Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Biggar on his excellent maiden speech on the importance of our national story in liberal schools. I also thoroughly enjoyed the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley. I welcome them both to your Lordships’ House.

We have heard many powerful and moving speeches from across the House, and they confirm that this Bill matters. It will affect the lives of the nation’s children intimately and profoundly, and it is important that we get this legislation right. We will engage constructively where the Government are intent on doing the right thing, but, as so many noble Lords have pointed out, there is work to do to improve the Bill, most particularly in its impact on schools.

Every child deserves safety, dignity and a fair shot at life, and we support the aims of Part 1: to provide stronger support for children in care, to build a child protection system that protects and to end the unchecked profiteering from services meant to nurture, not exploit. These are not just policy goals but moral imperatives, and they speak to the kind of country we ought to be.

Much was done by previous Governments—most conspicuously under the coalition by Ministers such as Sarah Teather, David Laws and Edward Timpson—to improve the lives of children in care, but we acknowledge that there is more to be done, more even than the Bill currently allows for. We heard compelling evidence from expert witnesses in Committee in the other place that the Bill misses clear opportunities to intervene earlier and more effectively in children’s lives. My noble friends Lady Cash and Lord Farmer spoke of the need to break the cycles of dysfunctionality.

One example is the timing of family group conferencing during care proceedings. Used too late, its value is diminished. The same is true in private law proceedings, where earlier use could help defuse conflict before it escalates. When it comes to deprivation of liberty orders for children, the Bill says little, despite the known risks and the urgent need for stronger safeguards. These are not technical oversights; they are missed chances to protect children sooner, to reduce harm and to shift the system from reacting to crisis to preventing it. That is what reform requires and, on this, the Bill falls short.

The Bill’s provisions on regulating children’s homes and independent foster carers also fail to confront the real issue, which is capacity. The fundamental problem in foster care is not a lack of oversight; it is a lack of homes. Yet, instead of addressing that constraint, the Bill turns to regulation—elaborate, bureaucratic and unlikely to deliver the change that is needed. My noble friend Lord Young of Cookham gave us the benefit of his personal experience. My noble friend Lady Cash also highlighted further problems in the system. We will look to amend the Bill to do what it should have done from the outset—expand fostering capacity and reduce dependence on a process-heavy system that too often delivers delay, not results.

On safeguarding, there are clear omissions. The Bill is silent on the place of smartphones in schools. There is a need to give children a break from the well-documented problems of digital technology, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady Cass, so eloquently explained. This is an issue of growing concern for teachers, parents and pupils. I commend the excellent research that Policy Exchange, the UK’s most influential think tank, has done on this issue.

More seriously, the Bill says little about the long-promised reform of the SEND system, where delay has real consequences for children and families already struggling to navigate a broken process. This issue was raised by many noble Lords, including my noble friends Lady Berridge and Lady Fraser of Craigmaddie, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington.

My noble friends Lord Moynihan of Chelsea and Lady Sater, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, also brought attention to the fact that there is not one mention of the importance of sport or physical activity in the Bill.

Far too much of this Bill is being left to secondary legislation. This should alarm every Member of this House. It is not just a procedural shortcut. It is a clear signal that the Government do not yet know how their own reforms are supposed to work. The noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, called strongly for the clear use of data and measurement of goals. Clause after clause is a placeholder for policy that has not been written, capacity that has not been planned and consequences that have not been thought through. That is not just weak government; it is disrespectful to this House and dangerous for the children who will live with the consequences. We will bring forward amendments to address all these points. We urge the Government to use the time ahead not to defend the text as drafted but to improve it so that it meets the scale of the challenge and the seriousness of the moment.

I turn to Part 2 of the Bill. As the Minister will have heard, our concerns are far more fundamental. The Bill does not take account of the careful cross-party consensus built up during the last two decades which has driven up standards in schools in England, even if they have deteriorated in Scotland and Wales, as my noble friend Lady Fraser demonstrated so persuasively in the case of Scotland.

Greater autonomy for the front line, through the growth of academies and free schools, provided with sharper accountability—my noble friend Lord Agnew was absolutely right to talk about the Damoclean sword of consequences—and intervention when schools fail, has ensured that England has risen up every international measure of educational performance. Many other noble Lords, such as my noble friends Lord Young of Acton, Lord Fink and Lady Fleet, have spoken of the huge successes of the programme. The reforms driving this improvement have been shaped, supported and implemented by politicians from every major party, from my noble friend Lord Baker to the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett and Lord Adonis, the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, Nick Clegg and David Laws during the coalition years, and my noble friends Lord Harris of Peckham, Lord Agnew of Oulton, Lord Nash, Lord Hill of Oareford and Lady Morgan of Cotes.

These measures, which touch on schools, do not all give rise to concern. There are manifesto commitments in the Bill which we want to see succeed, but they must be made to work. The proposal to roll out free breakfast clubs to all primary schools could offer real value, but only if issues around funding, staffing and delivery are properly addressed.

