Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Hampton Excerpts(5 days, 6 hours ago)
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Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, I am very sorry to hear the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough. I believe he totally misunderstands the point of the amendment so ably introduced by my noble friend Lady Finlay. He used “smacking” quite a lot. I will never use that word myself, because it trivialises what we mean. We are talking about a hit—about a physical assault on a child. The reasonable chastisement defence is only ever likely to be used in a court of law, and it has been.
As I think we know, the rationale is that every battery of a child starts with a hit, but not every hit of a child leads to battery. One recent case illustrates the point. On the first day of the trial of the killers of Sara Sharif in 2024, the prosecutor, Bill Emlyn Jones, told jurors that Urfan Sharif called British police, having fled to Pakistan after Sara’s death. He said:
“He used what you may think is an odd expression. He said: ‘I legally punished her and she died’”.
I wonder where he got that phrase. I can tell your Lordships: it appears in Section 58 of the Children Act 2004, and for the last 20 years, I and others have tried to delete it. The presence of those words in the law sends a message that it can be lawful to beat a little child.
Back in 2002, the Adoption and Children Act acknowledged the damage done to children from witnessing violence in the home. So long as the reasonable chastisement defence remains, babies and children who witness violence still have greater legal protection than those who are directly assaulted.
Emlyn Jones said that Urfan Sharif also told the police:
“I beat her up. It wasn’t my intention to kill her, but I beat her up too much”.
An intention to kill is not necessary. An intention to cause serious harm is sufficient for a murder conviction if death ensues. The prosecutor said that a note in Urfan Sharif’s handwriting was found next to his daughter’s body, which read:
“I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her. But I lost it”.
Sara had more than 70 injuries to her ribs, shoulders, fingers, spine and brain, and a burn from a domestic iron to her buttock. She had numerous bruises, scald marks from hot water, restraint injuries, and human bite marks. These injuries did not occur on one occasion when her father “lost it”.
This sort of case is not new. When Maria Colwell died in January 1973, she had black eyes, fractured ribs and brain damage. This was inflicted by her mother and stepfather, William Kepple. Kepple was convicted of Maria’s murder in April 1973, but the charge was later reduced to manslaughter. Officials repeated the mantra: “It must never happen again”. But it has, and it does.
Victoria Climbié, who died on 25 February 2000, was rushed to hospital suffering from hypothermia, weighing just three stone and ten pounds and suffering 128 injuries.
In arguably one of the most notorious child deaths, Peter Connelly, known in the media as baby P, died in London on 3 August 2007, aged just 17 months, after suffering more than 50 injuries. He had been seen 60 times by healthcare professionals and social workers.
On 3 March 2012, four year-old Daniel Pełka died after being severely battered by his mother and her partner. Daniel had suffered 22 injuries, including 10 to his head.
Arthur Labinjo-Hughes was murdered after months of abuse in 2020. Arthur, aged six, was tortured to death by his father, Thomas Hughes, and stepmother. After months of horrific abuse, he was starved and poisoned with large quantities of salt. When he died, his skeletal body was covered with 130 bruises and he suffered 93 different areas of injury.
On 22 September 2020, Savannah Brockhill caused baby Star Hobson catastrophic injuries after inflicting months of brutal abuse alongside her mother. Medics said that her injuries were usually seen only in car crash victims. Boris Johnson vowed that action would be taken to stop such shocking and heartbreaking tragedies in future, but it has not been taken. Many other fatal cases have hit the headlines, and there have been hundreds of beaten children who did not die but were marked for life by their experience. Briefings we have received from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have made it clear that hitting children is not harmless; it is harmful.
Yes, there were serious shortcomings in the actions or inactions of various public services in the cases I have just outlined, but the social workers and police did not kill these children; their parents and carers did. They did it because they thought they could get away with it. Every terrible beating started with a single hit, a single physical assault: the sort of thing that recently lost an MP his seat and his liberty.
The reason why these children died was that they did not have the voice or ability to stop it and they were not sufficiently protected by the law. If the early stages of any one of these cases had been perpetrated on an adult, the attacker would have been imprisoned long before the pattern of assault became fatal. The fact is that children do not have equal protection against assault under the law, because of the excuse expressed in the chilling words “reasonable punishment”. These assaults are not reasonable by any measure, and they are not punishment either.
No child was ever naughty enough to deserve such abuse. It is not punishment; it is an expression of the anger, hatred and frustration of the perpetrator, leading to actions that should be classed as criminal, without mitigation. These children are calling from the grave to make them so. Let us do it at last by carrying this amendment.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 67 and 505 in the name of my noble friend Lady Finlay of Llandaff, to which I have added my name and to which she spoke so eloquently. I am afraid that I am unable to comment on the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, because my cerebral cortex received so many messages of complaint that it shut down quite early on.
