Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, this portmanteau Bill has its strengths, which I concede and welcome, particularly on child protection and safeguarding, pupil absence and kinship care—an area close to my heart that I campaigned on in the other place. It is also deeply flawed, particularly in Part 2, which is ideological and divisive, written at the behest of the teaching unions and careless of fundamental priorities around standards, parental choice, teacher recruitment and retention, local autonomy, innovation and independence. As more sensible Labour figures have rightly noted, it is a betrayal of the laudable record of not just the 2010 coalition Government but the first two Blair Administrations from 1997 onwards. It may well result in poor outcomes, social immobility and worse life chances, particularly for children from modest backgrounds.

My focus today is squarely on some troubling aspects of Part 2, which is predicated on the misguided belief that micromanagement by officials, whether in Whitehall or the town hall, will somehow enhance child safety or education standards. This may be the natural direction of travel of a bureaucracy, but it is one that this House must firmly resist. To echo the remarks of my noble friend Lord Frost earlier, the trend is starkly evident in the mandatory registration scheme for children not attending school. Consider the sheer intrusiveness of the data demanded. It compels parents to report the number of hours each of them spends educating, but parents educate their children constantly—when cooking a meal together, opening a bank account, or simply talking and living life together. Home education is often an extension of this integrated approach. It is not institutional provision for classes of 30, following rigid timetables. How are parents expected to delineate their specific hours with each child?

The requirements extend to the names, addresses and hours of everyone else contributing to each child’s education: grandparents, Sunday school teachers, music tutors, scout leaders or someone who gives a talk at an art gallery that the child visits with a grandparent. Parents must update the local authority within 15 days of any change for each child. It is, frankly, an absurd and impossible requirement. This constitutes state-mandated surveillance of family life on an unprecedented scale for law-abiding citizens choosing a perfectly legal form of education. As highlighted in the learned Aidan O’Neill KC’s legal opinion, there are significant questions over the scheme’s compatibility with the convention as well as with UK GDPR principles. The justification for such intrusive measures is that these children are “invisible”; they are not invisible to their parents, families or communities.

The tragic and appalling case of Sara Sharif was repeatedly raised in the other place. She was already on a list of children about whom social services had been concerned. The local authority had been notified that she was educated at home—already a legal requirement of schools. How would placing her on yet another list have made a difference? It is a question that demands an answer. We must do all we can to prevent such terrible tragedies occurring again, but we need to ensure that the actions taken will be effective. Even if another list was helpful, what possible justification is there for all the detail demanded in this Bill? I challenge the Minister to address that in her remarks at the conclusion of this debate. The limited research available shows that, although home-educated children are disproportionately referred for safeguarding concerns, they are significantly underrepresented on child protection plans. Let us make sure our approach is founded on empirical evidence and not prejudice, so that we genuinely protect children who need it without imposing ineffective bureaucratic restrictions on everyone else.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 22nd May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, these are probably the sorts of things that we should be doing in Committee. The noble Baroness introduced these amendments very well but I did, I am afraid—having known him for a long time—see the hand of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, in them. It is definitely his style, as all those who have known him for a long time would say. These are definitely the sorts of questions that we need answered, about the practicality of what is going to happen. All systems will have their flaws, but this is about having the structure to cope with those flaws. Getting that through would be very valuable.

To give fair warning, I will not move my amendment on the NHS number identifier later on.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I support Amendment 50, as well as the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, who gives his apologies to your Lordships’ Committee, as he is unable to be here to speak to his own amendments. I do so in the spirit of my noble friend Lady Cash, because these are probing amendments by and large, from a position of broad support for the objectives that the Government have laid down in this part of the Bill. Nevertheless, they are amendments that seek clarity in respect of the proposals that the Government are putting forward.

We need more information about the Government’s intention in adding new Section 16LB to the Children Act 2004. Such scrutiny is essential given that it would enable the Government to set in train a process that will be achieved through regulations—secondary legislation —but nevertheless is very far reaching and potentially re-establishes a regime that, as we have heard previously, was abolished in 2010 by the coalition Government for reasons that I will come on to.

It is hard to disagree with the logic that a single unique identifier would prevent children getting lost in systems that are meant to keep them safe, for example, if they are known by different names or their names are not spelled correctly, as happened in the tragic case of Victoria Climbié. I absolutely concur with my noble friend: the name Maria Colwell and other tragic cases hang over someone like me, who served on a social services committee, and many social workers and other professionals over many years. Ensuring that children do not slip through the net or disappear without services knowing where they have gone is paramount, as so many appalling national scandals involving dead or desperately abused children have shown.

It is appropriate that we look at the history and genesis of ContactPoint. It is important to be mindful of the need for qualitative data, not just quantitative data collection; there is a difference. Hence in 2003, in his report about the death of Victoria Climbié, the noble Lord, Lord Laming, recommended the establishment of a new national children’s database for all children under the age of 16. While scrutinising this report six months later, the Health Select Committee in the other place expressed reservations, saying:

“We believe that establishing a national database for children along the lines envisaged by the Laming Report would represent a major practical and technical challenge that should not be underestimated”.


