Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 2 in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran. As we have just heard, it has a simple purpose: to allow families access to a family group decision-making meeting at the earliest possible opportunity in the child protection process. As I am sure noble Lords have seen, the Family Rights Group briefing, for instance, noted that, when a local authority issues parents with a pre-proceedings letter, concerns around a child’s welfare will already be serious and could mean that an intervention at this stage through a family group decision-making meeting is, unfortunately, already too late. The British Association of Social Workers and Coram have expressed similar worries that waiting could mean that opportunities to bring families together are lost, with difficulties having escalated too far to be addressed.

I believe that research on the ground shows that family group conferences can be effective whenever the time is right for the family—in most cases, that may well be the sooner the better. Indeed, some local authorities are already successfully offering family group conferences earlier on in the child protection process. As my noble friend outlined in her opening remarks, having a family group decision meeting earlier on would allow the wider family to more fully understand the local authority’s initial concerns, and it could— I am not saying it would—allow them to demonstrate that they were able to protect the child concerned.

I hope the Minister will look favourably on this proposal, which aims simply to ensure that families have the best possible chance of staying together if— I stress “if”—issues around a child’s welfare can be properly addressed at the earliest opportunity, or at the very least to ensure that the measures put into the Bill do not force this option to be totally closed off.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I was a family judge for about 35 years, and I tried mostly care cases. I very much support this amendment and will make three points. First, I entirely agree with the previous speakers: hold the meeting as soon as possible, because it is unlikely that the decision to make a make an application for a care order or an interim care order comes at a very early stage. One hopes that the social workers would have been working with the family before this becomes inevitable. Consequently, the sooner the discussions can be had—and the other members of the family identified where possible—the better it will be, and it may not be necessary to have the care application before the magistrates’ court in any case.

Secondly, not only is it important to have the meeting early but there must be a degree of ability for the local authority to deal with members of the family—because, not in every case but in some cases, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, has said, there will be very unhappy divorce proceedings pending, whereby the parties will use the children as the arena for their attacks on each other. That is the typical sort of unhappy divorce case—fortunately not frequent, but one that occurs in care proceedings. Consequently, you may find that one or both of the parents should not at some stage be at the meeting. It is crucial that local authorities are warned, if they do not know already, and given at least, under statutory guidance, some help on how to deal with that issue—not in this Bill, of course, but in statutory guidance.

The third absolutely crucial point that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, made is not to let a particular parent or someone with parental responsibility have the opportunity to use the meeting to delay the proceedings that are necessary. Again, it is absolutely crucial that, if a member of the family is trying to delay the proceedings, the local authority can go ahead without having the meeting. That is the one point that worries me about saying that they must have the meeting, although I think that probably, under the later part of Clause 1, it is possible not to have it. Again, in the statutory guidance it is crucial that local authorities are warned that the family meeting must not take place if, in fact, the delays are there for that particular reason.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, have laboured long in the family courts. I think that we are all basically aiming in the same direction, but the detail is important. Family group conferences or meetings, as described in this Bill and in the amendments, are a valuable process, often best used as the pre-proceeding stage rather than after a formal application has been issued. I cannot help wondering whether there is not some lack of clarity in the drafting, at least of the amendment. The Bill as I read it is clear enough; it says that the local authority must include the offer of such a meeting in a letter before proceedings. That is entirely desirable in my view, whereas the amendment says:

“When a local authority starts formal child protection proceedings”,


which to my mind reads as if it means “Once it has actually issued the formal application”. In some cases, that may be too late. I think that there is a mistake, possibly unintended, in the drafting of the amendment.

The general thrust of what the noble Baroness said—that the meetings should be initiated as soon as possible—is clearly right. These meetings are valuable for three main reasons. First, they enable family members to be informed of what has happened and why the local authority has intervened, as well as to learn what is planned or may be planned for the child or children concerned. Quite often one finds in practice that the parents have not told the wider family what is happening, sometimes out of shame or pride, so that the first the wider family learns of the proceedings comes from the social worker—and that can come as a surprise or, indeed, a shock. Even if the family knows what is happening, a formal meeting enables it to get an accurate first-hand account that is not filtered by the parents.

Secondly, conferences enable the social worker and guardian, if one has by then been appointed, to form an initial assessment of the strengths, weaknesses and attitudes of the wider family and the possible realistic options for the support of the parents and any alternative arrangements for the children, either in the short term or in the long term. In the long term, if in reality adoption is going to be the outcome, the court will ultimately have to consider the relatives’ ability to provide a secure environment under the statute that governs adoption decisions.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I have attached my name to Amendment 14, already very ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer. I want to widen the political breadth of support for the family group decision-making process by strongly offering the Green Party’s support.

Amendment 14 differs from the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, which refers just to 16 and 17 year-olds. It is more expansive than the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, in that it stresses the need to make every effort to ascertain the child’s wishes and feelings and give due consideration to them.

However, it is worth noting that all the amendments in this group and the associated amendments reflect, as others have said, briefings from the Children’s Charities Coalition and the Family Rights Group, which are saying, as other noble Lords have said, that the Government are going in the right direction but the Bill needs to be strengthened and made clearer, which is what this amendment and others seek to do.

In backing this amendment, I am reflecting statements I have been making in your Lordships’ House and amendments I have been tabling and signing, going back a considerable distance to the Health and Social Care Act and the Mental Health Bill. They are about listening to children and ensuring they have agency.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred to the survey showing that almost three-quarters of children—some 73%—feel that they are not listened to by politicians. We know there is a mental health crisis, particularly among our young people. Psychologists tell us that, as is clear to us from a common-sense perspective, not having a sense of agency or feeling as if you have control or are being listened to is damaging to your mental health.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s report from 2023 raised concerns about the significant barriers to the meaningful engagement of children in decision-making in the UK, particularly the seldom heard and marginalised group of children we are speaking about here, who are likely to be involved in family group decision-making processes. We have to ensure that people are listened to and feel that they have agency. This amendment takes us in the right direction in a constructive way, and I hope we will hear from the Minister that we will at least be taking steps in this direction.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, it is a particular pleasure to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, and to have the former Children’s Commissioner in this House. This is a good Bill but, like all Bills, it could be better. I support Amendments 3, 13, 14 and 18.

In 1988, I wrote a report, having been chairman of the Cleveland child abuse inquiry. In my report, I said that children should be listened to. I also said that children were people and not objects of concern. I remember talking as recently as last year to a young person whom nobody had told what was happening to him. He had no idea until he was moved. This is very serious. It is not just that nobody took any notice of what I said; the fact is, everybody else has been saying it. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred to the voice of the child. The voice of the child is crucial at all stages of what happens to children.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 4, 6 and 17, which are in my name. They present a more ambitious use of family group decision-making processes. I am keen to understand whether the Government have considered these at all and, if so, why on balance they were excluded from the Bill. If they have not considered them, perhaps there is room to reconsider. For many children, being able to live with another family member, even if they still require support, is a better outcome that going into stranger foster care or a children’s home. This group aims to test the Government’s appetite to expand the scope of family group decision-making further.

Amendment 4 would extend family group decision-making process to private law cases, which is something the noble Lord, Lord Meston, questioned in his earlier remarks. I think the Minister will be aware that this was raised as a recommendation in evidence in the Public Bill Committee in the other place by the chief executive of Cafcass. Two-thirds of Cafcass cases are private law proceedings. The Minister knows just how acrimonious these can be; indeed, we heard about that from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. That includes, of course, cases of domestic violence and abuse.

My amendment would move these cases into scope. I understand that this would extend the scope of family group decision-making significantly and there are resourcing implications, but I would like to understand the Government’s logic in using this approach with some cases with material safeguarding concerns but not others that share many of the same characteristics about the risks posed to children. We know that, tragically, a number of child deaths have happened after family proceedings rather than proceedings in public law or child protection.

I have not put down a specific amendment on this point, but, in a similar spirit, I wondered what consideration the Government have given to a situation where a Section 7 welfare report is requested by the court. As the Minister will know, a Section 7 report is a court-order document, prepared under Section 7 of the Children Act 1989, and is ordered when parents cannot agree on arrangements for their children’s care, usually only if there are any aspects of the children’s welfare that require further investigation. My question is: could this also be an area where family group decision-making might apply? If the Government have not considered these options, can the Minister, as a minimum, commit to considering them and working out the practical implications? This is exactly the kind of situation where the wider family could help but where the involvement of child protection professionals is needed.

I am optimistic—although my optimism might be waning—that the Minister might look favourably on my Amendment 6, because it makes so much sense for children. It addresses another current gap, when a child is reunited with their parents after a period of being in care. Reunification is the most common way for children to leave care, with 27% of those leaving care returning home in 2022-23. However, the number of children who then re-enter the care system is far too high, with 12% of those children re-entering within three months and more than a third within six years. Of course, we all want reunification to have the best chance of success. The statistics on those breakdowns are pretty stark, but the human cost for those children is far starker.

Finally, my Amendment 17, which I think the noble Baroness was starting to talk about on an earlier group—but maybe not—seeks to give a continuing role to the local authority in safeguarding a child in kinship care. With this amendment, I seek to probe what safeguards are in place around kinship care. So, if I have understood correctly, if the public law outline for care proceedings has started or the child has been made subject to a child protection plan—both of which would be the case when a family group decision-making process starts, as per this legislation—the significant harm threshold has been met. New carers may not be able to address all the risks that a child faces; they may well be the right place for that child to be, but they might need additional support.