I have lived on this planet for 60 years, I have been a parent for 20 years, a cricket coach for 15 years, a teacher for 10 years and a kinship carer for over a year, and I have never hit, slapped or smacked anybody, except one unfortunate time in a tour game against Tredegar Ironsides, and the opposition scrum-half started it.
As has been mentioned, this is the children’s well-being Bill, but it is quietly going on its way without mentioning a fundamental problem of well-being: legalised violence against children. That is what we are talking about. Not a quick clip around the ear, not a short, sharp shock that teaches them right or wrong. Not something that was done to us and we are no worse for it. No, we are grooming our children to believe that violence is acceptable by the powerful against the weak for their own good. That is not an acceptable message.
I believe that the results from Wales and Scotland are showing no major increase, if any, in prosecutions. I suspect that, for most people, it will not be a surprise that hitting a child is a bad idea, so a change in the law would remove the defence only for those who really aim to harm children. The rule of thumb is an urban myth. It has never been acceptable to hit women. Why do we still allow violence against children?
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I will briefly speak to Amendment 172, to which I added my name. My noble friend Lord Meston and my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss have said it far better than I possibly could. I know the amazing work of Pause and I commend its work to the Committee. I have full faith that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, will say anything that is missing.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 169 and 172 in my name and to comment on the other amendments in this group. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and my noble friend Lord Farmer for their support on Amendment 169, and the noble Lords, Lord Hampton and Lord Meston, for their support on Amendment 172. As has been noted, they seek to do similar things.
Amendment 169 is a narrower version, focusing on support for mothers who have had a baby removed into care at birth. Like the noble Lord, Lord Meston, I prefer Amendment 172, which is broader and would create an obligation for local authorities to offer an evidence-based programme, such as the Pause programme, to mothers who have had a child removed from their care and who, as we have heard, very often immediately get pregnant again. From a human point of view, one can absolutely understand why, after all the attention that they may have received from children’s services prior to the child being removed and then the deafening silence that surrounds them once the child is gone. Very often, that void is filled by another pregnancy. I prefer Amendment 172 because it is a real issue and is broader, but the evidence for Amendment 169 is crystal clear. Almost half of newborns subject to care proceedings are born to mothers who had previously had a child—an older sibling to the newborn—removed through those proceedings. The near inevitability of that seems very powerful.
I am not sure whether it is on my register of interest, but I did a period of volunteering for Pause before I joined your Lordships’ House, so I have seen the quality of its work first hand. Since 2013, over 2,000 women have completed the Pause programme who, prior to working with Pause, collectively had had more than 6,200 children removed from their care—that is just over three children per woman. This is not a competition for how many children a woman has had removed, but Pause was founded by a social worker, Sophie Humphreys, and a district judge, Nick Crichton, after they worked together on a case where a 14th child was removed from the same woman. It is grounded very much in the experience of women.
I suggest to the Minister that this amendment is similar in spirit to Clause 1, which puts family group decision-making processes on a statutory footing, in the sense that some local authorities offer these programmes and some do not. The delivery is inconsistent and patchy and, as the noble Lord, Lord Meston, said, the funding for it is not always available. Also in the spirit of the Bill, which seeks to support those in the care system, we know that 40% of women who have taken part in the Pause programmes were themselves in care.
The Minister will know that the DfE’s own evaluation of this work saw significantly improved outcomes for mothers, reduced rates of infant care entry and very significant savings to children’s social care, with the department’s evaluation suggesting that every £1 spent on the Pause programme resulted in a saving to children’s social care of £4.50 over four years and £7.61—that seems remarkably accurate—over 18 years. I am not sure whether that is the net present value of £7.61, but anyway—that is a 7:1 return. From the point of view of the mother and the children, and from the financial perspective, these amendments deserve the Minister’s serious attention.
More broadly, this group has been focused on the important subject of support for families, both at a relatively early stage and at crisis points, such as when a child is removed into care. The purpose behind Amendment 68, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and my noble friend Lord Farmer, is to ensure that there is universal provision of family support services. There is no question that such services are valued by the families who use them and can make a great difference to the lives of children and to their parents. We support the spirit of the amendment, which keeps universal services separate from those that are voluntary but targeted to more vulnerable families, as the noble Baroness knows from our earlier debates on Clause 3.
Amendments 68A and 68B seek to introduce the concept of earned autonomy for family support services, which is again something that we are very sympathetic to. I have the greatest respect for my noble friend Lord Farmer for his extensive work in this area, particularly in relation to family hubs. I look forward to hearing what the Minister might say about the expansion of family hubs, which the Government have described as
“a non-stigmatising gateway to targeted whole-family support”.
