Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

3rd reading
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, while I hope the Commons will look again and restore some version of Clause 4 and material remedies for victims of cancel culture on campus, I am still really glad that we have passed the Bill. I think our deliberations have been worth while and even now are having an impact, so I thank all involved.

A highlight for me was when the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, made his “confession” last week that he had originally thought the Bill “not necessary”, but

“during the process of Committee and the dialogue and discussions … I was persuaded that there is an issue to address.”—[Official Report, 7/12/22; col. 222.]

That is a win, in my book. Credit, then, to those who have spoken so articulately on threats to academic freedom, but also to those who have been open-minded and listened. Does that not remind us of the gains of hearing all sides of a debate, the importance of free speech and why it is so valuable?

In another instance, I have a confession. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, was keen to correct any impression I had given that the University of Oxford was creating a hostile environment to academics who might oppose moves to decolonise classical music. I apologise if I was too sweeping, but I am in touch with music scholars who are extremely worried about the dogmatic atmosphere surrounding the classical music canon, disparagingly dubbed

“white European music from the slave period”.

They claim that the debate on the topic is toxic and mired in accusations of racism, so I enthusiastically welcome the University of Oxford’s insistence that this is just not true. Perhaps this shows that university authorities can be sensitised to the reputational damage of not defending academic freedom or their own academic staff’s reputation if they disagree with critical theory orthodoxies. That is a shift away from worrying only about the reputational damage of being mislabelled as bigots by campus activists, and I think the Bill has helped.

A final positive note: I was shocked last week when the UCU, the trade union of Edinburgh University, shamefully demanded that the university cancel the screening of “Adult Human Female” organised by their own colleagues, Edinburgh Academics for Academic Freedom and—not a good example of collegiate atmosphere. I was nervous that Edinburgh University would succumb. After all, it had only recently given into pressure to cancel the titan of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy, David Hume. But no, the university stood firm. The documentary will be shown at the university’s theatre tomorrow night, despite transphobic accusations—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, is this normal?

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I do not know. I apologise; I am trying to be gracious.

Perhaps the debate we have had has already given authorities a bit more backbone, and therefore I congratulate and thank everyone concerned for allowing a freer spirit and discussion around academic freedom to take place, at least outside this place.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 18th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister has done what in rugby they say happens to good players: they catch the bad ball. You catch the attention of the entire team and you get flattened, but the good players get up. I hope the Minister will be able to get up and report back that—and I have made this point to her many times—unless we have a realistic amount of time and structure within which to discuss the changes, we are not doing our job. It is as simple as that.

I would be slightly more flexible about having a whole new Committee stage, but only one day has been suggested. I asked the Minister at the time whether that meant one day of business that might be extended to three or four—we might have a better reading if we had that—but a process that would be effectively guillotined, or at least very condensed, fills me with nothing but dread. We have to make sure that we have enough time to discuss the changes, and if that meant another process coming through, I would be quite flexible and would encourage my noble friends to do the same. But one day of Committee, with 12, 20 or who knows how many more new clauses and a structure that we have not heard of yet—come on, that is not on.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, the only thing that stops me wholeheartedly agreeing with everything that previous speakers have said is the thought that we would have to go through this again.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, that is one of the reasons why I support what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. This is not just about a particular Bill; it is about the way we do business. As I am just about to finish my first parliamentary year in this House, and, as other noble Lords have said, a situation of this kind has not arisen before, I would not like to think that this would set a precedent in any way for the way in which the House considers its business in future. When it comes to what I might call negotiating leverage, one day is a derisory offer to the House; with no disrespect to the Minister, that is not good enough. There is great merit in not agreeing to allow a date for Third Reading to be set at this stage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wei (Con)]

Just to clarify a few of my remarks, I want to credit the noble Lord, Lord Soley, the Minister and the Government for doing research. That is important and I hope that the research and consultations that will take place, moving forwards, will bring out more of the data and evidence that we sorely need. I feel that the most recent consultation, which was very short, did not get enough of the opinions of home educators. Many of those who oppose the register are painted as a minority, but that is not necessarily the case. A lot of people—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Will the noble Lord give way? My understanding is that it is not normal to have a backwards and forwards between Back-Benchers. I am getting nods from the Front Bench, which is a very rare occurrence from either Front Bench. I am going to speak to my amendment—oh, sorry.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Wei, asked me to give way, which I did, but I am quite happy to continue as I have nearly finished.

