Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Spielman Excerpts

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments proposed by my noble friend Lady Barran. These proposals are clearly well intentioned but there are reasons why this has not been done before, and her desire to explore how these amendments are intended to work is absolutely right.

Just to put it in context, in a typical local authority, there are 400 or 500 schools and nurseries. This goes beyond anything that can reasonably be characterised as a “partnership”. So, how will it work? How much capacity will it absorb in each of those? What will it add?

The core documents that all these providers must work with in keeping children safe in education and working together, get bigger and bigger each year. Many schools and childcare providers are close to the limit of complexity that they can manage.

I should have declared an interest at the outset, as a former chief inspector of Ofsted.

Most schools that fall down on safeguarding at inspection are small—typically primaries, often standalone primaries, and special schools. The vast majority take safeguarding seriously but some are struggling with the complexity. We need to be very sure about layering on safeguarding partnership responsibilities and, later in the Bill, corporate parenting duties, on top of all the existing duties. It may not add anything to safeguarding and, in some cases, could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and drives good staff out, or forces early years providers to close.

Generally, layers of duties that make everyone responsible tend to blur who has the primary responsibility in any given situation. There will be the greatest value in these provisions if they work to achieve maximum simplicity and clarity, so that they are workable in the hands of normal, well-intentioned people.

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak after such knowledgeable contributions from all noble Lords. It is fair to say that all the amendments in this group are wrestling with the same issues, which have been raised by the Children’s Commissioner and by the independent review into child social care, led by the honourable member for Whitehaven and Workington.

We want to include education and childcare agencies in safeguarding arrangements. Indeed, schools already play a huge part in this area and make a significant percentage of safeguarding referrals where they have concerns about a child. But in practice it is hard, because of the number of organisations and their differing size and capacity.

We have heard from all sides on this, with many calling for full statutory partner status for education and childcare—such as in Amendment 24 from the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield—while others are worried about workability. We fear that we may err on the side of caution regarding how full statutory partner status could work in practice, although we will of course reflect on the points made by all noble Lords.

We support the aims of Amendments 21 to 23 from the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, who has such a depth of experience and understanding of these areas in general and of family hubs in particular. Amendments 20 and 25, from the noble Lords, Lord Hampton and Lord Bichard, aspire to have an inclusive and non-bureaucratic approach to these arrangements. Naturally, we fully support Amendments 26 to 28, from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran.