Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Storey

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Nash’s Amendment 279. It suggests a very mild tweak to the proposed legislation, largely because he is respectful of the majority of parents who do a good job in home education, which I completely agree with. However, I see at close quarters the impact of home education in deprived communities where the parents have limited education themselves and little interest in it. They are clearly unable to educate their own children and yet, when they are withdrawn from schools, there is nothing a school can do. These children are being thrown to the wolves and, as the Minister has said, the numbers are escalating.

My noble friend Lord Nash talks about a trend over the past 10 to 15 years but, according to the NSPCC, the number has increased by 186% in six years. In 14 local authorities, it has quadrupled in that time. These are not all middle-class, educated parents, but we have no idea who they are.

In 2021, the House of Commons Education Committee’s Strengthening Home Education report made a number of recommendations. Perhaps the most important was that the DfE should provide

“a set of clear criteria against which the suitability of education can be assessed, taking into account the full range of pedagogical approaches taken in EHE”—

elective home education—

“as well as the age, ability and aptitude of individual children, including where they may have SEND”.

The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel, a government-sponsored group, produced a number of recommendations on home education in its May 2024 report, and many of these mirrored the report I have just mentioned. The report refers to 27 referrals received between August 2020 and October 2021, involving the deaths of six children and a further 35 suffering serious harm, including physical neglect, physical abuse and sexual abuse. There are many other good recommendations, but, as they do not fit this specific amendment, I will not list them. I recommend these two reports to any Peer interested in this vexing subject.

My noble friend’s amendment would provide a very light-touch review point. Bona fide parents would not be negatively affected. On the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, I say that the amendment is extremely light touch, but it would move the situation from what is currently a complete black hole to at least give us some indication of children’s well-being.

I want to finish with the case of Sara Sharif. Many noble Lords will know about it, but I will remind the Committee. A 10 year-old girl was withdrawn from her primary school in April 2023 under the pretext of home education. This occurred after teachers noticed bruising, which she had attempted to conceal beneath her hijab. The school referred their concerns to social services, but, after being taken out of school, she became invisible to safeguarding agencies. Neighbours reported hearing constant crying and screaming. She was murdered by her father and stepmother. They were convicted in December last year. The lack of school oversight allowed this to happen undetected. I respect the good work that most home-educating parents do, but it is for cases like hers that I support Amendment 279.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Government for taking this issue on and for being aware of the problems that we face. I also recognise that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, was on to this in her role as Minister as well.

I have met hundreds of home educators and considerably more have contacted me, and most of them do an amazing job. Noble Lords ought to know that some of the home educators who have contacted me by email have been concerned about what has been going on and given practical examples of that. We need to get a balanced picture sometimes.

If we really want to understand this issue, I note that the noble Lord, Lord Meston, makes the point in his amendment that 39,000 children are missing—we have no idea where they are. The Government want to tackle that head-on. Imagine a society that says to those who want to remove their children from the education system that that is fine—just do it—but we will not keep any records and we will have no idea what you are doing at home, and will leave you to get on with it. Can you imagine that?

Can you imagine a situation where fundamentalist religious groups set up unregistered schools and we have no idea what is happening in them, except occasionally when some of the teachers working in them report to the authorities the appalling behaviour of staff? Ofsted has on many occasions tried to close those schools down, but they re-emerge as home education settings—

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Storey

Monday 23rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I was not going to speak on this group—I was a minute or so late, for which I apologise. I wanted to hear the arguments of those who oppose Amendment 177 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and I will just address a couple of those.

I think the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said that we cannot warn children of the danger of smartphones if they are not using them in schools, but let us be more realistic. The school day is only seven or eight hours, and there are 52 weekends and 15 weeks’ holiday. They are going to use these awful things, whatever we do. But at least schools provide a safe space if they cannot use them—we heard the point from the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, about not being mugged on the way to school. I see it in my own schools where, although we have bans, the kids get around them. If they have hair similar to that of the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, how do we know whether they have AirPods in their ears? With the so-called magnetic pouches, you can buy a disabler on the internet to get rid of it. The list goes on and on.

I agree with the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that you cannot uninvent them, but they are very toxic. We look back on tobacco and sugar, yet we are allowing these things to go on while people cogitate, when it is so obvious that we should be bringing a much more vigorous ban of these devices into schools as soon as possible. I support the noble Lord, Lord Nash.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, we have heard some very powerful speeches this afternoon, particularly from the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, who talked about a world health crisis. I was also taken by my noble friend Lord Addington, who talked about the importance of technology for special needs. I am going to be brave and agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hampton: I want to see children talk to each other, and I want to see them play in schools.

I remember being absolutely—I cannot find the adjective to describe it. During our debates on the Online Safety Act, we were remembering the young girl, Molly Russell, who took her own life after being groomed online, and her brave father sat below the Bar for the whole of that debate. I thought what a brave parent he was, to sit through that and listen to what had happened.

I do not know whether any of your Lordships saw “Question Time” last week—I do not tend to watch it these days—when one of the questions was about smartphones. A young man of 18 or 19, who had ADHD, pleaded with the panel to ban smartphones. He said, “I am addicted to them—I cannot stop myself using a smartphone. Please ban it”. I thought, “Wow! What a brave thing to say on television in front of everybody”.

Whatever we do, we have to make sure it works. It is no good us passing laws which do not actually work. I remind noble Lords that children who are under the age of 13 are not allowed to use social media. That ban does not happen. I had children at my school who were seven and eight who accessed social media. Whatever we agree, it has to work. My great fear in this whole debate is that it will not work, and people will find ways around it. So I plead with the Government—indeed, with everybody—to have a realistic streak in what we do.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Storey

Thursday 19th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

For a number of years, when the noble Baroness’s Government were running things, I was always concerned about the issue of Jobcentre Plus mentors, who are hugely important in this area, and was trying to probe to find out what training they had. I never got a straight answer, and never found out whether they were equipped with the tools to do the work, particularly in this area.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott’s amendment on jobcentres. I hear the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, about resource stretch, but from my own experience of this in my academy trust, we have about 50 looked-after children, and I require a report on them to come to every one of the trustees’ board meetings. It does not cost anything, but it just gives a little bit of focus to these very vulnerable children.

The same could apply in jobcentres; it just needs an asterisk by the person’s name so that when the advisor is talking to him or her, they can use a little bit more empathy and maybe ask a couple more questions about the status of that child. I strongly support my noble friend and hope that the Government will support her amendment as well.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Storey

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, on these Benches we very much believe that there should be an independent and suitably trained person; that is really important to us. We also appreciate that if this amendment were agreed—I do not know the timescale of training people up—there might have to be some transitional arrangements. It slightly jars with me that the party adjacent to me does not necessarily believe that teachers should be fully qualified—you can have unqualified teachers—but on this issue it wants a suitably trained person. In any situation where young people are involved, it is important that the person who is training or teaching is qualified and has the right skills.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. Clearly, the family decision-making groups are extremely important, and we are discovering them rather late in the day. I could have said this on any of the other amendments involving family groups, but this one particularly caught my eye because of the emphasis on an evidence-based approach. The Scottish Government have had this for nearly 10 years, which gives us a tremendous opportunity to learn from the successes and failures they have experienced over that time. How much contact has the Minister had with her Scottish colleagues to learn from the best and the worst, and what has she taken from that to put into this Bill?