Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Crisp Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, as this is the first time I am speaking in Committee, I declare various unremunerated positions in Gypsy, Traveller and Roma organisations. I wish just very briefly to comment on Amendment 322, on nomadic organisations. I should say that all the evidence I have seen, and many conversations, attest quite firmly to the fact that most Gypsies and Travellers, that small minority who lead a nomadic life, welcome registration and the offer of support from local authorities—although I shall have something to say about that later. This amendment does not correspond to the experience of Gypsies, Travellers, boaters or showmen. I just briefly add that it seems that most of these amendments are at odds with the reality of the situation of most children who are not in school, and with the intentions of the Bill, but I will not prolong the debate at the outset at this stage.

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, I am delighted to have the chance to speak after the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and his eloquent and rather moving statement to the Committee about how he sees this. Echoing those important points, in the end this is about relationships, and about children and their needs and relationships. As the noble Lord said, with the Bill there is a real danger that this will be hugely disruptive for local authorities and parents, and in many ways could be a recipe for trouble to come if we get this wrong. But there are ways in which we can get this right and get proportionate reporting around the Bill. So there is a lot to get right here.

I will come back to various of those points later, but the simple point I wanted to make here was in relation to Amendment 238, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, which is about the requirement to know which parents are educating, how and for how long. We will come back to that point in various ways in later groups. There are two key points here. One is about safeguarding, where there is an issue with at least one of the parents, which the noble Lord, Lord Storey, has an amendment on, and there is one about the division of time between parents educating, which the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, has an amendment on.

This whole section needs to be rethought. What do we really need to know? We need to know which parents are taking responsibility, and where they are and how they can be contacted, but it seems that the rest of it is superfluous. I simply make those points in response to Amendment 238.

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 234 in particular, to which I have put my name, and, more generally, endorse the views that my noble friend Lord Lucas and the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, just set out.

I have just begun to engage with home education as a concept and as a community, and it is clear right from the start that the community is very well motivated and, indeed, deeply reflective about education in this country and how it works, and it has a lot of expertise into which government should be trying to tap and learn from rather than regiment and regulate. If it should turn out that the worst happens and my noble friend Lord Lucas is indeed forced to step back from advocating support for this sector, I am sure that I and other noble Lords will be very willing to pick this up and continue the discussion.

I thank the Minister and her team for all the communication that there has been over the summer, as there have been some very comprehensive communications and emails that have been very helpful and will be very useful today.

I want to make just one brief point today, which is relevant to Amendment 234 but also to all those in this group, which is the point about trust. Trust is the way home education works—trust and mutual understanding. In many ways, the Bill as drafted gives huge powers to the Government which appear to be based on a lack of trust and a determination to regulate. They are very detailed and prescriptive and will cause all sorts of practical difficulties, and are based on a misunderstanding about how much of home education actually works.

Now, it is true that some local authorities are not as positively motivated as others. It is certainly true that all are extremely overworked in this area. It is difficult to see what is gained by generating vast amounts of paper and reporting which go into a drawer and are not much looked at.

To conclude, if it is not too late, a rethink in this area would be helpful. There could be a pulling back of some of the prescriptiveness and a better understanding from government—centrally and locally. There could be more support for local authorities and a clearer direction from the Government to get the approach right. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, this group concerns data protection and sharing. Obviously, we are dealing here with some very personal data. People want to be sure that it is handled right and not shared with the wrong people. Where families are in the process of breaking up or where abuse is concerned, it is particularly important that the data does not get to the wrong people. By and large, the amendments in this group for which I am responsible are self-explanatory. It would be most helpful for me first to listen to the Minister responding on where the Government find themselves. I beg to move.

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, I want to say a few words about Amendment 254A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, to which I have added my name. I want to spell out what I suspect noble Lords understand fully, which is that there are issues here. In certain cases, where perhaps one parent has been abusive to their child, partner or spouse, it is vital that addresses are not made available to that parent.

Perhaps I could just go back two or three steps and preface my remarks by saying, first, how much I appreciate the warm remarks on home education made by the Minister in opening. They set a much better tone than has tended to come through in this debate. Something else that I omitted to say at the beginning is that my thanks go to the Minister and her officials for the excellent meeting we had. It lasted much of the day and, frankly, they were very open and willing to discuss things; that was very helpful. I do not know how much movement we got out of it—we will see during the course of today—but it was helpful to have that meeting and to understand things clearly.

