Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Wei Excerpts(1 day, 11 hours 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.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I have added my name in support of Amendments 127 and 129 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, and outlined so eloquently by her just now. I also signed her amendments on a similar topic during earlier stages of the Bill, and I commend her for pursuing this important topic throughout its passage. I was unable to be here for the debates we had on this issue in Committee but followed the detailed exchanges that the noble Baroness had with the Minister then. I know that they have been talking fruitfully outside the Chamber as well, which I was glad to hear.
Reading those earlier exchanges, however, I must say that I was struck by how thick the jungle of regulation has become in this area, and how hard it is as a consequence for parents and teachers of young people who are offered these important and beneficial experiences to help take up what can be truly life-changing opportunities for them. In a simpler era, I was somebody who benefited from such an opportunity. At the age of 13, I played a French ghost called Guillaume in a children’s television drama, broadcast on Halloween 1996. That opportunity came about by chance; the writer of the show had worked with some of the teachers at my state comprehensive. I think my casting had less to do with my acting prowess and more the fact I could do a passable French accent and bore a striking similarity to the chap who had been cast as the character who was to be my twin brother.
It was an unforgettable and formative experience. We went to film it in a ruined chateau in Dijon, and I was paid the princely sum of £400, which will always be the most pleasing payslip I have ever received. Crucially, I was given the opportunity on the condition that I carried on my work, and my dad had to come with me to make sure that I did the homework and schoolwork that I missed while we were away filming.
Looking at the forms and regulations that the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, has highlighted, and the even more forbidding system that could be brought about by the Bill as currently drafted, I wonder whether schools and families like mine would be able to seize the same opportunities as easily as I was able to 30 years ago. I therefore very much support the noble Baroness’s crusade to make this as simple as possible, including her call for a review of the 2014 regulations. When they were brought in during the coalition Government, there was a commitment then to look at them after 10 years. That time has now elapsed— I hope the Government will look at it.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, has said, what we have does not recognise the complexity of the creative industries and the sectors. This is a place where filming schedules can change at last minute, where young actors’ opportunities often overlap, and certainly where decisions need to be taken at a faster pace than the capacity of many local authorities to be able to. There is also a very important issue of equity and social mobility that lies behind this. The harder we make it for children from ordinary backgrounds to take up opportunities such as this, and if we give that impression by calling them an unauthorised absence or sending the message that this might adversely affect a school’s Ofsted ratings, then the fewer children from state schools we are going to see take up opportunities like this.
While the gap has been closing a bit in recent years, the arts and creative industries are sectors in which children from public and private schools seem to have a head start. A report by the Sutton Trust and the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre last November showed that BAFTA-nominated actors are still five times more likely to have attended a fee-paying school than the population as a whole. We are already missing out on countless other Ncuti Gatwas and Jodie Comers, to name just two talented actors from state schools who have managed to beat the odds, and we should be seeking to narrow that gap, not widen it. I hope that the Minister will support these sensible amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, when she comes to respond, and that she will also take the opportunity to send the message from the Dispatch Box that taking up opportunities such as this is very worth while for children of all backgrounds.
Lord Wei (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 148C and the other amendments in my name in this group: Amendments 157A, 161B, 161C, 164A, 175ZF and 254. Together, they address the foundations of Clause 32 and the proposed register of children not in school.
I begin by recognising where the Government have listened and where Ministers have accepted the need for stronger parliamentary scrutiny, clearer procedures and a narrowing of discretion through the affirmative process and other means. This deserves acknowledgement. Restraint is not a weakness in law; it is what makes power credible.
I want to address the deeper questions raised by Amendments 164A, 175ZF and 254. These are not separate concerns; they express a single constitutional proposition. We heard just now about the restrictions that many families in the creative industries will face, and I would extend that to all families, as many families have complex fast-changing lives. In home education, you have a lot of online activity. I do not think that there is necessarily a huge world of difference. I accept that children in acting have a particular situation, but those who are in home education circumstances also have quite complex schedules. Many of the same arguments that were made in relation to that group apply to many families that are going to be swept in by the Bill.
A universal and persistent register of lawful families, together with the data infrastructure that flows from it, is not a proportional response to safeguarding risk. Proportionality lies at the very core of the balance between legitimate state regulatory power and civil and convention liberties. Safeguarding in this country has always been based on thresholds, reasonable cause, identifiable risk and particular children. Clause 32 alters that logic: oversight becomes the default, while risk is inferred from how families respond to that oversight. This is a significant change in the relationship between families and the state. Once a universal system is built, it rarely remains narrow: secondary uses accumulate, data sharing expands and retention grows. Each future tragedy becomes an argument for more routine intervention.
None of this requires malice; it flows naturally from administrative logic and institutional risk aversion. The House should therefore ask a simple practical question: what problem does a universal register solve that cannot already be addressed through existing powers? The answer is none. Local authorities already have extensive safeguarding tools. They can make inquiries, assess needs, convene multi-agency responses and go to court. None of these powers requires a population-level database of lawful families. If the concern is that some children fall through the cracks, that is serious, but it does not logically entail universal monitoring. The proper response is to examine how targeted systems fail, as in the tragic case of Sara Sharif, and to strengthen the response under current rules, not construct permanent identification spying for hundreds of thousands of children, most of whom are not at risk and many of whom are educated outside school precisely because they are vulnerable. These amendments therefore ask the House to pause before constructing an infrastructure that normalises permanent oversight of lawful difference. They do not deny safeguarding; they challenge inevitability.
However, if the House is not persuaded to remove the register entirely, the minimum duty upon us is to bind it with strong statutory safeguards. This brings me to the second tier of amendments in this group: those concerned with review, transparency, and redress. My Amendments 148C and 161B would introduce time limits, rolling review, and active parliamentary reauthorisation. These are not wrecking devices but constitutional hygiene. Government is good at building systems but much less good at dismantling them. Review mechanisms force Parliament to look again with evidence in hand. They create a lawful route for correction, refinement, and, if necessary, reversal without waiting for scandal or litigation, which home education leaders and legal advisers suggest to me will spiral should such systems in their current form be taken forward.
Lord Wei (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to the amendments in my name in this group, namely Amendments 148A, 148B, 148D, 148E, 153A, 155A, 161D and 174A. Together, they are concerned with one question: how information about children and families is collected, used, retained and acted on under the Bill. Again, I begin by recognising that the Government have shown restraint where Ministers have strengthened scrutiny, tightened procedures and limited the scope for open-ended regulation-making, and it deserves acknowledgement. My amendments in this group are animated by a single concern: if Parliament is minded to create a register, it must be tightly bounded, purpose-limited and structured so that it does not normalise suspicion or routine burden and data sought must be proportionate to serving a legitimate aim and narrowly tailored. It must not indirectly discriminate against or unduly burden parents who choose to home educate when compared with children attending recognised schools.
Amendments 148A and 148B concern data use and data governance. The true risk of a register lies not only in what it collects but in what that information becomes over time. Data once shared rarely contracts. Once repurposed, it rarely remains confined to its original purpose. We are collecting quite a lot of data here on quite a lot of sensitive matters. Some have argued that this is really a kind of digital ID by the back door, which I do not think many of our citizens are very enamoured of right now.