For example, from my work prior to coming into your Lordships’ House, I know of a number of cases where a child’s parents coerced the kinship carer into allowing them to have unsupervised contact with their children—which we can all understand, on a human level, may be very hard to resist. I appreciate that this is a very delicate balance that needs to be struck, but this amendment aims to give the local authority the ability, where needed, to create something like a kinship protection plan, rather than a child protection plan, until it is confident that the arrangements are safe and in the child’s best interests, or until a child arrangement order or special guardianship order is made by the family court. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reflections on these amendments, which would significantly improve the Bill. I beg to move.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, unusually, I entirely disagree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, has put forward by way of an amendment. It is not just overambitious—in my view, it is plainly wrong, for two reasons.

Although there is—thank goodness—a minority of almost insoluble family cases, there are other ways in which to deal with mediation. Some of the work, although not all of them do, and I do not think that a local authority should interfere in private law cases. Perhaps more importantly, there is a brilliant system started by the then Lord Chancellor, Alex Chalk, and the present President of the Family Division; I think it is called Pathfinder, but I am not entirely sure. It has been rolled out in four places. When a family starts contentious divorce proceedings, all those involved with the family—the local authority specifically, Cafcass, the police, local health people and anybody else who may be involved with the family—meet to decide whether it is a domestic abuse case, in which case it goes through a longer channel, or a case in which the parties are behaving properly but cannot agree.

In the majority of cases, as the President of the Family Division has told me—he also gave evidence to one of the Select Committees in the House of Commons on this, perhaps the Home Affairs Committee—he or other family judges get rid of the case within two hours; they are completed. It would be unnecessary and unsuitable to have a family meeting of the sort proposed. There are real dangers to it in the other cases, particularly since there are other systems. So unusually, as I very often agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, on this occasion I think that she is wrong and very much hope that the Government take no notice of her amendment.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I, instead, speak in support of Amendment 6. As we have heard, reunification is the most common way for children to leave care but, sadly, the number of children who re-enter the system remains far too high, as many reunifications break down due to lack of support. There is currently no strategy by which to support reunifying families, and 78% of local authorities admit that the support that they provide is inadequate.

A breakdown in reunification not only is tragic for the children and families involved but costs the Government around £320 million annually. Action for Children estimates that the cost of providing family decision-making support to meet the costs of all reunifying families across England would result in significant cost savings of a potential £250 million.

On the basis that this is accepted and viewed as a positive step among professionals, should be in the best interests of care for children leaving school and, finally, has the potential to provide cost savings to the Government, which could be recycled into the system, I hope that the Minister will look favourably on including in the Bill a duty to offer family group decision-making during reunification.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 22nd May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash (Con)]

Although I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, about schools becoming very good at child protection in recent years, there will be a cost to engaging in this activity. I support my noble friend Lord Agnew and his point about the cost for schools. All schools are facing a very severe funding shortfall, and I am concerned that they will have to make a lot of redundancies. None of us wants to see that but schools are telling me that it is the only way they will be able to balance their budgets. If the Government’s worthy target of getting 6,500 new teachers into the profession is a net figure of leavers and people coming into the profession, then redundancies will make them miss that target. I support the point about money being needed to support this activity.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, schools are absolutely fundamental to knowledge about children. For any child who has started at school, any of that child’s teachers are extremely likely to know more about the child than anybody else except the parents. In some cases, they know more than the parents. The idea that they are being looked at for the first time, as it appears is being said, is, as the noble Baroness said, ludicrous. I hope that the Minister will underline the importance of involving schools at the earliest possible moment. Any amendment that can help with that should be supported.

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[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I cannot resist picking up on what the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, said about the two children whose approach to education was so different. It happened exactly in my family. What I can tell noble Lords is that, as a parent, it makes life very interesting.

I particularly support the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, and her Amendment 69. I also take this opportunity to strongly support Clause 4, and I will give two examples of its unbelievable importance. First, when I did the Cleveland child abuse inquiry, it was absolutely obvious that nobody was speaking to anybody—the police, social workers, paediatricians and the psychiatrists. Literally nobody was sharing information about anything.

Okay, that was a very long time ago. However, I was very recently at a conference where we were discussing certain aspects of safeguarding. A senior police officer told me that he was trying to work with Peterborough local authority, which would not speak to him about the issues he wanted to discuss. I have wondered ever since what on earth I could say about it, so I am raising it here today. It was last month that I was being told that.

The real problem is getting people to talk to each other. I understood and listened with great interest to the various problems that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, raised, but at the end of the day, what really matters is that Clause 4 be agreed to with whatever alterations are necessary, because nothing could be more important than these two things: information sharing and sensible, adequate data.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry not to have been able to speak at Second Reading, but I take a great interest in the effectiveness of public services and improving them where we can. I was sorry that there was not much discussion that day of the importance of information-sharing across agencies involved in social care, although the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox of Newport, spoke about it, and we have of course heard eloquently today from the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, in introducing her amendment.

Of the 12 million children in the UK, about 400,000 are in the social care system, which is far too many. History and avoidable scandals show that in this sector, poor recording and sharing of information, as well as, of course, poor follow-up, are sometimes responsible for failures in our care system, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, has borne witness to that again today. This lets down children, young people and the families who are served, and it is bad for social services, which find it harder to recruit, and spend time fighting fires rather than improving people’s lives. As the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, has already said, intervention needs to be timely.

The fallout from mistakes also increases the ever-rising cost of the system and delays essential appointments and training, so there needs to be much more success in getting things right first time and intervening early enough. All of that means the sharing of information in a timely fashion is critical to the reforms to social care. In scrutinising this Bill, we need to be sure that the system of data collection, use and aggregation to improve the system learns from the best, and we need to understand how much of that will be in subordinate legislation—a question my noble friend Lady Barran has already asked.

I support Amendment 41 and other probing amendments in my noble friend’s name. She is rightly seeking answers to some important questions on consent, on the threshold for information recording and sharing, and on the compliance cost across the many bodies and agencies involved, including, as she said, even childminders.

However, I want to go somewhere different. I read with particular interest page 219 in section 8.8 of Josh McAllister’s Independent Review of Children’s Social Care. The report, I believe, is the inspiration for much of the Government’s reforms. For today’s purposes, the proposal for a national data and technology taskforce is of particular importance. The case study on the positive experience in Bristol, using the Think Family Database, is instructive. It brought together data from 30 sources, including the council, the police, the DfE, the NHS, the DWP and social care itself. That is the kind of joined-up approach we need—and it is happening here and now. I just hope that this is not one of the areas with issues.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 9th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I too support Amendment 66 and the proposed introduction of a mandatory reporting requirement for sexual abuse, in accordance not just with the speeches we have heard but with the carefully reasoned recommendation of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. In simple terms, failure to report known or reasonably suspected abuse puts the child concerned at future risk, and it can make a person failing to report complicit in what has happened and in what may later happen to the victim of that abuse and, indeed, to others.

Moreover, a failure to report prevents proper and prompt investigation of alleged abuse and can deprive the victim of appropriate treatment and support. A failure to report is a failure to protect. All that is obvious, but it is a complex area. There are only a few cases when it can be truly known that abuse has occurred, because it is largely an unwitnessed crime. Accordingly, under the terms of this amendment, the person expected to report must have reasonable grounds for suspicion. If the child is young, that suspicion could well depend on the adult’s understanding of what the child has said or tried to say, or on an interpretation of the child’s behaviour. That may not be easy, particularly if the person concerned does not know the child well or the structure or dynamics of the child’s family.

These difficulties should not be made worse for victims of child sexual abuse by failures to report and by deflection of evidence of abuse for the sort of reasons and excuses so clearly described by the report of the independent inquiry—in particular, a misguided desire to protect the alleged perpetrators or institutions. In the sort of cases dealt with in the family court, schools can often be the first to realise that there may have been some type of abuse, and some school staff can, understandably, be nervous of the reaction of angry family members if allegations are made. I recall a case in which the teacher admitted not acting when he saw obvious injuries to a child simply because he was reluctant to get involved in making the statements and reports that might be required.

If there is to be a duty in law underpinned by criminal sanctions, as the amendment proposes, it will be particularly important that it is made known to all who will be subject to that duty and that, where possible, they have guidance on how to record and manage disclosure and evidence of possible sexual abuse. It can be crucial to avoid inappropriate and repeated questioning of a child.

Changing the focus slightly, towards cases arising in the family context, I should mention that the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel’s cogent and disturbing report in November 2024, I Wanted Them All to Notice, stated that:

“Over the past 20 years or so, the light on the sexual abuse of children within families has gradually dimmed. We have witnessed a worrying evaporation of the skills and knowledge that professionals (leaders and practitioners) must have to work confidently and sensitively in this complex area of practice. This dilution of focus and expertise may be partly explained by the greater public and professional attention on the sexual abuse of children in institutions, by ‘famous’ people and on the sexual exploitation of children outside their home. This was undoubtedly urgently required, but it may also have drawn our eyes away from the more common experience for children, of sexual abuse in their families”.