As all noble Lords have said, there is an issue of balance here between supporting the good people who are providing home education because it is best for their children, or for another good reason, and supporting the missing children who are abused or neglected or have missed out. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, made an important intervention on this. We need to get that balance right.

We discussed with officials the issue dealt with in Amendment 254A. It was said that this could be picked up in regulations or whatever, but there needs to be something in the Bill to help parents who are specifically worried about safeguarding. This amendment is probably as simple as it gets in pointing out that where there is a concern about abuse, or an order standing against one parent, this should be handled by an authority in an appropriate fashion.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 267 in my name and in those of the noble Lord, Bourne of Aberystwyth, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, whom I thank for their support.

This amendment mandates local authorities not to keep the information they have on the register after the child has grown up, for two reasons. First, it is not necessary after the age of school education has passed. Secondly, many Gypsy, Traveller and Roma families have a well-founded mistrust of unnecessary scrutiny, targeting and intervention on the part of authorities. This amendment would allay their fears and ease liaison with the registering authority. It may be that discretion should be used in the case of SEND children, perhaps until the age of 25, but that is for discussion later. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will understand the need for this amendment.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes) (Con)]

My Lords, I must apologise: I should have advised the Committee that, as the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, alluded to, Amendment 237 is in an incorrect place on the Marshalled List—hence my calling Amendment 235A now.

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, this is the point at which I will make one of the two main interventions that I propose to make today, on my Amendment 254B. Before I come to that, I will comment on two other amendments. I added my name to Amendment 239, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, which would leave out the bit about the split between parents of how many hours are provided per week. This seems completely redundant information and is not necessary. I understand the point that the register should include some reference to the fact that parents are providing the education—it is not all being done through a private tutor—but it seems to me that the split is unconvincing.

When the Minister responded, essentially to this point, in an earlier group, she said something about wanting to know the number of hours of education taking place during the week. I may have misinterpreted but I think that is what was said, and it prompts me to ask a question of the noble Baroness. Does she have a number of hours per week that are expected to be covered by education? I should be interested to know if there is some number that the department has in mind.

The second amendment to which I have added my name, Amendment 260, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, is about local authorities being able to ask for any other relevant information. That is too much of a catch-all; enough information is already provided. I should be keen to hear her arguments on this and hope that the Minister will accept them.

My main intervention is on Amendment 254B, which concerns the first point at which parents are asked to provide a lot of information about who is providing the education. My amendment picks up the point that this is a large set of possible providers. As written, it could include the occasional organised event. It could include regular visits to the Guides, which is an educational charity, I understand. It could include a rugby club and other such things—anything that has an educational component as the amendment is written. I should say in parentheses here that I have received one reference from a provider of home education, a wildlife trust in the Midlands—I will provide the name to the Minister—which has already written to the people for whom it provides home education, saying that it will put this on hold until the Bill’s impact is clear. Already this wildlife trust—I do not know what level of education it provides—has stopped providing education to home-educated children because of its fears of what the Bill might mean for it in terms of the amount of information the trust has to provide in future.

However, my intervention here concerns the information that the parent or parents need to provide. In our useful discussions with officials, they made it clear that they would put in regulations something that implied that there was a certain amount of time beyond which one-off events would not count, and that events that happened once a week but were only three hours long, or primarily social and recreational, would be taken into account. That is fine in regulations but you need some parameters in the Bill to state:

“The requirement to provide the information set out in subsection (1)(e) only applies to providers which are providing regular education sessions amounting to 10 hours or more a week, which are not primarily social or recreational in nature, and”—


importantly, a point that we have not discussed at all—

“where the information has not already been provided to the authority in other formats, such as an annual report.”

Let me pick up that point about duplication. I am as keen as anyone to weed out fake or failing home-educating parents or arrangements. However, this register is not the way to do it. Form-filling will not catch the diversity of a child’s needs and of educational methods. It is the match between the two that is so vital, particularly as we know that more than half of those who are home educated have special needs of different sorts. This really is not one size fits all, yet the Bill seems to be treating it as though it is. Nor, I believe, will inspection of a child’s work and timetable, without the wider context of a parent’s own assessment of their child’s needs, be an effective method of doing so. The Bill misses out the most important evidence of all: the reality of that particular child and their circumstances. That is why the attempt to use the register to make any meaningful assessment of the quality of education provided is fundamentally flawed. There is an existing alternative.