I emphasise again that there has been far more consultation than the noble Lord, Lord Wei, is aware of. I did not spend the last five years arguing for this Bill just for the fun of it. I did not ignore people. I have had people say to me what they have said to him: “I’ll go to prison rather than this”. Mind you, in a very long career in politics of 40-odd years I have heard an awful lot of people say they would go to prison for one thing or another, but very few do. The poll tax was a near exception, but by and large they do not.

I was saying to those people—to be fair, I won over a lot of them—“Think of this as supportive”. The noble Lord is falling into the trap of a tiny minority who say that this is a wicked state that is going to do terrible things. He has taken that as a fact; it is not. It is not even in the Bill that way. This is supportive. It is not a punishment. He is not doing himself or the House any favours in implying that it is anything other than supportive. I ask the House to reject the amendment.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am going to be very quick. I would like to speak to my Amendment 86B and later amendments which are essentially saying the same thing: that this Bill is dreadful and ought to be taken away and thought over completely.

Amendment 86B is to delete Clause 49 entirely because it is such a far-reaching clause that it will create a bureaucratic nightmare for thousands of families. At the same time, it will fail to achieve the Government’s stated policy aims. I am also completely puzzled about how overstretched local authorities will be able to implement these new powers and duties. Having been a local councillor, I know how hard they work and how overstretched they are already—even before the recent government cuts.

Overall, I am convinced that Clause 49 will turn out as a total legislative failure and will leave a trail of destruction that will probably be ignored because home-schooling families are a minority in this country. I wish the Government would see sense on this and support the deletion of this clause, as they have with significant other parts of the Bill which they acknowledge were also unworkable. Within that, I would like to include my deletion of other parts of the Bill in Amendments 93A, 95A and 95B.

Finally, on my Amendment 118C, the government amendments are a step in the right direction, but a long way from the necessary protection that families need from these new powers. A code of practice would address the data protection concerns that many parents have. I urge the Minister to think about that.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have several amendments in this group. If I were to say one thing to my noble friend the Minister, it is that I really hope the department will use the time it has while dealing with Part 1 to advance its thinking on the guidance and other aspects of the Bill so that, by the time it gets considered by the Commons, its thinking is rather more detailed and matured than what we have had the chance to look at. That would be a real help.

My noble friend Lord Wei raised some issues of true Conservative principle, which I hope home educators will find the opportunity to discuss with the candidates during August. Home education is a matter of freedom. Although the noble Lord, Lord Soley, and my noble friend both say that the Bill is supportive of home education, in many details it is not.

As my noble friend Lord Wei said, many letters are reaching us describing situations in which local authorities have been, frankly, abusive to home educators without any obvious good reason. I have pursued some of these matters with local authorities. I will not name the one I have talked to, but it is clear that they allow the difficulty that they have with some families to spill over into the way that they deal with those who are, on the face of it, doing a pretty good job—for instance, harassing a child who had a stroke aged six and saying that the child, rather than being cared for specially within their family, must be cast into school, not accepting independent reports about this child and saying that they must have more, different evidence. That is not in any way conducting their relationships in a supportive way. There have been cases where they have made really unpleasant remarks about home educators privately, and then, by mistake, copied others into emails. This shows that among a good number of local authorities there is a very unsatisfactory attitude to home education.

I am very keen that the Bill contain safeguards which put home educators, particularly good ones, in a position where they can reasonably hope to argue their case. We will come to some more details of that later. My noble friend Lord Wei espouses some true Conservative values of freedom and family which the Bill does not recognise sufficiently. One could also argue for efficiency, in that the best local authorities seem to do a very good job and, with the same money, go beyond what is achieved elsewhere by building up a pattern of trust which enables them not to spend time harassing people who are doing a good job.

The Bill as it is at the moment is not efficient, nor does it pay sufficient attention to all those occasions when the state is failing children. We have an amendment later, which I applaud, which says that children who have been excluded should not be placed in unregistered institutions. Oh, my golly—that is the state doing that. Why are we fussed about what good private educators are doing when there are things like that being done by the state?