Amendment 148A would draw a clear statutory boundary. It would provide that information may be shared only where necessary and proportionate for the education or welfare of the individual child, and it must not be repurposed for population-level profiling, predictive modelling, automated risk scoring or speculative secondary uses. This is not hostility to safeguarding, it is respect for trust. Safeguarding will collapse when families believe that information given for one reason will be later used for another. Amendment 148B would complement this by making explicit that all regulations governing the register must comply with data protection law by requiring consultation with the Information Commissioner and representatives of affected families before regulations are made. This is not decorative, it is constitutional. When people cannot foresee how their data will be used, trust dissolves.
Amendment 148D would introduce a deletion rule so that information must be removed after five years or earlier where the child is no longer within scope, unless there are recorded safeguarding grounds for attention. Childhood is not a permanent status, and our legal architecture should reflect that. Permanent records create permanent consequences. This amendment would prevent the register becoming a life history file for families who have done nothing wrong while preserving the ability to retain data where there is a genuine and ongoing safeguarding justification.
Amendment 148E is equally important. It would place into statute the principle that Ministers have articulated today, namely, that education otherwise than at school is lawful and must not of itself be treated as a reasonable cause to suspect harm or educational failure. I know there was an assurance about this principle that home education is legitimate, but much of what we have seen in the Bill does not seem to suggest that that belief is held tightly by those who drafted it. Presumptions are powerful. Once a category is treated as suspicious, every interaction becomes shaped by that assumption. This amendment would ensure that the burden of justification remains where it belongs: with the state.
Amendments 153A and 155A address burden and frequency. Amendment 153A would place a clear ceiling on routine requests for meetings, information or home access of no more than once in any 12-month period, unless there is reasonable cause to suspect significant harm, in which case more frequent engagement remains possible but is still bounded. It would make clear that a parent’s failure to comply with a routine request must not of itself be treated as evidence of unsuitable education and that a parent’s notice to home educate takes legal effect when given. This is about temporal proportionality. Frequency is not neutral. Repetition changes the character of a relationship. Rolling engagement becomes rolling surveillance.
Amendment 155A would complement this by requiring that information demands must be reasonably required, proportionate and not of such volume or frequency that they materially damage the child’s education by diverting parental time and resources away from teaching. This is a real risk. Oversight that crowds out education defeats its purpose. I have also tabled Amendment 161D, which would require written reasons for decisions to provide families with a right to correct factual inaccuracies in the register. Large systems generate errors. If we are going to create records that shape how families are treated, those records must be contestable and correctable.
I support the proposed cyber security Amendments 172 and 247A, which would prevent these provisions being commenced. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, made a great point in Committee about reviewing the cyber security risks around storing this data, which is so important given that just recently we had a breach of government data.
I should be clear about what I cannot support. I cannot support approaches that normalise routine monitoring or turn lawful difference into a reason for scrutiny, nor can I support amendments that increase admin burdens on families by default rather than in response to evidence of harm.
The question before us is not whether the state may act where there is evidence of risk—it must—but what kind of system are we going to build? Is it going to be targeted, proportionate and trusted or one that drifts into routine suspicion and routine intrusion? I commend these amendments to the House.
Lord Crisp (CB)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 135A in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. Before doing so, I once again thank the Minister for having reduced the requirements in this section considerably—I am very pleased not to have to comment on whether Scouts, rugby clubs, cricket clubs or anything are included—and getting rid of the 15-day requirement to report. Those are significant improvements.
In terms of process, I shall just pick up on one point, which I raised earlier, so I will not speak at length on it, about how this process of putting information on the register fits in with the annual reporting process that happens in an awful lot of authorities. That may be a local issue rather than a national one, but I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response on that.
Amendment 135A from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, is largely heading in the same direction as the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hacking. I think it is proportionate. I think it is important that proposed new subsection (3) states:
“Nothing … prevents a local authority from requesting further information … where the authority has reasonable cause to believe that a child may not be receiving a suitable education”.
In other words, it is a two-step process so that one does not automatically assume that the parents are guilty, as it were, because there would be a two-step process before the local authority asks for more information.
I shall draw out one point that the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, made, which is that not all parents need to be recorded on the register, only those who are taking responsibility for the education of the child. That is entirely in keeping with where we are currently, in that to withdraw a child from registration to school, you need only one parent’s signature. It seems to me that, in putting them on the register in this way, you only need those parents who are taking responsibility. It is not necessary to involve other parents, including those who may be a danger to the other parent or to the child. I simply make those points.
I have a lot of sympathy for the various amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, around the security of the use of information, not least because I believe I am right saying that we are talking not about one register but 150. This is not a national register, this is 150 registers. What chance do we think that somewhere in those 150 problems will occur in terms of security and of people getting access? I think these are real concerns, and I will be very interested to hear what the Minister says about the various amendments that the noble Lord, Lord Wei, has tabled.
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I rise, first, to thank the Government, on behalf of myself and the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, for bringing forward Amendment 146, putting carers on the register. We heard moving testimony in Committee about some incredibly young carers aged eight, nine or 10 looking after several members of their families—siblings and parents. In some cases, they were apparently being home-educated, but from the point of view of the adults they were caring for, looking after them took priority. That is why it is so important and so helpful that they will be recorded.
I also support my noble friend Lord Crisp and Amendment 175ZC from the noble Lord, Lord Wei, which is along the same lines—it is for children who are coming to the final parts of their home education and will, one hopes, take and pass exams. There is a real postcode lottery, particularly post-Covid, in access to examination centres. In parts of the country such as Cornwall or large parts of the north of England, it is extraordinarily difficult for parents to access examination centres for their children. In some cases, they have to travel one and a half to three hours to go to them. In many cases, their children are not taking a single paper; they might be taking three or four papers for mathematics, so they have to go back and forth. Some of those children will have some challenging behaviours and may find that an examination centre is not an environment that they are entirely comfortable in. Having it within reasonable reach and access of where one lives is exceptionally important.
For those reasons, I hope that the Minister will think carefully about this and look at some of the facts and figures. The charity, Education Otherwise, has looked into this in great detail and has a lot of really quite useful and compelling information. I hope that if the department is prepared to look at that, it might be able to think again.
Lord Wei (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 161A, 175ZA, 175ZB and 175ZC in my name. These amendments sit in a part of the Bill that would be felt most sharply not in Whitehall but in kitchens and living rooms by parents doing their best for children whose needs do not fit neatly in the school system. When Parliament reaches into family life, it has to do so with care, because it is easy to create a framework that looks reasonable on paper and yet breathes mistrust in practice.
Again, I want to acknowledge at the outset the Government’s movement in this group. Government Amendment 158 recognises the reality of exam access and ensures that information about GCSE routes can be provided to parents who ask for it. Amendment 159 creates a regular forum for parents to raise concerns and discuss how this regime operates. Amendment 161 tidies the drafting around exam-related provisions. These are sensible steps. They start to show an understanding that families need information and a channel of engagement, and I welcome them.
Yet there remains a gap between permission and protection. Information may be offered, but access can still fail, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, and others. A forum may be held, but families can still feel unheard when nothing changes. These amendments in my name aim to close that gap with light-touch safeguards that strengthen legitimacy and reduce conflict. With the Government having shown that they are listening, I think that many of us hope that, on these quite non-contentious amendments, they will also come back with suggested changes to the Bill, as well as afterwards in the statutory guidance, to understand these realities.
