Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Mohammed of Tinsley Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley]

159: After Clause 26, insert the following new Clause—
“Establishment of Child Protection Authority(1) The Secretary of State must, within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, establish a Child Protection Authority for England.(2) The purpose of the Authority is to—(a) improve practice in child protection,(b) provide advice and make recommendations to the Government on child protection policy and reforms to improve child protection,(c) inspect institutions and settings at some times and in such ways as it considers necessary and appropriate to ensure compliance with child protection standards, and(d) monitor the implementation of the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse and other inquiries relating to the protection of children.(3) The Authority must act with a view to—(a) safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children;(b) ensuring that institutions and settings fulfil their responsibilities in relation to child protection.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment establishes the Child Protection Authority for England.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 160 to this important Bill. Amendment 159 relates to the establishment of a child protection authority and is also signed by the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge. These amendments, grounded in the belief that every child, no matter where they live and what challenges they face, should be guaranteed a basic level of protection. Amendment 159 proposes the creation of a child protection authority, in direct response to one of the most urgent and widely endorsed recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. Amendment 160 seeks to establish national thresholds for children in need support under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989. Neither of these proposals is theoretical. Both are urgent responses to real-world system failures that we have seen repeated with devastating consequences across our country.

Amendment 159 calls for the creation of the child protection authority, as recommended by the final report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. That inquiry, after seven years, 325 days of public hearings, and testimony from over 7,000 victims and survivors, concluded that existing child protection mechanisms are fragmented, inconsistent and insufficiently accountable. Among the 20 recommendations, the establishment of the independent child protection authority was second only to mandatory reporting.

This body would have four core responsibilities: to improve child protection practices across public and private institutions; to provide expert advice to the Government and the sector; to conduct inspections of institutions and systems where safeguarding concerns are raised; and to monitor the implementation of the recommendations from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse and other major safeguarding inquiries. Critically, this authority would be independent and established as a non-departmental public body, similar to the structure of the National Crime Agency. Its independence would give it the mandate and credibility to act across departmental and institutional silos.

We cannot ignore the repeated failures of the current framework. The names of Sara Sharif, Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson will remain etched in our nation’s conscience for years to come. Each of those children was known to professionals and each was failed by a system that saw the risk but lacked the clarity, co-ordination and accountability to prevent harm. The Government’s response has been to strengthen existing structures rather than create a new body. Although that is understandable, it risks reinforcing the very fragmentation that the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse warned about. We must be bolder, take a systematic view and act decisively.

Amendment 160 is on national standards for children in need support. Let us begin with the children in need framework. Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 empowers local authorities to offer services to children whose health or development would suffer without additional support. Yet, in the absence of a national threshold or quality standards, this power is deployed deeply inconsistently. In her 2022 report, the Children’s Commissioner for England uncovered stark regional disparities of how children in need plans are used. For example, in Knowsley and in Blackpool more than 60% of children known to social care were supported through a child in need plan, in stark contrast with Northamptonshire and Leicestershire, where the figure is less than 20%.

Let us be clear: this variation cannot be explained by demographics or the level of need alone; it is a result of fragmented local practice in the absence of national guidance. That creates a system in which access to help is determined not by a child’s vulnerability but by their postcode. The situation is compounded by variations in the quality of those plans. Many are vague, lack time-bound goals and fail to specify what support a child will actually receive. Social workers have expressed frustration with a system that burdens them with process but does not enable them to deliver change.

This amendment seeks to fix that. It would require the Secretary of State to undertake a national review of how Section 17 is currently implemented, including an analysis of demographic variations and effectiveness; to issue statutory guidance establishing clear minimum thresholds for child eligibility and a template for high-quality planning; and to use automatic referral triggers, such as a parent entering prison, in-patient mental health care or a child being arrested, to ensure early intervention where risk is identifiable. This is not about removing local flexibility; it is about setting a national baseline of protection so that a child’s right to support is not dependent on what they have.