There is a flavour in some of the remarks I have read from local authorities of a difficulty with difference which we should surely not allow. Local authorities have to deal with a lot of very different people, including Gypsies and others who choose to live a lifestyle which is not at all in accordance with the normal. Fear or dislike of difference should not be something one finds in a local authority. I entirely understand where the noble Lord, Lord Wei, is coming from, but my wish in the Bill is to find ways of improving it in its detail rather than attacking the principle of the register.

Amendment 65 looks at the

“means by which the child is being educated”.

That is widely seen—I think correctly—as permitting the Government to inquire deeply into the exact way in which a child is being educated. That is one of the ways the worst local authorities have adopted to oppress home educators. They ask for more and more detail. They ask for things that home educators are not doing, like having a timetable. There is a whole structure of education which is necessary in school but does not apply to home education. Home education can be centred on the child and be very different. The question is: is it effective and sufficient? Is it doing what it should do to bring out the qualities of the child? The structure of what is being provided should not be open to question and attack if the outcome is sufficient.

Amendments 65 and 66A suggest alternative ways of dealing with that, and in Amendment 66 we will come to another, when the right reverend Prelate speaks to it. With Amendment 66A, we are looking at a limit to who is providing the education. The Government want to know what outside people are providing the education that a child is receiving. That seems to me to be a reasonable bit of information to ask for, and is well short of the worrying implications of the wording as it is.

In Amendment 85, I come back to a subject I raised in Committee. One of the justifications for the register is so that we know what is happening to children. I find that quite persuasive, but if we are going to do that, we ought to know what is happening to all children in this country; we should not leave bits unexamined. At the moment, your standard independent school does not return data to the Department for Education on the children in its charge. I do not think it takes legislation to change that; it just takes the Government to decide that they want that, and to ask for it—they have the power. But if the justification for a register on home educators is that the Government ought to know what is happening to children, that same thought ought to apply to independent education too.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, in the debate on the last group, I completely forgot to say thank you to the Minister, who is not in her place at the moment, for meeting me not once but twice. She also met two home educators, and I like to think that that influenced the amendments. I have never had as many emails and contacts as I have had on home education, so it would be very good if the Bill’s changes could be expanded to include the concerns of those people.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

Did the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, want to speak to his amendments in this group?

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Lords Chamber

Debate on whether Clause 49 should stand part of the Bill.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I oppose Clause 49, and the other clauses and the schedule set out in the group, standing part of the Bill. I do so partly because the Bill is such a mess. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, pointed out that a lot more discussion is needed on it, but we also need to facilitate a debate on the rights of home-schooling families. That is not clear to the families themselves, nor to me because of the Bill.

We have already had extensive debates on this on previous groups, so I will not go on, but I will briefly reflect the worry that many home-schooling families have expressed to me and to other noble Lords. The Minister said on Monday that the Government are not criminalising anything and that it is dangerous to talk in these terms, but that is the sort of language that we have heard from home educators; that is how they feel. If that is not right, they need to be told, and told clearly. They are genuinely fearful that their way of life will be trammelled by this legislation and that the state will use the legal system against them.

Can the Minister please take this opportunity to make a clear statement to home-schooling families about what the legislation means for them, what safeguards will be in place to protect their way of life and what work the Government will do to ensure that positive support, rather than coercion, is provided by local authorities? There are some points from Monday’s debate that might be worth reiterating, but I am aware that it is getting on and it would be wonderful to get through the Bill today.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is taking part remotely on this group. I therefore invite her to speak now.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, sort of said “all home educators” and I briefly want to say that that is not the case. Some home educators feel threatened by a number of people in their organisation, particularly a number of ex-home educators who are running and providing services. I am happy to show the noble Baroness the evidence for that privately.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I did not say “all”. I am well aware that there are others, but I did not say “all”.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The noble Baroness said “home educators”. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, corrected by saying “some home educators”, but the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said “home educators”. When she said that, it indicated to me that she was talking about all home educators.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I am really sorry; the noble Lord is going to have to check this in Hansard. I have my copy and that is not what I said.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

Let us agree to differ until we see Hansard.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

No—the noble Lord is wrong.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

If I am wrong, I am wrong and will apologise, but I make the point quite strongly that a large number of home educators are getting on with home educating. Within the home education movement, there are home educators who are behaving in an unacceptable way. In the first debate we had—I do not think the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, was with us—we all agreed, or the feeling of the debate was, that we need to use language that brings home educators together and works with local authorities. That is really important.