In normal-speak, I think that is a good thing.
Amendment 167, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, would require local authorities to report annually on early intervention services for children and families in their area. As the noble Baroness acknowledged, local authorities have annual reporting requirements, including in relation to their multi-agency safeguarding work. As I understand it, this amendment would make that more explicit in relation to early help. I just wondered whether this would not naturally fit as an update to the Working Together to Safeguard Children statutory guidance, as opposed to being in the Bill.
It is hard to argue with the spirit of Amendment 171, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. I was sad to hear of her loss and that of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester. I am sure that, across the Committee, we are very grateful to those charities that offer great support to children, and their families, who have been bereaved. When I was in the department, I remember meeting the team at the Ruth Strauss Foundation—indeed, I went on to recommend it to extended family members, who benefited from its support. In some cases, when perhaps a parent has cancer, the death can be anticipated and support can happen pre bereavement as well as post bereavement, if the family wishes, but in other cases, such as cases of domestic homicide, the child in effect loses both parents—one parent has been killed and the other parent is in prison. Effective support in all these cases is to be encouraged. If accepted, this amendment would make the task of finding the right support so much easier for bereaved or soon-to-be-bereaved children.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 69B in my name and in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, as well as the other amendments in this group. Amendment 69B seeks to ensure that children in kinship care and their carers can be referred to as a “kinship family”. Using the term “kinship families” would allow for the correct dignity, respect and acknowledgement that they are indeed a family unit. Currently, the use of “kinship carers” and “children in kinship care” does not fully recognise that they are a family unit. This amendment seeks to ensure that the whole family is able to access the necessary support, as set out by the local authority.
Amendment 71 seeks to ensure that, when a local authority updates its kinship care offer, it proactively consults kinship families. These kinship families play an integral role in understanding the effectiveness of the local offer, as they are the ones in situ who are receiving the support and as such, their opinion and understanding of such delivery is essential to enhance the overall service as and when required.
This amendment would also require the offer to be reviewed annually rather than from time to time. We believe that such a vague timescale opens up the possibility for local authorities, which are dealing with a multitude of tasks at any one time, to allow, through no direct fault of their own, such a review to remain unaddressed for a material amount of time without the subject matter being considered, which would negatively affect the kinship families in that local area.
To be clear, and as referenced by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, in the previous group, local authorities are always trying to do their best—that is not in doubt. But this amendment cements best practice to ensure that the kinship care offering can be continually improved in line with feedback.
As drafted, the Bill does not make reference to any details surrounding how a local authority must review and update its kinship care local offer, so this amendment provides further detail about how and when such a review must be conducted.
Amendment 70, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, seeks to include legal support and family decision-making on the list of services a local authority can provide to support the local kinship families. This amendment seems entirely sensible as there may well be situations in which kinship families need these services. When family group decision-making processes are taking place, it is right that the kinship care family should be aware.
Amendment 72, also in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, seeks to require local authorities to publish the comments they receive and how they have addressed these comments. It is similar to my Amendment 71 as it recognises the importance of understanding how local families interact with the care offer and their opinions on its effectiveness, which should be a good thing.
Amendment 103, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, seeks to extend the pupil premium to children in a kinship care arrangement. While we understand that kinship placements are an essential part of the social care system, a decision such as this would potentially involve a significant commitment from the Treasury, and as such would require a full financial impact assessment before further decisions could be made.
Amendments 104 and 146 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, seek to extend the rights of kinship carers so that they receive an allowance and are able to take leave in a similar way to other employees. It is certainly important that the attractiveness and prospect of becoming a kinship carer is not reduced because of financial difficulty, and it is vitally important to recognise the importance of kinship carers and ensure that the system works in practice. We would urge His Majesty’s Government to consider ways to reduce barriers to entry for kinship carers so that the number of children in children’s homes can be reduced. I beg to move.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 72 in my name and remind the House that I am a kinship carer of twin 13 year-olds. I also thank Kinship for its help in this.
The Bill recognises the vital role that kinship carers play and strengthens welcome reforms which improve support for kinship carers. However, some of the Government’s stated policy objectives associated with the Bill’s provisions are unlikely to be realised without additional reform and the Bill ultimately falls short of delivering the vital education on the mental health support that children in kinship care urgently need.
Making the kinship local offer a legal requirement through new legislation is welcome. In Kinship’s 2024 annual survey, a third of kinship carers rated the information provided about kinship care by their local authorities “very poor”, and only 7% of kinship carers said in 2023 that they had seen their local authority’s existing family and friends care policy—something local authorities have been required to deliver since 2011.