Amendment 161A would require each local authority to establish a home education parental advisory board, composed primarily of parents with recent experience of elective home education in the area. We are not trying to create new bureaucracy for its own sake; it is about a practical feedback loop. Families most affected by these powers are often those most able to spot unintended consequences earlier than we can in this environment. When policy is made without their input, misunderstanding becomes routine, and routine misunderstanding can become the culture of the system. Advisory boards would keep local authorities grounded in reality; they would create discipline around reasoning, and when an authority departs from a formal recommendation, my amendment suggests that it needs to explain why. That simple requirement can improve decision-making and build trust.
I want to express strong support for Amendment 160 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, which addresses a long-standing injustice that the House should not tolerate any longer. Home-educated children face serious obstacles in accessing examinations. Parents are left to navigate a patchwork of centres, fees, refusals, capacity limits and inconsistent arrangements. This is not just in small cases—it is in many instances. Qualifications open doors, and access is important; we must not make the children pay the price. With my own children, we had to travel several hundred miles to the south coast pretty much for all their GCSEs, and you can imagine how many they did, how many you multiply that by, and how many hotel stays that meant for my dear wife, who did most of the heavy lifting, although I drove a few times myself.
My Amendment 175ZC would place a clear duty on local authorities to secure reasonable access to approved exam centres, building on the thinking around Amendment 160, including adjustments for children with special educational needs. That would ensure that the responsibility is not left just to good will or market convenience. Somebody mentioned that, in the summer of last year, around 47,000 home-educated children in England were in their exam years, yet there are fewer than 200 centres listed as supporting them, many with limited capacity—and there is uneven geographic coverage. Whether a child can access qualifications should not depend on commercial viability or geography; we need to provide equitable access to this basic infrastructure as a responsibility of the state.
Amendment 175ZA deals with the related harm that is already appearing. Some providers are withdrawing opportunities for home-educated children in anticipation of new compliance burdens. Museums, activities, learning programmes and even basic services can become quietly harder to access. That may not be the Government’s intention but, because you are talking about a higher level of scrutiny and information-sharing requirements, that is already causing people to hold back. This amendment would draw a clear statutory line against discrimination and extra administrative hurdles imposed solely because a child is educated otherwise than at school. Lawful educational choice should not become a reason for exclusion.
Finally, Amendment 175ZB addresses the people who will operate these powers. I welcome the fact that the Government have indicated that training will be provided to those in local authorities working with home-educating families, and I welcome that. The House knows that guidance can be diluted over time, especially when you are under pressure and you have lots of families to look after with not much more funding. This amendment would require a national training standard to be issued, covering elective home education and related SEND, lawful decision-making and the avoidance of unconscious bias when dealing with these families. These families deserve consistency, and officers deserve clarity; a system with serious powers needs competent hands.
Safeguarding works best when families co-operate, and co-operation relies on trust. Trust is earned through fairness, understanding and clear routes for participation. These amendments would strengthen these foundations, and I hope that the Government show good will towards the many home-educating families who are going to have huge disruption to their lives in the coming years by looking at these amendments and others today, especially those on the area of access to exams. I urge the House to support them.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendments 160 and 175ZC, which we have heard so much about. The noble Baroness, Lady Blake, when talking to Amendment 158, painted a very rosy picture of parents being signposted to happy centres where their children could all take wonderful exams and obviously achieve enormous success. However, the reality, from what I have seen and heard, is a very different thing. Amendment 175ZC provides a very clean solution.
Access to exams is the golden thread. We want as many of our students to succeed—they have to do their exams. If they are driving hundreds of miles, that is not going to work. I genuinely think that working in partnership with local state schools would be quite a simple thing. There is always room in an exam hall for an extra 10 people, and you have the invigilators already. It would be a very simple thing, so I urge the Government to accept these amendments.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I thank noble Lords for their very considered comments, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, for bringing his experience into the Chamber. I thank him for the considerate way that he has approached this. I hope we will continue to have a constructive dialogue as we move forward on these important issues.
Amendment 160, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, and Amendments 161A and 175ZC tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, seek to require local authorities to act supportively towards, and establish advisory boards of, home-educating families, and ensure that home-educated children can access examinations. As I said at the beginning of this group, local authorities should be sources of support for home-educating families. Noble Lords’ engagement has been constructive and I reassure them that this will be further strengthened by the support duty in the Bill, which is the first ever duty on local authorities to provide support specifically for home-educating families, as well as the government amendments in this group, which clarify that information on GCSE exam access should be provided as part of the support duty and require local authorities to arrange biannual engagement forums, as we have discussed.
We also recognise the importance of ensuring that parents are responsible for bearing the costs of any exams they may enter their child for before they make the decision to withdraw them from school. This is something already made clear in the department’s Elective Home-education guidance and which we would expect to be discussed as part of the mandatory meetings pilots that my noble friend described earlier. To expand on this, while some of these things seem straightforward, they are more involved than perhaps has been suggested. The question is: why can we not require local authorities to find exam centres for all home-educated students? This would involve a local authority forcing a state school or college to accommodate a home-educated pupil. We do not think this is right or appropriate. Exam centres, schools, colleges and private institutions rightly take their own decisions on whether they can accept private candidates based on their individual circumstances, such as financial and administrative capacity and logistical considerations. Schools and colleges have finite resources and exams must be delivered in line with strict regulatory requirements, including desk spacing, appropriate invigilator-to-candidate ratios and the secure administration of assessments to ensure that they are conducted fairly and safely. When a centre is able to accommodate a private candidate within these requirements, we fully encourage it to do so. However, it would not be appropriate to require a centre to breach exam regulations or compromise the integrity of the assessment, or to require a school with a full exam hall potentially to exclude one of their own pupils to make space for a private candidate. Instead, we encourage arrangements to be based on an understanding of each exam centre’s local circumstances and relationships.
However, the department will contact both state-funded and independent schools and colleges to encourage them to accept private candidates and to be included on the list of centres published by the JCQ, as appropriate. To pick up on the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Russell, we will also work with the JCQ to explore whether this list can be made available earlier in the year so that families have timely and accurate information to support their planning.
In addition, we will update our guidance to local authorities, encouraging them to provide clear and accessible information for home-educating families at an early stage about the qualifications and exam centres in their area. This will help families to consider exam arrangements before starting a course of study, make informed choices about assessment options and avoid unnecessary travel, where possible.
Lord Wei (Con)
I welcome this timely provision of information for families. I speak for myself, but Peers here have also spoken about the need for exam access and would not want to burden state or other schools that have completely full exam halls. I wonder whether, maybe through a letter, we could have a further conversation with the department about this.
As that information is gathered and you discover what access there is in a local authority, if there literally is none for exams, could there not be some dialogue with the local schools? This would not be to force them to do anything they cannot do, or cannot afford to do, but just to ask how many spare desks they have in their exam halls, which they probably will be able to tell you very quickly. Then, that will allow conversations to happen about creating something in the area, which often may be absent, as we found.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Wei Excerpts(4 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Longfield (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendments 469 and 470, and I thank my noble friend for making such a strong and clear case for why they are important.
As a former Children’s Commissioner who worked very much within the framework of the UNCRC as the legal person required to promote and support children’s rights, the Committee will not be surprised to hear me speaking up for these amendments. As part of that role, I met children’s commissioners and Governments from around Europe and the rest of the world. They were at different stages of having regard to the UNCRC, but it was very clear from all my conversations with those who had taken the step towards incorporation—senior members of Government and others working in the public sector and wider society—that this was an important declaration for their country and for how they viewed themselves.
