Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Debate between Lord Bishop of Manchester and Lord Wei(2 weeks, 6 days ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, I will be very brief. It is an old, apparently African, adage that it takes a village to raise a child, but it is no less true for that. What that captures in a few words is that raising a child is a balance: a partnership between the parents on the one hand and the wider community on the other. I think that is what we are trying to get at in this group of amendments: what are the appropriate powers for the state to have and what should be simply left to parents?
It is a long-standing principle in this country that parents have the right to home-educate their children, but where that becomes a proxy for hiding the children from the state and putting them in a place where they are potentially at risk and at danger then clearly concerns must be raised. Having listened carefully to this debate, I will, if they are pressed to Divisions, support the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, in Amendment 121A and maybe later in Amendment 131A. They are probably as nuanced as we are going to get in a complex situation where we can all find bad balls for which we should not be setting the field.
Lord Wei (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 164B, 164C, 167A, 170A, 170B, 175ZD and 175ZE in my name. All these amendments are rooted in one concern, and we have had a lot of debate already that touches on this: that it is not whether the state may act, but how it does so. It is not whether safeguarding matters, because it does, but whether the systems we design can tell the difference between care and control, and between help and coercion.
I welcome those of the Government’s amendments that strengthen scrutiny, including by using the affirmative procedure. That kind of restraint does not weaken authority; it makes it legitimate. Where I differ is where further processes, or compulsory steps, are placed on parents simply to complete a sequence. Support should be available, but it should not become mandatory and it should not become a gateway to enforcement.