This Bill is an opportunity to do more than pass yet another set of well-intentioned clauses. It is a chance to confront two crucial, long-standing failures: the lack of consistent, enforceable thresholds for when and how a child receives support under Section 17—on that note, I add that the Children’s Commissioner has today come out in support of my Amendment 160—and the absence of a single, independent body tasked with improving, inspecting and co-ordinating our child protection infrastructure. We often speak in this Chamber about opportunity, fairness and levelling up. These amendments are a test of whether we mean what we say because, for children growing up in hardship and at risk of harm, fairness begins with visibility and opportunity begins with protection. Let us give these children more than words; let us give them a system that supports them and keeps them safe where they live. I urge noble Lords to support my amendments. I beg to move.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for tabling Amendment 159, to which I added my name. It is a probing amendment, so I hope the Minister has not been equipped with various intricacies on the drafting. I believe that His Majesty’s Government intend to consult on child protection.

As the noble Lord outlined, this is a recommendation from IICSA, which envisaged the child protection authority having an inspection function of certain settings within its purposes. However, there was another recommendation from the independent inquiry, which said:

“All religious organisations should have a child protection policy and supporting procedures, which should include advice and guidance on responding to disclosures of abuse and the needs of victims and survivors. The policy and procedures should be updated regularly, with professional child protection advice, and all organisations should have regular compulsory training for those in leadership positions and those who work with children and young people”.


Although the child protection agency will be led by the Home Office and the honourable Member Jess Phillips, this second recommendation sounds like a description not only of charities but of out-of-school settings. I am aware that, since the amendment was laid, a call for evidence went out from the Department for Education on safeguarding for out-of-school settings, but how are they intended to fit together?

In addition to religious organisations, sports clubs, informal educational settings, summer clubs and private tutors seem not to be within a regulatory framework at the moment. Is this not what the independent inquiry envisaged that the work of a child protection authority would be, or could be? Those organisations are outside Ofsted and, despite the excellent work of the Charity Commission—many of them will be charities but not all of them—the threshold for intervention by the Charity Commission on the grounds of safeguarding is statutorily very high. It is not an inspectorate, it seems, or an accreditor of safeguarding training.

If one looks momentarily at the scrutiny function that the Church of England is trying to set up, that function, which should be independent, looks as if it should be inspection, audit, accreditation and an end of complaint process facility. In these informal settings, out-of-school settings or charities, who accredits the safeguarding? Who does the inspecting? Who holds low-level concerns regarding staff and volunteers? Many of those settings will be a single charity under no umbrella organisation—and I thank the safeguarding charity Thirtyone:eight for its excellent work on safeguarding. If you are the trustee of a stand-alone charity and you begin to have concerns about a volunteer or a staff member—the kind of low-level concerns that are that are dealt with in Keeping Children Safe in Education—where is the umbrella organisation that will keep track?

We have to keep one step ahead of people who have this intention to get access to children. They will disappear from one independent stand-alone charity and have the potential to pop up, maybe in a different place—a different church or sports club—but who is keeping track of those concerns? You might informally tell another charity such as thirtyone:eight, but who will be collating that information? Could the Minister consider arranging a meeting for any interested Peers at which we can talk about the scope of the child protection authority and the call for evidence for out of school settings?

The call for evidence is, I believe, like a survey that you fill in. I promise the Minister that I will fill out the survey and go through that facility. But could she also confirm to noble Lords that the child protection authority will go out for consultation? What will the scope be for that and how will it fit together with this large gap—or number of small gaps—we have with out of school settings? This is an important moment to finally cover the many loopholes that still exist in relation to child safeguarding, particularly in out of school settings.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My Lords, this Government are committed to protecting children from serious harm and ensuring that they can access the right level of support at the right time. That is what the amendments in this group seek, rightly, to pursue and challenge on.

Amendment 159, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, is on the establishment of a child protection authority, as recommended in the final report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. Just to be clear, this Government have made a series of announcements that demonstrate our commitment to strengthen the response to child sexual abuse and exploitation. Establishing a child protection authority was one that we have, in looking at the recommendations from IICSA, committed quite clearly to. I was a bit unclear about the charge made by the noble Lord that we had not accepted that recommendation. In the Government’s update on our work to tackle child sexual abuse, published in April, we announced that we would establish a child protection authority in England. As the noble Lord says, this will help to make the child protection system clearer and more unified and ensure ongoing improvement through effective support for practitioners.