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[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My Lords, we have had a good debate on this group—interestingly, with some rather different perspectives on the nature of the extent to which information should be included on the register. Let me deal with the range of points, I hope, as reassuringly and informatively as I can.

Amendment 235A was introduced by my noble friend Lord Hacking, although it seems that it had several parents—I will try to respond to the principles of it—and Amendment 239 is in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. These amendments would mean that registers would be required to contain the names and addresses of only the parents who are taking responsibility for the education of the child, rather than details of all parents of the child. Parents would also not need to provide information on how much time their child spends receiving education from each parent.

As I said in relation to Amendment 238 from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, the reason why both parents’ details are needed is because, by law, each parent has an equal responsibility for securing a suitable education for their child. This remains the case even if a parent is not providing the education themselves and is instead securing other providers to do so. Although I understand the intention behind these amendments, I worry that they would result in local authorities being unable to obtain necessary information.

My noble friend Lord Hacking gave a harrowing example in relation to access to information on the registers. I had hoped that my comments in our debate on the previous group had given some assurances around the control of and requirements for confidentiality around the register, which will provide some reassurance on that. Additionally, I am concerned that Amendment 239 would make it more difficult for local authorities to identify children who may not be receiving a suitable full-time education. Without having the time that a parent spends educating their child on the registers, how are local authorities to know whether the six hours that a child spends at a supplementary school each week is just part of their education or their whole education?

In relation to Amendment 235A, what if no parent claims responsibility for the education of the child? Unfortunately, we must face the reality that some children in England and Wales are receiving no education at all from their parents or from anybody else. Where this is the case, how can local authorities even begin to intervene if they are missing basic information, such as an up-to-date address for both parents?

Amendments 240, 241 and 247, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, seek to restrict or remove completely the requirement on parents to provide information on the amount of time their child spends receiving education from individuals other than the parent. I will come back in a moment to the point about hours and time, raised—appropriately—by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and my noble friend Lady Morris. But it is important that local authorities understand whether other persons are involved in the education of the child. This, alongside information on for how much time a child is educated by their parent, will support the authority to establish whether education is full-time or not and to fulfil their existing duty to identify children missing education. This is an important point, which the noble Lord, Lord Storey, also brought to our attention.

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

Will the Minister answer my supplementary question about whether the department or she have in mind a number of hours that make up full-time education that they are trying to get to through this process?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I said I will come to that—I am coming to it. I will also answer the other point about the annual report.

Once again, on this, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and other noble Lords for taking the time to meet my officials and to outline in detail their concerns about the nature of the information that we are requesting. I understand the concern not to limit the wide range of activities that effective home education may well involve, the range of different organisations that might be contributing to it and the burdens that might be placed. I reassure noble Lords that I am reflecting on the points raised.

Amendment 253, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, seeks to define what constitutes education for the purposes of for which activities parents must provide information on the registers. I anticipate that the noble Lord tabled this amendment to reduce parental burden, but it will actually do the reverse. It would bring a broad list of activities into scope of the duty to provide information, as any activity that results in the child learning would be classed as education. It is not the policy intention that registers will need to contain information on such a wide range of activities. The accepted definition of “education” is that it should contain elements of supervision and instruction that work towards defined objectives. This is supported by case law.

I recognise that noble Lords are concerned about the burden that the duty to provide information on a child’s education provision places on parents and local authorities. We will ensure that those burdens are kept as low as possible. Parents will not be required to give details on non-educational activities, for example, and we will outline this in detail in statutory guidance and, obviously, consult on the details.

Amendments 243 and 249, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and Amendment 254B, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, seek to place limitations on the providers that parents must provide information on. They set a threshold so that parents need to provide information only on organisations that offer more than six or 10 hours of education a week, that educate their child during the school day, or that are one-off or largely social and recreational activities. Although I appreciate that these amendments seek to reduce burdens on parents, the exemptions would potentially leave large gaps in the overall picture of a child’s education. This is particularly true if a child is attending multiple providers or does not follow the school timetable. In relation to Amendment 254B, as I mentioned, we will make it clear in statutory guidance that parents will not be expected to give details of non-educational activities for the register.