It goes on to suggest that the

“moral outrage that can accompany media attention on extra-familial sexual abuse has perhaps distracted attention from the more commonplace nature of familial abuse. In turning our attention away from the latter, we have undermined the confidence and capability of professionals to identify and respond to sexual abuse in families”.

The panel called for a national strategic response. Approval of this amendment would be an important step in that response. There should be a mandatory duty to which all professionals should adhere.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly support this amendment and agree with everything that has been said so far, particularly the very important and valuable contribution by the noble Lord, Lord Meston. He, like I, tried many child abuse cases. It is a sad part of the work that family judges do that there are so many sexual abuse cases of children, from babies to the age of 17, and they are all absolutely terrible. It is important to remember that there are two sorts of sexual abuse—that within the family and that without. As the noble Lord, Lord Meston, said, there has been less of a mirror on abuse within families as on strangers abusing children.

It is extraordinary in some ways that we do not already have mandatory reporting, since it is so obvious and so important. There are so many people out there, certainly members of families, who know what is going on but do not know what to do. I am talking about siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, because this is a very serious part. I do not know whether noble Lords realise that the majority of sexual abuse is within the family, although there is far too much by outsiders. If it is within the family, it becomes increasingly important that those around the child, who do know but do not know what to do, are told that they have an obligation to do something effective.

I hope that the Minister recognises that this is long overdue. It must come into this Bill or into the Crime and Policing Bill—preferably both. One group of people who have not so far been referred to are the police. If it is an obvious case of sexual abuse, the local authority employee must go immediately to the police. Let us not forget that any sexual abuse of any child, of any person, is a crime.

[Lord Bichard (CB)]

My Lords, as someone who has been involved with child abuse issues and child protection down the years, I thought it necessary to add my voice to support the amendment. It may be that we want to talk about the vehicle, it may be that we want to talk about the drafting, but it is really important that the House makes absolutely clear that there is agreement on the principle around mandatory reporting, because that has not always been the case, and that is the first massive step to dealing with this issue.

I otherwise wanted to say only how pleased I was to hear the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. In 2012, when I spoke in this Chamber against the watering down of vetting and barring, I was told roundly that we should have an exemption for all sports clubs and societies because they were exemplars. The last 12 years have shown us how wrong that would have been; they have also shown us how important the amendment is.

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[Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard (UUP)]

My Lords, I will make a brief intervention in and around Amendments 68 and 167, which are both about early intervention. I know that situations are often different in Northern Ireland, where the local health trusts look after young people and young people’s services, whereas in England it is the local authorities. However, the principle of the issues is the same, and dealing with the young people and early intervention is hugely important. My issue is that it should not be just about early intervention; it should be an ongoing process.

The one aspect that is not looked at in the Bill—I wonder whether it could be included at some stage—is around the rights of parents. I have worked with looked-after children for many years and am an adoptive parent. Really significant issues with young people can sometimes manifest into wider family difficulties, particularly when a young person is a refuser. Maybe they refuse to take on counselling or refuse to go to school. Then, because that child or young person will not attend either counselling or school, the pressure of maybe facing a court hearing or legal proceedings returns to the parents. Quite often there is then huge pressure on the family, because the law is on the side of taking the family and the parents to court; that is not often a good prospect for family proceedings and family support.

All I am trying to say in this brief moment—I know there are other amendments on the same issue coming up at a much later stage that I will also hopefully speak to—is that, while early intervention is very important, there needs to be ongoing intervention as well.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I very much support not only early intervention but intervention at various levels when the family absolutely needs it. As the noble Lord, Lord Meston, said, there is a financial advantage to local authorities—not, of course, short term, but long term, because the more a local authority intervenes in a troubled family, the less the chance, with any luck, that the children will go into care.

As has already been said, when one child has gone into care, it is particularly important to make sure that the next child—there nearly always is a next child—will not also have to go into care. As the noble Lord, Lord Meston, has said, it is a very sad situation for judges when you really cannot help the mother and her second, third or fourth child—sometimes more—because she has never had any help each time she has lost a child. So there is a genuine financial advantage to stopping children going into care, which is obviously far more expensive in the long term.

I will add a short word following on from the sad story of the right reverend Prelate. My son, aged 50, died of cancer, five years ago, with teenage children. Their mother, my daughter-in-law, was brilliant, but the children’s loss of their father at early teenage was absolutely devastating. I am glad to say that they have succeeded extremely well and have coped, but it is a moment when I have no doubt at all that my daughter-in-law—she lives in Los Angeles, so the wider family were unable to help—would have gained enormously, as indeed would the children, if there had been somebody there in a similar situation in this country. This bereavement amendment is particularly important.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 17th June 2025 Lords Chamber

Given the nature of that evaluation, I am not convinced that waiting until the end of what will be a lengthy evaluation will be the most appropriate way to address the issues that currently face the care market—although it is the case that in Clause 66(4) we are clear that the Bill will come into force on such day as appointed by the Secretary of State made by regulations, and Clause 66(5) allows different commencement dates for different areas or different purposes. So there are already provisions in the Bill which would permit the Secretary of State to delay implementation of this clause on regional co-operation arrangements. However, I very much hope that that will not be necessary. As all noble Lords have outlined, there are considerable reasons why we need to improve the sufficiency of placements: we need to fix a market that is broken, and we need to do that in order to ensure that the children who so desperately need appropriate and sufficient placements are able to get them. I hope that, for all those reasons, noble Lords will feel able not to press their amendments.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being present at the beginning of the discussion of these amendments. One issue that I was worried about many years ago, and I would be surprised if it did not happen still, is the fact that once a child moves from its local authority area to a local authority somewhere else, the sending local authority completely loses contact with anything that happens to the child—even though, as I understand it, it retains a certain responsibility. I wonder whether anything can be done to make sure that each local authority—that which the child comes from and that which the child goes to—is actually in touch and discussing what happens.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

As usual, my friend the noble and learned Baroness makes an important point about the application of the law in this particular case. I think, as she suggests, that legal accountability and responsibility remains with the authority placing the child, but that does not mean that, in practical terms, there should not be engagement, and I would have thought that that would have been good practice. I also think that it is important that there is clarity about where the responsibility stays. That goes for the care co-operatives as well.

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[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

I put my name to Amendment 129 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, which I am happy to do. She has made a strong case for amending the sufficiency duty or doing something similar to make it clear that moving children beyond a certain geographical distance from their normal base is deleterious to their well-being and health in every way possible.

I also put my name to Amendment 144 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson. We have all heard what is going on and I think we all agree that it is unconscionable and appalling. The question, as was put very aptly by the noble Lord, is what action we are going to take to do something about it. The fact that it exists is bad enough, so we need to have a clear plan to do something about it.

I will focus my remarks primarily on Amendment 165 in my name. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Young and Lord Hampton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for putting their names to it. It is to do with temporary accommodation and the effect that being moved into temporary accommodation has on young children. This is a topic that the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Households in Temporary Accommodation, which is headed by Dame Siobhain McDonagh, has long campaigned for. In fact, on 13 May Dame Siobhain met the Minister’s colleague Janet Daby, Minister at the Department for Education, and Rushanara Ali, Minister at the Department of Housing, Communities and Local Government, specifically to explore what can be done about this issue.

The issue, as the amendment’s explanatory statement says clearly, is that the new clause would establish a notification system requiring local authorities to alert schools and GPs when a child is placed in temporary accommodation. To explain why that is important, this is a direct quote from a head teacher in Lewisham about this phenomenon:

“On the ground, the impact of TA on children is colossal. We only hear, by accident, only by us being nosey and being at the gate in the morning, or them being late, tired or hungry, is how we find out, then we do our best to support them”.


We have a situation at the moment where there is a lot of inconsistency in what is happening when a child is moved with their family into temporary accommodation, sometimes in a very different area from where they were before, which clearly is disruptive to both education and their health. I understand that the upshot of that meeting was positive. We still need to get colleagues in the Department of Health on side because there are some complications in there being several different elements to trying to get this to work.

There are three particular areas that need to be done better if this amendment is to be successful. The first is local authorities. There is a move within the LGA to acknowledge the need for councils to be compassionate councils. There is agreement that, in principle, local authorities should be doing this notification on behalf of the child, and that they should be sending the receiving authority a notification—a point that was raised by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, on the last group. That often takes place but not always, when clearly it should. The LGA has very good and clear guidance on this. However, its guidance does not mention schools or general practices specifically. Perhaps this is an area that could be looked at.

The second is to do with technology. While government in all forms, including local government, can spend vast amounts of money on technology, it does not always do what you think it should be able to do. Many local authorities do not have the ability in their current systems to send notifications easily. Manchester, for example, which you would have thought of as one of the larger and more sophisticated metropolitan authorities, has to do this individually by email; there is no way of pushing a button and just getting it done.

Under the previous Government, the central government ensured that the providers of technology to local government were able to change their data systems so that they always included rough sleeper assessments. Where there is a will, there is a way; this can be done. We hope that His Majesty’s Government can do something to ensure that the housing system has a notification system embedded within it to make notification much more straightforward than it currently is.

The last point is to do with getting better guidance implemented. At the moment, training across schools and primary care provision is very varied, and I do not think there is necessarily an understanding, either by the schools from which the children are being moved or by the schools to which they are being moved, of the importance of having that dialogue, and the same is true of GP practices.

