Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Lord Crisp and Lord Lucas

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, this group concerns data protection and sharing. Obviously, we are dealing here with some very personal data. People want to be sure that it is handled right and not shared with the wrong people. Where families are in the process of breaking up or where abuse is concerned, it is particularly important that the data does not get to the wrong people. By and large, the amendments in this group for which I am responsible are self-explanatory. It would be most helpful for me first to listen to the Minister responding on where the Government find themselves. I beg to move.

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, I want to say a few words about Amendment 254A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, to which I have added my name. I want to spell out what I suspect noble Lords understand fully, which is that there are issues here. In certain cases, where perhaps one parent has been abusive to their child, partner or spouse, it is vital that addresses are not made available to that parent.

Perhaps I could just go back two or three steps and preface my remarks by saying, first, how much I appreciate the warm remarks on home education made by the Minister in opening. They set a much better tone than has tended to come through in this debate. Something else that I omitted to say at the beginning is that my thanks go to the Minister and her officials for the excellent meeting we had. It lasted much of the day and, frankly, they were very open and willing to discuss things; that was very helpful. I do not know how much movement we got out of it—we will see during the course of today—but it was helpful to have that meeting and to understand things clearly.

As all noble Lords have said, there is an issue of balance here between supporting the good people who are providing home education because it is best for their children, or for another good reason, and supporting the missing children who are abused or neglected or have missed out. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, made an important intervention on this. We need to get that balance right.

We discussed with officials the issue dealt with in Amendment 254A. It was said that this could be picked up in regulations or whatever, but there needs to be something in the Bill to help parents who are specifically worried about safeguarding. This amendment is probably as simple as it gets in pointing out that where there is a concern about abuse, or an order standing against one parent, this should be handled by an authority in an appropriate fashion.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Lord Crisp and Lord Lucas

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, this group seeks to ensure that the most intrusive elements of the Bill, particularly the new register of children not in school and associated powers, are subjected to robust rolling checks and ultimately remain only if they demonstrably work. Amendment 274 from my noble friend Lord Wei would introduce a simple safeguard whereby the register will expire two years after its creation. This would make sure that the system does grow beyond its original purpose without a clear review.

The troubled families programme is an example of a programme that was sold as an early intervention, but which had very little effect and continued long after people knew it was not doing anything useful. Similarly, Prevent, introduced as a targeted strategy to counter radicalisation, was quietly broadened over time into schools, nurseries and local authorities. The UN special rapporteur described it as the systematic surveillance of Muslim families and their children under the guise of safeguarding. These systems do tend to drift, so having the ability to curtail the register, or at least a requirement to review it, would seem a sensible safeguard.

Amendment 330 calls for a two-year pilot scheme before the register is rolled out. We know from experience that local authorities are highly variable in their understanding, and we receive reports of wildly inconsistent demands. If we run this as a pilot, we will get a clear understanding of how the system is going to work before we have to try it nationally on a whole series of overstretched local authorities, some of which will be mid-reorganisation and not in a position to take on something new.

Amendment 320 proposes that every two years the Secretary of State must review the operation of Sections 436B to 436G and lay their findings before Parliament. If we are not going to actively renew these, as previously proposed, we should at least be sure that we review them.

Amendment 329 proposes an independent review board made up of home educators and education law experts. One reason why SEND tribunals overturn 95% of local authority decisions is that independent panels exist to scrutinise flawed local reasoning. If we do not have independent review, we will allow this new system, which we all wish to succeed, to decay unnoticed. The volume of complaints we have heard from families who say that their council simply does not understand autonomous learning, or that they keep applying a rigid “home at school” template and deem everything else unsuitable, demands some expert oversight. The document from Bristol shared with the Government would be an example of that. This board would ensure that decisions are not made solely by people who may have little real grasp of the varied pedagogies embraced by the home education community. Amendment 388, in another group, would give home-educated children a direct annual panel to advise the Secretary of State, as we have discussed.

These amendments are also about preserving the proper balance between state oversight and family privacy. We have heard families voice profound fears about how soft safeguarding powers have become heavy handed. In one county, a local authority insisted on seeing the family’s daughter alone to discuss why she was not in school, despite clear evidence of school-related trauma. The family reported that it felt more like an interrogation than support. Another council threated a school attendance order within weeks of deregistration, purely because it had no familiarity with unschooling approaches. My noble friend feels that these proposals would not harm the Bill but would strengthen it. I beg to move.