A new legal duty and more comprehensive guidance around the content and delivery of this information should help kinship carers to better understand and access available support. However, as outlined by Kinship’s associate director of policy and public affairs when providing oral evidence to the Education Committee last month, the local offer’s impact will be to magnify the lack of support available to kinship families, particularly those with informal arrangements or where a legal order was made in private proceedings.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
I support the amendments in this group in the name of my noble friend, which, as she set out, aim to simplify the process for approving kinship carers, balancing the importance of robust safeguards with greater flexibility and discretion within the process to speed it up in the best interests of the child.
As we heard in the previous group, kindship carers are an essential part of our care system, and their benefits are well known. Research indicates that, on average, children in kinship care achieve higher GCSE scores compared with those in non-kin foster care, and significantly higher than all looked-after children or children in need. Children in kinship care also experience better mental health and overall well-being compared with those in other out-of-home care settings, with the familial environment contributing to these positive outcomes. In addition, children in kinship care are more likely to remain in the same area and school, maintaining continuity in their social and educational environments, and are more likely to experience better long-term outcomes, including reduced involvement with the criminal justice system and improved employment prospects.
However, as my noble friend set out in her opening remarks, under the current system, many of those wanting to provide this form of care face significant hurdles because the assessment frameworks for kinship carers are modelled largely on foster care standards and can include checks and interviews that can feel invasive or inappropriate in the context of family caregiving.
While, of course, there needs to be a careful balance and assessment made between the benefits of placing a vulnerable child with kinship carers, with whom—as we have heard—they will already have had a long-standing relationship, and a clear-headed evaluation of any potential risks and safeguarding issues, the current approval process can be unduly slow, causing delays in placing children with family during critical early moments. As we have heard, this means children may be placed informally for long periods with no proper support while assessments drag on, creating significant delays and exclusions. Some of the criteria around housing and income in particular can lead to the exclusion of willing, loving relatives being able to provide care for vulnerable young people within their kinship group.
With the inclusion of the new kinship offer in the Bill, it is clear that the Government recognise the value of kinship carers and are looking to provide greater support and continuity of support to them. I hope the Minister will carefully consider my noble friend’s amendments, which, taken together, offer a thoughtful, balanced reappraisal of the current process and, I believe, would enhance the impact of the measures already contained in the Bill.
Amendment 76, which would require the Secretary of State to carry out a full review assessing the effectiveness of the current pathways for approval within 12 months of Royal Assent, would also provide the Government with the opportunity to look at the practical impacts of these amendments, so that they can be changed or built on, depending on the effects they have had.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I will speak very briefly to Amendments 73, 74, 75, 76 and 76A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, to which I have added my name. I am in that dangerous position where I am between your Lordships and supper, so I am going to keep it very short, given that I spoke at length about kinship care in the last group. These are extraordinarily sensible amendments that would speed things up and make it easier for kinship carers to be kinship carers. I heartily approve.
Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)
My Lords, I will also speak incredibly briefly to the amendments in this group. Obviously, we need protections in place, but I think that across the Chamber we are all agreed that we want to make kinship care a viable option for as many people as possible. These amendments help to do just that by removing some of the hurdles and hoops, and I am very much in support of them.
School Teachers’ Review Body: Recommendations
Lord Hampton Excerpts(1 week, 3 days ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord is right that we have inherited a situation where school budgets are stretched. That is why we have already made available an additional £2.3 billion for the core schools budget in the October 2024 Budget, of which £1 billion was for high needs. We have also made available, on top of that, £930 million to support schools with the cost of the national insurance contributions increase in March 2025. There is also, as I have already said, £615 million for the 2025 pay awards. That means that, while this Government have been in power, we have seen the core schools budget increase from £61.6 billion to £65.3 billion.
There will be productivity challenges for schools and the Government have been clear that, as with other parts of the public sector, we will look to support schools in finding 1% of efficiencies to contribute to the ability to pay the pay award. That is alongside considerable funding support; considerable additional funding, on top of the efficiencies, to fund the pay award; and work that the department is doing with schools to help them find those efficiencies. That is a responsible way to balance the need for teachers—who are the most important in-school determinant of children’s success—in our classrooms with our responsibility to the taxpayer to ensure that public money is spent as effectively as possible.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, as a working teacher, I say thanks very much for the 10%—it is very gratefully received. It occurred to me a few days ago that the Government seem to presume that nowadays everybody leaves university, trains to be a teacher and stays a teacher for the rest of their lives. That is just not happening. The way working patterns are now, people change professions after 10 years. Is that built into the model of recruiting now—that people last only, say, 10 years and move on, and that we can get people who have been in other jobs and recruit them into this very fine profession?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord raises an interesting point. There are of course people who enter the teaching profession, teach for 10 years, and then leave to become Members of Parliament and Ministers. I am probably too old now to ever countenance going back into the classroom, but the noble Lord makes an important point about how we attract people into the profession at a later age.