For all those reasons, I hope that the Minister will be able to give some indication as to whether the initial impression given at the meeting with the two Ministers in May—that the Government were receptive to this—is still the case. Perhaps the Minister can update us on any talks that have happened since then.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 118, 144 and 165 in particular. Dealing with perhaps the least important of the three: as a boarding school girl, I think that boarding school can often be a very sensible place to send children. I would not want to see it required for all children—that would be most unsuitable—but boarding school should be in the thoughts of those wondering where to put a child. It might be that it would be possible to keep the child with a particular member of the family if that family member did not have the child for 12 months of the year. Anyone who has been a mother or a father understands that situation.

On Amendments 144 and 165, I feel particularly strongly about unregulated accommodation. Under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989, there is an obligation on the local authority to promote the welfare of the child. I cannot believe that local authorities that send children to unregulated places are complying appropriately with the law. I wonder whether any local authority has ever thought about it.

Unregulated accommodation—which has been set out so well already—is not, in fact, checked. If one thinks about it, the idea that 16 and 17 year-olds are not being checked as to how they are getting on—bearing in mind, as has been said, that they are still technically children and are at a very vulnerable age, particularly if they are in care—is extraordinary. The other point is that even adult accommodation seems very unsuitable. Who are they going to meet in adult accommodation? Although it may be checked, one wonders how much checking there is. I hope the Minister will listen to these particular matters very strongly.

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 170 and lend my support to the other eminently sensible amendments in this group. They all, individually, beg the question: why would we not? I implore the Government to consider these gaps, which have been so carefully thought through and proposed before the Committee today. If Committee serves any purpose, it must be to collaborate and work for the benefit of the children we are talking about.

I will not rehearse the points I made on the first group today. The data point, under Amendment 170, drives at the same point. I ask the Minister to think carefully, because I had almost anticipated that her previous answer would address the data required already under the Children Act. So I carefully focused this amendment on the gaps where the data is not already required—that is to address sufficiency in care homes overall.

A body of science around attachment and trauma now emphatically supports the case for providing secure and stable environments for young people—including young adults, because the brain is not fully developed until well into the 20s. This debate is very timely, in the wake of the grooming gangs story and the Casey report, which has just been published. When children have not been securely attached and have been moved into and out of care, they are at their most vulnerable. They are the most susceptible to risk, the most vulnerable to being preyed on and the most easily seduced by any kindness whatever, so the wolf in sheep’s clothing is a particularly dangerous scenario. It is time that we dispense with unregulated accommodation, and I am grateful to the noble and learned Baroness for her comments and her extensive experience of that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 126, in my name, is in this group. This amendment relates to a discreet issue for children who are under a High Court deprivation of liberty order but who are not also looked-after children under the Children Act. Approximately 96% of those children under a High Court deprivation of liberty order are also looked-after children under the Children Act, but then they end up at the High Court, as there is a shortage of Section 25 secure accommodation. Only in Section 25 accommodation under the Children Act can a looked-after child be restricted of their liberty—that currently means a secure children’s home—so they are also put under a High Court DoL so that the local authority can deprive them of their liberty in non-Section-25-type accommodation. It seems that by the move to the phrasing “relevant accommodation” the Bill will regularise in law their situation, which is that 96% of these young people are currently under that inherent jurisdiction deprivation of liberty order. However, there are currently 4% of children under a High Court deprivation of liberty order who are not also looked-after children under the Children Act.

I want to thank the President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane. I believe that it was his work that brought in the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory, when High Court DoLS—as we would call them—began to be used as a jurisdiction. It is due only to that work that we know that, within that group, we have this little group—the 4%—who are not also looked-after children. Even an amended Section 25 of the Children Act refers only to looked-after children having their liberty being restricted in what would now be known as “relevant accommodation”. They would still be left under the High Court jurisdiction, with fewer safeguards. The whole purpose of Clause 11 is to bring from the inherent jurisdiction these children under a statutory system of protection, safeguards and reviews.

This 4% of around 1,280 children last year are often children coming out of the mental health estate. They have been taken into hospital for their own protection and for treatment; then they are discharged but, for health reasons, their home is no longer suitable. In my view, they are not going to pass the threshold test under the Children Act 1989 to be a looked-after child, because the threshold test—philosophically and in practice—is about harm by the care or neglect of the adult who should be caring for them or the fact of their being out of control. Neither of those circumstances seem in most cases to apply to a young person who has gone into the mental health estate and then been discharged.

While I recognise the imperfections of the current drafting of Amendment 126—for instance, it might trigger other provisions of the Children Act if we deem these children to be looked after-children—I chose that mechanism to try to bring them under the safeguards that we will have for children under Section 25 who are looked-after children, and not leave them still to be under the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court. I hope that that serves to be a mechanism for the Minister to explain what the situation is for that small group of children.

I imagine it was envisaged by Sir Andrew McFarlane that he would get the data through the Nuffield work, so that we would come to Parliament, legislate and take this into statute law, out of the inherent jurisdiction. It seems to me, from Amendment 126, that unless we do something for this small group of children, he is going to have to continue needing Nuffield, because there will be a need for this type of deprivation of liberty order under the inherent jurisdiction for the group of children I have just outlined.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, what the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, has just said is entirely sensible, and, if I may, I add my voice to it.

I did not know about this group of children. It seems wrong in principle that they should not be treated in exactly the same way as all other children in this particularly vulnerable group. As the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, pointed out, they are quite obviously the most vulnerable of all the children. I declare my interest as patron of the Atkinson unit in Exeter, which is secure accommodation.

What I am really standing up for on this is not only to understand and support in principle what the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, is saying but to express some concerns. I will just take, as an example, Amendment 120. If this child under the age of 13—and that is a very sad circumstance to have a child under 13—is under an order of the court, the Secretary of State would not be able to deal with it further than suggesting that the court order should be reversed. It is important that, when looking at these amendments, one has to bear in mind that it appears that deprivation of liberty may be able to be made without the introduction of the court. In so far as the court is concerned, I remind the Committee, as a former lawyer and judge, that neither the Home Office, the Department for Education nor any other government department can actually change the law of England other than through the parliamentary process. I have no doubt at all that the Minister knows that perfectly well, but it seems to me we have to be a little careful about the extent of the suggested use of these amendments.

I entirely understand what is intended, and it is entirely laudable, but we just need to be very careful as regards in what circumstances and whether there will be a court order. My recollection is that, in the past, Section 25 orders were also made in the family proceedings court. Not a word has been said about that now, and it may be that that does not happen any longer, but certainly there continue to be orders under the inherent jurisdiction, so I just make that warning to your Lordships.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, noble Lords often say in this Chamber that it is a pleasure to follow whichever noble Lord or noble Baroness. I cannot say it is a pleasure to follow the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, because, given the depth and detail of what she says and the experience she brings as a former judge—and she always speaks without a note—it is not a pleasure but humbling to be given the role of speaking in her wake, as it were. She is, as ever, extremely impressive and adds so much to our debates.

I want to speak to Amendment 506B in my name, on the use of accommodation for deprivation of liberty. When a child is in a secure setting, there is a robust framework for reviewing the suitability of arrangements for deprivation of liberty, including through the appointment of independent persons. Where deprivation of liberty orders are used in other accommodation arrangements, the same safeguards may simply not be there. So there need to be additional safeguards, including, as recommended by the Children’s Commissioner, a record in the looked-after child census, including the type of setting and the length of and reasons for restrictions placed. Also, wherever possible, independent advocacy should be provided for all children where a deprivation of liberty order is being considered or is in place.

Clause 11 provides a statutory framework for children to be deprived of their liberty in accommodation other than a secure children’s home through amending Section 25 of the Children Act 1989. The intention is for there to be parity with secure children’s homes in terms of access to legal aid. But the current position for parents and anyone with parental responsibility in these cases is that they are entitled only to means-tested legal aid. Such means tests are very restrictive; research by the Law Society has demonstrated that even those living in poverty can fail the financial eligibility test for legal aid.

Many parents are therefore left to navigate these complex legal proceedings on their own. The result of these court hearings is significant for children because it could lead to a child being put into a placement that is many miles away from their home environment and their local network of support—mirroring the arguments that we heard in the last group of amendments. Additionally, deprivation of liberty orders are increasingly being used to place children in unregistered accommodation —I will not go there again—due to the lack of secure children’s home places.

According to figures published by the Family Court Statistics Quarterly, there were 1,280 applications to the High Court for deprivation of liberty orders for children in 2024, of which 132 were for children 12 years of age and under. That total figure represents a 120% increase since 2020-21 figures, which themselves reflected a fourfold increase since 2017-18—again, according to the Law Society. By way of comparison, there were 261 applications for secure accommodation for children in 2024.

The noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, mentioned the Nuffield Foundation; the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory found that almost 90% of parents and carers were not legally represented at any hearings in applications made under the High Court’s inherent jurisdiction for deprivation of liberty orders. For an event of such importance to those families involved, that is surely a worryingly high figure and is just unacceptable.

