Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Geddes Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, the grouping of these amendments is becoming a bit confusing. This amendment and Amendment 237 are directed to the protection of sexually abused children, but so are Amendment 236A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and Amendment 254A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. I will therefore be addressing the problem of protecting sexually abused children at this stage in this group. I did not intervene earlier because I thought it sensible to collect all my words dealing with the same issue together. Before I go any further, I should like to refer to when my noble friend the Minister got to the Dispatch Box at the beginning of this stage of the Committee and kindly mentioned my name and the names of the noble Lords, Lord Crisp and Lord Lucas, and other noble Lords who have participated in this Bill. She also referred to the meetings that have taken place at the Department for Education with her officials and with her colleague the Minister, Stephen Morgan. I wish to express extreme thanks to my noble friend and the officials for their helpfulness. On this Bill, the Government are listening. This has not been exactly a feature of recent Bills, either from the Conservative Benches or my Benches. On this Bill, however, the Government are listening and we are grateful.

My attention was drawn to this problem by a mother who had a serious problem with her husband abusing her son. That kind lady has been very objective and forceful in presenting her case. She spoke to the noble Lord, Lord Frost—I am sorry that he is not in the Chamber. She also came to speak to the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. I do not know whether she came to speak to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, but he has certainly been in contact with her. It has been helpful to have the evidence that she provided. I am not going to identify her, although I should also mention that the Minister himself, Stephen Morgan, met her. My noble friend’s officials also met her and exchanged emails with her. A lot of information has been exchanged, which has been helpful.

In brief, her son was sexually abused by her husband, I think from the age of four. It went on for several years. When the mother found out, she was absolutely horrified and wanted, as do all mothers who face the same situation, the maximum protection. That is what these amendments are trying to do. My submissions on this issue are not based on just one case. I am afraid that a number of cases of sexual abuse of children are undetected, unreported or both. This brings me back to many years ago, when I was a barrister appearing at the Lincoln Assizes. I was involved in a case of incest. The prosecution case against the accused was that he was committing incest on the complainant, who was both his daughter and granddaughter. That illustrates how horrific the problem of sexual abuse can be.

Under these amendments, the protection sought is that the misbehaving husband should not have access to any information, particularly, as my noble friend identified, as to the whereabouts and address of the abused child. He should be entirely separated from that poor child. One can do that in a number of ways —that suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, in Amendment 236A, or by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, in Amendment 237. Amendment 235A was his amendment, not mine, but somehow his name was lost from the Marshalled List. I apologise but I hope he has forgiven me. He is a very forgiving Peer. The position, which is the point I really wanted to establish, is that the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, is still with the amendment and supportive of it. I did not quite get a nod from him but I will work on that basis because it is a very sensible amendment.

The Minister was quite right—she referred to data protection too—when she said that there is a strict rule in new Section 436C(5) that puts a strong prohibition on the publication of any information in the register and on it being made “accessible to the public”. I keep calling the Minister my learned friend—she is very learned, but I should stick to the correct parliamentary description of her as my noble friend. Anyway, new Section 436C(5) provides a strong prohibition, but of course that means that the officials with access to the register have to be trusted to follow new Section 436C(5).

The lady to whom I just referred, who has been so helpful in our deliberations on this issue, recalls a situation when a husband, who had been convicted of the sexual abuse of his child—actually, in that case it was two girls—had been sent to prison but had rung up to collect information from the register, which was given. The only way that we in this House can properly protect the abused child from being traced by the abusing father is by making sure that the information is not in the register. Of course, if it is not in the register, it cannot be released. I suggest that that is the best approach.

I end by thanking my noble friend again for how she has conducted this entire Bill, with helpfulness, a willingness to listen and, above all, a willingness to work with this House. That is a matter deserving of great congratulations and great thanks. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes) (Con)]

My Lords, I must apologise: I should have advised the Committee that, as the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, alluded to, Amendment 237 is in an incorrect place on the Marshalled List—hence my calling Amendment 235A now.

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, this is the point at which I will make one of the two main interventions that I propose to make today, on my Amendment 254B. Before I come to that, I will comment on two other amendments. I added my name to Amendment 239, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, which would leave out the bit about the split between parents of how many hours are provided per week. This seems completely redundant information and is not necessary. I understand the point that the register should include some reference to the fact that parents are providing the education—it is not all being done through a private tutor—but it seems to me that the split is unconvincing.

When the Minister responded, essentially to this point, in an earlier group, she said something about wanting to know the number of hours of education taking place during the week. I may have misinterpreted but I think that is what was said, and it prompts me to ask a question of the noble Baroness. Does she have a number of hours per week that are expected to be covered by education? I should be interested to know if there is some number that the department has in mind.

The second amendment to which I have added my name, Amendment 260, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, is about local authorities being able to ask for any other relevant information. That is too much of a catch-all; enough information is already provided. I should be keen to hear her arguments on this and hope that the Minister will accept them.