The committee was instinctively open to the concept, likely for the same reasons that many are advocating for it today: if good data can save children’s lives, it of course needs further exploration. The committee went on to say that the implementation difficulties should not be a deterrent and endorsed the recommendation of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, for a feasibility study to explore the value and practicality of setting up a national database for children.

In 2004, as we heard, trailblazer pilots were conducted to assess the feasibility of implementing a children’s information index. Nine local authorities piloted a range of IT applications and a government study of the indexes concluded that implementation was operationally and technically feasible. By 2009, the Children’s Information Sharing Index had been renamed ContactPoint, with the aim of all local authority ContactPoint management teams having access to the database by autumn 2009. In old money, the estimated development and set-up cost of ContactPoint was £224 million and the estimated maintenance cost in 2009-10 was just under £44 million; most of this latter sum was for local staff to operate, maintain and ensure the security of ContactPoint.

Some giving evidence to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee in the Commons—and arguing strenuously for the SUI—were among those running ContactPoint back then and benefiting from those sizeable contracts. In their defence, they saw this as part of a bigger package and emphasised the need for early intervention in communities and strong relationships with families. The Children’s Charities Coalition said that,

“to really shift the dial we need further investment in early intervention and early help across our communities, and much greater focus on embedding that consistently and universally”.

It also called for further clarification on how the single unique identifier will be effectively applied.

Returning to the ContactPoint database, which was, as I said, abolished by the incoming Government in 2010, it was designed to contain names, ages, addresses and information of all children aged under 18, as well as information about their parents, schools and medical records. Respected organisations such as the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust quantified the scale and financial cost of data collection, the methods used to maintain and secure the data, and the treatment of critical issues such as consent, as part of a wider study. Its researchers found that children are among “the most at risk” from what they called Britain’s “database state”, with three of the largest databases set up to support and protect children failing to achieve their aims.

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[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I very much hope that the NHS number works, so that we can get on with data sharing. When I spoke in an earlier group, I explained the importance of feedback loops in a successful organisation. The amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, is about using the single unique data system to inform research and commissioning. I think he has a point. The precedent of government-supported HDR UK, which I spoke about in the earlier group, is highly relevant as we found a way to anonymise such data on a consistent basis for research purposes. Indeed, the Minister might find HDR UK a useful collaborator in speeding up her excellent work and avoiding Big Brother fears.

We have heard that the single unique identifier will not be used to create a giant database. I am therefore interested in how the Government can gather aggregated data, for example by NHS trust, social service area, education authority, type of family or medical condition. Examination of such group data can reduce future mistakes and costs, target resources and improve efficiency—all the things that I tend to talk about—and make social services and the police more effective. So I would appreciate an answer about how this can be done if we are ruling out a database—by letter if need be, because it obviously goes slightly beyond the scope of the amendment. I am grateful for all the information that has been given today. It has been very reassuring.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the very good amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton. If we are spending significant amounts of money on collecting this data and building a database and we have some of the best research facilities in the world, it seems to be sensible when looking at longitudinal studies to utilise that data properly.

My second and more prosaic point is that maybe I am missing something, but it seems to me that subsection (5) and subsection (14) are at variance with each other. They are quite loosely drafted in new Section 16LB. Will the Minister comment on that, because the great thing about the noble Lord’s amendment is that it has pointed out that there seems to be a discrepancy between the two subsections?

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I shall briefly speak in support of these amendments and of research. We do not need to have a national database established in order to do research because, first, research has to go through research ethics committees, so that is carefully scrutinised. You could take a representative sample of areas and use properly anonymised data. We can do that now. We can anonymise properly rather than using the old-fashioned pseudo-anonymisation, which was not helpful.

But in all these areas, I am afraid, we lack the evidence that we need to make sure that all our services are best targeted. When we are looking at very vulnerable children, we need to know which flags that are currently yellow flags should become red flags and which items do not show a correlation—although there has been an urban myth that they do correlate—so that the index of suspicion is appropriately targeted. To pick up on the point made by my noble friend earlier about having criteria, it is only through good research that we will get good criteria to determine the point at which we trigger an alert that a child is at risk and get that to happen earlier. It may well be that we are missing some important pointers just because they are not in people’s current consciousness, and there is a real danger in reacting to what I would call urban myths.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 9th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to add my name to Amendment 67, so ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff.

For me, this is very much a question of children’s rights. As the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said, Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child makes it clear that children must be free from violence and that Governments must do all they can to protect them from violence, using all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures. This amendment would ensure that the whole of the UK, not just Scotland and Wales, complies with the UN convention. Moreover, if we are taking children’s well-being seriously, we cannot continue to allow them to be subjected to physical assault. They are the only group, as the noble Baroness said, who are not legally protected from it.