It is surely a basic human right for no child to be deprived of their liberty, particularly into an unregistered placement, without their parents having access to legal advice and representation. There should always be access to non-means tested legal aid for parents and carers in these cases, and Amendment 506B would provide for that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

This may be a rather silly question, but in my experience of the Atkinson secure accommodation unit, every child needs at least two carers. There are even children who need three. I wonder how a children’s residential care home will manage a child deprived of liberty. It will be an extreme case and the child will be unbelievably difficult to look after.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Nevertheless, we believe that it is possible. On the definition of relevant accommodation, we believe that it is possible to find those sorts of homes—sometimes supported by the use of technology to help maintain security for children, and certainly needing a certain level of staffing, as the noble and learned Baroness said—and that, for many children, it is preferable to live in that type of accommodation as opposed to the alternative, which has been to be deprived of their liberty under the inherent jurisdiction of the courts. Actually, some of that type of accommodation may well be more suitable for things such as maintaining contact, having education and being closer to the community.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 19th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for tabling Amendment 159, to which I added my name. It is a probing amendment, so I hope the Minister has not been equipped with various intricacies on the drafting. I believe that His Majesty’s Government intend to consult on child protection.

As the noble Lord outlined, this is a recommendation from IICSA, which envisaged the child protection authority having an inspection function of certain settings within its purposes. However, there was another recommendation from the independent inquiry, which said:

“All religious organisations should have a child protection policy and supporting procedures, which should include advice and guidance on responding to disclosures of abuse and the needs of victims and survivors. The policy and procedures should be updated regularly, with professional child protection advice, and all organisations should have regular compulsory training for those in leadership positions and those who work with children and young people”.


Although the child protection agency will be led by the Home Office and the honourable Member Jess Phillips, this second recommendation sounds like a description not only of charities but of out-of-school settings. I am aware that, since the amendment was laid, a call for evidence went out from the Department for Education on safeguarding for out-of-school settings, but how are they intended to fit together?

In addition to religious organisations, sports clubs, informal educational settings, summer clubs and private tutors seem not to be within a regulatory framework at the moment. Is this not what the independent inquiry envisaged that the work of a child protection authority would be, or could be? Those organisations are outside Ofsted and, despite the excellent work of the Charity Commission—many of them will be charities but not all of them—the threshold for intervention by the Charity Commission on the grounds of safeguarding is statutorily very high. It is not an inspectorate, it seems, or an accreditor of safeguarding training.

If one looks momentarily at the scrutiny function that the Church of England is trying to set up, that function, which should be independent, looks as if it should be inspection, audit, accreditation and an end of complaint process facility. In these informal settings, out-of-school settings or charities, who accredits the safeguarding? Who does the inspecting? Who holds low-level concerns regarding staff and volunteers? Many of those settings will be a single charity under no umbrella organisation—and I thank the safeguarding charity Thirtyone:eight for its excellent work on safeguarding. If you are the trustee of a stand-alone charity and you begin to have concerns about a volunteer or a staff member—the kind of low-level concerns that are that are dealt with in Keeping Children Safe in Education—where is the umbrella organisation that will keep track?

We have to keep one step ahead of people who have this intention to get access to children. They will disappear from one independent stand-alone charity and have the potential to pop up, maybe in a different place—a different church or sports club—but who is keeping track of those concerns? You might informally tell another charity such as thirtyone:eight, but who will be collating that information? Could the Minister consider arranging a meeting for any interested Peers at which we can talk about the scope of the child protection authority and the call for evidence for out of school settings?

The call for evidence is, I believe, like a survey that you fill in. I promise the Minister that I will fill out the survey and go through that facility. But could she also confirm to noble Lords that the child protection authority will go out for consultation? What will the scope be for that and how will it fit together with this large gap—or number of small gaps—we have with out of school settings? This is an important moment to finally cover the many loopholes that still exist in relation to child safeguarding, particularly in out of school settings.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

I find these two amendments extremely interesting, and I very much support the spirit of them. But I am not at all happy, I have to say, about exactly how they are put forward. I think it is important that the Government reflect on Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 and the extent to which it could be updated and improved. I am delighted that the Government are taking steps to find out rather more about it.

I was extremely interested in the issues raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, but I am not sure that they come into either Amendments 159 or 160. It does not mean that it is any less important. This is a wider issue of some real importance. I am not quite sure where it should come, but it certainly needs to be regarded .

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

I am grateful to be able to respond, as this is Committee. With the child protection authority, the question is about what scope that will have. If it is to have an inspectorate function, which is what was recommended by IICSA, will it have a role to inspect out of school settings? That is the way that, I would say, it comes within the scope of the amendment. But I accept it is a probing amendment. We need to make sure that we put the DfE and Home Office together to keep children safe .

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 23rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I am moving Amendment 166 with the support of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford, to whom I am grateful—she regrets that she cannot be in her place—as I am to the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium, the RMCC, for its help.

The amendment would introduce an entitlement to an independent guardian for separated asylum-seeking or trafficked children, in line with international law and the provisions already made in Scotland, building on and expanding the existing independent child trafficking guardian service run by Barnardo’s.

Imagine that you are a child who has fled persecution or conflict, travelling across Europe and then making the perilous journey across the channel, all of which makes for a pretty traumatic experience. You arrive frightened, wet and cold. You are given no time to recover but, instead, almost immediately are faced with questions that you may not understand and age-assessment procedures that can all too easily wrongly determine that you are an adult. I will not go into that today, other than to say that research shows how these age assessments can undermine children’s mental health and well-being. You then face incomprehensible bureaucratic procedures and have to navigate complex systems, such as social care, immigration and criminal justice, as you make the difficult legal journey involved in claiming asylum.

How different might it be if you had a legal guardian to support you? The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child sets out that legal guardians are a crucial component of a protection system for children who temporarily or permanently lack a family environment and are unable to have their interests represented by their parents. An independent legal guardian in this context plays a key role in supporting unaccompanied children by connecting them to all the support they need, instructing solicitors on their behalf and, most importantly, representing their best interests throughout.

An evaluation of the Scottish guardianship service, now called Guardianship Scotland, showed that it played an invaluable beneficial role in supporting unaccompanied children. In particular, it helped them with navigation and orientation, gathered and provided information for stakeholders, supported interactions with immigration lawyers, and provided emotional support.

The RMCC applauds the crucial role played by the service, which, it says,

“highlights the transformative power of dedicated advocacy and care”.

Barnardo’s points to the evidence of the positive impact on mental health during often lengthy asylum waits, with qualitative feedback emphasising that guardians are viewed by asylum-seeking children as their primary source of stability, advocacy and protection. It told me that seven independent evaluations of the trafficking guardian service that it runs found that having a guardian helps reduce children’s likelihood of going missing and their vulnerability to harm.

The effects on children have been both immediate and long-term. Barnardo’s quotes asylum-seeking children supported by its service in Northern Ireland:

“I trust you and rely on your support”,


and

“my friend does not have an independent guardian working with him and this is so bad. I would have really struggled with that”.

Yet the limited reach of the traffic and guardianship service in England and Wales, and the lack of any such service for asylum-seeking children here, means that thousands of vulnerable children are having to struggle every day as they try to build a new life.

Compelling evidence of this comes from a new study of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and young people by the LSE and the University of Bedfordshire, as I referred to in our previous sitting. It focuses in particular on their well-being. The children and young people themselves identified a number of aspects of their lives that were important to their well-being, including

“not being lonely and having reliable people to talk to”

and

“professional support and knowing professionals are taking responsibility for you and your needs”,

along with

“having hope for the future”.

Moreover, they viewed integration as key to their well-being.

Happily, a significant number of the children and young people were being supported by a charity operating an independent guardian-like service. For them, that was often the difference that made the difference, but, the report said, these specialist casework interventions happen mostly by chance and after procedural drift and poor mistakes in and around the asylum decision-making process, rather than systematically or at the early stages of children and young people’s asylum applications.

The report talks of a “protection gap”, in which the children and young people felt very much alone. Their sense of well-being was closely associated with the extent to which they felt cared for by professionals—to have what the authors call a “scaffolding of care” built around them to help give them hope and belief in themselves and their future—and hope for the future was crucial to their well-being.

The importance of caring support from a social worker cannot be stressed enough but not all enjoy such a relationship, and social workers do not necessarily have the requisite understanding of the asylum system. This led to the recommendation by the children and young people themselves, echoed by the academic researchers, for

“independent guardians from the start and throughout their journey, who understand the asylum, immigration, modern slavery and social care processes, who understand the unique challenges”

and who are accessible.

As that study illustrates, the case for extending the guardianship service lies primarily in the positive impact that it will have on a particularly vulnerable group of children, in line with international standards. It is also a very cost-effective measure. UNICEF UK and the Children’s Society calculated some years ago that a system of guardianship for all unaccompanied children could save £1.25 for every £1 spent over three years, rising to £2.39, taking account of the benefits once the children become adults. That detailed cost-benefit analysis estimates an overall saving of over £62 million arising from reduction in social work time, police resources, interpreting time, judicial and legal expenses, and the time of other professionals.

Ultimately, what is at stake here is the mental and physical well-being of children. That is what the Bill is all about. As one of the young people in the study I cited commented:

“Children are not just a category. You need to be living all your childhood”—


a maxim that we might apply to the Bill as a whole.

The RMCC concludes:

“In light of the substantial financial savings, improved systemic efficiency, and enhanced well-being of unaccompanied children, implementing a nationwide guardianship service in the UK is both a fiscally responsible and morally imperative decision”.


