Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Moraes Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to have this debate this evening. I will keep it fairly short, given the time.

Amendment 75, in my name, simply seeks to change the current duty of being “alert to” the needs of looked-after children to one requiring public bodies to have “due regard to” removing or reducing the disadvantages they face. There are lots of things that I am alert to; that does not mean that I take any great notice of them. I am alert to them, but I can choose to ignore them. What we need is something that requires local authorities to take this seriously, and the concept of “due regard” is well understood in many other aspects of law. As a bishop, I am used to there being policies of the Church of England to which I am required to have due regard. If I simply had to be alert to them, I do not think that they would get the attention and focus they need. Instead of a duty of being alert, Amendment 75 would put in place something that I think we all understand to be a higher bar, but something that I think is achievable.

Amendment 76 says:

“A relevant authority exercising the duty … must take reasonable steps to avoid, reduce or otherwise mitigate any adverse impact of its policies and practices on looked-after children and relevant young persons”.


The key here is that we are not asking for anything unreasonable. This concerns what it is that it is reasonable for a public body, particularly a local authority, to do, beyond just being aware. The word “aware” is really no better than “alert”. How are they going to take reasonable and practical steps to prevent harm that is being done when some policy is being implemented? This would complement the aims of the Bill and provide a clear framework for shared action and accountability.

Finally, Amendment 96 concerns equality impact assessments. I know it is not practically possible to make being care-experienced yet another protected characteristic in the law, but we need some way of understanding the particular impact that those bits of the law have on children in care, or people who have been in care. There is a misprint, I fear, in the text as printed on the Marshalled List. The very famous Equality Act was of course enacted in 2010, not 2020 —it has been around rather longer than the amendment says. I am sorry; it was my people who put the wrong year in there.

The amendment is asking that we look at the impact on persons under 25 who are looked after by local authorities. Again and again we have tried, through various aspects of the Bill, as I did in my own Private Member’s Bill a few months ago, to say that the impact of care experience needs, at the very least, to be tracked through to the age of 25. We need to support young people up to that age. As was said on an earlier group this evening, most young people are still heavily dependent well beyond the age of 25—including, I fear, my kids, who were still heavily dependent on my wife and me well beyond that age. We are talking here about young people who do not have the bank of mum and dad or traditional parental support. We really need to do our best for them.

I will not delay your Lordships any further. I urge the Minister to give me such assurances as she can possibly give me this evening that will persuade me that I do not need, at this late hour, to test the opinion of the House. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, who has supported these amendments. I hope that he will have something to add in a moment or two.

[Lord Moraes (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to introduce Amendment 77 in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Lister, who tabled a similar amendment in Committee. I apologise to the House for not being in Committee to speak to this amendment due to a period of illness last year.

The amendment concerns a new statutory duty for corporate parents to be alerted to matters concerning children’s well-being. In this respect, there are a group of children in the UK who are entitled to citizenship but for various reasons do not achieve it. This is not widely understood generally, nor even among parents, foster parents and corporate parents of those children. Achieving their citizenship under British nationality law is good for the children, who gain stability, and for society, which sees the integration of children often in vulnerable situations. Here, I should declare that I am a patron of the non-profit Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens.

We want to ensure in this amendment that there is no duplication of duties on the Secretary of State, while ensuring that duties on corporate parents under Section 21(1) concerning the well-being of young people include appropriate consideration of nationality rights. We do not want to see children being wrongly categorised or treated as if this is wholly a matter of immigration or discretion.

In Committee the Minister placed an emphasis on Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act, which states that the Home Secretary should be the one discharging citizenship in relation to the safeguarding and welfare needs of the child. But this places the sole duty on the Home Secretary; it does not apply to the corporate parents to whom the new duty is to apply. Our amendment understands the importance of Section 55 but would ensure that care providers to whom the new duty is to apply are not left without the protection of any statutory duty altogether in relation to these child citizenship applications.

In Committee the Minister suggested that the Government are reflecting on the requirement to support children in gaining citizenship. That is welcome, and it is welcome that the Government are considering what further steps to take in this area. But this amendment would support those efforts by ensuring that corporate parents could act on whatever new policy or practice was brought forward by the Home Office.

While we welcome the Government’s steps to improve local authority practice in relation to child citizens, the experience of credible practitioners on the ground, such as PRCBC, is that these rights are not widely known or acted on, and any improvements that are seen are not uniform, with some local authorities showing evidence of no improvement at all.

My noble friend the Minister is probably aware that a number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lady Lister, have been pressing the case for children in this situation for many years. Government support for this amendment would ensure that these important children’s rights are not overlooked by local authorities in their role as corporate parents.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I support and will talk to Amendments 75 and 76, which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester set out powerfully; I fully support the arguments. Last week I hosted a meeting in your Lordships’ Committee Room 1, which showcased care experience and protected characteristics. The room was full. Care-experienced people had travelled from across the United Kingdom to be there because they wanted their voices to be heard, and I speak today to ensure that those voices are heard in your Lordships’ House.

Care-experienced people are asking that relevant bodies in the exercise of their corporate parenting duties are required to have due regard, as we heard earlier. One care-experienced person told us: “I deserve to have my voice heard to create real change. Too often decisions are made about us but without us”. Another said: “Care-experienced individuals need recognising because our outcomes are constantly poor yet our insight is rarely used when services are designed”.

At that meeting, Terry Galloway, who often helps and supports these young people with care experiences, offered a simple but striking example. He asked us to imagine driving down a road in a fast car and seeing a child standing in the road. You are alert to that child being there, but you drive straight through them—and you say your duty has been discharged because you were alert to them being there. Contrast that with a duty of due regard. On the same road and with the same child, discharging that duty would require you to stop the car, get out and speak to them. You would seek an understanding of why they are in the road and whether there is something you can do to help them.