I am proud of the work that this Bill, as well as the wider work of government, is putting forward to make children a much more central commitment in decision-making. These amendments would offer a next, important step. However, the discussion around this can often become quite legalistic and technical, which sometimes distracts. We need to get to the heart of what this is about: making sure that we have a consistent focus on how we, as a nation, put our children first. We know that what happens in childhood will have an impact throughout the whole of life—and that impacts at the heart of who we are as a nation.
Children do not fit neatly into government departments; no one at the Cabinet table exclusively represents the best interests of children. Children do not vote, so they often get missed out in key moments of decision-making, and, as we know, they are most likely to fall through the gaps. In short, it is very easy for children to be overlooked and to fall between the departments and decision-makers who are making policies.
Children’s rights impact assessments can strengthen that move. They may sound technical and bureaucratic, but, again, this is about ensuring that decisions are made in the round and these issues are considered. We most seriously felt the lack of that during the pandemic, when decisions were made that were not in children’s best interests and there was no framework for wider consideration. Many departments undertake impact assessments, but I do not think that they yet have the status or consistency needed across government. During the pandemic, we saw other countries, such as Scotland and Wales, putting forward impact assessments on decisions made about children that considered wide-ranging issues, from economics to schooling and health, to ensure that children’s best interests were looked at in the round. It did not mean that those things could not be improved, but it meant that there was a consistent framework for consideration.
That is what I am putting forward for consideration today: that we take the next step to look at strengthening the framework, within government and our legal system, that puts children on a firm footing—not only in emergencies but in day-to-day life. We must have the ambition of putting children first in all the decisions we make, to ensure that we are not holding them back and that their best interests are taken into account.
Lord Wei (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 502YP, which stands in my name. This amendment goes to the heart of how government power is exercised in the Bill. It would require the Secretary of State, when issuing guidance and reviewing parental appeals, to act in a manner that is substantively fair, proportionate and consistent with the best interests of the child while also taking into account the burdens that they might impose on families and parents.
Why is such a provision necessary? It is not enough for Ministers to draft guidance that looks acceptable on paper or to frame decisions in language that appears compatible with human rights law. What matters is how these powers operate in practice and how they impact parents and children, and other stakeholders in their daily lives.
Too often, many innocent families that I have spoken with experience the gap between theory and practice. They are told that regulations are light-touch, yet find themselves deluged with data requests, threatened with attendance orders or subject to investigatory processes that are often triggered not by evidence of harm but by mere administrative suspicion. From my work with home-educating families, I have heard repeatedly of parents treated as problems to be managed rather than partners in their child’s learning and well-being. That is not safeguarding; it is coercion disguised as oversight.
I understand that the guidance-led approach and strategy that the Government have taken is a means to try to block loopholes both now and into the future, but I urge the Minister and the department to think about the costs that this Henry VIII-led approach impose. For many families who find themselves on the wrong side of an investigation—and let us remember that the majority of investigations never lead to a conviction —it imposes huge court fees and requires them to set aside years of their lives to fight for their rights. It puts costs on to ordinary citizens. This amendment seeks to ensure that courts, when reviewing such actions, look beyond the fine words of official guidance to their real-world effect.
Does the policy genuinely protect children, or does it impose burdens that are unnecessary, unfair or disproportionate? Does it still respect the primacy of parents under Section 7 of the Education Act 1996, or does it erode it by stealth? The principle of substantive fairness is well established in case law. The Supreme Court has affirmed that state interference with family life must be proportionate, necessary and justified by evidence of significant harm. In R (W) v Birmingham City Council, the court stressed that suspicion alone is insufficient to override parental decision-making, and in Strasbourg jurisprudence, cases such as TP and KM v United Kingdom, and Folgerø and others v Norway, make clear that formal compliance with Article 8 is not enough if, in practice, families are subjected to arbitrary or excessive state interference.
This is not only about legal safeguards but about rebuilding trust. Parents must have the confidence that when the Secretary of State issues guidance it is designed to support, not to harass, empower or intimidate. They must know that appeals will be judged not by a tick-box reading of regulations but by a substantive assessment of what is fair, proportionate and in the best interests of their child.
To use one example, guidance might say that local authorities may request information as necessary. On its face, this sounds reasonable, but in practice families have reportedly been asked for intrusive details about their beliefs, philosophies or private lives—information far beyond what is needed to confirm that a child is receiving a suitable education. Under my amendment, the court would be obliged to ask not just whether the words of the guidance seem lawful but whether its application crosses the line into disproportionate intrusion.
Let us also consider parental appeals. Without a substantive fairness test the Secretary of State could uphold decisions that technically meet the letter of the law or guidance but are manifestly unjust, such as refusing deregistration when a child is in acute distress or supporting disproportionate monitoring conditions that make family life untenable. This amendment would require that such decisions be tested against their effect on the ground.
Some may fear that this opens the door to endless litigation. I would argue the opposite. By embedding the principle of substantive fairness from the outset, we give clearer guidance to decision-makers, reducing the scope for arbitrary or heavy-handed action and thus reducing the likelihood of judicial review. It is precisely when parents and families feel trapped, unheard and mistreated that they resort to the courts.
This amendment is not limited to home-educators; it will protect all families affected by the Bill. Schools will also benefit if guidance remains targeted and proportionate rather than bloated with impractical demands. Local authorities, often stretched to breaking point, will be shielded from the impossible task of enforcing rules that look neat in Whitehall but are unworkable on the ground.
It also respects the proper role of Parliament—of this place. Too often, we legislate with the assumption that the department will interpret and apply the law reasonably, but when guidance becomes overreaching or unfair, it is our reputation that suffers. This amendment restores a crucial check, ensuring that actions under the Bill are judged by their substance, not their spin.
Finally, I stress that this does not prevent the Minister issuing robust guidance where children are genuinely at risk. It requires that such guidance be necessary, proportionate and practically implementable without undermining parental and family rights. That is exactly the balance struck in our domestic law and by the European Court of Human Rights: protection where there is evidence of harm but restraint where there is not.
If we pass the Bill without such safeguards, we risk embedding a culture of formal compliance that is blind to lived reality. We risk measures that look lawful and feel great about them, but that feel unjust. In doing so, we risk losing the trust of the very parents, families and children whose partnership we need to safeguard children’s lives effectively.
Amendment 502YP offers a principled, proportionate solution. It ensures that the law is not just words on paper but fairness in practice. It strengthens oversight, protects families and upholds the integrity of our child protection and education systems. I commend it to the Committee.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I support Amendments 469 and 470, particularly the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, who has such experience.
I should like to concentrate briefly on listening to the child. In 1987-88, I chaired the statutory inquiry into the Cleveland child abuse. I heard, with my assessors, a lot of videos of children being interviewed. It was extraordinary how even very young children of five or six were able to give astonishingly accurate accounts of what had happened to them and what they wanted done. The older children were explaining not only how they had been interviewed but how they wanted their voices to be heard, and they were not being heard.
In my recommendations, I pointed out that children were people and not packages. That idea, that children are people entitled to be heard, does not mean that they are entitled to have what they want done—it may not be appropriate—but it is crucial to hear what they want done.
It seems to me that these two amendments put on the statute book part of the very important United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has been referred to frequently today. It is a bit odd that we have not embraced it fully in English law, though it is embraced in other parts of the United Kingdom. It is very odd indeed.
What really matters it that what children want should be heard. They should be listened to, and what they need and want should be evaluated. That is why these two amendments are so important.
