Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Bichard Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly support this amendment and agree with everything that has been said so far, particularly the very important and valuable contribution by the noble Lord, Lord Meston. He, like I, tried many child abuse cases. It is a sad part of the work that family judges do that there are so many sexual abuse cases of children, from babies to the age of 17, and they are all absolutely terrible. It is important to remember that there are two sorts of sexual abuse—that within the family and that without. As the noble Lord, Lord Meston, said, there has been less of a mirror on abuse within families as on strangers abusing children.

It is extraordinary in some ways that we do not already have mandatory reporting, since it is so obvious and so important. There are so many people out there, certainly members of families, who know what is going on but do not know what to do. I am talking about siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, because this is a very serious part. I do not know whether noble Lords realise that the majority of sexual abuse is within the family, although there is far too much by outsiders. If it is within the family, it becomes increasingly important that those around the child, who do know but do not know what to do, are told that they have an obligation to do something effective.

I hope that the Minister recognises that this is long overdue. It must come into this Bill or into the Crime and Policing Bill—preferably both. One group of people who have not so far been referred to are the police. If it is an obvious case of sexual abuse, the local authority employee must go immediately to the police. Let us not forget that any sexual abuse of any child, of any person, is a crime.

[Lord Bichard (CB)]

My Lords, as someone who has been involved with child abuse issues and child protection down the years, I thought it necessary to add my voice to support the amendment. It may be that we want to talk about the vehicle, it may be that we want to talk about the drafting, but it is really important that the House makes absolutely clear that there is agreement on the principle around mandatory reporting, because that has not always been the case, and that is the first massive step to dealing with this issue.

I otherwise wanted to say only how pleased I was to hear the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. In 2012, when I spoke in this Chamber against the watering down of vetting and barring, I was told roundly that we should have an exemption for all sports clubs and societies because they were exemplars. The last 12 years have shown us how wrong that would have been; they have also shown us how important the amendment is.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 107B, which is in my name. The purpose of this amendment is to ensure that the same legal rights would apply to a child in care as those which apply to children living with their families. In that sense, it is linked to Amendment 69AB, which I shall move later today.

In 2022, the final report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, henceforth referred to as IICSA, highlighted the fact that the family court can limit parents’ exercise of their parental responsibility, but the court is unable to intervene in the same way with corporate parents. The report recommended a new

“route by which children in care can apply to the family courts for orders to mandate or limit a local authority’s exercise of its parental responsibility”,

which is what this new clause seeks to achieve.

There are many recognisable harms in the children’s care system, some of which have been identified by noble Lords already, among them: children being moved from settled homes; children being sent many miles from their home area; siblings being split up; children forced to move areas ahead of critical GCSE or A-level exams; children desperately unhappy at where they are living but being told there is nowhere else for them to go; and children approaching their 18th birthday woefully unprepared for life ahead of them. As incredible as it sounds, it is still common for children in care to be told that they must register as homeless once they reach their 18th birthday. It is not difficult to understand why that often causes unbearable stress and anxiety, affecting all areas of the child’s life.

The family court is able to intervene in how parents exercise their parental responsibility, yet it has no equivalent power in respect of corporate parents, when looked-after children are the most vulnerable children in our society. As IICSA’s final report explained:

“Courts can make decisions about children who are not in care, but only local authorities can make decisions about children who are in care”.


That is an inconsistency that I believe needs to be confronted and brought to an end.

IICSA considered the role of the independent reviewing officer, the ability of children in care to apply to discharge care orders, bring claims under the Human Rights Act 1998 and to bring judicial reviews, and it found each of these systems of protection to be insufficient. IICSA foresaw children in care having a straightforward legal mechanism on a par with children in the community, whereby the exercise of a local authority’s parental responsibility could be put under the spotlight and subject to restriction and instruction where necessary.

