Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Spielman Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. Having been sent to a boarding school for some years from the age of 10, it seems to me that the last place that somebody should go if they are a looked-after child, and therefore already displaced, is a boarding school. They would be shunted to one place and rejected again and shunted to another. I would be very strongly concerned that looked-after children should not be sent to a boarding school.

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

I shall speak to several amendments—to Amendment 170, on a capacity plan, and to Amendment 134B, on planning. I declare my interest as a former Ofsted chief inspector, where I spoke repeatedly over seven years about the issues with sufficiency in many parts of the country, and the urgency of taking action to enable homes to open in the places where they were needed.

I support what my noble friend Lady Evans just said, and I will not cover the same points about planning. I will say that the most acute need is partly in the most expensive areas, for obvious reasons, and partly for the children with the highest needs, for whom it is most difficult to configure, recruit, train and get a home open where we need it, when the children are there. We need planning for high needs. I stress that capacity planning should pay particular attention to the very high-needs children, whose care accounts for a startlingly large proportion of the total spend on care, and whose needs, in the main, are predictable, if not from birth then from very early in life. There is a high level of certainty of that being needed all the way through their childhood, and many of them will, sadly, also be in care homes in their adult lives. We need that focus and urgency to do everything that can be done, and to think intelligently, sufficiently far in advance, to enable homes to open so that, at the point and age at which children need them, they can move to somewhere within a reasonable distance of home.

I reassure the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler- Sloss, that the existence of children in unregistered accommodation is a serious concern to Ofsted. We spent a significant amount of our resources on putting pressure on those accepting placements of children to register as children’s homes, as they should.

I will speak briefly on a couple of other points. I support the boarding proposal for those for whom such schools are genuinely the right place; it is a way to create stability and a strong partnership with foster parents to make something more stable and enduring—in certain cases. The principle that it should at least be considered is important. I also support Amendment 165. As others, including my noble friend Lady Sanderson have said, that seems so obvious that one cannot imagine that it is not happening everywhere already.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

I support Amendment 119, in the name of my noble friend Lord Agnew, about the availability of boarding places. I do so as a former south London boy who was, rather unexpectedly, because of family circumstances, sent away to a boarding school—with, I believe, considerable financial help. Pretty much every child in care I have ever spoken to, when I have asked them, as I tend to do when I meet them, what the biggest issue facing them is, replies that it is the lack of a constant adult in their lives—the revolving door of people responsible for them. This leaves issues of lack of trust, which can stay with such children all their lives.

In a boarding school, a child has a constant adult—often a housemaster or mistress. I accept that it might not be appropriate for all children, but I agree that children should be offered it. It can be a very inexpensive way in which to look after these children, although obviously that is only a secondary consideration. I have seen the benefit of this in many cases of young people who have experienced boarding, thanks to the Royal National Children’s SpringBoard Foundation.

I support the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and others about unregistered settings and about children being sent away many miles from their home.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I realise that, quite often, we are very privileged in this House that, when there is a Bill, we get showered with briefings from all sorts of organisations. Of course, we read them, and then we say, “Oh my goodness, I did not understand this. I did not know about that”. Then, when we come to debate in the Chamber, we get real expertise, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Meston, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, who bring that added understanding and information. In fact, I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, who mentioned Learn with the Lords, and when I do a Learn with the Lords session, and they ask, “Why are you in the Lords?”, I say it is because we have got real people who are experts in the field, and when you listen to them, you say, “Wow”. That is not just in this debate.

When I looked at the briefing from the Nuffield Foundation, I was just absolutely shocked. It was not something in my understanding or that I particularly knew about. I do not want to repeat the figures—the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester said we should not repeat things—but when you read the briefing, perhaps they do need to be repeated because they are quite shocking. The number of children being deprived of their liberty through the High Court is rising and rising—102 in 2017, and in 2024 it had gone up by 1,100%. These were meant to be last-resort measures, but there were 10 times as many applications to deprive children of their liberty to the High Court as there were applications for secure accommodation orders between July 2022 and March 2023. We have talked a lot about the voice of the child. It has sort of been a mantra of this part of the Bill, and yet only 10% of children were present at hearings considering their case. So where was the voice of the child? The other figure which quite alarmed me was that 89% of parents or carers were not represented at hearings.

Of course, these children are not only the most vulnerable children but also, in most cases, very difficult children to manage and to support. You need highly trained and professional people to be able to do that. Sadly, those numbers of people are not always available. The final part of this briefing, I noticed, said that costs are escalating—not that costs are everything—but outcomes are not improving. You would think if costs were going up, the outcomes would be improving.