Lord Wei (Con)
My Lords, my Amendment 502YQ is mainly to probe the Government’s intention in relation to their own use of data regarding this Bill. This amendment addresses an issue that has surfaced repeatedly in our many debates: the scope of data collection about children in education. We have heard a lot today about the role of technology providers, but I want to turn the focus to how we are collecting data within the education system in government.
My amendment would ensure that personal data may be collected, retained or processed only where it is strictly necessary to protect a child from significant harm, as defined in Section 31 of the Children Act 1989. Why is this needed? The Bill as drafted gives wide latitude to local authorities and the Secretary of State to demand data on children not in school—an area that I really care about—as well as potentially on others. In particular, the data demanded of children not in school—we have already heard about the amount of data that is already collected on children in school—is off the scale. We are told that this is for safeguarding, but safeguarding has a very specific meaning in law. It is not a licence for limitless information gathering; it is a duty to act when a child is suffering or likely to suffer significant harm.
Clause 31, for instance, invites local authorities to gather information far beyond what is necessary. Names, addresses and dates of birth are sufficient to identify a child and discharge oversight duties. However, the Bill’s wording allows for much more, including details of parental and children’s beliefs, educational philosophy, supplementary providers and even protected characteristics. This, to me, is mission creep, not proportionate oversight. As the department has itself acknowledged in past consultations, the bare minimum of data suffices to track children and ensure that no one falls through the net. To demand more because it might be helpful is not lawful data processing. Data protection law is clear: collection must be limited to what is necessary for the purpose. Helpful is not enough.
The risks of excessive data collection are not theoretical. Families have already seen sensitive information stored indefinitely, cross-referenced with other records and sometimes shared with agencies in ways that they did not consent to or even know about. One military family with whom I have interacted recounted how their local authority repeatedly contacted the father’s workplace about his children, despite clear instructions not to do so. Another home-educating mother described how, after deregistering a child with special needs, she was followed in public after being wrongly referred to social services. These are not safeguards; they are intrusions to undermine trust.
We must also remember that not all parents in the system are confident or well resourced. Some are vulnerable, fleeing domestic abuse or suffering with SEND bureaucracy. For them, intrusive data demands feel less like protection and more like surveillance. If the state is perceived as hostile, families may retreat from engagement altogether, making genuine safeguarding harder, not easier. That is why my amendment would tie permissible data collection to the Section 31 threshold of “significant harm”, which is already the bedrock of child protection law. It is the line that our courts have drawn between parental primacy and state intervention. Aligning data powers with that line ensures consistency, legality and proportionality.
Proposed new subsection (2) in my amendment would ensure proportionality by limiting data to what was essential for the specific risk identified. If the concern is neglect then collect information relating to neglect; if the concern is radicalisation, focus on that. Do not use safeguarding as a pretext for wide-ranging dossiers on families’ private lives. Proposed new subsection (3) would close off another danger: profiling. We should not be gathering data to build long-term behavioural profiles of children or to monitor families against vague benchmarks of compliance. That is not safeguarding; it is social engineering by stealth. Proposed new subsection (4) would require the Secretary of State to publish clear guidance within six months, so that local authorities, schools and parents know the limits of permissible data collection. That guidance should provide clarity, consistency and accountability.
Some might worry that the amendments would tie the hand of professionals. On the contrary, they would free them to focus on what matters. Instead of drowning in forms and files and data, they could concentrate on children at genuine risk. Excessive data is not neutral; it diverts time, money and attention from where it is most needed.
International law supports this approach. In MM v the UK in 2012 the European Court of Human Rights held that the retention of excessive personal data without clear necessity breached Article 8, while in Ali v the UK in 2015 the court stressed that decisions must be informed by accurate, relevant and proportionate information. We cannot claim compliance with Article 8 if we allow the indefinite harvesting of families’ and children’s private details “just in case”.
The amendment is not only for home educators, though their experience has highlighted this problem in the Bill. It would protect every family in the education system. It would ensure that schools are not turned into data collection points for the state and that local authorities are not saddled with the impossible burden of storing, processing and protecting sensitive information that they do not always need. Above all, it would protect children from being profiled, stigmatised, or surveyed in ways that bear no relation to genuine safeguarding.
In passing the Bill, we must not create a database state by accident. We must legislate with care, remembering that data is not neutral—it is power. It is the new oil, in fact. Used well, it can protect; used badly, it can harm. Amendment 502YQ would ensure that that power was exercised with clear limits, tied to the statutory threshold of significant harm. That is fair, proportionate and faithful to the principles of our child protection law. I commend it to the House.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, Covid was certainly the rocket fuel for the growth of educational technology in our schools, which is now accepted as part of the school learning landscape. The UK’s education tech sector is the largest in Europe, spending, as we already heard, an estimated £900 million a year. However, there are real concerns that these amendments seek to address, which is why we will be supporting Amendments 493, 494, 502K, 502YH and 502YI.
The edtech sector is exempt from the Online Safety Act, and adherence to GDPR is inconsistent, to say the least. Large multiuse platforms such as Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams can enhance teaching and school management, but the absence of clear statutory standards leaves children’s education and school cybersecurity often at risk. We surely need a regulated framework to safeguard children’s rights, protect the data and prevent the commercial exploitation of children. We sleepwalked into the development of social media. Now that we see the harm that has been caused, we rush to try to do something about it. There is a strong case for developing a regulated framework to safeguard children’s rights and support schools in making informed and sustainable choices.
I want to respond to what I thought was a very thoughtful contribution by the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman. It made me think that six years ago I had a Private Member’s Bill on essay mills and contract cheating. That is now all for naught, because there are other ways of cheating, and AI helps that considerably.
I had an intern who one day said to me, “Lord Storey, here’s a speech for you”. I said, “Ooh, let me have a look”. I read the speech and thought, “Wow, this is great. I’ll use this”. He told me that it was AI generated. “Really?”, I said. I wondered whether in five or 10 years your Lordships’ House might be a very different place for speeches. Might we all succumb to using not our own thoughts and experiences but AI to generate speeches? Would anybody know in five or 10 years’ time, when the technology will be absolutely spot on?
I want to deal briefly with the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. Amendment 502YU concerns reception baseline assessments. The Minister will recall that I raised this in an Oral Question. There is something a little perverse about the youngest children—five year-olds—doing their assessments on a screen. I have a degree of sympathy for the noble Baroness’s amendment, and I hope the Minister can shed some light on it.
Regarding the other two amendments, I know that SEND exceptions are mentioned, but as my noble friend Lord Addington said in his hugely important contribution, it is not either/or. We have to think through these amendments carefully, as there are other issues, not just special educational needs, that we need to be aware of. We do not want to agree something that creates problems for the future.
Lord Norton of Louth (Con)
My Lords, on my count, almost 20 amendments have been tabled to the Bill requiring the Secretary of State within six or 12 months of the Act being passed to promulgate some regulations or undertake a review of a particular provision of the Act. My amendment is more comprehensive and adopts a longer timeframe. It would require the Secretary of State within five years of the passage of the Act to undertake a review of its operation and effect. The wording is the same as that of an amendment I tabled to the Employment Rights Bill and has the same justification.
Post-legislative scrutiny is essential for ensuring that the law we enact meets the various criteria of good law. We cannot know that it does without undertaking a thorough review and, in effect, completing a legislative feedback loop. There is no point in enacting legislation that then fails to deliver what it is intended to deliver and for us to proceed, in essence, in ignorance of its effects.