I turn to the issue of school attendance, which, again, we discussed previously. Part of me asks that, if school attendance is important—of course it is; it is hugely important, and we want to make sure every child and young person is in school—what are the tools in our kit to ensure that it happens? It must be through encouragement, reward and so on. If that is the case, should we say that there should be no sanctions, and let us do it through all other means? If we want school attendance to thrive in our society, we should not be suggesting that parents be fined, taken to court or, as my noble friend Lady Brinton mentioned, criminalised. Should we have a serious discussion about doing away with all those sanctions? If so, we need to know the consequences. I prefer a carrot-and-stick approach, but the carrot should be the overriding way we encourage parents to ensure that their children are in school.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 20th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

If I may come in at this stage, I first thank the Government for putting in this Bill my original Private Member’s Bill, as they said they would. It was brought before this House in 2017—a mere five years ago—and went through with support on all sides and the key bit of it, of course, was to create a register. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for this, as well as the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, the first Minister I dealt with, and the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, who also understood my argument and supported it. I also thank the clerk to the House who helped me draft it in the first instance, even though I have forgotten some of the things they drafted. It was well drafted and I was pleased about that. I see that most of it is in the Bill, which is great. I also thank my noble friends Lady Morris and Lord Knight, who have been very supportive on this, and others, including the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who came up to me the other day and said, “Clive, you’ve won”. I thought that was some sort of accolade. I am not sure I have won yet—I want to see the Bill on the statute book before I leave this place. That is what I am after.

I have just a couple of points. I will want to return to this issue, probably on Amendment 112A in my noble friend’s name, because there is the question about the appeal process which we need to look at. I will perhaps speak on that when we come to that amendment. On this group, the important point, which the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, made very well, is that there is a right to home educate. I have never had any doubt about that; I have supported it fully, and that right is clear. Again, the fact that this is in the Bill is one of its positives. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, was keen on that too. I want to make clear that it is very important that we see this as a supportive measure, not a punitive one—supportive of parents who are home educating either by choice or because of necessity.

One of the things I learned in promoting my Bill back in 2017 and 2018, when I consulted very widely—with remote meetings on Zoom and other things, meetings in this House and individual meetings with people who are home educating—is that I would put home educators broadly into three, very rough groups. There are a group who do it extremely well, are very keen on doing it and, frankly, are likely to give their children a better education than you get almost anywhere else. Then there are probably the biggest group, who are doing it either because they want to try it out and see if they can do it or—this is very common—because they have special problems of one type or another. They are not necessarily the child’s problem; it may be a problem with the school or the local authority, which parents feel, rightly or wrongly, cannot deliver the education they think their child needs. They are a very big group. Then there are this thankfully very small, but profoundly worrying, group who do it for all the wrong reasons. One reason might be radicalisation. I want to emphasise here that it is not just Islam, which people tend to think of; I have been given examples in the Christian and Jewish faiths of unreasonable behaviour or radicalisation. We perhaps need to remember something I have said to people a number of times about religion: God is an idea, and there either is or is not one, but religion is more like an ideology. Of course, with ideology, people have different interpretations. As I say, in Christianity, Judaism and Islam, I have seen examples of abuse and radicalisation. It is important that we look at it in that way and not just at one particular religious group.

In the course of that consultation, I had other letters which were very deeply moving. I remember one man who wrote to me, who I think was in his 30s or 40s. He said, “I don’t want to criticise my parents. They home educated me and they really meant well, but it meant I never mixed with other children and I ended up profoundly lonely. I’m still a very shy person and I find it difficult to hold down jobs and mix in company.” There are all sorts of things to consider, and that is why I say the provisions on home education have to be supportive in a way. If the parents are trying to do it well but are missing out on certain opportunities that might be available, it is the child who loses as well. The support aspect of this, which we might spend more time on later, is very important. One thing that education authorities have to be much better at is finding out what level of support the parent and the child need and providing that. It might be some of the obvious things, such as support in more complex subjects such as physics or maths, but it might also be simply having a way for the child to mix with others who are learning and dealing with the problems of isolation and loneliness.

