Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, at Second Reading I said that, while I welcomed the Bill, it was a cause of great sadness that the late Baroness Massey of Darwen was not there to participate. It is a cause of sadness that, had she been here, she would have had her name on this amendment rather than me, with much more power and justification behind it. At the time of her untimely death, she was working with a group of us in this House to try to find ways of having the voices of children heard more regularly in the day-to-day work of this House, particularly in some of our committees. That is work that is yet to be completed, and we must carry it on.

The Josh MacAlister review showed us that, while we have a plethora of different organisations trying to look after the needs of the young people we are talking about in a variety of different ways, with an enormous amount of data about what they are and are not doing, the fact that we had to have a large-scale review to collate and understand this data—which required tremendous resources but which was carried out very effectively—and that we spent as much time understanding what it was not telling us as what it was telling us, is in itself telling.

I particularly support the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Cash. In trying to improve a situation that has developed over the last 20 or 30 years, and which at the moment is causing local government across this country huge difficulties because of the statutory duties that we have heaped upon it in legislation after legislation, with the best of intent, we have a system that is not working. We have an opportunity in the Bill to learn from the lessons of trying to do the right thing but clearly going about it in the wrong way, and to do it in a much better way.

I particularly took the points that, first, children should be listened to, and, secondly, that, in trying to provide the right services for these young people, we should be driven by the demands they require to make their lives better, rather than by the inadequacies of the current range of supply, which is hugely varied in both its coverage and the type of delivery, and the good or bad effect of that delivery.

For all those reasons, I support this group of amendments. I implore the Government, and all of us, to learn from the lessons of the past and try to do better in the future.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 117, in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Tyler and others. The decision on where a child is cared for in the system is crucial to the child’s life, so we should listen to children with care experience. As we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, it may affect their ability to keep contact with wider family and friends, and other factors were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Meston. It will make a difference even to their ability to keep in contact with a teacher who they might trust—that can be quite important in children’s lives. It can otherwise be very disruptive to their education if they are put a long way from where they previously went to school. As we know, children with care experience usually have less of a chance to get good educational qualifications than other children, and that has an effect on their whole-life chances.

As my noble friend says, it cannot be left to the Secretary of State under the title of “such other persons”. The category of those most directly affected by these regulations must be named in the Bill, and it is vital that children have the confidence that they will be heard. The slogan, “Nothing about us without us”, is very apt in this context.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Since we are forming a set for Amendment 117, I will stand up now, having attached my name to it, and will focus chiefly on that amendment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has stolen my starting line with her final line: nothing about us without us. I first used that phrase in a debate on rather similar amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill. I think that your Lordships’ House and the country are increasingly coming to realise that we have to listen to children far more.

In this context, I will cite an interesting case from the past week, where a 14 year-old who had been tricked by his parents into going to Ghana took his parents to court. The Court of Appeal ruled that he should have the right to come back to Britain, as he wanted to do. That is an interesting court case that shows how, generally, our legal system is starting to listen more and more to children. It is important that our legislation does so and that that is in the Bill.

This raises issues that I will come back to on a later group, but the basic point about the regional care co-operatives is that they will take decision-making further away from local authorities. People have been studying this, and the care review evidence group, for example, said that

“care will need to be taken that these structural reforms do not dilute local accountability mechanisms”.

Making sure that children are actually heard in the making of regulations is in some way a counterbalance to the risk that quite a lot of experts have identified in taking this approach.