The case for post-legislative review has been accepted by government since 2008, with a commitment to reviewing most Acts three to five years after enactment. Ministers have variously reiterated that commitment. However, not all departments are rigorous in complying with it. The Government have also introduced a get-out clause saying that there may not be a review if, following correspondence with the chair of the relevant departmental Select Committee, it is agreed that a review may not be necessary. As I pointed out when the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, reported this, it is not clear how a chair will know that a review is not necessary without undertaking some initial review. It is also not clear why this House is excluded from the process.
As I argued on the Employment Rights Bill, there is a case for putting on the face of a measure provision for post-legislative scrutiny where
“the Bill is large, is complex, makes substantial changes to the law, is contested and has not been subject to pre-legislative scrutiny”.—[Official Report, 24/6/25; col. 223.]
This Bill is clearly substantial, both in length and content, and it makes a major change to educational law in this country—it has been characterised by my noble friend Lord Lucas as striking
“at the heart of the relationship between parents and the Government”.—[Official Report, 20/5/25; col. 173.]
It has clearly engendered strong opinions; we have had extensive debate, with 12 days in Committee, as to its likely effects. It has also been introduced without pre-legislative scrutiny.
Making provision in the Bill for post-legislative scrutiny would enable all the claims made as to the effects of the Bill to be tested. Including such a provision would also help reassure critics of the Bill that there will be such a review. That may help the process of getting the Bill through.
The Minister may say that the amendment is unnecessary given that the Bill will qualify automatically for review three to five years after enactment. Making a clear commitment at the Dispatch Box, putting on the official record that the Bill will be subject to post-legislative review, is obviously valuable; we got such a commitment on the Employment Rights Bill. However, as I pointed out in debate on that Bill, the wording of my amendment derives from the Government’s own amendment to the then Football Governance Bill. The Government, to their credit, accepted the argument for putting provision for post-legislative scrutiny in that Bill and brought forward their own amendment. The grounds for doing so apply in the case of this Bill.
As I say, it would be welcome to have a commitment at the Dispatch Box that there will be post-legislative scrutiny of the Bill, but it will be even better to enshrine it in the Bill. Putting it in the Bill will demonstrate that the Government are confident that they will deliver on what it is intended to deliver. If the Minister resists the amendment, it will be helpful to hear from her how she distinguishes this Bill from the Football Governance Bill in terms of the merits of putting post-legislative scrutiny in the Bill. Does she or does she not accept that good law is a public good? I beg to move.
Lord Wei (Con)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 502YN and 502YR, which stand in my name. These amendments are bound by a common theme: that the powers we create in this Bill must be effective, proportionate and accountable, not only in ordinary times but in moments of crisis, when authoritarian temptations grow stronger.
Amendment 502YN would establish an annual review of all measures introduced by the Bill. Each year, the Secretary of State would be required to test whether those measures are achieving their stated purpose, and whether they are doing so without imposing unnecessary or disproportionate burdens on parents, children, schools, providers, local authorities or the department itself. Where a measure fails, it should be amended or repealed. If no action is taken, within two years it must lapse. This is about accountability cutting both ways. Families, schools and community groups—huge numbers of stakeholders—are being asked in this Bill to account for children’s education. It is only fair that the Government should account for the laws they pass.
We have been warned many times in these debates about the dangers of excessive bureaucracy and mission creep. Clause 31, the proposed register of children not in school, illustrates this risk. In principle, such a register may help identify who is being educated outside mainstream settings. In practice, the Bill demands far more data than is needed. In Portsmouth, more than 70% of home-educated children have already been served notices or orders annually, compared with a national average closer to 1%. That is not proportional oversight; it is overreach.
The effects ripple outward. Children suffer when teachers, social workers and SEND staff are forced to spend more time filling in forms than supporting them, and parents are treated with suspicion, not because of evidence of harm but because they made a lawful choice to educate differently. Schools themselves may be dragged down by compliance checks that drain morale and resources. Providers and tutors may be chilled by one size fits all rules designed for large institutions but applied indiscriminately. Community groups and charities—often the lifeline for struggling families and children—will find scarce volunteer time consumed by licensing and paperwork.
We have seen where such unchecked bureaucracy leads. The contact point database was launched with the best of intentions to safeguard children. It collapsed under its own weight: disproportionate, unworkable and ultimately abandoned. Scotland’s named person scheme likewise promised protection but in practice extended excessive authority and intrusive data collection before being struck down. These are cautionary tales of what happens when there is no obligation to review and no sunset clause to cut away what does not work.
Yet the risks are not only of inefficiency; there is something deeper. Bureaucracy when excessive is not neutral. It becomes a means of control. It erodes freedom, not by open coercion but by endless demands that exhaust and intimidate until families, schools and communities yield.
That is why Amendment 502YR is so important: it recognises that powers created in good faith can one day be misused. It would require that, within six months of Royal Assent, the Secretary of State ensures that a mechanism is ready so that, in any national emergency or period of authoritarian governance, the courts, not Ministers, retain the final authority to uphold the primacy of parental rights in their children’s education.
We cannot ignore the geopolitical context. Across Europe and beyond, we see the rise of extremes on both left and right. Authoritarian Governments rarely declare themselves at the outset; they grow by increments, often beginning with education. They use registers and guidance powers, not to support families but to control them. They impose ideological curricula, marginalise communities of faith and stifle innovation and dissent in the classroom. Disturbingly, elements of this Bill draw inspiration, whether knowingly or not, from an unlikely and troubling source. The original departmental human rights justification cited to justify state intervention in home education here arose from a case in Germany where a home-educating parent was prosecuted under laws dating back to the 1930s. These laws, introduced under Hitler’s regime, continue today to ban home education outright in Germany. It is sobering that our own debates now echo arguments first made to defend a system designed not to protect children but to eliminate educational pluralism—one that our own national wartime Government in the 1940s sought to fight by giving parents the ultimate say over their children’s education.
We must not follow that path. We must not allow powers framed as safeguards to evolve into machinery that stifles freedom. This is not to deny the state its proper role in protecting children. Safeguarding is vital, but safeguarding fails when systems chase compliance instead of risk: when form filling replaces human judgment, when bureaucracy itself becomes the end rather than the means. In such a climate, children most in need are overlooked while families acting responsibly, and schools, are burdened and alienated.
The two amendments before us are modest disciplines against such outcomes. The first creates a feedback loop: Parliament learns from the real-world impact of its laws and corrects course where necessary. The second ensures that, when times grow dark, there is a constitutional anchor, that courts can guard against authoritarian misuse, ensuring that parental primacy in education is never extinguished by bureaucratic or dictatorial creep.
Lord Wei (Con)
I thank the Minister. On my understanding, having spoken to those who know about the workings of the Regulatory Policy Committee, which the Minister said greenlit the Bill, in the last few years it has not been allowed to ask for submissions, on receiving a draft Bill, to scrutinise whether that Bill fits within the kind of good regulatory framework that we all would like to see. So the information that it had to greenlight this Bill was very limited indeed. If you cannot ask people what they think of the Bill, obviously any information you have is very limited and you can only go on what you have been given, which is further ammunition for the point that the Bill needs a lot of scrutiny, because it did not really have any before it was brought before this House.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The Regulatory Policy Committee had the benefit of our published regulatory impact assessment to review. Wider comments about the efficacy of the Regulatory Policy Committee are for the noble Lord to make to the Regulatory Policy Committee, rather than using it as a stick to beat this particular Bill. Frankly, as we are coming to the end—nearly—of day 12 of Committee on this Bill, the idea that it has not had sufficient scrutiny is laughable, given the time and care that was also spent in the other place, which has been massively exceeded by the time and care that has been spent by noble Lords in this House during the course of this Committee.