However, in that more extreme group, there are people who sadly take the child out of school for abuse reasons, either sexual or physical. The Minister will know that a couple of children have been starved to death under the guise of home education, and that the parents are not necessarily caught until it is too late. The views of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, on this are well worth listening to, having chaired the Climbié report and others. We might well come back to this when we touch on Amendment 112A, but it is important to remember that there will be examples where the parents try to deny the education authority access to the child, yet if it does not have access to the child it not only cannot tell how much education is being delivered to enable the child to survive in modern society—basics such as reading, writing, arithmetic and so on—but cannot tell whether the child is physically well. I do not in any way want to imply that this is a social welfare measure. It is not; it is an education measure. But just as in health, where we make sure that parents of newborn children can be seen to ensure that the child is developing properly, in education this role for the local authority is essential in modern society. The local authority needs to be able to make sure that the child is getting their education. Some of the examples I had were particularly tragic; the child was being abused, radicalised, used virtually for slave labour, or in some cases trafficked. It is for that reason that we need this register.

I got quite a few strong criticisms from people who felt I was being unnecessarily authoritarian by insisting on a register, but I ask those people to understand that there is a balance between the rights of the child and the rights of the parent. At the end of the day, the rights of the child should always triumph. The parent who insists that the local authority is somehow or other abusing its powers if it asks to see how the child’s education is progressing is missing the point about the welfare of the child. That is extremely important. I do not wish to say much more on this at this point.

I agree with the point made by my noble friend Lord Knight and with quite a few made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, as well. However, before I speak again, on Amendment 112A, I emphasise on this group: please can we make sure that this is done as a supportive measure—supportive of the children and of the parent—to make sure that the child is getting a good education and is properly able to develop while enabling those parents, many of whom want to do this well but who struggle to do it as well as they can? One of the other ways they need help is that if you have three or four home-educated children sitting exams, it is an expensive business, whereas if we could bring them into a system where they were able to sit exams under local authority procedures, or whatever, the costs for those families who are not so well off would not be such a major factor.

The Minister will be grateful for a few thanks here, but thanks go to the Government for bringing this in. I will not go away until I have seen it on the statute book so I will stick around for a bit, but after that I will be glad to say that this was a good bit of legislation with regard to home educators—and a necessary bit that we should have done long ago.

I end by saying that one of the reasons I have some knowledge of this is nothing to do with my knowledge of education generally, which, frankly, is very poor. However, many years ago, before I came into the House of Commons, I was a probation officer, and one of the things I learned was that if you took a child out of school you could hide abuse. When you have seen cigarette burns on a child, you know that this is a serious matter.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I rise with some trepidation because schools and education are not my areas, and when I hear the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lords, Lord Soley and Lord Knight, saying something and I do not quite agree, I pause. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Soley, on getting something close to his original Bill through. I hope I have the same success with my clean air Bill, which will come up in July. It is good to see such a broad coalition of Peers with concerns about this part of the Bill on the so-called children not in school register, who are bringing so many amendments to this part of the Bill.

I disagree slightly with the noble Lord, Lord Soley; no, in fact I probably do not. He talked about the three groups, but part of the problem is that the Government are trying to fix all three with one piece of legislation, and they are extremely different. We should be trying to find children who will receive no education or a dangerously poor education. However, the net is cast far too wide and it risks trapping many home-educating families within a web of unnecessary bureaucracy and red tape. I am standing up to speak on this only because some of my grandchildren were home educated and it has served them extremely well, so I feel that I have a voice in this.

A great many families are worried about this prospect in the Bill, and I am sure that they have contacted many noble Lords about their concerns. Some concerns are fairly simple, such as the time limits being too short and the registration requirements being unclear. However, others are much deeper, such as the breadth of discretion granted to local authorities to decide whether a child is receiving an adequate home education or should be subjected to a school attendance order. If the Government’s intention is to extend the grasp of the state into the lives of home-educating families, they should be explicit about it, but so far the Government justify this policy as being about helping children who are not receiving any education. If that really is the policy intent, there must be a better way of legislating for it than this bureaucratic mess.

I am sorry—I should have thanked the Minister for meeting me and two concerned people. I have not seen any letters in return but I am sure that they are winging their way.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 2
Monday 20th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 98 in this group is in my name. I will also speak to Amendments 106, 107, 110, 113 and 114, and to support my noble friend Lord Storey on Amendment 103. I think we all need to try to speak as briefly as possible if we are not to have a totally hideous day on Wednesday, when we will be expected to finish Committee on the Bill.