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

Rather foolishly in retrospect, I have added my name to several amendments proposed by Front-Bench Members of the parties opposite, and I therefore have to speak first on them, rather than just say that I agree. On this occasion, the noble Lord, Lord Storey, has proposed a new clause reviewing the impact on home-educators and the reduction of unnecessary reporting after the event. It also includes an assessment of the administrative and reporting requirements placed on local authorities as part of its proposed terms of reference.

Particularly in the light of this morning’s discussions, when we looked a great deal at the impact on home-educators but also on unprepared local authorities, and the expectation that local authorities should up their game considerably as a result of a number of measures in the Bill, it will be even more important to undertake a review such as this. The Minister has suggested that regulation will provide considerable flexibility. Some of us, including me, have been arguing that some of that flexibility needs to be put in the Bill and that there needs to be parameters around it. But even if there is flexibility, it will be interesting to see whether that actually works in practice. I am very much a supporter of the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Storey.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, this is an area where we have had substantial conversations with the Government so, again, I would prefer to start by listening to the Minister. I beg to move.

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 288A is in my name. In a way, it is the counterpart to the amendment we debated this morning under which parents would have to provide information about providers. This is about the information that the providers need to provide. There are two points in it. I have used the same format as the earlier amendment to say

“a person or organisation is providing regular out-of-school education to a child not registered in school, for more than 10 hours in a week”

and used the words

“is not primarily social or recreational”

and

“takes place without any parent of the child being”

there. I will dwell for a moment on those two points: “regular” and “not primarily social or recreational”.

The point about “regular”, as we have touched on but not fully discussed, is that this should not apply to one-off or occasional items, some of which will come up at short notice and cannot therefore be included in the register because the parents did not know about them in time to give notice. It would be extremely useful to have this in the Bill and not just in guidance. As I argued earlier, we need some parameters around what will come out in regulation. The word “regular” is not a particularly difficult one for the Government to include and would clarify that this refers only to people who are providing regular activities—maybe a definition of regular would be needed.

The other point on which I want to dwell a little more is saying that these activities are “not primarily social or recreational”. The Minister will correct me, but I think that at some point she said that it was not expected that activities that are not educational should be included in the register. The trouble is that a lot of activities—such as rugby training or swimming lessons, where they are carried out by a school—are educational, or could be, and, for example, the Girl Guides is an educational charity. It would be easy enough to label these organisations and activities as educational, which is why I am trying to turn it the other way up and say that activities that should not be registered are those which are primarily social or recreational. That is a fairly simple judgment to make and it would allay quite a lot of fears, including, perhaps, the example I used this morning—although it may be regarded as more educational than social and recreational—of the Wildlife Trusts. It has already stood down its activities because of concerns about the data that it will have to provide on all the children that use its services as part of its home education programme, which has been going on for some time.

In looking at this, I ask the Minister to reflect a bit more on those two descriptions: “regular” and “not primarily social or recreational”, as opposed to the “not educational” aspect.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 317 in this group, which would rather expand the range of reporting to other groups of children who are under the care of the state and not in a specific school. It is really important for the governance of education in this country that we understand how all our children are performing. I would expect a local authority to take an interest in the examinations of home-educated children and these other groups of children in Amendment 317 in their local area. I would expect the Department for Education also to be interested, not for year-to-year panicking but in a determination to understand what the difficulties and differences are and how, over time, to drive the results up. The basic starting point of that is to get the data out.

Particularly if you are reporting at a national level, you are not reporting anything that has any element of personal or identifiable data to it, but you are putting a bit of data down on the table to draw people’s attention to what the state of affairs is. That is a very important part of the way in which the state should have responsibility for what it is providing to our children.

Equally, I agree with those who are saying, particularly as we are bringing home education within the scope of the state so much more, that we should take responsibility for making sure that home-educated children find it easy to take crucial examinations. At the moment, it is extraordinarily difficult. They may have to travel hundreds of miles to find an examination centre and pay thousands of pounds to have access to an exam. The Prime Minister is borrowing a flat so that his child may have a quiet environment in which to study for his examinations, so one would hope that the Government realise that making it easy to take exams within a reasonable distance from home and without undue stress on the family’s finances is an objective we should have—particularly when, as my noble friend says, home-educated children are saving us so much money.