Lord Wei (Con)
Just to clarify, the words I used were, “before it was brought before this House”. The reason it has had so many days of scrutiny is because it was not drafted in a way that was appropriate. We have spent so much time on it. We cannot believe how many nights and days we have all had to work on this. If we could have Bills in future that had a bit more effort put into their drafting by policymakers and others, we could use the time of this House really well. I am not in any way criticising or saying that the work of this House is wasted. In fact, it has been very necessary to get us to where we are today.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord is right that noble Lords have spent considerable hours on this—some more than others, I think it is fair to say.
Amendment 505C, tabled by my noble friend Lord Watson of Invergowrie, seeks assurances, via a published statement, on how the Human Rights Act 1998 applies to private providers of publicly funded children’s social care services. The amendment seeks a pause in the commencement of Clauses 12 to 18 of the Bill until such a statement is made. These clauses cover measures relating to provider and financial oversight, profit caps, Ofsted and Secretary of State powers to impose monetary penalties, and information sharing between Ofsted and the Secretary of State.
I thank my noble friend for bringing important human rights considerations to our attention. Protecting the human rights of all children is of paramount importance, and the Bill is delivering a number of important measures to stop vulnerable children falling through cracks in services. I completely understand the reasoning behind my noble friend’s amendment and would like to provide the Committee with reassurances on the robustness and broad applicability of the human rights legal framework, including for children’s social care services.
Section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 makes it unlawful for public authorities to act incompatibly with the European Convention on Human Rights, and this duty extends to private providers when they are performing functions of a public nature. There is no statutory definition of “functions of a public nature”, but relevant factors considered by the courts include the extent to which the body, in carrying out the relevant function, is publicly funded, exercising statutory powers, taking the place of central government or local authorities, or providing a public service. This broad-scope approach is intentional to ensure that a wide range of services can be captured, as appropriate.
Any statement that the Government make, as proposed by my noble friend, would not be legally binding. Whether a provider is carrying out functions of a public nature and is therefore in scope of the Human Rights Act is for the courts to determine, based on the facts in each specific case. However, to be clear, the Government’s position is that, were a court required to decide whether the private provision of core children’s social care services—services that local authorities are legally required to provide—falls in scope of the Human Rights Act 1998, we believe that the court would conclude that they were indeed performing a function of a public nature and would therefore be in scope.
My noble friend has identified the distinction between the approach taken here and that taken in the Mental Health Bill. As he said, the DHSC is making it explicit in that Bill that certain mental health services are deemed to be exercising a public function for the purposes of the Human Rights Act, but those amendments are being made following case law that identified a gap in the application of the HRA to the private provision of the services in question—some of which my noble friend referenced, I think.
No such gap has been identified through case law in relation to private provision of children’s social care services. Therefore, our view is that no clarification of the law is necessary for these services and, as I have emphasised, we continue to be of the view that the private provision of core children’s social care services would be considered to be within scope of the Human Rights Act. I suspect that, in pushing me, my noble friend might say, “Why don’t we take a belt-and-braces approach here, anyway?” The issue is that attempting to provide further specificity around certain services risks other services being unintentionally excluded by virtue of their omission. This is the way, as I understand it, that lawyers tend to work.
I emphasise again that we are content that the Human Rights Act as drafted is flexible enough to capture those functions that need to be within scope of the Human Rights Act 1998. We believe that would be upheld in any case with respect to children’s social care services. It is also important to remember that children’s social care is a highly regulated sector, subject to inspection and accountability processes aimed at keeping children safe and promoting their best interests. The local authority arranging or funding the relevant service would also always be within scope of the Human Rights Act in the exercise of its functions as a core public authority.
On this basis, I hope my noble friend might be reassured. We do not consider it necessary or appropriate to delay the commencement of other important Bill measures that are designed to ensure children in relevant settings are protected. We are confident in the existing legal framework and hope that we have provided the necessary reassurances and statements here today to reassure him. I hope, given my responses, that noble Lords would feel able to not press their amendments.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Wei Excerpts(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and to give a nod to his amendment. I rise to speak to my Amendment 499 in this group, the purpose of which is incredibly clear: every child is entitled to an excellent education, but that does not mean that every child should receive the same education. The great joy of being born human is that we are born with rich, bright, beautiful diversity from the moment of entering this human world.
The difficulty with the Bill as set out is that it does not fully appreciate this fact or the difficulties parents have in achieving that excellence of provision for their children. In no sense is that a criticism of anybody in the system. Teachers do tremendous work, day in, day out, often in the most pressing, difficult of circumstances. This amendment is all about recognising the particularity of individual provision—not least for children and young people who may be disabled or have special educational needs—the difficulty for parents in trying to get an EHCP, and the often prohibitive cost involved, even if they can go through that time-consuming and terribly intense process.
The amendment simply asks the Secretary of State to produce a focused, “support-first” attendance code of practice that understands the particularities of those circumstances and that does not have an almost forced presumption that school is necessarily the best and only place for excellent educational provision. As I say, the amendment speaks to children, young people and parents across the piece, but it is often children who are disabled, who have special educational needs, and the parents of those children, who find themselves at the sharpest end of this current situation. That is why Amendment 499 suggests a support-focused, support-first attendance code of practice. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Wei (Con)
My Lords, I rise in support of Amendment 499, tabled by my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond, which would require the Secretary of State to issue a statutory attendance code of practice. I believe this is a modest proposal, yet one that could transform how attendance is enforced and supported across England.
First, I thank my noble friend Lord Lucas for stepping in for me last week, when I was unable to be here due to a family wedding. My own attendance record that day did not pass without comment. In fact, when the Whips discovered that the wedding was taking place on the Tuesday, business seemed to be swiftly and suspiciously rescheduled from Monday to Tuesday. In any case, I was unable to attend, but I am grateful none the less both to colleagues and to the staff of the House for their patience with me. My amendments have been submitted in large numbers, and some were received with humour, others less so, but they all make in their different ways the same point. At their heart lies concern about the overreach of this Bill and the heavy burden it will place on families and already overstretched local authority staff and systems.
Talking about attendance, practice across the country is wildly inconsistent, at present. One parent reported that, in their local authority, they have a 75% chance of being issued with a notice to satisfy, and a 35% chance of receiving a school attendance order. That authority issued 270 notices in a single year to just 320 home-educated children. In other areas, parents face nothing like this. This does not seem like safeguarding to me; it is a postcode lottery, and it is indefensible.
The current approach, regrettably, often defaults to enforcement and sanctions, rather than genuinely seeking to understand and address the underlying reason for unattendance. Over the summer, it was reported that Hampshire County Council had netted £1.6 million in revenue by fining families over the past three years. Government data shows that almost half a million penalty notices were issued last year, an increase of 22% from the previous year. This can exacerbate distress, erode trust between families and schools and, ultimately, fail to secure a child’s right to education.
