Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Meston Excerpts

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash (Con)]

I have a great deal of respect for the noble Lord, Lord Knight. I do not think all of us are going to make a nine or 10-minute speech, but I will wrap up now and hope that keeps him happy.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I was unable to speak at Second Reading and I will resist the temptation to make a Second Reading speech now. Rather, I wish to concentrate on Amendment 1.

Any consideration of a proposed purpose clause should take us all back to the Renton report, in which it was said that sometimes such clauses can be useful and sometimes they can be unnecessary, and that they should be used selectively and with caution. On one view, the scope and effects of this Bill are clear enough and there does not appear to me, at least, to be any complexity for which a purpose clause would help interpretation.

However, there is perhaps some value in this amendment, which uses the word “improve” three times, emphasising the intention of the Bill—and the Bill as amended in due course—to achieve improvement in the areas specifically mentioned, and not to maintain or simply tweak the status quo. For that limited reason, I would support Amendment 1.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, in responding I hope the Minister will be able to point out that the purpose of the Bill has a golden spine running through it, and that is the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The different clauses should be able to read across to the convention, and wherever the child is and whatever group they are in—and we have lots of groups in this Bill—fate can be extremely cruel, and we know that every day around 127 children lose a parent.

Bereavement is a major issue and hits different groups in different places at different times and affects their outcomes. I hope that we will have a statement from the Minister in responding to this which is about the principle of what we are really trying to do for children across the whole nation, everywhere.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I was a family judge for about 35 years, and I tried mostly care cases. I very much support this amendment and will make three points. First, I entirely agree with the previous speakers: hold the meeting as soon as possible, because it is unlikely that the decision to make a make an application for a care order or an interim care order comes at a very early stage. One hopes that the social workers would have been working with the family before this becomes inevitable. Consequently, the sooner the discussions can be had—and the other members of the family identified where possible—the better it will be, and it may not be necessary to have the care application before the magistrates’ court in any case.

Secondly, not only is it important to have the meeting early but there must be a degree of ability for the local authority to deal with members of the family—because, not in every case but in some cases, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, has said, there will be very unhappy divorce proceedings pending, whereby the parties will use the children as the arena for their attacks on each other. That is the typical sort of unhappy divorce case—fortunately not frequent, but one that occurs in care proceedings. Consequently, you may find that one or both of the parents should not at some stage be at the meeting. It is crucial that local authorities are warned, if they do not know already, and given at least, under statutory guidance, some help on how to deal with that issue—not in this Bill, of course, but in statutory guidance.

The third absolutely crucial point that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, made is not to let a particular parent or someone with parental responsibility have the opportunity to use the meeting to delay the proceedings that are necessary. Again, it is absolutely crucial that, if a member of the family is trying to delay the proceedings, the local authority can go ahead without having the meeting. That is the one point that worries me about saying that they must have the meeting, although I think that probably, under the later part of Clause 1, it is possible not to have it. Again, in the statutory guidance it is crucial that local authorities are warned that the family meeting must not take place if, in fact, the delays are there for that particular reason.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, have laboured long in the family courts. I think that we are all basically aiming in the same direction, but the detail is important. Family group conferences or meetings, as described in this Bill and in the amendments, are a valuable process, often best used as the pre-proceeding stage rather than after a formal application has been issued. I cannot help wondering whether there is not some lack of clarity in the drafting, at least of the amendment. The Bill as I read it is clear enough; it says that the local authority must include the offer of such a meeting in a letter before proceedings. That is entirely desirable in my view, whereas the amendment says:

“When a local authority starts formal child protection proceedings”,


which to my mind reads as if it means “Once it has actually issued the formal application”. In some cases, that may be too late. I think that there is a mistake, possibly unintended, in the drafting of the amendment.

The general thrust of what the noble Baroness said—that the meetings should be initiated as soon as possible—is clearly right. These meetings are valuable for three main reasons. First, they enable family members to be informed of what has happened and why the local authority has intervened, as well as to learn what is planned or may be planned for the child or children concerned. Quite often one finds in practice that the parents have not told the wider family what is happening, sometimes out of shame or pride, so that the first the wider family learns of the proceedings comes from the social worker—and that can come as a surprise or, indeed, a shock. Even if the family knows what is happening, a formal meeting enables it to get an accurate first-hand account that is not filtered by the parents.

Secondly, conferences enable the social worker and guardian, if one has by then been appointed, to form an initial assessment of the strengths, weaknesses and attitudes of the wider family and the possible realistic options for the support of the parents and any alternative arrangements for the children, either in the short term or in the long term. In the long term, if in reality adoption is going to be the outcome, the court will ultimately have to consider the relatives’ ability to provide a secure environment under the statute that governs adoption decisions.