That requires, for example, some of the flexibilities we have introduced through the postgraduate apprenticeship route into teaching. It also means that you have to make teaching an attractive profession for people to enter at any age and, importantly, to stay in. That is why we are—through the targeted retention incentives, the bursaries we are offering for specialist subjects, the action we are taking on supporting teachers on the considerable workload they face and the action we are taking to ensure that technology can support teachers in doing the face-to-face work in the classroom that makes all the difference—helping to recruit teachers at the beginning of their careers and teachers who are perhaps coming from other areas and, most importantly, to retain the excellent teachers that we have.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Hampton Excerpts(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
Good training is already provided for teachers and teaching assistants, but my point was that the role of the education lead practitioner would both enable and need more training to be provided. I used the example of one of the pathfinders where that training had taken place. I suspect that, with those pathfinders, it would be appropriate if some of the additional money that had been made available contributed to that. I also made the point that it is already the case that statutory partners in safeguarding are providing resources for their safeguarding responsibilities. The point about multi-agency child protection teams is that they will enable that resource to be spent more effectively at the point when it will impact on children’s lives.
Lord Hampton (CB)
I add to the Minister’s son’s view that a lot of this training is already being done. As a working teacher, I note that we do inset days and online and offline CPD. As far as I remember, it is still a requirement of Ofsted that every teacher, when questioned, should have a working knowledge of Keeping Children Safe in Education. A plea that has oft been made to me is to ask the Minister—I have asked previous Ministers too—whether, when Keeping Children Safe in Education is updated, that could be done before the beginning of September, so that inset days can be planned with the new guidance rather than the old.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I am glad that the noble Lord reinforced my point—I think I am in big trouble with my son for having outed him in this debate. I am glad to hear that other excellent teachers have experienced this training. The noble Lord makes a very fair point. I will certainly go back to my colleagues in the department and say that, in reality, if we want people to be trained and updated on Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance, and if we expect that to happen at an inset day at the start of a school year, it would be a good idea if the guidance was there in time for them to be able to do that. That is a fair request.
Lord Hampton (CB)
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that SUIs can be used for research and commissioning purposes in order to improve outcomes for babies, children and young people.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I will be quick. In moving my Amendment 61, I put on record my thanks to Laura Anderson of the National Children’s Bureau, not only for her help on this amendment but for her heroic collating of the many briefings from the children’s charity sector for a group of interested Peers.
We have talked about the SUI a lot. We know that information sharing is urgently needed—we do not need any more serious case reviews to tell us so. We know that when a child is interacting with many different services, it is important these services communicate with each other, particularly in the case of, for example, disabled children who may need the support of health services, as well as special education provision in their school, as was mentioned by my noble friend Lady Finlay of Llandaff.
A single unique identifier can mean a better, more joined up assessment of a child’s needs and a better understanding of the impact that services make on a child’s progress and development. However, this benefit should be considered not just for individual children but children as a population group. A more holistic view of children’s needs across the local area will lead to better commissioning. A more holistic view of children’s outcomes will ensure we can evaluate what interventions work best. Yet currently, the legislation explicitly excludes research studies and evaluation from the mandated purposes of the SUI.
Using an SUI across anonymised, linked datasets could have a transformative effect on identifying risks across cohorts of children and conducting research about service impact. This would not add any considerable risk to children, as the legislation does not change or weaken any existing data protection but states explicitly that the duty to share information does not authorise or require the disclosure of information if the disclosure would contravene data protection legislation. The Government’s intention for the SUI appears focused solely on direct service provision. However, enabling local commissioners and researchers to use anonymised linked datasets could transform our understanding of the impact of particular interventions across traditional service boundaries.
Information is the new gold. We have already seen how relevant and rich data can be used to form policy in education and health, so why not take advantage of this new source of information? There seems to be a lot of saying that they are not going to be databases. Will the Minister define in her answer what she means by databases? I beg to move.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I very much hope that the NHS number works, so that we can get on with data sharing. When I spoke in an earlier group, I explained the importance of feedback loops in a successful organisation. The amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, is about using the single unique data system to inform research and commissioning. I think he has a point. The precedent of government-supported HDR UK, which I spoke about in the earlier group, is highly relevant as we found a way to anonymise such data on a consistent basis for research purposes. Indeed, the Minister might find HDR UK a useful collaborator in speeding up her excellent work and avoiding Big Brother fears.