Of course, there will be lots of questions about what form the authority takes and its scope—some were raised today by the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, with specific questions on safeguarding. I reassure the noble Baroness that we have absolutely aligned the work on the CPA with the out-of-school settings call for evidence that she referenced. She identified that the design and the delivery of the authority require consultation, including with child protection experts and victim groups to ensure that it has the right constitution and the right powers. We have already begun our work towards a consultation on the child protection authority, and I assure the noble Baroness that we will engage with key stakeholders as part of this process. We will consult on developing the new child protection authority this year, and the consultation will set out in more detail the proposed roles, responsibilities and powers of the authority.

However, we do not want to wait until we are able to set up the child protection authority in full to take action—there has arguably been too long a delay in acting on the recommendations of IICSA—so we have also already begun to strengthen the national Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel on some of the key aspects IICSA envisaged for the child protection authority. In 2025-26, we are increasing the resources at the panel’s disposal so that it can increase its analytical capacity and its ability to develop high-quality material for practitioners.

That is part of the overall action that this Government are taking: the strongest possible action to tackle child sexual exploitation, including immediate action to take forward all 12 of the recommendations for change from the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, which were published in her audit just this week. That includes setting up a new national inquiry, with which government departments will co-operate fully to make sure we are tackling this vile crime and supporting victims and survivors. The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, also recommended that the mandatory sharing of information be enforced between all statutory safeguarding partners in cases of child sexual abuse and exploitation. The child protection authority will play a critical role in addressing this recommendation through national oversight of the child protection system and supporting the co-ordination between agencies. Of course, provisions within this legislation are already taking forward other elements of the IICSA recommendations.

Amendment 160, also tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, aims to reduce regional variations in the type, frequency and duration of support that children receive under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989, which, of course, places a general duty on local authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of any child in need by providing appropriate support and services. Here, I fear that I disagree with the noble Lord’s analysis. Prescriptive national criteria with automatic referrals would risk narrowing the cohort of children and limiting local flexibility in providing support. Section 17 rightly allows local authorities discretion to provide support and services based on local need and resources. On this at least—and on other things as well—the noble Baroness, Lady Barran and I are in agreement. A danger of being specific in the way suggested is that groups are left out, narrowing the cohort who receive support—exactly, in fact, what the amendment is seeking to avoid.

It is not the case, as the noble Lord suggested, that there is no national guidance. There has recently been strengthening of the statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children, to make it explicit that local authorities and safeguarding partners should publish a threshold document for statutory services under Section 17 so that there is clarity for those working within an authority area about what that threshold would be and what action they should take. Furthermore, Ofsted inspects whether these local thresholds are set appropriately.

Working Together is clear that plans setting out support and services for children should be reviewed regularly against progress. All this comes within the broader context of our reforms to family help and multiagency child protection, which we have talked about at some length in earlier proceedings on the Bill and in Committee—reforms precisely aimed at supporting provision at an earlier stage for identifying children who will need support and wrapping that around them, and reforms backed by over £500 million of investment in this financial year and supported by additional investment made available in last week’s spending review for future years. These will provide help for families at the point of need and decisive action when protection is needed.

While I accept that the noble Lord raised important issues about the current working of the system and the need to develop the child protection authority for all the reasons that he spelt out, I hope that I have addressed some of his concerns and reassured noble Lords that this Government are committed to protecting children from significant harm, providing the right support at the right time and, ultimately, improving outcomes so that all children can thrive. On that basis, I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Berridge and Lady Barran, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, for their interventions and comments, some of which I agree with and some I may not agree with—but that is the nature of the Committee; we are here to debate and improve Bills that come forward from the Government. I welcome the comments from the Minister, particularly on the national protection agency. Clearly, the devil will be in the detail about its powers and how it functions, rather than just establishing the authority.

On Amendment 160, I clearly still have issues with the disparity between some local authorities having up to 60% of young people in their care with child in need plans and others having 20%, as in the examples I gave. My aim was to raise this in Committee and hopefully for the Minister to look into it. I will continue to press and probe as this Bill travels through your Lordships’ House but, on this occasion, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 159 withdrawn.