Ministers say they are open-minded but want to see the review of evidence from Wales and from a range of voices. But, as already noted, we have ample evidence, from numerous countries, both of the negative impact of physical punishment on children’s well-being and the positive impact of its prohibition in terms of it having the desired effect of reducing the use of physical punishment. If she has not seen it, I would refer my noble friend the Minister to a recent article in Children and Youth Services Review which brings together much of that evidence.

As has already been noted, the evidence is sufficient for all the Children’s Commissioners, including from Wales, to be calling for reform. Indeed, they call the current law “outdated and morally repugnant” and reject the argument that it would lead to the criminalisation of parents. Polling shows consistent support among the general public for reform and new polling shows a majority of safeguarding professionals in support of change. Over half of social workers and teachers said the current law makes their work of safeguarding children more difficult.

I fear that the “waiting for Wales” argument is becoming a legislative form of “Waiting for Godot”. How long will we have to wait for another Bill that would provide such a perfect opportunity for reform? The Children’s Commissioners and a range of health and social care organisations are calling for urgent action now. Surely, we should be listening to them and stop prevaricating.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to oppose this amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, and its consequent Amendment 505. I believe it is an egregious interference in family life by the state and an intrusion. It is an attack on family rights and it will encourage a childish disrespect for authority. It is disproportionate and heavy-handed and it risks criminalising good and caring parents, as well as overloading children’s services departments.

The law as it stands is sensible. It outlaws violence, abuse and unreasonable chastisement. Crown Prosecution Service guidelines are clear that, if the actions of a parent cause anything that is more than transient or trifling, it is unlawful. This has been the law since 2004, when Parliament narrowed the scope of the reasonable-chastisement defence. The reasonable-chastisement defence simply permits parents to use very mild physical discipline, like a tap on the hand or a smack on the bottom, without being charged with assault. By definition, the defence allows only reasonable behaviour. Therefore, if the defence is removed, it is only reasonable behaviour that will become unlawful.

“Reasonable chastisement” is common and harmless. The Welsh Government admitted in 2021 that there was

“no definitive evidence that reasonable physical punishment causes negative outcomes for children”.

Research recycled by activist academics campaigning for a ban fails to distinguish between reasonable chastisement and beatings. The recent press statement calling for a ban by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, which appears to have become an annual event, included the claim that

“now is the time for this Victorian-era punishment to go”.

This kind of highly loaded language must bring into question whether the college was engaging in scientific debate or merely exaggerated polemic. Victorian-era punishment conjures up images of beatings that were outlawed long ago. Either the college is uninformed about the law or it is deliberately exaggerating.

Those who defend loving parents who use mild physical punishment within the context of a warm, nurturing relationship are opposed to child cruelty. The reasonable-chastisement defence will never prevent a court bringing in a conviction in a case of abuse. There is not a single reported case where this has occurred. As stated, the legal defence cannot be used where a parent causes anything that is more than transient and trifling. An example of the law in action took place in Torbay in 2018, where a stepdad was successfully prosecuted for smacking his four year-old daughter too hard. He had left a handprint on her bottom and the judge ruled, quite rightly, that he had acted unlawfully.

A core objective of the Bill is to address the concern that children at risk of abuse are falling through the cracks of our safeguarding system. However, a smacking ban would exacerbate this wrong by increasing the likelihood that genuinely at-risk children are overlooked. It would be a tragedy if major cases of abuse were missed because vital staff members were needlessly occupied with innocent parents. Those in genuine need will suffer while resources are wasted on cases where there are no real problems. Social workers will be even busier than they are already and, as a result, some vulnerable children will not get the help they obviously need.

Everyone wants the state to intervene to protect children who are in danger of abuse, but, if that is to be done effectively, the limited resources available need to be focused on identifying and helping those at risk, not investigating innocent, loving parents because the law of assault has become politicised by activists who do not agree with reasonable chastisement.

Making trivial smacks a criminal offence will cause misery for parents and children. Parents will be required to be treated as suspected child abusers by police and social services when they know they do not deserve to be treated in that way. We do not help victims of real abuse by creating injustice in families where there is no abuse. Some children will be removed from their parents; some will have to give evidence in court against their mother or father. This entirely unnecessary and unjust process would be devastating for the child and their parents, and it runs counter to the Bill’s stated aim to keep children and families together wherever it is safe to do so, as set out by the Minister at Second Reading.

--- Later in debate ---

The protection of children is critical and the Bill takes important steps to improve safeguarding. I hope I have assured the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, about the measures we are taking in the enormously important area of identifying and rectifying the situation that children who are subject to neglect find themselves in. I know that those noble Lords who have contributed to this debate in support of the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, will be dissatisfied with my response, but I hope they recognise the enormous range of work being included in the Bill.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I warmly welcome the Minister’s remarks, because at the heart of this debate there seems to be a mischaracterisation and misunderstanding of Section 58 of the Children Act 2004 and a conflation of mild admonition with assault by beating, which obviously should be subject to the full force of the law. For the avoidance of doubt, and just to sum up, would she agree with the words of her colleague the Minister of State, Catherine McKinnell:

“As the law stands, quite frankly, any suggestion that reasonable punishment could be used as a defence to serious harm to a child, or indeed death, as has been asserted, is completely wrong and frankly absurd”?—[Official Report, Commons, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee, 6/2/25; col. 464.]