We have heard that the single unique identifier will not be used to create a giant database. I am therefore interested in how the Government can gather aggregated data, for example by NHS trust, social service area, education authority, type of family or medical condition. Examination of such group data can reduce future mistakes and costs, target resources and improve efficiency—all the things that I tend to talk about—and make social services and the police more effective. So I would appreciate an answer about how this can be done if we are ruling out a database—by letter if need be, because it obviously goes slightly beyond the scope of the amendment. I am grateful for all the information that has been given today. It has been very reassuring.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I hope I can provide some reassurance to noble Lords about this. Amendment 61 seeks to ensure that the consistent identifier could be used for research purposes. I understand the concern raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton—and I commend him for his persistence in sitting this long to move his amendment—that the provision may appear to limit the use of the consistent identifier for research, which many stakeholders, and many noble Lords today, have rightly highlighted as a potential benefit. However, to be clear, these measures make provision for the Secretary of State to specify which agencies must use the consistent identifier and in what circumstances. Importantly, this does not prevent a consistent identifier being used for research purposes, provided that any such use is authorised in accordance with data protection and other relevant legislation.
We recognise the role of data in improving outcomes for babies, children and young people. As I say, this legislation is about when the consistent identifier must be used, rather than when it can be used, as regulations will mandate the number and the organisations required to use it. The consistent identifier could be used for research purposes, if this is authorised in accordance with UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act. We are aware of concerns around this, and officials are discussing this with key organisations. I hope that provides some assurance about the possibility of using the consistent identifier.
We have, in this legislation, deliberately prioritised use of the consistent identifier to facilitate the exercise of safeguarding and welfare functions directly. That is the basis on which we are testing its implementation and benefits through our pilot programme. If additional benefits, such as those for research, are realised, we will be in a strong position to explore how this could be facilitated. For the reasons I have outlined, and with some of the reassurance that I have provided, I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment, having achieved his objective.
Lord Hampton (CB)
I thank everybody who took part in that debate and say how optimistic the Minister’s answer has made me. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Hampton Excerpts(3 weeks, 4 days ago)
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I will be very brief indeed. I just remind noble Lords that in considering the first amendment, which went on rather a long time, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, who is not in her place, talked about children’s rights being the “golden spine running through” the Bill, but that is not explicit in the Bill. Amendment 14, so ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, is a very good example of how we could be promoting children’s rights much more explicitly in the Bill.
I very much support the amendments. I will be introducing amendments myself at the very end—if anyone is still standing at that point. I had hoped to do it at the beginning. The more we can come back to this thread of children’s rights throughout the Bill, the better. I hope noble Lords will realise the importance of the amendments on children’s rights, which will be introduced at the end of the Bill.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I will speak very briefly to Amendment 8, to which I have added my name. In this, I declare that I am one of the school of qualified teachers in this Chamber. I am also a kinship carer of twin 13-year-olds.
This is a very small but important amendment. As we have heard, the Bill attaches great importance to family decision-making. I recently had a cup of tea with my noble friend Lord Laming to ask his advice about the Bill. Sadly, he is unable to take part, but if there is one person in the House who is an absolute expert in this field, it is he. His concern—which I share, having been in decision meetings that have gone wrong—is that a badly handled meeting can do more harm than good. The wrong timing of a meeting, the participants not realising the aims or bad chairing can lead to a breakdown of trust and irreparable harm being done to a child’s future. This amendment goes a long way to making sure that the importance of an FGDM meeting is acknowledged, with the fact that it can be facilitated only by an independent, suitably trained person, and I urge the Government to accept it.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 3 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, which I have co-signed.
Family group conferencing was born out of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act 1989 in New Zealand, whereby families became key participants in a process of decision-making. Family group conferences are now used in approximately 30 countries worldwide and in at least 22 countries in Europe. Indeed, research has shown that children whose families were referred to a family group conferencing at the pre-proceedings stage were significantly less likely to be in care 12 months later than those whose families were not so referred. This should not be a surprise to your Lordships, as such preparation and discussions offer a compelling opportunity for families to come together and unite around important decisions for their child, which has the benefit of making that child feel loved and wanted, as well as the ability to address with professionals any glaring gaps in the child’s well-being.
Amendment 3 is a simple amendment that seeks to extend the right to family group decision-making meetings to children aged 16 and 17. It is surely important that we allow children who are on the brink of adulthood to take part in decisions that could materially affect their lives. That would appear to be eminently sensible. At the age of 16, a child can agree to their own care plan, so by that very same logic it is fair and reasonable that they are involved in the family group decision-making process. This is a family-led process and is absolutely essential in keeping children with their families where possible. We should be avoiding at all costs children going into care; that should be the absolute last resort. So, allowing 16 and 17 year-olds to share their voice and their opinions would ensure that this process is as child-focused and effective as it can be. It is essential that family group decision-making is done right, and ensuring that older children are able to contribute would be an extremely positive step in that direction.