In her recent oral evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, the Minister, Angela Eagle, suggested that the Home Office

“may start to look at how we can provide a voice for migrants—an advocacy service, a help service”.

I do not know what she had in mind, but I suggest that a guardianship service for unaccompanied children would be a good place to start.

I am not looking for such a decision today, but I believe the case is compelling from the perspective of children’s well-being. I therefore ask my noble friend the Minister to commit to talking to her Home Office colleagues and, together with them, to give the proposal serious consideration, with a view to possible implementation in the future. I beg to move.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly support this amendment. I declare that I am vice-chairman of the Human Trafficking Foundation and co-chair of the all-party group against modern slavery. Ten years ago, the Modern Slavery Act introduced child advocates who are informally called guardians. It is a brilliant scheme, but I understand that it is still in a pilot stage, which is one of the sadnesses of the implementation of parts of the Modern Slavery Act.

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[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 166 was tabled by my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett. I echo the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and compliment her, as always, on the eloquent and moving way she described the plight of so many children and young people coming into this country. I know that she is a very passionate advocate in her own right and speaks to many people across the piece.

Specifically on the amendment, although other issues have been brought into the discussions today, it seeks to provide support, via independent child guardians, to all separated children. That would be in addition to trafficked and exploited children. It would also initiate the support on consideration of a referral, rather than when an initial decision has been made that a child has been potentially exploited. This amendment also sets out limited functions for the independent guardians but, crucially, it removes the ability to amend these functions through regulations or statutory guidance.

Currently, the existing independent child trafficking guardianship service is a specialist provision for trafficked and exploited children, operating in two-thirds of local authorities across England and Wales. We are moving forward towards a national contract, planned for tender in the summer of 2025, building on the work from the Modern Slavery Act and from the very first authorities that were brought into scope in 2017. As we have heard, this is currently funded by the Home Office but delivered by Barnardo’s. It is important to note that we will look at best practice all the way through the piece as we move forward. Modern slavery engagement forums are absolutely critical in this, and I will go on to speak about the Minister’s role as well.

As my noble friend Lady Lister is aware, the needs of trafficked and exploited children are complex, ever evolving and ever changing. Defining functions directly in the Bill would reduce the flexibility for the Secretary of State to adapt the role through the statutory guidance or regulations as it needs to evolve. We would not wish to limit the functions of guardians in this way and would instead continue to provide the detail for their role in statutory guidance or regulations. We believe that this is the best way we can move on and acknowledge changes in circumstances as we move forward.

I recognise my noble friend’s intentions in extending the independent guardian provision to all separated children, and I acknowledge the words of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, in this space as well. This would significantly expand the scope and, unfortunately therefore, strain resources, which could delay support for exploited or trafficked children who need urgent help. Separated children will not necessarily be trafficked, and there is a risk that this provision will overlap with the existing support, causing confusion or duplication in some places, as well as providing unsuitable services for some separated children.

The arrangement for unaccompanied asylum seeker children is, as we know, that they are looked after by local authorities in keeping with the arrangements for all children in the United Kingdom. Unaccompanied asylum seeker children are provided with a professional social worker and will also have an independent reviewing officer to oversee their care arrangements. They are also entitled to legal assistance in pursuing their asylum claim. These arrangements ensure that children are provided with independent support and advice; the addition of a guardian to this framework, as I have said before, could risk adding another level of complexity to existing arrangements. Instead, we have worked to provide additional support specifically to vulnerable children who may have been trafficked. We therefore do not consider that expanding or bringing forward the point at which support is initiated would be in the best interests of meeting the needs of exploited and trafficked children.

That is not to say that we do not recognise the work that needs to continue. I am pleased to say that Jess Phillips, the Minister for Safeguarding, has regular meetings with the ICTG service. She holds round tables, bringing everyone together to make sure that we can bring the role of advocates into this mix and continue the essential conversations.

I completely recognise the need for stable relationships, as outlined by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. We can only imagine the disruption, upheaval and separation, and the impact that that has on these very vulnerable young people. The importance of this is that the child will have access to an advocate. Unlike the social worker and IRO, the advocate is not required to have a prescribed social work qualification; their primary purpose is to represent fully the views and wishes of the child. As part of this function, they can assist the child in obtaining legal advice in the same way as the social worker and IRO—and, indeed, the foster carer, where that is appropriate.

I understand the need to continue the conversations. I hope that my noble friend will recognise that those conversations will continue. I completely acknowledge that there is no room for complacency at all in this very important area of work. With those reassurances, I hope that my noble friend will feel content to withdraw this amendment.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

I entirely understand and respect the Minister’s reservations, particularly on not putting regulations in primary legislation that might make more difficulty—that I understand. It is the spirit of the amendment that I am particularly concerned with. I just ask, is it intended that the modern slavery advocate will be put out across the entire country before the end of this year?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

The tender is going out in the summer. I believe that implementation will take some time and should be fully up and running by 2027.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

Children could use phones that do not connect to the internet—phones that do not access social media—like the old phones, if they need to phone their parents in an emergency. With the mobile phones that we are talking about now, for children under the age of 16, their brains are not developed enough to understand the harms and dangers—and, as we have said, it is all very addictive. Big tech companies know how to get children to look at certain sites. In our generation, we did not have phones and we did not have that exposure to predators, and we did not have so many mental health issues among the youth.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

I ask the noble Baroness how on earth she thinks that parents will be able to stand up against their children so they will not have phones? What we are discussing here is phones in school. The idea that we should prevent children under 16 from having smartphones seems to me utterly unrealistic.

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

I did not mean under-16s in general, I meant under-16s at school, as in those amendments. However, I agree with some noble Lords that parents also need to be educated. When we see parents pushing a pushchair and children looking at video games and such things, it is probably not very helpful, but this is part of education and we all need to get together to educate parents also. So, I support these amendments and I think that, to help our children’s well-being and future, this is something we should look at.

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[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

I absolutely acknowledge that, but it is important to note that such a provision was available and was defunded. The number of centres was decimated, which has had long-term consequences that noble Lords have been so clear about: the effect on the poorest children of that poverty of provision. I think that is really important to note.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I feel the need to move on. I very much support early years strategy, and I particularly appreciated the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool and Lord Young of Cookham. I remember a mother and her three year-old daughter. The mother had never learned how to speak to her daughter, who had no speech and had never heard anything from her mother. They were invited to join what was almost certainly Sure Start in north Kensington and, three months later, hand in hand, near Christmas, they danced down the steps of the preschool, singing carols together. That place closed—and this is one of the sadnesses that we have.

I very much support what the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, said, because I have a granddaughter who at five was said to be stupid. Thank goodness she changed school; she was found to be dyslexic and, I am glad to say, she got a good degree at Edinburgh—but with a great deal of help. To identify children at an early stage, long before they go to school, would make the most enormous difference. It did to my granddaughter, who was extremely unhappy at her first school, because she kept being told she was stupid, and she was not stupid at all. She is one of countless children who are not identified at one stage early enough.

Dare I ask the Minister whether it is at all possible that this Government, from the party that produced Sure Start, which was so excellent, could think one day, when there is a little bit more money, they might reintroduce it again?

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I have not spoken much at this stage of the Bill but, having heard the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, I have to say very respectfully that I am concerned.

It seems to me enormously important that the local authority has the opportunity to understand what is happening with children who are home-schooled, and it has the responsibility to check. I have no doubt at all that the family of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, teach their children extremely well at home but my understanding from what I have been told is that this is not true in every family. I think the Government are entirely right to be taking the steps that they are taking, just to check that our children who are not at school are properly cared for.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My Lords, as I have said previously, the duty on parents to give information for children not in school registers is key to their operation. Information on where the child is being educated, and by whom, is vital in enabling local authorities to identify cases of potentially unsuitable or unsafe education.

The amendments in this group concern this requirement for parents to give information, and how local authorities must act in a transparent and accountable manner towards the home-educating families in their area. Amendment 277, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, seeks, in effect, to remove the requirement.

I want to respond to the broader points that the noble Baroness made about home-schooling. I completely understand—actually, I am not sure that I do understand—why she might have wanted to celebrate the election of her new leader. In any event, I recognise that she has a new leader, which was decided this morning. Had she been here this morning, she would have heard what were, I hope, important comments from me and others on the support that exists within the English and Welsh education system, precisely for parents to home-educate, and the reiteration by this Government that there is no intention in this legislation to remove that right. In fact, there is an intention to provide additional recognition and support while also ensuring that local authorities are able to carry out their functions, by knowing where children are being educated otherwise than in school. I hope that the noble Baroness will read the comments that I made this morning about that.

Without a requirement on home-educating parents to register with their local authority, authorities cannot be assured that they have fulfilled their education duties towards children not in school living in their areas. Parents having to provide required information is an absolutely crucial component for the success of the registers.

I bring my noble friend Lord Hacking back to the point that I made this morning. I was completely clear that it is not the case that failing to provide information to the register would lead directly to parents having to face fines and penalties. I hope that my noble friend will reread that contribution and find that it provides some assurance around the point that he made.

I recognise that there are home educators who are already known to local authorities and are captured on voluntary registers. However, that is not the case for all because there is currently no legal requirement for parents to tell local authorities that they are home-educating. Without placing this proactive duty on parents, local authorities will have no assurance that they have identified all children not in school in their areas. As I have mentioned previously, the duty on parents to give information for registers is separate from but complementary to the annual reports that some parents submit to local authorities for the purposes of providing in-depth information about their child’s education.

