Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly to add my name and voice to the force of nature that is my noble friend Lord Bird. We have heard points made forcefully by all noble Lords around the House. I think noble Lords all know what I do for a living; I am sorry to be boring about this.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

A schoolmaster!

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

I am indeed a schoolteacher. Every day in Hackney I see the effects of poverty. We still have 55% free school meals in our school. Schoolteachers are very used to targets. Every pupil has target grades and if they do not hit their target grades, we have to explain why. It really does focus the mind. If we can solve child poverty, the entire Bill will be so much more powerful. The best way to solve poverty is with targets, so I beg the Government to accept the amendment.

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Moved by

[Lord Hacking]

134A: Clause 32, page 58, leave out lines 17 to 19 and insert—
“(b) the names and home addresses of the parent or parents who are taking responsibility for the education of the child;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to identify the minimum requirement for providing information for the register and ensures that information is only included on parents who have responsibility for educating the child.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I will be speaking in this group on Amendments 134A, 139 and 140. At this stage, I should draw your Lordships’ attention to Amendment 135A tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. The very first part of this amendment is almost identical to my Amendment 134A.

However, in the second part—which is a rather longer part—of Amendment 135A, which deals with the problem of excessive information being sought from home-schooling parents, the noble Baroness and noble Lord deal with it much more extensively than I do in my Amendments 139 and 140, but it is on the same subject.

Before I speak to my Amendment 134A, I should like to acknowledge the good progress that has been made on home-schooling issues in the three or four years that I have been involved in them in your Lordships’ House. First, there has been very good progress on the register, which is now to be called the not in school register. That is most welcome. The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, may remember that, with the previous Government’s Bill, I made it quite plain that I have always supported the institution of that register.

Secondly, I acknowledge the recognition that home schooling should not be secret, and that the local authority should know what home schooling is taking place. Thirdly, there is the recognition, which has come out now, of the role of the local authority to assist home-schooling parents. That was very well covered in the second bullet point on page 8 of my noble friend’s letter of 7 January and was even better covered by the Minister’s excellent and helpful speech at the beginning of group 3 during our present deliberations on Report.

This enables me to go, on a strong basis, to my Amendment 134A—previously Amendment 135. Its purpose is to protect a home-schooling parent and child from an offending other parent—for example, a father who has perpetrated serious sexual acts on the child, the parents having separated and now living in different abodes. Another example is protection from an offending father who has perpetrated serious domestic violence in the home. My amendment seeks to prevent the offending parent having knowledge of the address and whereabouts of the mother and child. As your Lordships will understand, all parents who have faced the ordeals that I have just described place tremendous importance on their whereabouts and address not being known.

The need for this amendment was brought to my attention, and to the attention of the noble Lords, Lords Crisp and Lord Frost, by a mother whose former husband had committed serious sexual acts on her son. Last June this mother attended a successful meeting of home-schooling mothers with the then responsible Minister, Stephen Morgan. It was a very successful meeting, and we thought we had made very good progress at it.

It is beyond our understanding how any father could seek to perpetrate sexual acts on his own children, boys or girls, and some as young as four years old. But it does happen and, I suggest, more frequently than we know about. Prosecuting authorities are in a difficult position and have extreme reluctance to prosecute when reliance has to be placed on a small child’s evidence. This amendment, therefore, is based on not just one mother’s concern but a universal concern for all home-schooling mothers who are now separated from an offending father and want that separation to be kept complete.

The problem is that, as drafted, the requirement on page 56 of the Bill is a requirement for the name and address of both parents to be in the register. This includes the offending father. Hence, my amendment seeks to change that wide allowance so that parents are in the register only if they

“are taking responsibility for the education of the child”.

In the helpful discussions that I have had, for which I thank my noble friend the Minister, with her officials, I have been told that the offending parent in the description that I have given will not have access to the register. This cannot be right—perhaps my noble friend will correct me. All persons named in the register must have the right to access that register—for example, just to check whether the name and address are correct. Once the offending father has access to the register, he has access to the address and whereabouts of the mother and the child. That is why I am extremely concerned, on behalf of all home-schooling mothers in a similar situation, that they should be properly protected.

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I hope these amendments demonstrate that we have listened carefully to concerns raised by noble Lords during previous debates, and that we have acted to reduce burdens of compliance with the registration duty, while ensuring that registers contain the information necessary for local authorities to meet their education and safeguarding duties. On that basis, and on the basis of the reassurance I have provided on the other amendments, I hope the noble Lord feels able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend the Minister. She and her officials have clearly thought very carefully about the provisions of this Bill and have come to some conclusions. My difficulty is that I think they have come to the wrong conclusions, and I would therefore be very grateful—and I will be withdrawing my amendment—if my noble friend and her officials looked carefully at what I argued relating to my two sets of amendments. If there is any way they can find to accommodate my concerns, I would be very grateful.

The central point is that what I proposed in both sets of amendments was a safe way of doing it, and it must be the safe way of doing it: changing the drafting on page 58 of the Bill from the

“home address of each parent of the child”

to each parent or parents who have responsibility for their education. That is the safe way of dealing with that. Likewise, on the amount of information being sought from home-schooling parents, my amendment is the safe way of doing it. I am asking the Minister and her officials to look at the safe way relating to both sets of amendments, but having said that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 134A withdrawn.