Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bichard (CB)]

My Lords, as someone who has been involved with child abuse issues and child protection down the years, I thought it necessary to add my voice to support the amendment. It may be that we want to talk about the vehicle, it may be that we want to talk about the drafting, but it is really important that the House makes absolutely clear that there is agreement on the principle around mandatory reporting, because that has not always been the case, and that is the first massive step to dealing with this issue.

I otherwise wanted to say only how pleased I was to hear the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. In 2012, when I spoke in this Chamber against the watering down of vetting and barring, I was told roundly that we should have an exemption for all sports clubs and societies because they were exemplars. The last 12 years have shown us how wrong that would have been; they have also shown us how important the amendment is.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 107B, which is in my name. The purpose of this amendment is to ensure that the same legal rights would apply to a child in care as those which apply to children living with their families. In that sense, it is linked to Amendment 69AB, which I shall move later today.

In 2022, the final report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, henceforth referred to as IICSA, highlighted the fact that the family court can limit parents’ exercise of their parental responsibility, but the court is unable to intervene in the same way with corporate parents. The report recommended a new

“route by which children in care can apply to the family courts for orders to mandate or limit a local authority’s exercise of its parental responsibility”,

which is what this new clause seeks to achieve.

There are many recognisable harms in the children’s care system, some of which have been identified by noble Lords already, among them: children being moved from settled homes; children being sent many miles from their home area; siblings being split up; children forced to move areas ahead of critical GCSE or A-level exams; children desperately unhappy at where they are living but being told there is nowhere else for them to go; and children approaching their 18th birthday woefully unprepared for life ahead of them. As incredible as it sounds, it is still common for children in care to be told that they must register as homeless once they reach their 18th birthday. It is not difficult to understand why that often causes unbearable stress and anxiety, affecting all areas of the child’s life.

The family court is able to intervene in how parents exercise their parental responsibility, yet it has no equivalent power in respect of corporate parents, when looked-after children are the most vulnerable children in our society. As IICSA’s final report explained:

“Courts can make decisions about children who are not in care, but only local authorities can make decisions about children who are in care”.


That is an inconsistency that I believe needs to be confronted and brought to an end.

IICSA considered the role of the independent reviewing officer, the ability of children in care to apply to discharge care orders, bring claims under the Human Rights Act 1998 and to bring judicial reviews, and it found each of these systems of protection to be insufficient. IICSA foresaw children in care having a straightforward legal mechanism on a par with children in the community, whereby the exercise of a local authority’s parental responsibility could be put under the spotlight and subject to restriction and instruction where necessary.

This new clause would implement IICSA’s recommendation 6 by giving children who are the subject of a care order the legal means of challenging their corporate parent’s actions and, perhaps equally importantly, inactions. When a child in care is suffering, or at risk of suffering, significant harm, this new clause would enable the family court to make an order to prohibit the local authority from taking action that could be harmful to that child. The family court would also have the power to make an order to require the local authority to take particular action

“to safeguard or promote the child’s welfare”.

On 16 January in another place, the Home Secretary made a clear statement that the Government would set out a plan for implementing all 20 of IICSA’s final recommendations. Their Tackling Child Sexual Abuse: Progress Update issued in April very helpfully set out how children in care’s access to independent advocacy services will be strengthened through the publication of revised national standards and statutory guidance.

However, this is a long way from implementing IICSA recommendation 6, the purpose of which is to give children in care a new legal mechanism to challenge the actions and inactions of their corporate parent when these are causing or are likely to cause the child significant harm. Such a measure will go hand in hand with effective independent advocacy services, because it is likely to be independent advocates who assist children in care in accessing this new legal safeguard.

We all know that IICSA was a seven-year public inquiry that heard devastating evidence of the ways a whole host of institutions consistently failed vulnerable children. Its recommendations must be taken seriously and, as I said, the Government are on record as being committed to implementing all its 20 recommendations. As the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said, my noble friend may well suggest that the Crime and Policing Bill is a more appropriate vehicle for this amendment. If so, why does it not appear in that Bill? I believe it is a very important step. I hope my noble friend will be a bit more positive than that and be able to offer a commitment that she will return on Report with a government amendment to make children in care legally the equal of children in the community.