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I hope I did make that clear earlier, but I am very happy to reiterate. It would be wholly wrong. It would not be in line with the law for the types of cases that we have heard about in this debate to be subject to the defence of reasonable punishment. The Crown Prosecution Service has been clear, as professionals are clear, that that would get nowhere near to this defence. I know that noble Lords will be disappointed, with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, with the response of the Government, but I think it is a reasonable recognition of the very strong action taken when children are subject to violence and the need to learn from those who have recently changed the law. That is a sensible and appropriate way to go forward in this case.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 12th June 2025 Lords Chamber

Finally, as the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, said, Amendment 99 in my name calls for the publication of a national offer. It is really important to draw the line here between the national offer and a local offer. The national offer should be a foundation that no care leaver should fall below. That does not mean we might not hope that local areas might be able to do more than that, if they have the resources or the capacity, or if they acknowledge a particular issue, problem or local circumstances. The local offer will vary from the national, but it should not fall below the foundation of the national level that meets the basics that should be available to every care leaver. That is the intention of this amendment.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to the excellent and compelling amendments in this group. In particular, I support Amendments 96 and 107A, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran.

The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, will remember that I spoke at Second Reading of her commendable Private Member’s Bill on mental health professionals, which I think was about 18 months ago. I raised the particular issue of children with complex needs—specifically children mainly in mainstream schooling who are diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome. For a number of years in the other place, I supported Tourettes Action in its research, profile-raising and fundraising. For full transparency, my brother is a professor of cognitive neuropsychology, specialising in human movement studies, which includes Tourette’s.

I do not wish to detain your Lordships’ House in discussing Tourette’s, but I want to make the point that one of the key issues that affects children who have Tourette’s is a lack of collaboration and consistency across schooling, primary care and hospital settings. In other words, often children behave badly in school and are excluded because they are not diagnosed with Tourette’s and do not get the clinical care that they need. That work between the two parts of the state is not happening, and there is a similar issue for children with complex needs in the care system.

Again, all these amendments are excellent, but the specific advantage of my noble friend’s amendments is that they would impose an imperative on the education sector, and specifically the health sector—primary care, hospitals and other clinical settings—to focus on those children leaving care with specific and very important pressing needs.

There are a wide variety of issues that affect young people in that situation, including housing—the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham have focused on those issues—but the advantage of these two amendments is that they would put a focus on primary care in the Bill. Yes, young people are worried about education, skills, training and housing, but probably the most important thing is their health.

On that basis, putting this in the Bill would be a positive move that would encourage different social care agencies and the people who write the statements for those children and young people, such as teachers and so on, to start thinking about what their healthcare pathway will be in addition to other pathways, such as housing, education and skills. For that reason, I support these amendments. I hope that the Minister will look kindly upon all the amendments, but those two in particular.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 100 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, which would insert a new clause aimed at giving all care leavers up to the age of 25 priority status in homelessness legislation. To that extent, it is a subsection of the much broader debate about how we look after care leavers.

The amendment would end a current anomaly in the law, whereby care leavers up to the age of 21 are entitled to priority under the homelessness legislation, if they present as homeless to their local authority, but not those between the age of 21 and 25. It is supported by a range of charities, not least Barnardo’s.

All young people need a safe and stable home in which to start their adult life—and, if you do not have that, it is difficult to access education, employment and health services. As we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, care leavers are more likely to be homeless than non-care leavers. Research by the charity Become shows that they are nine times more likely to become homeless, and that threat does not stop at the age of 21. Again as we heard from the noble Baroness, the numbers of young care leavers presenting as homeless has gone up by 50%.

We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, earlier that non-care leavers are staying at home much longer; the average age at which they leave is now 24, up from 21 a decade ago. Over the years, the legislation has been gradually catching up with that trend, beginning I think with the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000, which recognised that the state or local authorities need to support children beyond the age of 18. Again as we heard earlier, care leavers do not have the same safety net of family to fall back on.

There is a lot in the Bill which I welcome to support care leavers, in particular a recent amendment disapplying intentionality for care leavers, meaning that local authorities, when they have a corporate parenting duty, no longer view care-experienced people under 25 as being intentionally homeless. But the Bill needs to go a little bit further. Under the current legislation, all young care leavers under the age of 21 who present as homeless are deemed to be in priority need, which means that local authorities have an obligation to accommodate them. However, there is no such automatic protection for care leavers between the ages of 21 and 25. Under the current homelessness legislation, they are required to prove that they are vulnerable—something that is not defined in legislation. This means that they have go around getting letters from their GP, for which they may have to pay, and getting other letters from psychiatric services, to prove that they are vulnerable and their corporate parent is under an obligation to support them.