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, I support the proposal on GCSE results from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. It is very important, for the reasons she suggests. I have seen some interesting results from home-educated children, which show them performing well in these areas. The results would be interesting to see and may improve the score, as it were, for the country as a whole.

Secondly, I entirely support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Storey. I will say nothing more except that this is perhaps the biggest single practical obstacle in the current regime that home-educating parents have reported to me. I will leave it to the noble Lord to press that case.

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[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, I was going to speak to Amendment 365, which is about appeals against a local authority’s decision not to revoke an attendance order. However, in light of the discussion we had about appeals in an earlier session in July, I had intended to withdraw this amendment, so I will not speak to it.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have several amendments in this group. My noble friend Lord Wei is concerned that we are not getting the balance right between the state and family, and I agree with him. It is the parents who have the primary responsibility for upbringing and the best interests of their child, and intervention by the state should be justified only in exceptional circumstances and must be proportionate. My noble friend feels that Clause 32, as drafted, risks tipping that balance the wrong way. Families already tell us that school attendance orders cause stress, anxiety and a sense of powerlessness. One parent said they were forced to send their child to school against her will, where her needs were not going to be met. They said, “We felt trapped, unheard, threatened and fearful for our daughter’s safety”. Another described a child with severe anxiety and seizures who has thrived only when withdrawn from school.

For many, home education is not elective but a response to systemic failures. I am sure the Government are aware of that, and what a mess the SEND system is at the moment. Many of the parents who home educate are doing so in response to a less than ideal system. I know we tried to improve the system, and that this Government are going to have another go; it is not easy. We must expect a continued flow of parents who choose to look after their own child because the state is not doing a good enough job, and be humble enough to recognise that that deserves our support and not continual harassment.

Amendment 334 would change the duty on local authorities to serve a preliminary notice from “must” to “may”. In the context of all the other discretions that local authorities have, it would be sensible to allow them to see that issuing a notice in a particular set of circumstances would do more harm than good. It would allow them to focus on the child’s welfare and not force them down a rigid path.

Amendment 335 would require that all relevant support be offered before issuing such a notice. This goes back to an earlier amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. The first reaction of the local authority ought to be to ask if support is possible—can it help make this succeed?—as well as looking at whether school is a better option. It ought to come at this with support; families should not be threatened with orders without help being tried. The Square Peg campaign, supported by over 130 organisations, has called for a “support first” duty. One parent told us, “We asked for counselling and support, but what we got was a school attendance order. It only made my child’s anxiety worse”.

Amendment 338 asks in what circumstances a “best interest” test will be applied. Amendments 339 and 340 ask why just the existence of a Section 47 investigation is the trigger, rather than a consideration of whether that investigation has any relevance. Many Section 47 investigations are entirely unconnected to the suitability of a family for home education.

Amendment 341 looks at the question of how the local authority is in a position to judge best interests. What resources has the local authority got to enable it to do this? Why should the decision as to what a child’s best interests are be so hard for a parent to challenge? If it is not to be hard to challenge, what should the routes be?

Amendments 343, 344 and 345 are all concerned with the threat of a school attendance order not being a penalty for a minor infraction. I gather that the Government intend to put that in guidance, but it is important that parents understand that they are being judged by reasonable standards and are allowed to make ordinary mistakes—that they are walking a path and not a precipice.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Lord Crisp and Lord Lucas

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 209 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and others, in part for the reasons given so eloquently by the supporters of the amendment, but also because it provides the opportunity for the child concerned to be home-educated if that is the right thing for them. It is not just about ensuring that being home-educated is in the child’s best interest, but about providing the opportunity for that to happen. This is an important, and presumably relatively small, concession in terms of numbers, because here we are talking only about people who are in special schools, although I know there is another amendment later. I hope that the Minister will consider this amendment favourably.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much support what my noble friend said about young carers. We ought to be much better at collecting information on what is going on with young carers. The whole business of collecting information is getting easier with AI. The government AI team is a sight to be seen. I have not, in government, come across such an enthusiastic and effective team. I very much hope that the Department for Education will make contact and make use of the blockers. When you are faced with a difficult problem and need to find a way of collecting data that does not put a burden on the organisations that are having to do that data collection, and it is diverse and complicated, AI is a really good approach. I urge the Government to help look after young carers by taking that step.