This new clause would implement IICSA’s recommendation 6 by giving children who are the subject of a care order the legal means of challenging their corporate parent’s actions and, perhaps equally importantly, inactions. When a child in care is suffering, or at risk of suffering, significant harm, this new clause would enable the family court to make an order to prohibit the local authority from taking action that could be harmful to that child. The family court would also have the power to make an order to require the local authority to take particular action

“to safeguard or promote the child’s welfare”.

On 16 January in another place, the Home Secretary made a clear statement that the Government would set out a plan for implementing all 20 of IICSA’s final recommendations. Their Tackling Child Sexual Abuse: Progress Update issued in April very helpfully set out how children in care’s access to independent advocacy services will be strengthened through the publication of revised national standards and statutory guidance.

However, this is a long way from implementing IICSA recommendation 6, the purpose of which is to give children in care a new legal mechanism to challenge the actions and inactions of their corporate parent when these are causing or are likely to cause the child significant harm. Such a measure will go hand in hand with effective independent advocacy services, because it is likely to be independent advocates who assist children in care in accessing this new legal safeguard.

We all know that IICSA was a seven-year public inquiry that heard devastating evidence of the ways a whole host of institutions consistently failed vulnerable children. Its recommendations must be taken seriously and, as I said, the Government are on record as being committed to implementing all its 20 recommendations. As the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said, my noble friend may well suggest that the Crime and Policing Bill is a more appropriate vehicle for this amendment. If so, why does it not appear in that Bill? I believe it is a very important step. I hope my noble friend will be a bit more positive than that and be able to offer a commitment that she will return on Report with a government amendment to make children in care legally the equal of children in the community.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Bichard Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bichard (CB)]

My Lords, by any measure, this is a landmark Bill and I welcome very many of its provisions. However, in the very short time available today, I will focus only on the part of the Bill that concerns child protection and safeguarding, in particular in Clauses 2 to 4. I will do that because child safety remains the first priority of schools, the education system and the Government, and we should never forget that.

Schools themselves are safer places than they were back in the days when I chaired the Soham inquiry. The vetting and barring scheme, more rigorous staff interviews, designated safeguarding leads and better training for all staff have played their part in that. But, as the Children’s Commissioner said recently, schools also play a wider and

“fundamental role in keeping children safe and protecting them from harm”.

Children simply trust schools; they trust teachers and they trust teachers’ assistants, and those teachers are often the first to know if children are facing challenges in their lives. So it is important that we ensure that the knowledge that schools have is available to all who are tasked with protecting children. That is why the Bill places a duty on safeguarding partners—local authorities, the police and health—to secure the participation of education settings in multiagency safeguarding to ensure that the education view is heard.

That is a step forward, but I agree with the Children’s Commissioner and others that schools should not just be participants; they should be equal partners to properly underline their status and responsibility in the safeguarding process. I also think that the Bill should recognise and reference faith-based and community organisations in the safeguarding process to avoid gaps in oversight, especially of marginalised children. Well-being and safeguarding are not the sole responsibility of the statutory organisations; they are also the responsibility of community organisations that play such an important part but at the moment are overlooked in the Bill in the way that they can sometimes be overlooked on the ground.

As has already been said, the common thread in the findings of every child abuse inquiry since the case of Maria Colwell more than 50 years ago has been the failure of agencies involved to share information. Your Lordships’ own Public Services Select Committee, which I sat on at the time, concluded in 2021 that data sharing between government departments and between local agencies was a long-standing problem that

“endangered vulnerable children and their families”.

Currently, social care services are not always told when the police arrest a child or when a pupil is on a waiting list for mental health services.

I am delighted that the Bill seeks to address data sharing, and I am especially pleased to see the very long-overdue proposal to introduce a consistent, unique identifier for children. That should make it easier to create a comprehensive profile for a child and achieve smooth transitions when children change schools or move local authority areas. The question for me—one which we should be asking ourselves in Committee—is whether the changes proposed even now go far enough to reverse decades of learned behaviour. I have long argued that our society has prioritised the protection of data ahead of the protection of children. That has to change. This is the chance to change it, and we should take it.