There is also a problem with children who are placed out of area. They are not apparently automatically eligible for the usual care support in the local authority in which they are now living, even if they have been living there for many years, whereas local care leavers have that entitlement. That seems to be an anomaly that the Minister might like to comment on.

Finally, the amendment would bring the homelessness legislation into line with the Children and Social Work Act 2017, which obliges local authorities to continue to provide support up to the age of 25. It will not be a panacea for all the problems facing care leavers, but it will be an important step towards ensuring that, when the worst happens, help is available for a young person who may have few other places they can turn to for help. So I encourage the Government to accept the amendment.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th September 2025 Lords Chamber

I expect that these amendments will not be acceptable at the moment, but it is very important to have this discussion, because we are a multiracial, multicultural society, with many different religions and, mostly, none at all.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I oppose this amendment. Time does not permit me to properly debate and discuss Amendment 471, so I will confine my comments to Amendment 465. I thought that the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Weir, were very apposite, and I more or less wholly agree with him.

I want to specifically talk about the first part of the amendment, which would replace the duty to provide an act of worship with

“an assembly which is principally directed towards furthering the spiritual, moral, social and cultural education”,

rather than the specific issue of replacing the daily act of worship. This amendment contains an incoherent phrasing that, in effect, amounts to an imposition of humanist beliefs. To refer to spiritual education, regardless of religion or belief, is absurd. To refer to moral education, regardless of belief, is irrational. It is impossible to make moral judgments without beliefs about what is right or wrong or beliefs about how these judgments should be made.

It is not possible to understand British society and culture without regard for the religious beliefs that have shaped its literature, music, art, history and institutions. The exclusion of religious belief from a social and cultural education in assemblies is illogical and will restrict pupils’ understanding. The assumption that it is possible to provide an assembly

“directed towards furthering the spiritual, moral … education of the pupils”,

without regard to belief, is illogical. In effect, these new assemblies would promote humanist beliefs and provide pupils with a highly partial account of spiritual, moral, social and cultural education.

As humanists are keen to point out, not everyone is religious. There are people who hold non-religious beliefs, but these are beliefs, and consequently shape the perspective, values and attitudes of those who hold them in ways that are not neutral. They are sincerely held, but they are not universally held. This is why Humanists UK, for example, campaigns so vigorously—it needs to persuade others who currently disagree with it.

There is also a disparity in parents’ rights to withdraw their child. Currently, all parents have the right to withdraw their children from collective acts of worship, but this amendment allows parents to withdraw their children from assemblies in schools that contain an act of worship but does not allow parents to withdraw their children from humanist assemblies. This two-tier system is deeply inconsistent and unfair. The state educates children on behalf of parents with their permission, and not against their wishes; the amendment is inconsistent with Section 9 of the Education Act 1996, and incompatible with Article 2 of the first protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights. I surmise that there has been no consultation with the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church or any religious bodies on this in respect of this amendment.

Without the context of religion, the content of these assemblies will inevitably focus on issues of a political nature, and views on these issues will have to be considered with religious perspectives excluded. There are already concerns about political impartiality in schools, and this amendment risks making matters worse.

Britain and its values are rooted in Christianity, and this continues to be reflected in our national life. Currently schools can accommodate important national days, such as Remembrance Day, within their acts of collective worship. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, spoke in favour of the Private Member’s Bill proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, earlier in the year, which aims to achieve similar changes to this amendment, arguing:

“Children need to be taught early the importance of generosity, kindness, neighbourliness … community support”.—[Official Report, 7/2/25; col. 968.]


But the fact that these are valued in contemporary British society is due in large part to the impact of Christianity. These values have positively transformed society and are still cherished in modern Britain. It is impossible to explain the development of these values to pupils without regard for the context of the religious beliefs from which they arose.

There is an assumption that Britain is becoming an increasingly secular country, which is used to support these amendments, but it is not borne out by recent studies which demonstrate a sharp increase in young people attending church. Dr Rhiannon McAleer, co-author of The Quiet Revival, states:

“While some traditional denominations continue to face challenges, we’ve seen significant, broad-based growth among most expressions of Church—particularly in Roman Catholicism and Pentecostalism. There are now over 2 million more people attending church than there were six years ago”.


The present legislation already allows for the consideration of all beliefs, and requires the head teacher to have regard for the background of pupils in determining the extent to which collective worship reflects Christian belief. If still unhappy, parents can withdraw their child. The proposals are trying to fix a problem that does not exist.

There is also the issue that the amendment extends to Wales, where the education system and governance are devolved.