My main intervention is on Amendment 254B, which concerns the first point at which parents are asked to provide a lot of information about who is providing the education. My amendment picks up the point that this is a large set of possible providers. As written, it could include the occasional organised event. It could include regular visits to the Guides, which is an educational charity, I understand. It could include a rugby club and other such things—anything that has an educational component as the amendment is written. I should say in parentheses here that I have received one reference from a provider of home education, a wildlife trust in the Midlands—I will provide the name to the Minister—which has already written to the people for whom it provides home education, saying that it will put this on hold until the Bill’s impact is clear. Already this wildlife trust—I do not know what level of education it provides—has stopped providing education to home-educated children because of its fears of what the Bill might mean for it in terms of the amount of information the trust has to provide in future.

However, my intervention here concerns the information that the parent or parents need to provide. In our useful discussions with officials, they made it clear that they would put in regulations something that implied that there was a certain amount of time beyond which one-off events would not count, and that events that happened once a week but were only three hours long, or primarily social and recreational, would be taken into account. That is fine in regulations but you need some parameters in the Bill to state:

“The requirement to provide the information set out in subsection (1)(e) only applies to providers which are providing regular education sessions amounting to 10 hours or more a week, which are not primarily social or recreational in nature, and”—


importantly, a point that we have not discussed at all—

“where the information has not already been provided to the authority in other formats, such as an annual report.”

Let me pick up that point about duplication. I am as keen as anyone to weed out fake or failing home-educating parents or arrangements. However, this register is not the way to do it. Form-filling will not catch the diversity of a child’s needs and of educational methods. It is the match between the two that is so vital, particularly as we know that more than half of those who are home educated have special needs of different sorts. This really is not one size fits all, yet the Bill seems to be treating it as though it is. Nor, I believe, will inspection of a child’s work and timetable, without the wider context of a parent’s own assessment of their child’s needs, be an effective method of doing so. The Bill misses out the most important evidence of all: the reality of that particular child and their circumstances. That is why the attempt to use the register to make any meaningful assessment of the quality of education provided is fundamentally flawed. There is an existing alternative.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Geddes Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Longfield (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 142 is in my name. It sets out to make the case for the inclusion of supported accommodation in the scope of the proposed profit cap. Following clarification from my noble friend the Minister, including in answers to questions in earlier groups in Committee, I am content that that is the case, and that the intention is to include supported accommodation within these measures, so I will not be moving this amendment.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes) (Con)]

I am sorry but, having spoken to the amendment, the noble Baroness must move it so that others can comment.

[Baroness Longfield (Lab)]

I beg to move.

Plurilingual and Intercultural Education

Lord Geddes Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I will need to confirm the exact details of that in writing to the noble Baroness.

[Lord Geddes (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that the reciprocal to this Question is equally applicable regarding the teaching of English to speakers of other languages? I declare an interest as the non-remunerated life president of Trinity College London.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely agree with my noble friend. That remains an area of important focus for the department.

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Geddes Excerpts

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

Motion agreed.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Geddes) (Con)]

My Lords, before calling the first group, I should say that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is taking part remotely. I remind the House that remote speakers speak first after the mover of the lead amendment in a group and may therefore speak to other amendments in the group ahead of Members who tabled them.

Clause 49: Registration

Amendment 64A had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wei (Con)]

Thank you, I will wrap up.

I have two final amendments in this group. Amendment 86A in my name relates to a refusal to provide info not being sufficient reason to impose a school attendance order on a family. In this instance, the fact that the teacher or home educator did not provide information was seen as evidence that they were not educating their children properly. If you do not provide education and choose on principle not to provide that information, that should not mean that you are not educating your children well or that a school attendance order is put on them. This amendment is to prevent such occurrences happening again.

Finally, I support Amendment 118C on a code of conduct, but others will speak to that. I will give way and let them do that now.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Geddes) (Con)]

I assume that the noble Lord would like to move his amendment?

[Lord Wei (Con)]

I beg to move.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Geddes) (Con)]

My Lords, as I previously advised, I now invite the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, to speak.

Oh, I have been advised that the noble Baroness does not wish to speak.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

I was going to get a glass of water, but that is going to be difficult. I thought for a moment that maybe the noble Lord, Lord Wei, was not going to move the amendment. I would have advised him not to. I am sure that he is well intended—I do not doubt that—but he has missed many of the debates on this over the years. I ask him to understand that, when I put the Bill forward on home education, that was five years ago. I never heard from the noble Lord then or had any involvement with him. He did not seem to be interested in it, but I consulted very widely. I consulted by all sorts of measures: I had meetings in the House; I had Zoom meetings up and down the country; I had emails and all those things. I was dealing very much with a small group of people who objected to the register. Most of them came on board; a small minority have not, but the majority support the Bill and the register. They do so because they know it is beneficial.

I think one of the things the noble Lord, Lord Wei, has missed quite seriously is that the provision is designed to be supportive. It is not a punishment, but he does not seem to understand that. In other words, for the first time a home-educating parent will be able to say to the local authority, “I want help to do this bit of home education, which I cannot deliver myself.” It might be in advanced science, music or art; it might be any of those things, and the local authority has to do it. It is supportive, not punitive, and the noble Lord’s whole speech was on the idea that it is punitive.