I am very pleased to see that I believe this sentiment is shared by the noble Baronesses, Lady Armstrong, Lady Longfield and Lady Drake, with the amendment tabled in their names. Proposed new subsection (7A)(c) in their Amendment 12 seeks to achieve what the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, and I are aiming for, and we very much hope there will be cross-party support from other noble Lords on this important foundation stone.
Amendments 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, seek to set out key principles when implementing the family group decision-making process. Amendment 7 seeks to ensure that there is a process that accompanies these meetings. It is important that they are not isolated events but that instead the process is child-led and includes the family throughout.
Amendment 8 is similar in spirit to Amendment 5, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, which will be debated later, so I shall only briefly touch on the issues, but we absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, that a trained co-ordinator would prove an excellent addition to the family group decision-making team.
Amendment 9 rightly notes that an essential part of a proposal regarding concerns about a child’s welfare is the implementation of the proposal so that the best outcomes for that child can be put in place.
Amendments 10 and 11 seek to ensure that the parents or those with parental responsibility for the child, rather than the local authority, agree as to who may attend the family group decision-making meeting. It is important that those who know the child ensure that the relevant voices are heard.
Amendment 19 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, with its proposed new clause after Clause 1, aims to ensure that there is proper oversight of the child protection plan if a child under the age of five is subject to care proceedings. It is of critical importance that the matter of the child having been significantly harmed or being at risk of the same is kept in view given the general length of proceedings and the risk of harm during them. Many local authorities discharge the child protection plan and associated formal processes when the proceedings are issued; the child’s care also often moves to the court social work team. Many of these children are living with the parents where the harm, or risk of it, is happening, and this is why they must be protected during proceedings, which run on average for 52 weeks. Their protection and arrangements for formal monitoring must be maintained at all costs. Indeed, the risk to the child might actually be raised during proceedings given the pressure on their parent or parents.
We acknowledge that this amendment has a potentially arbitrary cut-off, but it does cover preschool-age children, who all too often have been the subject of serious case incidents, when the tragedy of a child losing their life or being seriously harmed has occurred. This amendment aims to be the grit in the system that ensures that a senior, fresh pair of eyes looks at such cases to ensure that a child protection plan is not ceased without their approval.
Regarding specific amendments concerning child attendance at these meetings, set out in Amendments 13 and 14, we regret that we do not support proposals that would permit children to attend these meetings. Of course, as we have heard from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, the voice of the child is crucially important, but we are concerned that the attendance by the child could potentially be traumatising, create a sense of rejection and constrain necessary conversation. This must be child-centric and the child must be heard, but possibly not in these meetings.
Amendment 18 in the name of my noble friend Lord Farmer seeks to ensure that the changing needs of the child are considered throughout childhood. It is important to recognise the changing family landscape and, as such, this amendment is a sensible one as the “family network” may be able to support the child. If that is possible, the local authority should take action so that the child can benefit from such support as and when it becomes possible.
In conclusion, family group decision-making has tremendous potential to transform outcomes for vulnerable children, but only if we achieve the scope and implementation correctly. We urge careful consideration of these amendments to ensure that this promising approach will deliver on its full potential.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Hampton Excerpts(3 weeks, 4 days ago)
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Lord Hampton
“(2) In subsection (3)—(a) omit paragraph (a) in the definition of “relevant agency”;(b) at the end of the definition of “safeguarding partner”, insert—“(d) those relevant agencies which are designated childcare or education agencies.”.(3) For the purposes of this section, a relevant agency is a “designated childcare or education agency” if it—(a) has functions relating to the provision of childcare or education (or both), and(b) is designated as such by regulations made by the Secretary of State.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to expand the definition of safeguarding partner to include all “designated childcare and education agencies” by default. It also seeks to remove the requirement that “relevant agencies” are designated by the Secretary of State.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 24 in my name, for which I am indebted to Action for Children and the Children’s Charities Coalition for their support, and to the more technical Amendments 20 and 25; I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Bichard for drafting them with the Public Bill Office, while I sat there looking rather bewildered. Unfortunately, he has had to catch the last home to Gloucester, so he cannot be here.
Education settings can and often do play a vital role in safeguarding. This applies from early years to FE colleges, but is particularly important in primary and secondary schools. Including education as the fourth statutory safeguarding partner has been called for repeatedly in recent years, including by the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care and the 2022 reviews into the deaths of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson.