In terms of parents giving detailed information on the child’s learning objectives and progress towards them, we want parents to continue to have flexibility to submit information in a way that works best both for them and for the elective home education officer. However, for the basic information, such as where the child is being educated and by whom, it is essential that there is a level of consistency in how this is submitted, collected and maintained. Parents of home-educated children in almost all other western countries must, as a minimum, provide details for a register. Children in England and Wales deserve the same level of assurance.

Amendment 278, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, seeks to allow parents to provide the required information in their own words. I appreciate how that approach would afford some flexibility to parents, but there needs to be consistency. That is why we are seeking a delegated power for the Secretary of State to prescribe how local authorities maintain and keep their registers, including the use of a prescribed registration form. We will ensure that the form is accessible and simple for families to use.

Amendments 280, 282 and 285, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, seek to restrict the duty on parents to provide information for registers, and the ability of local authorities to request information, by imposing time limits. Amendment 280 would restrict local authorities from requesting required information to once a year and impose a “reasonable cause to suspect harm” threshold for further engagement. Amendment 282 would provide a similar threshold so that parents did not have to provide information more than once every 12 months, and Amendment 285 would go further by introducing a civil penalty of up to £5,000 for local authorities for asking for information too frequently.

Twelve months would be too long a period for a local authority to be unaware of a change to a registered child’s education provision or personal circumstances. Education concerns can arise at any time, and local authorities must retain the ability to act proportionately without needing to meet a safeguarding threshold. The threshold risks conflating safeguarding with the separate duty to ensure that a child is receiving a suitable education.

Amendments 283 and 284, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, seek to extend parental response times from 15 to 30 days, as well as alternative deadlines that would potentially extend the timeframe to 12 months. We are keen that the length of time to respond to a request is proportionate and balances the needs of the family with the risk of a child being out of education for too long. That is why the Bill already allows a local authority the discretion to extend the timeframe for response to requests for information. That discretion could be used by local authorities if they make the request at a time when, for example, it is likely that a family may be on holiday.

Amendment 281, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, seeks to require parents of registered children to provide updates to their local authority only when there has been a substantial change to their information in the register. We share the noble Lord’s ambition that the burden on parents to provide information is kept to a minimum, but we have to ask: what would count as a substantial change? For example, a child attending a setting for an extra half an hour a week could mean that the child was then attending that setting for 18 hours or more, potentially indicating that the setting was operating illegally. Even though it was just 30 minutes more, it would be right that the local authority knew about it as the child might be attending an illegal school.

I know that the noble Lord is also concerned that families may overcomply with their duty to update information. I thank him and other noble Lords for detailing these concerns to my officials in the July meeting. We are committed to ensuring that the registers work for everyone and will continue to take into consideration the feedback that we have heard from your Lordships, home educators and local authorities.

I turn to Amendment 287, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wei. In a situation where parents have not fulfilled their duty to give information for registers, the amendment would require a local authority to seek approval from a magistrate or independent tribunal before taking further steps to gather the required information. Requiring local authorities to seek approval from magistrates or a tribunal before making reasonable inquiries about a child’s education is disproportionate at best. At worst, it risks children being in unsuitable education for long periods.

If a parent of an eligible child does not provide required information for a register, local authorities may continue informal inquiries. They also have the discretion to issue a preliminary notice for a school attendance order. This notice would require the parent to provide information on the suitability of the child’s education. These are proportionate responses to ensure a child is in receipt of suitable education.

Amendments 270, 380 and 382 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wei, seek to establish new review processes, including in situations where it is believed that a local authority is acting outside guidance or law. Local authorities are required to act in accordance with the law and should follow statutory guidance. If parents feel that a local authority has acted unreasonably or has not followed the law, there are several existing complaints processes in place, such as the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman and the judicial review process; in some cases the Secretary of State has powers to intervene.

The guidance updated as part of the children not in school measures will build on existing non-statutory guidance to ensure greater consistency around complaint processing. The new statutory guidance will also be consulted on prior to implementation. Data gathered by the department as a result of the children not in school registers will also allow us to draw comparisons between local authorities, identify any outliers and offer further support to these local authorities where appropriate. For these reasons, while we fully support engagement and transparency between local authorities and home-educating families, we do not believe that these amendments are the right way to achieve that aim.

Amendment 388 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, seeks to set up an annual review panel made up of home-educated children to advise on legislation impacting home education. The voice of the child is an important consideration when developing and implementing education and safeguarding policies. There have been previous consultations on changes to home education and young people were able to feed in their views, including a call for evidence in 2018, a consultation on the children not in school registers in 2019 and updates to the elective home education guidance in 2023. We would also welcome input from children as part of the future consultation on the children not in school statutory guidance as part of the implementation of the measures in this Bill.

For the reasons I have outlined, I hope that noble Lords will feel able not to press their amendments.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 18th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[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.

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[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, the amendments in group 1, as we have heard in a very good and well-informed debate, relate to duties on Ministers and public bodies in respect of children’s rights and parents’ rights to educate children in accordance with their faith. Let me be clear in responding to this group that the Government are committed to safeguarding children’s rights, both in law and in practice, and firmly uphold the principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

I am grateful to noble Lords for their views on these important matters and for the opportunity, as I say, to hear from experts in this Committee. We have listened carefully to the arguments for these amendments and will continue to engage closely with all those advocating for the rights of children. We regularly meet, for example, with an expert advisory group to hear directly from key stakeholders in this area, including the Children’s Rights Alliance for England, Coram, Barnardo’s and several others. This group will in fact be meeting again in the department next week. Additionally, we convene regular meetings with all the major children’s charities. These fora provide Ministers and officials with excellent and important opportunities to hear first-hand from the experts on these issues and to help us advance our shared goal of putting children’s rights at the very centre of policy-making.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

May I just ask the Minister: does she meet groups of children?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I have barely got started, but yes, most certainly we do, and I will come to a bit more detail on that in a moment. As we have discussed at various points during the course of the Bill’s passage, there are a whole range of ways in which the Government engage with children, both on the specifics of legislation but also more broadly. For example, a very wide-ranging engagement has been led by colleagues in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, along with DfE and the Department of Health, on the development of this Government’s youth strategy, and a very large number of children have been engaged.

I was just about to say that my honourable friend and former Minister, Janet Daby, engaged readily with these key stakeholders and asserted—as do I and as, I am sure, my new colleague Josh MacAlister does—the fundamental importance of children’s rights to this Government. In parallel, we are also carefully considering the issues and amendments on the rights and voice of the child that were raised on Part 1 earlier in Committee, to ensure that children’s rights are protected throughout the Bill.

Amendment 469, in the name of my noble friend Lady Lister and introduced by my noble friend Lady Blower, would place a duty on Ministers to prepare and publish a child rights impact assessment concerning all relevant legislative, policy and budget developments in the Act that will impact children’s well-being, social care or education, prior to the decision being taken. On children’s rights assessments and more broadly on the UNCRC, this Government have put children at the heart of our mission to break down barriers to opportunity through our plan for change. Ministers already consider the impact of our children’s rights responsibilities in all new policies and legislation, and of course through this landmark Bill we are delivering the most significant reforms—for example, to child protection—in a generation.

By improving safeguarding, strengthening social care and ensuring that vulnerable children do not fall through the cracks, we are already putting children and families first. For this Bill, we published children’s rights impact assessments for all measures, and we are working hard in the department to deliver what I think my noble friend Lady Longfield rightly emphasised: the need to improve both the status of children’s rights impact assessments and to develop the culture and win hearts and minds in order to ensure that that is delivered across government.

That is why we are continuing to work with policymakers across government to carry out CRIAs to analyse the impact of government decisions on children. It is a valuable tool, and the department has worked with civil society experts, for example, to develop a robust template, which was one of the suggestions made by the noble Lord, Lord Russell. We will continue work with children’s rights experts to promote children’s rights across government and upskill officials on the importance of considering children’s rights in policy-making and how best to utilise the assessment tool.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 14th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, will speak briefly, having added my name to Amendment 19 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. As teachers, we had it drummed into us that information is key—it is the new gold—but, as the noble Baroness said, that is no good without action. We need to have a frictionless system where information flows both ways but there is a responsibility to act on it. This is a very sensible amendment.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, in 1987, I chaired an inquiry called the Cleveland child abuse inquiry. One of the aspects of it was the deliberate refusal in those days to provide information about 120-odd children. This had disastrous consequences, because they were removed from home and many had to be sent back, whether or not they had, in fact, been abused.

During my years as a family judge, again and again the cases that came before me did so because, at the level of dealing with children’s safeguarding, there was a lack of communication and, consequently, a lack of action. What is unbelievably sad is that, since I retired many years ago, this has continued. We have had endless reports of the death of a child, and one of the reasons for that is that people had information that was not passed to somebody else and, consequently, there was no action. Therefore, I very much support Amendment 19.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I too support the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, on her amendment. In the Church of England, we had trouble with giving and passing information—having ways of doing certain things. What most people have been looking for is practical outworking of these policies. As the noble Baroness said, people could give information, but more is needed than just that: they need to be empathetic and to step into the child’s shoes in order to say what needs to happen practically for that child. The passing of information is important, but there are other consequences. If the children being safeguarded feel that the system has still not caught up in its internal ways of working, we are going to fail those children yet again.