All these amendments are at the request of home educators. Amendment 98 reflects that home educating may be undertaken by a single parent; the other may be estranged or simply not interested in the education of the child. Requests for the name and address of each parent may not be appropriate, and the alternative wording proposed—

“the parent or parents responsible for the education of the child”—

is much more relevant.

My noble friend Lord Storey will be proposing Amendment 103, but I recognise the value of a unique pupil number in ensuring that children can be identified as being secure and educated.

Amendment 106 reflects the concerns of home educators that all sorts of irrelevant information will be requested of them, so inserting “relevance” is important. Again, this follows on from some of the words of my noble friend Lady Brinton. This is also reflected in Amendment 107, where what the local authority may “consider appropriate” may not be universally appropriate. We do not need those two lines.

In Amendment 110, there is concern about the register being published, with too much information being put into the public domain. We want “publication” to be deleted, because this is not necessary.

Amendments 113 and 114 would both insert “reasonably”. Once again, the concern for all sorts of information to be requested and recorded surely needs justifying in some way.

The home educators are very concerned about the Bill. They have sent me rafts of material, which they consolidated into amendments. I have tried to reflect this. We are naturally concerned about those who claim to home educate but are using it as a cover to abuse, indoctrinate or otherwise do damage to children. However, we are also aware of the amazing work that most home educators do and wish to ensure that they are not unduly disadvantaged by the Bill.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am going to speak briefly as well, for several reasons: first, because I want to get home tonight; secondly, because I am cold; and, thirdly, because I quite agree that we do not want a terrible day on Wednesday.

Part of the fallacy on this children not in school register is the idea that local authorities do not already have the information about children who are not in school, but that is not true. For the most invisible children, who have had no contact with any service at all, of course it might apply; otherwise, the truth is that local authorities have a great deal of information about almost every child, whether they attend a school or not. Instead of adding yet more data collection, there should be an overhaul of how local authorities collect and process this data, and perhaps some sort of universality about it. That overhaul should be made in a code of practice, as set out in my Amendment 171S.

I have three other amendments in this group, which are basically probing because I feel that the legislation just does not have the detail that we need to understand exactly what it is going to do. Turning to the new registration requirements, I think the Bill really ought to be clearer about what information must be provided by home-educating parents to the local authority. We are left at the moment with “other information”, which leaves a large void of worry for the parents who will have to provide this information, which could be very probing and intrusive. I would much rather see such broad wording removed altogether or made subject to being necessary and in the child’s best interests. This group contains a range of possible ways forward, but the general gist is that the Minister must convince your Lordships’ House that any of this intrusive bureaucracy is needed in the first place.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I rise to speak to six amendments standing in my name. Amendment 101 removes from the register any requirement to record the means by which a child is being educated—something that ought to be discretionary on the parents. It replaces it with a less intrusive requirement to record only those details that demonstrate that the child is receiving a suitable education in accordance with the existing duty on parents to secure compulsory education for their child or children.

Amendment 105 curbs the local authorities’ proposed power to contain within the register

“any other information that may be prescribed”—

it is very broad and open to abuse—solely to instances where the safeguarding of the child is a concern. Surely that is the point.

Amendment 108 removes the wide-ranging power for local authorities to collect any other data they consider appropriate. Again, this is a highly undefined power that could be used to target individuals with protected characteristics, and it makes the state ever more intrusive. The amendment replaces this new subsection with a more clearly defined power permitting local authorities to collect special category data—such as ethnic origin, philosophical beliefs and sexual orientation—only in cases where the safeguarding of the child is concerned.

Amendments 111 and 112 ensure that parents are properly informed about the data collected: how it will be stored, shared, published, and when it will be deleted. These amendments are complementary to the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, requiring the Secretary of State to introduce regulations related to the not in school register, which I welcome.

Finally, Amendment 127 safeguards any data collected by local authorities when directed by the Secretary of State to provide information on the register. This is done by requiring that all data is either aggregated or anonymised unless there is sufficient reason for the Secretary of State to request information relating to an individual child, the sufficient reasons listed being safeguarding concerns or issues of public safety and criminality.