For all the reasons that I have laid out, I oppose this damaging and wholly unnecessary amendment.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

As it is late, I shall just register my support for Amendments 465 and 471. I agree that a large number of young people and their parents do not adhere to a religious faith. It is clearly valuable and important for them to learn about the central faiths that influence our culture, but they are also entitled to have access to moral and ethical frameworks which do not depend on a religious faith so that they may arrive at their own moral compass. These amendments would enable that positive development.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 18th September 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough]

485: After Clause 62, insert the following new Clause—
“Parental complaints (maintained schools)(1) After section 29 of the Education Act 2002 insert—“29ZA Parental complaints: appeals(1) A complainant may appeal to the First-tier Tribunal (Health, Education and Social Care Chamber) where—(a) the complaint was against a maintained school in England under section 29(1),(b) the complainant was a parent of a registered pupil at the school at the time they first pursued the complaint,(c) the complaint specified one or more legal duties listed in Schedule 1A of which the school was alleged to be in breach,(d) the complaints process under section 29(1) was completed,(e) the complaint was not fully upheld in respect of one or more of the matters specified as described in paragraph (c), and(f) the complainant does not have and has not had any other prescribed right of appeal apart from that provided under section 29(1) and this section.(2) The Secretary of State must make regulations about appeals to the First-tier Tribunal in respect of subsection (1), including—(a) making and determining appeals;(b) the powers of the tribunal on determining an appeal.(3) Regulations under subsection (2) may include provision conferring power on the First-tier Tribunal, on determining an appeal against a matter, to make recommendations in respect of other matters (including matters against which no appeal may be brought).(4) A person commits an offence if without reasonable excuse that person fails to comply with any requirement—(a) in respect of the discovery or inspection of documents, or(b) to attend to give evidence and produce documents,where that requirement is imposed by Tribunal Procedure Rules in relation to an appeal under this section or regulations under subsection (2).(5) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (4) is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale.”(2) After Schedule 1 to the Education Act 2002 insert—“Schedule 1ALegal duties for the purposes of section 29ZA1 (1) The legal duties to which section 29ZA applies are as follows.(2) The Education Act 1996—(a) section 9 (Education in accordance with parental wishes),(b) section 402 (Obligation to enter pupils for public examinations), (c) sections 403 to 405 (Sex education),(d) sections 406 to 407 (Politics) and(e) section 542(1) (Prescribed standards for school premises);(3) The Education Act 2002—(a) sections 78 to 80B (General duties in respect of the curriculum), and(b) section 175(2) and (3) (Duties ... in relation to welfare of children);(4) The School Standards and Framework Act 1998—(a) section 1(6) (Duty in relation to infant class size),(b) sections 69 to 71 (Religious education and worship), and(c) section 114A (Requirements for food and drink provided on school premises etc);(5) Childcare Act 2006, section 40 (Duty to implement Early Years Foundation Stage);(6) Children Act 1989, sections 87 and 87C (Welfare of children in boarding schools and colleges and national minimum standards) and(7) The Education and Inspections Act 2006, sections 88 to 94 (School Discipline).””

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendments 485, 487, 488 and 489. Before I do, I warmly concur with and support Amendment 502YM in the name of my noble friend Lady Spielman, which I believe is clear, sensible and complementary to my amendments. The principle behind my amendments is simple, and it goes to the heart of the rule of law. The laws that this Parliament passes are not mere suggestions for our schools; they are the rules that must operate, and they must be properly followed. That requires accountability when those laws are broken.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

The noble Baroness raises a very important point, and these will all be matters that are being considered as the Secretary of State takes this important work forward. I can get a written note and put it in the Library to outline the way forward and where we are at this moment.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her well thought through and considered response. It ranged wider than I expected, but just for the avoidance of doubt, of course I deprecate any unreasonable or vexatious complaints against teachers from parents that might veer into anti-social behaviour of the type she mentioned in terms of WhatsApp groups. I am happy to put that on record.

This has been a very thoughtful and important debate and I am grateful to noble Lords who took part, not least the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and my noble friend Lady Spielman, who both brought great expertise and experience to the debate—the noble Lord from his time on Liverpool City Council and my noble friend from her leadership of Ofsted.

At its heart, this debate has revolved around a single clear question: do we believe that the laws passed in Parliament should be enforceable in schools? People are worried about a litigation culture, yet the evidence demonstrates that the current system of bureaucratic brick walls and institutional inertia is the true source of conflict and frustration. We have heard concerns about costs, but I ask again, what is the price of the status quo? What is the cost of a department that fails in its duty, and of parental trust in schools evaporating?

This accountability vacuum does not remain empty for long: it is filled by an entire ecosystem of unaccountable third-party advisers and activists. This is not, I suggest, a failure of individual teachers but a systemic failure. In the absence of clear enforcement, the law becomes muted and professionals are left rudderless. Into this void step commercial subscription services. I will give one final example in this debate. The Key is an organisation ironically first established by the Department for Education before it was privatised. When the previous Government consulted on draft guidelines for schools on gender-questioning children, The Key actively counselled schools that it would be unlawful to follow that guidance.

The accountability these amendments would introduce is not just for schools; it is for the entire advisory industry, which is funded by stretched school budgets. When the advice of these organisations is tested before a tribunal and found wanting, schools will quite rightly cease to pay for it. The market for bad advice will therefore, for the first time, face a correction.

