noble Lord, is what action we are going to take to do something about it. The fact that it exists is bad enough, so we need to have a clear plan to do something about it.

I will focus my remarks primarily on Amendment 165 in my name. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Young and Lord Hampton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for putting their names to it. It is to do with temporary accommodation and the effect that being moved into temporary accommodation has on young children. This is a topic that the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Households in Temporary Accommodation, which is headed by Dame Siobhain McDonagh, has long campaigned for. In fact, on 13 May Dame Siobhain met the Minister’s colleague Janet Daby, Minister at the Department for Education, and Rushanara Ali, Minister at the Department of Housing, Communities and Local Government, specifically to explore what can be done about this issue.

The issue, as the amendment’s explanatory statement says clearly, is that the new clause would establish a notification system requiring local authorities to alert schools and GPs when a child is placed in temporary accommodation. To explain why that is important, this is a direct quote from a head teacher in Lewisham about this phenomenon:

“On the ground, the impact of TA on children is colossal. We only hear, by accident, only by us being nosey and being at the gate in the morning, or them being late, tired or hungry, is how we find out, then we do our best to support them”.


We have a situation at the moment where there is a lot of inconsistency in what is happening when a child is moved with their family into temporary accommodation, sometimes in a very different area from where they were before, which clearly is disruptive to both education and their health. I understand that the upshot of that meeting was positive. We still need to get colleagues in the Department of Health on side because there are some complications in there being several different elements to trying to get this to work.

There are three particular areas that need to be done better if this amendment is to be successful. The first is local authorities. There is a move within the LGA to acknowledge the need for councils to be compassionate councils. There is agreement that, in principle, local authorities should be doing this notification on behalf of the child, and that they should be sending the receiving authority a notification—a point that was raised by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, on the last group. That often takes place but not always, when clearly it should. The LGA has very good and clear guidance on this. However, its guidance does not mention schools or general practices specifically. Perhaps this is an area that could be looked at.

The second is to do with technology. While government in all forms, including local government, can spend vast amounts of money on technology, it does not always do what you think it should be able to do. Many local authorities do not have the ability in their current systems to send notifications easily. Manchester, for example, which you would have thought of as one of the larger and more sophisticated metropolitan authorities, has to do this individually by email; there is no way of pushing a button and just getting it done.

Under the previous Government, the central government ensured that the providers of technology to local government were able to change their data systems so that they always included rough sleeper assessments. Where there is a will, there is a way; this can be done. We hope that His Majesty’s Government can do something to ensure that the housing system has a notification system embedded within it to make notification much more straightforward than it currently is.

The last point is to do with getting better guidance implemented. At the moment, training across schools and primary care provision is very varied, and I do not think there is necessarily an understanding, either by the schools from which the children are being moved or by the schools to which they are being moved, of the importance of having that dialogue, and the same is true of GP practices.

For all those reasons, I hope that the Minister will be able to give some indication as to whether the initial impression given at the meeting with the two Ministers in May—that the Government were receptive to this—is still the case. Perhaps the Minister can update us on any talks that have happened since then.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 118, 144 and 165 in particular. Dealing with perhaps the least important of the three: as a boarding school girl, I think that boarding school can often be a very sensible place to send children. I would not want to see it required for all children—that would be most unsuitable—but boarding school should be in the thoughts of those wondering where to put a child. It might be that it would be possible to keep the child with a particular member of the family if that family member did not have the child for 12 months of the year. Anyone who has been a mother or a father understands that situation.

On Amendments 144 and 165, I feel particularly strongly about unregulated accommodation. Under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989, there is an obligation on the local authority to promote the welfare of the child. I cannot believe that local authorities that send children to unregulated places are complying appropriately with the law. I wonder whether any local authority has ever thought about it.

Unregulated accommodation—which has been set out so well already—is not, in fact, checked. If one thinks about it, the idea that 16 and 17 year-olds are not being checked as to how they are getting on—bearing in mind, as has been said, that they are still technically children and are at a very vulnerable age, particularly if they are in care—is extraordinary. The other point is that even adult accommodation seems very unsuitable. Who are they going to meet in adult accommodation? Although it may be checked, one wonders how much checking there is. I hope the Minister will listen to these particular matters very strongly.