At this stage, these are probing amendments. However, they reflect a number of serious concerns that many of us have about the danger that this Bill poses to home educators and the right they have to decide on a suitable education for their child. I do not oppose, in principle, a register containing information about home-schooled children in a local authority’s area. What concerns me is that the implementation of such a register as it exists within the Bill poses an attack on the principles of a free society where parents retain the discretion to educate their child in accordance with their own values. Without meaningful safeguards, this register could be the thin end of a slippery wedge resulting in Ofsted in the home: parents being mandated to teach specific things in a specific way, or being directed by law to send their children to school to receive a particular type of education.

After tabling these amendments, I decided to try and explore the rationale between the wide-ranging powers they sought to give to local authorities. I presumed there would be a vast array of evidence of why we desperately needed to have the collection of all this information. Well, the House of Lords Library kindly prepared a briefing at my request. The Government’s guidance from April 2019 stated that there was

“no proven correlation between home education and safeguarding risk.”

Furthermore, the Library was unable to provide any information on the exam success rates of children receiving an elective home education. However, from a cursory glance online, there is quite a lot of evidence to strongly suggest that children receiving EHE outperformed their counterparts in state education, so it is entirely reasonable to ask the Government why they believe local authorities should have the right to collect highly sensitive data pertaining to things that are not necessarily relevant to the child’s education. A register simply to track the number of home-educated children, at its core, is a sensible proposal. Likewise, there may be understandable instances where information beyond that needed just to register the child is required, but surely this should be the exception not the rule.

Her Majesty’s Government need to provide the rationale behind this proposal to give local authorities the right to collect to contain “any other information” they consider appropriate. This must be more specific so that there exists a clear legal boundary determining what information a local authority can collect, and for what specific reasons. Currently, this broad ambiguity allows local authorities to request entirely inappropriate special category data without good reason.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

2nd reading & Lords Hansard - Part one
Monday 23rd May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to speak about home schooling and hopefully to correct two or three of the misconceptions that have already been outlined by noble Lords. It is obvious that school does not suit everybody, and I declare an interest: three of my five grandchildren have been home-schooled, and they are turning out brilliantly. I think home schooling suits some people and suits some parents. Therefore, to put further measures and pressures on those parents could be a mistake.

Parents who home-school come from a huge range of backgrounds, and they have chosen to educate their children outside school, providing an individualised education to their child, suitable to the child’s age, ability and aptitude, because it is in the child’s best interests, and it is geared to supporting their well-being and future contributions as citizens.

At the moment, there are just over 78,000 children known to be home-educated in England. Many have tried school and found that it failed them. Common factors include a lack of effective special needs support in schools, the pressures of standardisation and testing, failure to stop bullying, discrimination and a lack of support for disabled children and those with medical needs. Registered children are kept track of by local authorities, and this continues at the moment.

The most in-depth study carried out into home education, in 2002 by Dr Paula Rothermel, found that home-educated children demonstrated higher levels of attainment and good social skills. Someone in my wider family has a PhD in astrophysics; they were home-educated, and it has not held them back so far.

Given the intrusive nature of the proposals, I would at least have expected some form of independently reviewed study showing that there is some sort of systemic problem with the freedoms of families who home-educate, which the Government have been unable to address by other means. Where is that study? Where has this repressive attitude come from?

Part 3 of the Bill has provoked a tidal wave of concern and condemnation throughout the home-education community. These proposals have been already rejected by parents and young people in a preceding consultation called Children not in School, so I am wondering why they have come back now. The mandatory registration of home-educated children is not the simple creation of a list. Local authorities already possess and keep such lists. The Bill goes so much further, seeking to treat home education as a problem that needs bringing under control rather than as an asset that should be nurtured and protected. The Government do not trust parents. That is the message that is coming over.

It is a very serious step to compel law-abiding families who are educating their children at home to be subject to statutory inquiries about their children in the absence of any presenting problem. This approach to families crosses a line in the involvement of the state in family life. The state is going to be able to single out a discrete group of law-abiding families from their peer group and then subject them to special monitoring.

Crucially, the Bill introduces no system of oversight of local authority conduct or safeguards for the vast majority of home educators who deliver a high-quality education. Local authorities could misuse these proposed duties to impose standardised requirements on the format and content of education that children receive at home. This would, of course, destroy the whole point of the child-centred, creative and flexible schooling that is characteristic of home education at its best.