Finally, I want to deal with one point that was made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, because it quite surprised me. She talked about children in handcuffs. The reason I was surprised about that was that I remember that, during the coalition period, one of our MPs sent a letter around saying, “If we have achieved anything, it is to stop the use of handcuffs on children”. I was quite shocked to hear that, and I went to ask my noble friend Lady Tyler if I had got this wrong and she said she thought I was right. I do not know where this is happening, and we need to find out. I really look forward to the Minister’s response on this.

I added my name to Amendment 132, in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, on expanding the legal duties of the independent review officer.

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to speak to Amendments 119 to 124 very briefly. We have touched on some very important points, and there is something that still needs to be crystallised. As others have said, these are some of the most troubled children in the system. They are also the ones whose care is probably the most expensive of all. Such specialised arrangements have to be made. We have touched on the tensions here between local authorities, the health service and the justice system. One of the reasons for the increase in the number of orders is the reduction in the number of justice secure beds and also tier 4 mental health beds. We have this terrible lacuna around children whom the health system deems to have, for example, untreatable personality disorders but who very clearly need to be looked after somewhere where both they and others can be kept safe and to have everything that we can do to improve their lives and to help make life work for them on a permanent basis in a healthy, humane way. This is an enormous challenge. I would very much like to hear the Minister explain how the health functions of government are also going to be tied into making the deprivation of liberty scheme work.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My Lords, as others have said during the course of this important debate, Clause 11 is about provision for some of the most vulnerable children in the country and the importance of ensuring that adequate support and necessary safeguards are available to them. The measures in Clause 11 brought forward by the Government seek to bring more children, who would otherwise be deprived of their liberty under the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court, into a statutory scheme where they will benefit from enhanced safeguards and protections. I will say more in response to specific amendments about those enhanced safeguards and protections.

The clause provides a statutory framework to authorise the deprivation of liberty of looked-after children in provision other than a secure children’s home where there are not enough places, and which cannot meet the needs of all this cohort. Noble Lords will be aware of the pressing need to ensure that these children are provided with sufficient suitable placements to meet their various needs, including in Scotland.

This brings me to government Amendments 125 and 128, which will allow local authorities and others in Scotland to seek authorisation in Scottish courts to deprive children of their liberty in relevant accommodation in England. As noble Lords will be aware, relevant accommodation will have the primary purpose of care and treatment and will also be capable of being used to deprive a child of his or her liberty if required in connection with the provision of care and treatment. We are also making a consequential change to amend the language from “restrict” to “deprive”, to ensure consistency with existing amendments to Section 25 of the Children Act 1989 provided by Clause 11. These amendments will ensure that Scottish local authorities can access all forms of accommodation to enable a child to be deprived of their liberty in a placement that best meets their needs.

Amendment 119A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, addresses important issues around how best to support and protect another vulnerable group of children by seeking to allow children who have an education, health and care plan and who are in residential schools to be deprived of liberty in those settings under this legislation. The primary purpose of a residential school is to educate the children living there. Each child’s EHCP will have specified requirements to meet the child’s educational needs. In contrast, Section 25 is a specific legal route for placing looked-after children in specific accommodation where there is a need to avoid absconding or injury to the child or another person, often due to complex trauma. Clause 11 will not require any child to move from a residential school that is meeting the child’s needs. Where deprivation of liberty is required for a child living in a residential school, mechanisms other than Section 25 can be considered. For older children, that might include an application to the Court of Protection.

Amendment 119B seeks to remove “injure” from the clause but, as the noble Baroness spells out, is probing what is meant by the terms within the criteria under Section 25 of the Children Act. I am grateful for the opportunity to clarify that “injure” in this context has a wide meaning, including physical, mental or emotional injury. The criterion for an order under Section 25 is long-standing and has been well tested by the courts. I confirm for the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, that Section 25 orders are issued by the family courts. I am confident, given the long-standing and well-tested procedures for Section 25, that it will continue to ensure that children can be deprived of their liberty to keep them safe where appropriate and necessary.

Amendment 120A seeks to ensure access to education for children in the new relevant accommodation outlined in Clause 11. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, that access to education for our most vulnerable children is of the utmost importance to ensure that they can thrive and get on well in life. That is why there is substantial existing legislation in this regard, setting out the legal duties on local authorities to promote children’s educational attainment and include educational needs within care plans, as well as regulatory requirements for children’s homes to meet children’s educational needs. The intention behind “relevant accommodation”, which will be registered children’s homes, is to focus on ensuring that the child obtains the relevant treatment, which may involve depriving them of their liberty, but where they may also be able to have, for example, continued access to the community, including for education. It is also more likely to provide the closeness to the community and to their homes which several noble Lords have rightly said is an important right and need of children that must be continued.