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The introduction of new court powers proposed by this amendment risks creating uncertainty around the role of the local authority, when we should be ensuring that the systems and processes in place immediately around the child, available on a day-to-day basis, are as robust and effective as intended.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for the points that she has made. She referenced the update that came out in April, but that does not go far enough to meet recommendation 6 of IICSA, which talks about access to courts. It seems to me that there is an inconsistency between that and what the Home Secretary said in January about implementing all 20 recommendations, if the update is—if I understand my noble friend correctly—as far as the Government are prepared to go in this aspect of it at this stage.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

In relation to recommendation 6, in very big consultation with the sector, the objective of the Government is to deliver on the intention of the recommendation while recognising—this is something that professionals have also raised—that, for the reasons I have outlined, a new legal route here not only is not necessary but would risk making children’s ability to have their voice heard and for the professionals around them to support them less likely to happen. It is the Government’s view that this is a more effective way of delivering the intentions behind recommendation 6.

Between existing safeguarding mechanisms and planned improvements, this Government set a clear expectation that children are safe, their voices are heard and professionals work together to take immediate action in response to issues or concerns. I thank noble Lords for the range of issues that have been raised on this group of amendments. I hope that I have been able to provide some assurances and that noble Lords will feel content not to press their amendments.

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Moved by

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

69AB: After Clause 4, insert the following new Clause—
“Parent-equivalent care by local authoritiesIn section 22 of the Children Act 1989 (general duty of local authority in relation to children looked after by them), after subsection (3)(a) insert—“(aa) to provide care as would be reasonable to expect a parent to give to them; and””Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that the nature and level of parental care expected for children within their own families also applies to corporate parents and to the children’s care system. It replaces amendment 146A.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I always think there is something rather sad about an amendment that sits on its own and forms a group of its own. It looks almost afraid to speak its name. However, I prefer to think of group 4 today as being small but perfectly formed, and I will speak to Amendment 69AB on that basis. The purpose of this amendment is to ensure that the same kind of parental care expected within families applies to corporate parents and the children’s care system. In that sense, it has echoes of Amendment 107B, which I spoke to earlier.

Section 31 of the Children Act 1989 provides that a court may make a care order in respect of a child only if it is satisfied that the child is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm and this is attributable to the care received by the child not being what would be reasonable to expect a parent to give to them. There are all sorts of issues, and we have heard many of them this afternoon and evening, about the failures of birth parents. None the less, this amendment would equalise the position of looked-after children and children who live with their parents with no social care involvement. Corporate parents would be required to provide the kind of care which it would be reasonable to expect a parent within the community to give to their child. Surely it is reasonable to expect that the state’s care of children should be at least to the level expected of parents. It should certainly drop no lower.

Under the Children Act 1989, a local authority must safeguard and promote the welfare of every child in its care—that is, those who are the subject of an interim care order or a care order—and every child for whom it provides accommodation for a period of more than 24 hours. Amendment 69AB would add the requirement that the local authority—as the child's corporate parent—must provide care that it would be reasonable to expect a parent to give to their child. This would strengthen and give legal clarity as to the primary duty of local authorities in their vital and privileged role of corporate parent: to safeguard and promote each child's welfare and to provide care that would be reasonably expected from a parent.

Statutory guidance issued in 2018 for local authorities on implementing the corporate parenting principles in Section 1 of the Children and Social Work Act 2017 says:

“A strong corporate parenting ethos means that everyone from the Chief Executive down to front line staff, as well as elected council members, are concerned about those children and care leavers as if they were their own. This is evidenced by an embedded culture where council officers … do all that is reasonably possible to ensure the council is the best ‘parent’ it can be to the child or young person”.


It was the late and much missed Frank Dobson, in his role as Secretary of State for Health, who first articulated the legal and moral responsibility of being a corporate parent. In a letter sent to every local authority councillor in September 1998, he said:

“For children who are looked after, your council has a legal and moral duty to try to provide the kind of loyal support that any good parents would give to their children”.


That applies no less today than it did all those years ago.

Despite many important amendments made to the Children Act 1989 over the years, aimed at improving the wellbeing and future life opportunities of looked after children and care leavers, it may surprise noble Lords that there is still no clear, unambiguous requirement that looked-after children receive the same level of care from their corporate parents as would be deemed acceptable for them had they remained with their birth parents. The High Court in March 2022, in a judicial review brought by the children's rights charity Article 39, found there is no provision in the Children Act 1989 which requires

“care to be provided in situ or as part of a placement”.