We recognise the case for a register of home-educated children, not least to ensure that no child becomes invisible to the system. However, as drafted, the Bill does too little to protect children already known to social care—those at the highest risk—yet overreaches into the lives of families who are not. My noble friends Lord Frost, Lord Wei and Lord Jackson have raised concerns in this area. New Section 436C mandates local authorities to collect extensive data from all home-educating families, including details about who is educating the child, how often, where and whether any third parties are involved, even for families with no history of safeguarding concerns. The noble Lord, Lord Hacking, described the clauses as too long and too complicated. Meanwhile, there is no tiered or risk-based enforcement mechanism. This is a blunt instrument and poor policy design.

There are measures in this Bill that do not merely pause the progress we have seen in our schools but threaten to undo it. As my noble friend Lord Hill of Oareford, brilliantly argued, what is most troubling is that the Government have offered no serious explanation as to why these changes are being made. There is no analysis, no evidence and, as my noble friends Lady Fleet, Lady Meyer and Lord Moynihan of Chelsea all pointed out, no clearly defined problem for which these sweeping proposals are the solution.

Take one extraordinary provision: Clause 50 repeals the legal duty to convert failing schools into academies. For over a decade, this duty has underpinned one of the few unambiguous successes in public service reform. Schools deemed to be underperforming were matched with strong academy trusts. Leadership was renewed, expectations were raised and, crucially, results improved. Without that power, as we heard from my noble friend Lord Harris of Peckham, thousands of children in our poorest communities would have been deprived of an excellent education which transformed their lives immeasurably for the better. Hundreds of schools serving some of the most disadvantaged communities were improved yet, with no consultation and no rationale, this Bill abolishes that duty.

In the same breath, Clause 49 hands the Secretary of State extraordinary powers to intervene in any academy—not when it has failed, or even when it has breached its agreement, but simply when a breach is anticipated. That is a staggering threshold. Worse still, Ministers may then determine precisely how that imagined breach must be rectified. This is not evidence-based reform; it is micromanagement by suspicion.

Clause after clause strips away the very freedoms that made the academy model work. Clause 46 of the Bill imposes a blanket requirement that all teachers in academies must hold qualified teacher status. It abolishes the current discretion that academies have long held, which is the freedom to hire brilliant, capable individuals from beyond traditional routes: the coder turned computing teacher, the actor turned drama coach, the engineer teaching physics in schools where such teachers are desperately needed. The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, argued that technical subjects are best taught by those with practical experience, and she is correct.

Clauses 53 to 56 invite local authorities and adjudicators to override decisions on admissions, pupil numbers and exclusions, thus centralising control where autonomy once delivered results. Clause 57 goes further by allowing local authorities to propose new community schools and pupil referral units, reversing the principle that new schools should be academies or free schools. In doing so, it reopens the door to precisely the local bureaucracies whose record of school improvement was so consistently weak that it gave rise to the academies programme in the first place.

Then there is Clause 47, which mandates that academies must follow the national curriculum. My noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes has expressed concern about this change, as did other noble Lords. The clause also gives the Secretary of State very substantial powers— Henry VIII powers—which now also apply to academies. Indeed, together with Clause 63, this Bill introduces some of the broadest Henry VIII powers we have seen in modern education law. My noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking expressed concern about the transfer of such powers to the Secretary of State, and the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, also addressed the issue. I am interested to hear the views of the Minister on the issue of such powers in the Bill.

We are left with this: the Government propose to dismantle what works, impose what they cannot defend and call it progress. Children do not learn better because Whitehall takes charge of school uniforms; they will not succeed if this House fails to question legislation that takes us backwards, a point made by many noble Lords, including my noble friends Lady Eaton and Lord Eccles.

Perhaps most importantly, the Bill is a chance to shape the next decade of school improvement in England. Let me be clear: we on these Benches would welcome that opportunity, if the Government were serious about rising to it. The first phase of academisation tackled deep, entrenched failure in a minority of schools. The second built a national network of trusts, many of which used their freedoms to innovate, improve and deliver for children.

Now the task before us is clear: to scale what works. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Huyton, made the case for this in her excellent speech. We should take the best of our MATs and local authorities and embed that excellence across the system to improve outcomes for pupils, back our staff—my noble friend Lady Shephard and the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, emphasised the need to support our brilliant head teachers and teachers—with better support and career progression, give parents meaningful choice and build a school system that is not just higher performing but more resilient and fairer.

The lesson from both academy trusts and local authorities in the recent regulatory and commissioning review was clear: if we want lasting improvement, we need a self-improving system, not one run from Whitehall. None of this is about ideology; it is about what works. We have seen that progress comes when we combine autonomy, accountability and ambition. Let us not quietly dismantle what works, let us build on it. It does not have to be this way. With the right amendments, this Bill could lay the foundations for a genuine self-improving system—one that drives outcomes, strengthens leadership and places children, not institutions, at the centre. I hope the Minister and her department will meet these proposals with the seriousness they deserve, because we do not get many chances to get this right.

I will give the final words to my noble friend Lord Harris: you can recover from a bad first job, even a second, but a child gets one shot at education. No do-overs. No second drafts. So our duty is simple: we must get it right the first time, and that begins by getting this Bill right here and now.