Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Baroness Morris of Yardley and Lord Marks of Hale

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marks of Hale (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 175A. The Government and the Secretary of State for Education in particular have rightly been vocal in confronting antisemitism in education, but that commitment must extend beyond condemning violence or bans towards Jews. The Government cannot condemn violence and bans against Jewish people and then ban or close down their faith institutions.

The Government make no secret of the fact that Clause 37 consciously seeks to close down or entirely alter yeshivas. In their analysis of the Bill since its launch, the only faith community they ever mention is the strictly Orthodox Jewish one. The Bill leaves no lawful space for long-established religious institutions, which provide only religious instruction and operate alongside registered home education.

Yeshivas are safe and safeguarded institutions. They are not schools. They do not provide academic education and cannot be turned into schools without destroying their religious purpose. They exist to inculcate a lived faith. That some noble Lords may raise an eyebrow at that purpose says more about the distance of our own society from faith traditions than about the yeshivas themselves.

Alongside attending yeshivas, these boys are home-schooled. That home education is serious and improving. I have seen their new communal platforms personally, and they are now in active use.

The amendment before the House is narrow and proportionate. It ensures the continued safeguarding of yeshivas; requires registered home education, regulated, of course, by the local authority; and prevents the misclassification of religious institutions. In short, it allows the Government to achieve their aims of maintaining child welfare and education while recognising the lawful set-up of the Haredi Jewish community.

Report is the final opportunity to correct this in primary legislation. To use biblical imagery, the Government’s heart and lips must be aligned. The Haredi Jewish community and its yeshivas must continue to flourish, their children safe and home-schooled. The amendment is the only way that this can happen.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I wish to speak against Amendment 175A. It is tabled in the same way as it was in Committee, but I accept that it was the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford rather than the right reverend Prelate Bishop of Manchester who spoke to it on that occasion. I do not want to rehearse all those arguments again. It was a good debate, so I will perhaps sum them up and express a few further points.

The Bill is not trying to abolish yeshivas; that is not the intent of the legislation. I join both speakers so far in saying that I cherish and welcome the fact that we are a country that values education for all children and allows people of all faiths to reflect that faith in their own education. I have, sometimes at my own political expense, defended the state system, which has Roman Catholic schools, Church of England schools and many other schools. Politically, there are many people who think that we ought to not have faith schools at all. I have always defended them, because that is an important tenet of a free society, and I value the contribution they make to our lives.

I feel the same about people of any faith. This is not about the Orthodox Jewish faith. The amendment could be used by people of any faith to start a school and have 10 hours a day of religious instruction and home education in the evening. That point is very clear.

However, I am opposed to the way some faiths are organising their education at the moment. Without rehearsing the arguments, it comes down quite simply to this: if a child, maybe under 11, is in a yeshiva or any other school—but the yeshiva has been the one that has been mentioned—from 8 am to 6 pm, I do not believe that they can be home educated effectively in the evening. I do not think that is what we are about. If we take faith out of that and think of the needs of the child, we cherish our differences, but we are only a cohesive society if we cherish the things that we hold together.

One of the “samenesses” of our society is that we believe in the right of a child to have a broad and balanced education. I do not see how, in this structure, with yeshiva from 8 am to 6 pm and only religious education, sometimes not in the English language, then home education from 6 pm onwards, we are delivering that to those children. It is as simple as that. I have met people who have been educated in the yeshiva movement. They would not describe it as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester described it. It is the same as any other school. There are people who like it, people who do not like it, people who say it has served them well, people who it has not served well. It is as simple as that. Let us not go down this line because we think it is one form of education that everybody cherishes and wants to preserve. There is as much of a difference of opinion in this as there is in anything else.