The Government are on to a good thing, but can they, through this amendment, recognise what needs to happen? At the end of the day, a lot of children, particularly those in care, need far greater attention and more resources. It will be helpful if the Minister, when she responds, explains the practical outworking of this. What are the expectations and how will we know that they have been delivered?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, is unable to be here and has therefore asked me to lead on this amendment. It follows on from that moved by the noble Baroness in Committee on 22 May last year. As I have said, the noble Baroness regrets that she is unavailable, but I want just to take a moment to recognise her dedicated support for the work of child contact centres and her wish to maintain and raise the standards of such centres, standards which are already high if accredited by the national association.

This is a more straightforward amendment than that moved in Committee. It would simply require all contact centres and organisations to be accredited in accordance with national standards for safeguarding and preventing domestic abuse, with such accreditation to be granted by the National Association of Child Contact Centres.

There can be no doubt about the value and effectiveness of child contact centres, as they have evolved, since the first was set up in the late 1980s in Nottingham by a family court magistrate to help those separated parents who could not arrange contact for themselves. The centres allow parents and children to adjust to child contact in a safe and neutral environment.

The use of such centres, when court-directed, has been reinforced since 2000 by judicial protocols, the first of which was endorsed by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, when president of the Family Division, and was later updated and revised by her successors. One of those was Sir James Munby, who sadly died earlier this month. In a speech in 2018, he said:

“Everyone in the family justice system knows just what a vital role is played by Child Contact Centres and the contact centre movement. Child Contact Centres enable contact which otherwise might not occur to take place and they play a central part in maintaining, and if necessary restoring and rebuilding, the child’s relationship with parents, grandparents and other relatives”.


He went on to say:

“NACCC and the whole contact centre movement are a distinguished example of the voluntary sector at its very best and of civic society operating as it should”.


Sir James, for those who knew him, was never given to understatement, but in that he was completely correct.

It is the experience of all of us who work, or have worked, in the family justice system that such centres are now essential in enabling courts, Cafcass and those advising parents, but also unrepresented parents and marginalised grandparents, to manage contact problems and disputes. They facilitate supported contact and, for those cases requiring more vigilance, they can provide supervised contact.

Typically, use of a centre is a fairly short-term measure—a temporary solution on the way to more normalised arrangements. It is certainly the experience of all judges that it is very gratifying to see contact arrangements progress in a way that moves the arrangements away from the centre, perhaps after six months or so, with the use of a well-run centre having reassured, typically, an anxious mother and/or a suspicious and resentful father, that contact can proceed away from the centre and in the community.

The strengths and potential weaknesses of contact centres were shown in the recent report by Cordis Bright, published in 2023. This amendment builds on that. Its emphasis is on the use of

“national standards for safeguarding and preventing domestic abuse”.

Those who refer a family to a centre should already be required to inform the centre of the relevant background history and, in particular, any violence, abusive behaviour or conflict, so that the more profound problems can be screened out and conflict avoided.

Those working in centres need training to identify and deal with the risks. Having accreditation, as proposed in the amendment, which would require all centres to work to the same standard, will be important in helping centres deliver their services. It will underpin the confidence of those using or thinking of using such centres and will further safeguard the children concerned. It is on that basis that I beg to move.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I agree with every word of the noble Lord, Lord Meston. One of the rather sad aspects of a minority of families who cannot get on and separate is that they so often do not recognise that the children love both of them. It is all too common for one parent to say, “The child won’t want to see daddy; she can’t stand him”, or for daddy to say, “I know that I won’t be allowed to see her; that woman can’t bear me”. This is, I regret to tell your Lordships, absolutely typical.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Wednesday 25th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Motion K1 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. I thank the Bill team and the Minister for our very useful meeting yesterday, and, as ever, I must declare my interest as a state school teacher.

When we talked to the Bill team yesterday, I thought that they almost seemed to use the language of this amendment. As we have heard, the Sara Sharif review says that the overview is at fault, not the system; but this amendment seems the very way of tightening oversight without, as has been mentioned, penalising adoptive parents and children, where the concern was about a previous iteration of their life. This seems to be the crux of the amendment. The Minister actually said the Bill says that “almost all” children fall within the Bill. I think this tightens it up, so hopefully all children will fall within the purview of this Bill.

Moreover, it seems to me that, in the Bill as it stands, the local authority could not require a child who left local authority care and returned to their family, say, three years ago, to attend school, while they could for a child who came off child protection three years ago. I do not understand that at all. At the moment, I am not clear about the Bill as it stands. I think Motion K1 makes it much clearer, and I implore the Government to accept this.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, has just said. As a family judge, I had a number of cases where children had been on protection orders—and, in particular, supervision orders—and I vividly recall an appalling case in Liverpool where there was a continuing supervision order that was utterly disregarded. I called the Director of Social Services to explain it, and she was absolutely thinking that it did not really matter; so everything that can be done to put added pressure on making sure that children who are home educated are kept under proper supervision by local authorities seems to me to be absolutely crucial.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I will confine myself briefly to supporting Motion B. It is commonly agreed now that the pilots of the pathfinder model in selected family courts have been a success and represent the way ahead. This model has been shown to reduce delays significantly and has forced the focus on to making things better for the child concerned, rather than on the parents’ disputes and confrontations. That model has developed sufficiently well, in that the delay in moving it on into the mainstream should really now be avoided. It means that the very recently announced expansion into child-focused courts will be welcome.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I was going to be brief in agreeing with what the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, just said and in welcoming Motion D, because the Government’s proposed amendment in lieu, which relates to sibling contact, is to be welcomed; indeed, it is a pleasant surprise. It promotes the local authority’s duty from the schedule to the Children Act to Section 34 of the Act, and reinforces it as a positive duty to allow contact between siblings; at the same time, it gives the court a major say in the type of contact, the level of contact and how it should progress.

Through their amendment, the Government have recognised in primary legislation the real significance of sibling relationships, particularly when siblings have to be separated and have differing needs. These are children whose parents have failed them, and the most important relationship left to them is with a sibling. The courts and legal professionals are familiar with the working of Section 34, which will now govern these cases, and the amendment will be a valuable, beneficial addition to it.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I chaired a Select Committee on adoption some years ago and very much welcome this sibling amendment. It is absolutely excellent. I remember we met a number of children who were in care. One boy of 15, with four younger brothers and sisters, said to us, “No one tells me how my brothers and sisters are getting on—I brought them up”. This is excellent, and the Government are very much to be congratulated on it.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords, we very much welcome the Government’s amendment in relation to sibling contact and hope very much it makes a tangible difference in practice. I will speak briefly to my Motion F1, which relates to how we can provide the highest-quality care for the most vulnerable children: those who are deprived of their liberty. As we have already debated, this must involve the local authority and the integrated care board.

The Minister will be very familiar with the difficulty of getting health to the table, even if the door is often held wide open by the local authority. But of course the cost of them not being there is borne by children, whose cases end up being repeatedly delayed because of disputes between health and social care as to who is responsible, who are moved from placement to placement without any join-up, and who attend emergency services without up-to-date information about their needs. My amendment would go some way to addressing this.

However, I am encouraged by the Minister’s promise—which is what I wrote down in very large letters, anyway—that the integrated care board involvement would be “locked in from the outset”. If that is what the Government are going to do, and if the Government are going to create some innovation funding opportunities to see true integrated work between health and social care, then I am grateful to the Government and look forward to following how that develops in practice.

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Our children are navigating a period of profound emotional and neurological development. They are working out who they are and where they belong. To layer on top of that the intensity of social media with constant feedback, exposure and comparison is simply too much. They are not equipped for it; nor should they be expected to be. So I sincerely hope we back my noble friend Lord Nash’s Motion.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I too support very strongly the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. I am not going to say anything about it because it has been very well said already by other Members of this House. I also support what the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said. I thought he put it, as so often, very powerfully. I will add one point to what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, said, with which I entirely agree. Parliament—both this House and the House of Commons—is being marginalised. These Henry VIII clauses are an extremely good example of this marginalisation, and it is time the House of Commons understood it, as we understand it very well in this House.

[Baroness Cass (CB)]

My Lords, I was going to talk about the consultation, which is fundamentally not fit for purpose, but other noble Lords have covered that well, so I want to make a couple of other points about the way in which the Government are failing to understand the impact of social media on our children, as exemplified in the press today by this latest quick and dirty pilot on 300 children and young people, which would not stand up to scientific scrutiny. What on earth are we going to learn from that when there is extensive literature, not least from Australia, that we can look at without doing something on which we are apparently going to base part of the government response? It is ludicrous.

The Government are taking a very narrow view of social media. They are locked into the psychological aspects of it, which are hugely important, but they are failing to look at the wider aspects and the direct harms that are being reiterated time and again by professionals in schools and clinics and by the families who are sitting up in the Gallery now. It is disrespectful to the trauma of those families and to the people who are suffering direct harm to continue to grab headlines with these cheap efforts to say that we are piloting something that will give us no information at all, when the strength of feeling in this House and outside this House is manifestly clear. I will again be supporting the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and I also support the approach outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, in her amendment.