Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, this portmanteau Bill has its strengths, which I concede and welcome, particularly on child protection and safeguarding, pupil absence and kinship care—an area close to my heart that I campaigned on in the other place. It is also deeply flawed, particularly in Part 2, which is ideological and divisive, written at the behest of the teaching unions and careless of fundamental priorities around standards, parental choice, teacher recruitment and retention, local autonomy, innovation and independence. As more sensible Labour figures have rightly noted, it is a betrayal of the laudable record of not just the 2010 coalition Government but the first two Blair Administrations from 1997 onwards. It may well result in poor outcomes, social immobility and worse life chances, particularly for children from modest backgrounds.

My focus today is squarely on some troubling aspects of Part 2, which is predicated on the misguided belief that micromanagement by officials, whether in Whitehall or the town hall, will somehow enhance child safety or education standards. This may be the natural direction of travel of a bureaucracy, but it is one that this House must firmly resist. To echo the remarks of my noble friend Lord Frost earlier, the trend is starkly evident in the mandatory registration scheme for children not attending school. Consider the sheer intrusiveness of the data demanded. It compels parents to report the number of hours each of them spends educating, but parents educate their children constantly—when cooking a meal together, opening a bank account, or simply talking and living life together. Home education is often an extension of this integrated approach. It is not institutional provision for classes of 30, following rigid timetables. How are parents expected to delineate their specific hours with each child?

The requirements extend to the names, addresses and hours of everyone else contributing to each child’s education: grandparents, Sunday school teachers, music tutors, scout leaders or someone who gives a talk at an art gallery that the child visits with a grandparent. Parents must update the local authority within 15 days of any change for each child. It is, frankly, an absurd and impossible requirement. This constitutes state-mandated surveillance of family life on an unprecedented scale for law-abiding citizens choosing a perfectly legal form of education. As highlighted in the learned Aidan O’Neill KC’s legal opinion, there are significant questions over the scheme’s compatibility with the convention as well as with UK GDPR principles. The justification for such intrusive measures is that these children are “invisible”; they are not invisible to their parents, families or communities.

The tragic and appalling case of Sara Sharif was repeatedly raised in the other place. She was already on a list of children about whom social services had been concerned. The local authority had been notified that she was educated at home—already a legal requirement of schools. How would placing her on yet another list have made a difference? It is a question that demands an answer. We must do all we can to prevent such terrible tragedies occurring again, but we need to ensure that the actions taken will be effective. Even if another list was helpful, what possible justification is there for all the detail demanded in this Bill? I challenge the Minister to address that in her remarks at the conclusion of this debate. The limited research available shows that, although home-educated children are disproportionately referred for safeguarding concerns, they are significantly underrepresented on child protection plans. Let us make sure our approach is founded on empirical evidence and not prejudice, so that we genuinely protect children who need it without imposing ineffective bureaucratic restrictions on everyone else.