In the Green Party we have been careful to develop policy on home education in partnership with home educators and their children, because effective co-operation aligns professionals and citizens as equals and encourages them to work together to create services that are as effective as possible. As a result, society sees better outcomes from its public services. We have received briefings from home education groups not simply explaining the dangers of the proposals in their current form but offering concrete suggestions for achieving the Government’s purported aims in a way that will better achieve the stated objectives and enable positive collaboration between home educators and local authorities, rather than the conflict that many of us can see happening.

If we want effective policy on home education that delivers good outcomes for children and young people, surely it is better to work with home-educating families, rather than against them. I strongly urge the Government to open discussions between now and Committee with home education groups and bring forward changes which enhance the life chances of these children rather than damage them.

Education (Environment and Sustainable Citizenship) Bill [HL]

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 3rd December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a short, precise and extremely welcome Bill, improved by the helpful amendment presented today. I am pleased to tell noble Lords that the National Education Union—the largest education union in Europe, with 450,000 members —welcomes the Bill and the amendment.

The climate emergency is of course the existential threat to the future of all our children and young people. It is certainly the case that educators have a role to play in helping children address the threat by enabling them, as was said at Second Reading, to understand the climate emergency and ecological issues, and to think critically about how they can play their part as we seek a more sustainable way of life.

To demonstrate enthusiasm for teaching about the climate emergency and sustainability, the National Education Union worked with other organisations, including Teach the Future, to promote Climate Learning Month, which overlaps October and November, ahead of COP 26. Despite the high-quality resources produced, not all schools, and therefore not all children and young people, accessed them.

The Bill, particularly with the amendment, would ensure that all those educated in maintained schools would have access to this important area of learning. Alas, those educated in academies and free schools are not required to follow the national curriculum. However, Robin Walker, the Schools Minister, speaking on this in another place, said that

“I want us to do more to educate our children about the costs of environmental degradation and what we are doing to solve that, both now and in the future. Not only do our children deserve to inherit a healthy world, but they also need to be educated so that they are … prepared to live in a world affected by climate change, so that they may live sustainably and continue to fight the effects of climate change.”—[Official Report, Commons, 27/10/21; col. 146WH.]

I therefore hope that Her Majesty’s Government will not only support the Bill but press upon all schools the benefit of this aspect of learning. Of course, I hope that the Government will will the means to ensure that educators are themselves properly educated and trained to ensure high-quality teaching on this important issue.

Finally, it is the case that climate and sustainability issues are covered in the current curriculum—as has been said, they are covered in science and geography—but the magnitude of the climate emergency requires the holistic approach to content and skills development outlined in my noble friend Lord Knight’s Bill. The brevity of this speech should not be taken to imply anything less than my wholehearted support for the Bill and this amendment.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

It seems almost superfluous to get up to support this Private Member’s Bill because it is so self-evident that it is excellent. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, on the progress it has made. Quite simply, you can care for something only when you understand it. That is true about caring for ourselves, for each other and for the natural environment. It is especially true for what can feel like an abstract concept: caring for future generations. The Bill will help tackle not only the environmental and ecological crises but the humanitarian and mental health crises.

Our Green MP, Caroline Lucas, has done great work promoting a nature GCSE and my noble friend Lady Bennett has called for a right to nature for children. Together with this Bill and the future generations Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, we begin to see a framework for the cultural and educational shift needed to underpin an ecologically minded society that no longer destroys our living world.

It would be very wrong for your Lordships not to pay recognition to the very many young people demanding action on the ecological and climate emergencies. As well as teaching them, we must learn from them and support them to use all that energy and enthusiasm to make lasting change, because it is their future that we are discussing. They will live to be the judges of our collective action or inaction.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, this is one of those debates where we are all violently agreeing with each other and with the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. I wish the Government were always as responsive to his committee’s forensic examination of the problems of delegated legislation as my noble friend Lord Knight has been this afternoon.

I do not think there is any concern at all on the substance of my noble friend’s Bill and the amendment, but I looked at the Bill because I have a Private Member’s Bill coming up on a related matter in the new year on votes at 16 and reducing the voting age. Alongside that, which I see as a critical element of lowering the voting age, is significantly enhancing citizenship education in schools. My view is that part of the reason why we have such a massive crisis of youth engagement in politics, including on the issues my noble friend refers to in the Bill, is because we do not take citizenship sufficiently seriously in schools. We do not have automatic registration of young people at 18, or polling stations in every school, educational institution and university, as we should have.