I say to him, as I have said in previous debates, some home educators are very good at it, but that does not mean that they do not need help at times. Just because you are able to teach certain things does not make you a good teacher without that support and backup which might be, as I say, in advanced sciences or whatever. The noble Lord’s amendment would deny them that and actually make it worse for them.

My line on this—I give credit to the Government, who have adopted most of my Bill here—has been about doing it well, and they have. I had some doubts about the appeal system. I wrote to the Minister about this and she gave me certain assurances in her reply about how that system will work. I made other suggestions too, but I think the Minister is saying that the appeal mechanism is there for both the parents and the authority. We should remember that this is a two-way street. The noble Lord, Lord Wei, says that he has had complaints from people about the way that a local authority has behaved. I say to him: listen to those people, mainly children who are now grown up and had complaints about the way that home education was done to them or, importantly, where it was done partly as a cover for something else. You do not have to think just about abuse here: it is about a child working in a shop and then being told “Well, you’re learning mathematics”; it is about trafficking, too.

Listening to the noble Lord, I think he has no concept of this. His speech was all about the terrible state and the wonderful home-educating parent. Most parents who home-educate in the way that he described do it well. They really have nothing to fear from this because what they will get is support from the local authority, if they ask for it. At the same time, they will have to demonstrate that the child is being properly educated. Is that really wrong?

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Geddes Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Lords Chamber

Amendments 113 and 114 not moved.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes) (Con)]

Before calling Amendment 114A, I inform the Committee that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, will be taking part remotely and that if Amendment 114A is agreed, I cannot call Amendments 115 or 116 due to pre-emption.

Amendment 114A

Moved by

Education, Health and Care Plans

Lord Geddes Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

To reassure the noble Lord, I would never take my fists to him under any circumstances. He raises a very important point, because a number of local authorities have literally zero appeals and others have a much higher proportion. It is important that we get them to talk to each other. There are a couple of other points to make. First, under the old regime that ended in 2014, the number of appeals was rising every year, so this is not a new trend. Also, under the new scheme we have two extra areas of potential appeal because we have a much wider age group—we now take them up to the age of 25, instead of just 16. We are also piloting in some areas the ability to appeal on the health and social care element. The main point the noble Lord makes about better collaboration between local authorities is well taken.

[Lord Geddes (Con)]

My Lords, could my noble friend advise the House whether the costs are always reimbursed if appeals are successful?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I do not have that information to hand but I will write to my noble friend to deal with it specifically.

Transport: A1 Dual Carriageway

Lord Geddes Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

The noble Baroness is absolutely correct and I stress again that we are on time with this project. However, she will know that these major road schemes have to go through particular stages, including strong consultation. We have consulted on both stretches—the dualling and the improvements north of Ellingham. Along with the improvements from Morpeth up to Ellingham, a development consent order with statutory timescales is required, so there are some necessary steps to go through to be sure that we do this work effectively.

[Lord Geddes (Con)]

My Lords, while warmly supporting the Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Beith, I will follow up the supplementary put by my noble friend Lord Vinson. Will my noble friend on the Front Bench refute a comment made to me some years ago by the then spokesman for my party in this House on transport, in response to a supplementary question, that it was quicker to go from Newcastle to Edinburgh via Carlisle?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I am not sure that I am in a position to comment on something that was said many years ago, but speed is of the essence here. When we complete this particular upgrade of the A1 on time, freight, tourists, locals and everyone else who wants to use the road will at last be able more speedily to reach the border—and I hope beyond, but that is up to the Scottish Government.

Sex and Relationships Education

Lord Geddes Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

As the noble Baroness will know, in the past few years we have tried to strengthen the role of school governors to make sure that they have the right skills. It is certainly true to say that many governors coming through now are fully aware of the role that schools should play in providing a much wider education and being aware of the issues facing young people being brought up in modern Britain.

[Lord Geddes (Con)]

My Lords, is there not a particular onus on parents in the context of this Question?

[Lord Nash]

That is certainly true. My noble friend makes a very good point about parents. We have done a lot of work with parents in relation to online security and access to things such as pornographic material. Of course, schools engage with parents increasingly well, but the sad fact is that too many of our young people are brought up in homes where, frankly, the only brick in life is their school—and it is schools that have to take an increasing responsibility.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Geddes Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Grand Committee

Relevant document: 1st Report from the Delegated Powers Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes) (Con)]

My Lords, as is my duty on these occasions, I must advise the Grand Committee that if there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, the Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.

Clause 1: Corporate parenting principles

Amendment 29

Moved by

Adoption

Lord Geddes Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I have just said that this was discussed in some detail last night.

[Lord Geddes (Con)]

My Lords, I may have misheard my noble friend, but I thought that in his Answer he referred to misinterpretation of court judgments. Misinterpreted by whom?

[Lord Nash]

We believe this may have been misinterpreted by some social workers with, I am sure, the best interests of children in mind. The president of the Family Division has clarified the meaning, particularly in Re B-S and in Re R, where he made it absolutely clear that the law on adoption had not changed. However, it seems that these decisions have sometimes been misinterpreted as raising the legal test for adoption so that adoption should not be pursued unless there is no other option. We are particularly concerned about this.