These amendments are not a radical proposal. They do not seek to create conflict: they seek to provide a clear, fair and independent forum for its resolution. They would not undermine professional judgment, but they do subordinate it to the rule of law, which is as it should be. They give parents a voice and give the law teeth.

In conclusion, the choice is simple. We can endure the current inertia, condemning parents to a system that does not work, or we could take a meaningful step to restore accountability, uphold the will of Parliament and ensure that, when a parent has a legitimate concern that a school is breaking the law, they have somewhere to go. I believe we must choose the latter. For now, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment but will consider returning to it at a later date.

Amendment 485 withdrawn.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 14th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I will respond to Amendment 97 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and oppose it. It is over six months since we last debated this issue in Committee in June last year. I welcome the change in tack. A previous version of the amendment sought to abolish the reasonable chastisement defence outright. Amendment 97 is more measured, given the serious implications that such a change in the law would have for parents and children.

In England, the only parents who can use the legal defence of reasonable chastisement are those who use reasonable discipline, like a mum tapping a tot on the back of the hand to teach the child not to play with the electrical sockets at Granny’s house. The defence protects parents from being unfairly charged, prosecuted and convicted for smacking their own children, and does so only when no harm was caused and the parent’s behaviour is objectively reasonable.

We are not talking about allowing parents to get away with abuse, as Government Ministers have helpfully acknowledged from the Dispatch Box on previous occasions. Under the reasonable chastisement law, if a parent punishes a child in a way that causes anything more than temporary reddening of the skin, that is unreasonable and therefore illegal. Some in the media have exploited horrific cases of children being brutalised to try to bolster their case for outlawing mild parental smacking. I reiterate that abusers are prosecuted under existing law. The tragic cases that we have seen in the press invariably turn out to involve children who were well known to social services but the social workers were invariably overstretched.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 28th January 2026 Lords Chamber

I was pleased to add my name to Amendment 191A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley. This is an issue that we debated at length in the Employment Rights Bill, but I am hopeful that the Minister might look at it more favourably at this point. It also deals with complaints against teachers and their rights to accompaniment. During the passage of the Employment Rights Bill, Ministers recognised that accompaniment in formal proceedings is intended to provide calm, professional support and help processes work better in practice. Given the context in which staff work, that is obviously extremely important in schools. I hope that the Minister will recognise the importance of this issue for teachers and school staff, particularly those who choose not to be a member of a trade union. I hope that she will set out how the Government intend to ensure that existing frameworks and guidance reflect the need for fair and supportive disciplinary processes across school staff. Our school staff and teachers deserve to be treated with the same fairness, dignity and compassion as they show their pupils and colleagues every day. I beg to move.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendments 223 to 226, and your Lordships’ House will remember that we debated the issue in these amendments in June of last year. The amendments have two aims: to provide parents with an effective means of escalating a formal complaint about a school when they are not satisfied with the school’s response, and to introduce a mechanism for better enforcing the legal duties of schools in the provision of education, for example over political impartiality. Proposing these amendments allows for a debate that draws attention to breaches of education law, the failure of the DfE to enforce it or to support concerned parents and the disempowering of parents in the education of their children.

At present, there is little or no enforcement of significant parts of education law: first, because the school inspector at Ofsted does not consider compliance with education law per se. When challenged about rating schools hitherto as outstanding when they were clearly in breach of their legal duties, Ofsted has stated that there are many different obligations and that it is not a compliance-driven inspectorate. Inspectors are teachers by profession, so they may not always be equipped to make judgments over legal compliance.

Secondly, parents could, in theory, launch a judicial review against their child’s school, but the significant costs of such legal action and the damage it could do to the parents’ relationships with their child’s school are significant factors. Parents can use the school’s internal complaints process, and, at a state-funded school, if they remain dissatisfied, they can escalate their complaint to the DfE. However, there are examples of extremely poor handling of complaints by the department. The department occasionally appears to go to considerable lengths to evade making any decision and parents can literally be waiting years after they first submitted their complaint to the school before they receive a response, by which time their child may well have moved on to another school.

Consequently, failure to comply with some education laws is widespread and schools do not always take them seriously. It is common for teachers and governors not to know what education law requires, demonstrating that it is largely irrelevant in practice. There are exceptions; for example, inspectors will consider aspects of a school’s work on safeguarding, and schools are consequently more likely to closely follow the statutory safeguarding guidance, Keeping Children Safe in Education—although even here there have been concerns about schools’ practice.

The amendments would introduce a right for parents to appeal complaints to the First-tier Tribunal, rather than to the DfE, if they have completed the internal school process and remain dissatisfied. The internal school process usually has at least two formal stages. Parents would retain their ability to escalate a complaint to the DfE. The amendments would work by inserting new clauses into existing education Acts: the Education Act 2002, for local-authority maintained schools; the Education and Skills Act 2008, for independent educational institutions, including academies; and the Education Act 1996, for non-maintained special schools. Finally, Amendment 226 would allow for consequential amendments to be made.