The question of education’s role in safeguarding was part of the consultation for the latest version of Working Together, the Government’s response to which was published in December 2023. There was very strong support across the children’s sector for this being implemented. The DfE response noted that, of 978 respondents, 69% agreed or strongly agreed that education being a statutory safeguarding partner was essential for effective local collaboration. However, the DfE noted at the time that any formalisation of education’s role through statutory guidance could happen only following legislative change. The Government committed in early 2024 to setting out a timetable for doing this, including a specific consultation on whether and how to make it work, but it was derailed by the election.
Education playing a full role as a safeguarding partner is a long-standing policy goal for many children’s charities. It was a key recommendation in the Jay review of criminally exploited children, published by Action for Children in 2024, as it was a strong theme in both the oral and written evidence submitted to the review. It was also a recommendation in Above and Beyond, Action for Children’s report on schools’ role in supporting disadvantaged children.
The difference between the amendments is whether the responsibility is given to the Secretary of State or given by default. To quote the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, please look at the intent rather than the drafting. Either way, they endeavour to make education a powerful partner in safeguarding: exactly how it should be. With that, I beg to move.
Lord Hampton (CB)
I thank noble Lords for this interesting and thought-provoking debate. I thank the Minister for her thorough explanation—I think I understood quite a lot of it. I would go along with the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, asking for maximum clarity and simplicity. I greatly look forward to the letter from the Minister which will explain a lot more of this. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Schools: Mobile Phones
Lord Hampton Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend identifies an important development, which is that, although schools can and do control the availability of mobile phones for children, children’s access to phones is much broader than that, and the support for children to be able to operate without their phones also needs a broader range of people than simply teachers and head teachers. That type of initiative demonstrates what is already happening under the current guidance. When people come together in that way to support each other, it is something to be recognised and on which they should be congratulated.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, as a teacher, I have never taught in a school that allowed mobile phones. The Minister said that mobile phones had no place in schools, while giving head teachers autonomy to make decisions. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is taking away autonomy from head teachers. Is it not time we just had a blanket ban on mobile phones?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord raises an interesting point about those who argue that autonomy for head teachers is important—which the Government support. By the way, I dispute his interpretation of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which we will have plenty of opportunity to discuss in more detail over the coming weeks. It is precisely those who make that charge who now want to remove that autonomy by saying that legislation is the only way to make progress.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Hampton Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, on his excellent and inspiring maiden speech, and I greatly look forward to that from the noble Lord, Lord Biggar. As ever, I declare my interest as a teacher in an academy in Hackney. I am an unpaid trustee of the Elephant Group education charity, a kinship carer of twin 13 year-olds and a parent of two teenagers. I am also a hereditary Peer and this could well be my last major piece of legislation in your Lordships’ House. So, as you might say, I am quite invested in this Bill.
What a Bill it is: 137 pages, 67 clauses and four minutes to talk about it. As everyone has said, it is a Bill of two halves. On well-being, there are many things to like—the Bill needs a lot of amendments, but basically there is a lot to like. Sadly, it misses out on the ending of the defence of reasonable punishment—what better place to put that in than a Bill that talks about children’s well-being? The evidence from Wales is pretty conclusive on that one.
However, if we are to describe the “schools” part as a curate’s egg, if I were the curate, I would just eat the toast. Head teachers should be the best people to make decisions about their schools, whether they are academies or maintained. The Bill does not deal with the lack of respect of parents for schools. It decreases innovation. It takes away the autonomy and entrepreneurial spirit that has made the outstanding academies flourish, such as the UTCs already mentioned, which provide practical technical education alongside industry to get students into skilled work.
At the school where I teach, Mossbourne Community Academy, students can choose public speaking, film and media, and yoga among other mainstream subjects. How are these trailblazing schools going to continue to innovate if they have to follow slavishly the rigid and, dare I say it, rather uninspiring national curriculum? I know that charities such as Tender are worried about the lack of a national PSHE strategy, and we wait to see what the review has to say about that.
On school uniform, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, will be pleased to know that, in our school, you can buy an almost-new blazer for a tenner that could potentially last a child their entire school career. The average mark-up on school uniforms is 7%, according to the Schoolwear Association. If the school uniform cap is to be on sports kit as well, then a school sports shirt will be considerably cheaper than a Premiership football shirt and will not have to be changed once a year or need to have an away shirt as well. I taught a 14 year-old girl who was pregnant, and you would never have known she was because of the blazer. Children, especially girls, change shape throughout their school time, something that a blazer hides very effectively. School uniforms can also be used, as we have heard recently, instead of suits for children to go to university interviews, thereby driving up social mobility.
We are going to be very busy in Committee, and I am afraid noble Lords have not heard the last of me.