A child can be the subject of care proceedings through the family court until the age of 17 where they have suffered, or are at risk of suffering, significant harm and this is deemed attributable to their parents’ care not being what it would be reasonable to expect a parent to give to them. Yet once they are removed from their parents and become looked after, there is no express duty on their new corporate parent to provide care within their new placement, which is their new home. How can that situation be defended? I do not believe that it can. It is the equivalent of a local authority saying, “Don’t do as I do; do as I say”, and it must not be allowed to continue. Were that to happen, it would help to transform the children’s care system.

If my noble friend cannot give me a positive answer today, I ask that she consider what I have said and perhaps come forward on Report with a proposal. I believe this is a lacuna, which this Bill has the opportunity to fill. I beg to move.

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

My Lords, I speak to oppose Amendment 69AB, well-intentioned though it clearly is. I have several levels of concerns about the imposition of yet another duty. I believe that the expectations for looked-after children are generally well understood—whether they are actually carried out in practice is another matter. This particular amendment has some obvious holes. For example, there are kinds of intimacy in normal, healthy parent-child relationships that absolutely would not be appropriate between local authority staff and children.

More generally, there has been a proliferation of duties in legislation in recent years. For example, I became chair of Ofqual 14 years ago. After a particular duty was raised in my first board meeting, I asked my legal director for a session to talk me through all the duties that applied. To my astonishment, I discovered that we already had 28 duties, with a handful more in the pipeline; I am sure it is a lot more since then.

This imposition of duties as the go-to solution has several problems. First, it creates problems of overload. Normal human beings simply cannot hold so many different duties in their thinking simultaneously. Secondly, they get imposed in isolation. They are usually added without reference to previous duties, with which they often overlap but sometimes push in different directions. How do you reconcile them? They can lead to skimping. If duties that have been imposed need resource but are not funded, you can end up with everything being done less well—not only the thing that the duty is aimed at but all the other functions—which reduces the quality at the receiving end. It takes away the ability of public services to prioritise intelligently. It can divert resource away from the main purpose that the duty is intended to protect and towards the kinds of activities that demonstrate compliance with the activity.

Finally, if there is a surplus of duties and an impossibility of giving full effect to them all, a sort of cynicism builds up that can corrupt an organisation’s culture. When everybody knows that they are really only paying lip service to an enormous list, people stop believing in the ability of the organisation to fulfil its real purposes.

Tempting as it is to think that another duty is the great solution that will protect children from all the awful harms that have been talked about today—they are a great salve to all our consciences—we need to resist and make sure that we get to the essence of the things that will do the most to help children.

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Given the extensive duties and requirements already placed on local authorities and those who care for children, I believe that this amendment would have little to no practical impact. For these reasons, I kindly ask my noble friend Lord Watson to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend. Her last point—about the proposal in my amendment having little to no effect—carries considerable weight coming from someone with her considerable experience as the leader of one of England’s largest city councils; something which she did with some distinction, to put it at its lightest. Her words carry weight. She also talked about—as did the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman—the addition of further duties. The question is whether those duties are appropriate and whether they fill any void that experience shows must be filled.

You can talk in generalities, but there are a number of occasions that have been referred to earlier today about local authorities. I do not doubt for one moment that any local authority sets out to do anything other than its best. But there are situations, such as those I mentioned in the debate on my earlier amendment, where local authorities move children out of their area, separate them from siblings, and, on certain occasions, move them just before they are due to sit GCSEs or A-levels, which can have such disruptive effects, and put them into foster care or adoptive care and then do not provide the resources for that care to be properly effective. There are ways in which councils can say, “We’re doing our best”, but, in actual fact, that might not be enough.

I am slightly troubled by the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, that “We’re just adding extra details and duties on to local authorities”. I know she has had experience at Ofqual and Ofsted, but that sounded more like a comment coming from the business part of her career, because it sounded a bit like corporate jargon—not to add on extra duties for the sake of it. The question is, are those duties looking to prevent what can sometimes go wrong in the council’s care of children? I would argue that they can, otherwise, there would not be the sorts of stories that we get all too regularly about local authorities or those funded by local authorities putting vulnerable children in some pretty dire situations.

While I bow to the experience of those who have spoken in the debate, there are issues here that need to be looked at further. In introducing this, I asked: why should it be that a local authority can take a child away from their birth parents, become their corporate parents and yet then not have the same responsibilities for them? That just does not seem right.

I thank those who contributed to the debate, and I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 69AB withdrawn.