As the hour is late, I will not go into detail on the amendments, but I will finish by explaining their impact. To make use of these provisions, parents would need to specify in their complaint the duty that they are concerned the school is breaching. There would also be some costs involved. Not all parents and complaints will be able to make use of these provisions. However, in those situations, parents would be no worse off, as they would still have their current ability to escalate to the DfE. The general effect, however, would be to increase awareness, among both parents and schools, of the school’s legal obligations. An increasingly clear focus on schools’ obligations may lead to greater objectivity in parental complaints and help reduce spurious complaints.

Whereas in the past schools have sometimes withheld information from parents on what they teach, the duty of disclosure would compel them to provide this information if an appeal to the tribunal was pursued, preventing secretive approaches to what children are taught about sometimes sensitive subjects. As tribunal judgments start to be issued, teachers and governors would become more aware of the legal requirements that they are under and take them more seriously, improving compliance and potentially reducing parental complaints in the long run. Politically sensitive judgments —for example, on whether particular teaching about gender identity is a breach of schools’ duty of political impartiality—would pass from the Secretary of State and the department to the tribunal, which would have a greater ability to prioritise a dispassionate consideration of the legal questions over political considerations. The Secretary of State and the department would also benefit, in that their policy decisions that lead to changes in schools’ legal obligations, or changes in statutory guidance to which those schools are legally required to have regard, would be given better effect in schools.

Although judgments of the tribunal at first tier do not set a binding precedent, unlike the decisions at upper tier, they would nevertheless build up a body of legal opinion on the application of education law that would be a valuable reference for governors, teachers and parents. If tribunal decisions repeatedly support bad practice, this would provide clear evidence to Parliament of the need for changes to education law. This may help cut through the claims and counterclaims about whether there are problems in schools’ teaching in areas such as RSE, providing a more objective basis for debate and evidence-based policy. For those reasons, I am happy to commend the four amendments tabled in my name.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 191 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, to which I have added my name. In doing so, I declare my interest as honorary president of COBIS. Unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Knight, is unable to be here today, but I am grateful to him for sharing recent correspondence he has had with the Minister on this matter.

It is critical that we act to improve the safeguarding arrangements between schools here in England and international schools overseas. The Safeguarding Alliance has supplied a couple of very concerning examples of recent cases where the system has clearly failed. In one international school, sexually explicit material was discovered on a school-owned computer during recent IT maintenance. A subsequent investigation identified multiple videos showing a member of staff livestreaming and recording explicit content which was stored within their user account. The content was assessed as being of such an extreme nature that the local UK embassy declined to view or handle the material. A referral was made to the Teaching Regulation Agency, but the TRA confirmed that the matter fell outside its jurisdiction. The member of staff is now working in another country and able to return to teach here undetected.

In a second example, a nursery teacher was discovered by a parent in the act of sexually abusing a child within the school setting. The parent immediately reported the incident to the school’s senior leadership team. The school made an immediate referral to the relevant local authorities and attempted to report the incident to the TRA, but as the school was based overseas, the TRA was unable to accept or process the referral. The school had no clear alternative reporting or regulatory pathway for international safeguarding concerns involving a UK-regulated teacher. The alleged perpetrator subsequently left the setting, and their current whereabouts remain unknown.

For this reason, Clause 46 is very welcome, in that it extends the jurisdiction of the TRA to those who have previously worked in England. It will give much-needed assurance to employers as teachers return from overseas. However, there remains a narrow but significant gap: where an individual who is qualified to teach in England through IQTS has completed induction in a British school overseas but has never taught in England, there is currently no route for serious misconduct overseas to be reported to the TRA. As the Minister has agreed in correspondence, this covers a very small number of teachers, but this loophole remains a risk to children if it is not closed.

The substantive reason for the Government resisting this amendment was set out in a letter which the noble Lord, Lord Knight, received last night. In essence, it argued that the TRA cannot practically be expected to investigate such incidents overseas. Yet this is precisely what it will have to do with incidents in relation to Clause 46. I want to stress on behalf of both me and the noble Lord, Lord Knight, that this amendment does not seek to turn the TRA into a global regulator or require the Secretary of State to investigate all misconduct overseas. It is tightly drawn, applying only to those who are qualified to teach in England and who may in due course seek employment in our schools.

Once Clause 47 requires all schools to employ qualified teachers and Clause 46 brings those who have previously worked in England within scope, this group is all that remains. It is a small cohort, but without this change, an individual who commits serious misconduct overseas may move on, secure a fresh reference and subsequently take up a post in England.

Safeguarding training reminds us that safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility; it does not stop at national borders and concerns must be reported wherever there is a risk to children. This amendment is pursued in exactly that spirit, and I hope that the Minister will once again reflect on whether this narrow extension could be accommodated to deliver the outcome that I know we all seek.