“Sharing local authority best practice on home education(1) All local authorities must provide an annual report to the Secretary of State setting out—(a) the total number of home educators in their area (A),(b) the number of complaints they have received from home educators in the preceding year (B), and(c) the number of School Attendance Orders they have issued in the preceding year (C).(2) The Secretary of State must make funding and resources available to any local authority which performs in the top ten percent of both—(a) B as a percentage of A, and(b) C as a percentage of A,to facilitate those local authorities sharing best practice regarding management of home education with local authorities performing in the bottom ten percent of the same metrics.”
Lord Wei (Con)
My Lords, I rise to speak in support of Amendments 426D and 426E tabled in my name. These amendments, though modest in scope, address two fundamental issues in the way that our system interacts with families who choose to home-educate or educate otherwise: the sharing of best practice across local authorities and safeguarding children from harm that may arise when legal action is pursued without due regard for their welfare and education.
Amendment 426D would require all local authorities to provide an annual report to the Secretary of State setting out three simple but highly revealing metrics:
“the total number of home educators in their area … the number of complaints they have received from home educators … and … the number of School Attendance Orders they have issued”.
These figures are important because they shed light on how local authorities are engaging with families. They provide a means of comparison, showing where relationships are constructive and where perhaps mistrust and conflict are more frequent. This amendment goes further: it would introduce a mechanism to reward local authorities that demonstrate strong positive performance under these measures—specifically, those in the top 10%—and whose complaints and attendance orders are low relative to the number of families. They would receive funding and support to share their best practice with authorities that find themselves in the bottom 10%. This is not about penalising weaker authorities but about equipping them to learn from others, improve their systems of engagement and, ultimately, foster more trusting relationships with home educators.
While I have mainly focused in Committee on the problems that arise when local authorities overreach, it is important to recognise that there are many examples of thoughtful and constructive engagement which deserve to be commended. Parents have spoken warmly of meetings in which their children have felt valued. One child enjoyed showing his work after initial hesitation, turning what might have been a stressful encounter into a positive one. Authorities such as Salford have invested in training staff to understand diverse approaches, from structured to child-led learning, while families in Cambridge have noted that their efforts to educate officials about progressive methods have borne fruit. Portsmouth has piloted three-way meetings between school, parent and LA to support families considering elective home education, fostering collaboration rather than conflict.
Other good practice includes the creation of parental advisory boards—informal events where families and officials meet in a supportive environment—and commitments to provide local exam centres and fairer access to resources. These examples remind us that, when authorities choose partnership over prescription, families respond positively and children thrive. In my view, this is precisely the sort of light-touch but constructive intervention that respects both the duties of local authorities and the rights of parents. It recognises that the challenges of home education are best addressed not by top-down prescription but by the careful exchange of experience, knowledge and good practice.
Amendment 426E is motivated by an equally important principle: that the welfare and education of the child must always come first. It makes it clear that no parent should be subject to criminal prosecution, penalty or sanction under the provisions of this Bill, if such legal action would cause harm to their child’s welfare or, on balance, cause greater harm to their education than if the action were not taken. The amendment is carefully drafted. It grounds the definition of welfare in Section 1 of the Children Act 1989, the bedrock of our child protection framework, and it ties the understanding of education to both Section 9 of the Education Act 1996, which requires respect for parental wishes, and to Article 2 of Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to education. In other words, this is not about creating a loophole; it is about ensuring that the pursuit of enforcement powers does not, in itself, become a source of harm.
Lord Wei (Con)
I am grateful to the Minister for her response and look forward to this letter. I am also grateful to the department for the correspondence that I and other noble Peers received relating to our questions.
I just want to reflect on some of the contributions. First, to clarify, the request for information from local authorities is asking them to provide data that they already have. Even though it might seem a little bureaucratic, I do not think it would require much more than a few minutes, or an hour or so, probably once a year. This is to be balanced with the tremendous bureaucratic demands that will be placed on over 100,000 families, for all the information pertaining to the education of their child, all the providers, which, in many cases will take many hours, days or weeks even, based on testimony I have received from families. So, I do not think it is unreasonable to ask for a set of data to be provided, to share good practice and highlight where there are areas for improvement on the local authority side, given the disproportionate bureaucratic demands, proposed in this Bill, to be placed on parents.
On Amendment 426E, I want to also clarify that we are not talking about mainstream schooling for the majority of pupils or schools in this country. When I talk about some of the distress, the suicides or attempted suicides of children who are forced back into school through some of our measures, we are talking about extreme cases in this country, where it is inappropriate for that child to be sent to a school. Perhaps they have been home educated all their life. Perhaps, as I have testimony of, the parents who have been busy home educating have been repeatedly asked by the local authority for information—even recently and then asked again. They have said, “We can’t share any more. We need to educate our child”. That very statement that they cannot share the information that they shared very recently is interpreted as the child not receiving a suitable education by the local authority.
At the moment, there is no protection. Ultimately, you go down a legal process. I agree that many of the schools will take great care to ensure that whatever they ask the family to do will not harm the child or harm their education, but there is a gap. I would urge the Minister and department to look at this gap, when it is not the school deciding but the local authority deciding, in some cases without much resource or experienced people. They are having to make a very significant decision about whether to take action against that family. All I am saying is, why do we not pay attention to the harm that might cause? Schools, I think, are cognisant, on the whole, of this if they are functioning well. I am not sure that in every case, every local authority is able to make that decision on its own properly.
By the time you get to the courts—including the European courts and so on—and they enforce the principles, that is great, but that has already taken many months, perhaps a year or two, during which the family has had to face tremendous uncertainty and stress, which will inevitably have an impact on the child’s education.
I have heard the response from the Minister and will reflect on what has been said. I may wish to return to this at a later stage but, for now, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Automatic Enrolment (Offshore Employment) (Amendment) Order 2020
Lord Wei Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Wei (Con)
My Lords, I join other speakers in this debate in congratulating the Government and the Minister on the principle of auto-enrolment. There are many speaking today who have been involved over the years in bringing this policy to fruition. I refer to my interests as entered in the register, which have historically related to this area. However, I also want to raise a bit of a dissenting voice, if I may.
There can be a danger of thinking that the job is done with auto-enrolment, and I will be interested to hear my noble friend the Minister’s perspective on this. I am very conscious that when you think you have done a great job, you tend to roll out the concept to more and more people. In many cases that is a good idea, but I recall that on many past occasions, the state of the American tax system for employees has often deterred the organisations I have worked with from doing too much with America. In an era when we are going to do more on free trade, has thought been given to whether this policy and others that could follow from it might deter overseas employers from employing British people, whether at sea or offshore, or in other ways? Has this been looked at? I sincerely hope that the Government will not apply these policies and ideas blanket-style to offshore workers who have some relationship with British companies, which may then deter trade.
I want to make a wider point beyond the policy of auto-enrolment. What are the Government doing to address the issue of people who have had multiple employers, especially given Covid? I know that this goes beyond the scope of the statutory instruments, but I would be keen to hear from the Minister what is being done to ensure that data from the different pension providers into which people have been auto-enrolled can be gathered over the course of their careers, so that they can get a decent picture of what they have saved or that has been saved automatically for them. Sometimes, people can be enrolled in this way without having an active involvement in or understanding of what they have been saving.
I would love to hear what work is being done to open up the data protocols, so that people can manage the money they have saved, get good advice and find a way to understand and go beyond the complexity often associated with saving for pensions. With the new technology, they will even be able to toggle their enrolment on and off in future, so that when we go through periods like this, in which we need people to save more cash up front, they can do so. I broadly welcome the principles but I would like to hear from the Minister what is being done to go further, instead of just resting on our laurels.