Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Hacking Excerpts(1 week, 1 day ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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 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.
Lord Hacking
“(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.
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.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Hacking Excerpts(2 weeks, 3 days ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, I supported and spoke to a similar amendment in Committee. Again, I will not be very long.
I want to celebrate this great example of when campaigning works. I pay tribute to Justlife, which worked alongside the Shared Health Foundation for the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Households in Temporary Accommodation. I want to stress the importance of this, and will not apologise for repeating what are such horrific figures. From 2023 to 2025, 80 children died while in temporary accommodation; that was 3% of total child deaths. From 2019 to 2024, temporary accommodation was cited as a factor in the deaths of 74 children.
Having said that, I want to stress, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Young, was hinting at, that it is crucial that this comes into effect as soon as possible. We could potentially save a life if GP surgeries and schools know the situation that children are in. Much more broadly, we need to get to a situation where we do not have children in temporary accommodation for the long periods of time they are now. Please let this be done as soon as possible.
Lord Hacking (Lab)
I give heartfelt thanks to the Minister from these Benches for moving this amendment. I have not dared count the number of amendments my noble friend has tabled, but this is a magnificent example of a Minister and a Government listening.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, we on these Benches warmly welcome the amendment and thank the Government for tabling it.
Love Matters (Archbishops’ Commission on Families and Households Report)
Lord Hacking Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, it is a very great pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate’s splendid speech. Housing is fundamental to decent family life and she is right to make those points. I add my congratulations to the most reverend Primate of all England on choosing this debate and the manner in which he introduced it.
It is entirely appropriate to have a Christmas debate focused on the family. Christmas is the season which above all is focused on the most famous family that ever lived. It is a privilege to take part in this debate. I want to choose my words with real care because I so agreed with my noble friend Lady Stowell when she focused on marriage. Like my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, I have had a long marriage to a single wife—56 years in my case. What I am even more pleased about is that both of my sons have celebrated their silver wedding anniversaries and one is heading for his 30th next year, which is very good. The family is the fundamental building block of society. Strong marriages make for strong families.
My noble friend Lord Herbert made a powerful and moving speech. He indicated that he respected the views of those who take a different view. While I am proud to have many gay friends whom I like and admire enormously, I hold to the traditional Christian view that marriage is between a man and a woman. Many Christians do not agree with that, and I respect them. Perhaps I am wrong. However, I hold to that view. It is extremely important that we do all what we can within the Christian Church to encourage marriage, because there is a stability in that relationship which is not present in others.
I support what the General Synod decided a couple of weeks ago. I am sorry that the majority was such a narrow one, because I think that it is right that those of the same sex who wish to live together as a permanent couple should have an opportunity for a blessing in a church. I welcome that and support it, and will continue to do so. I have every sympathy with the most reverend Primate, who has, in seeking to lead the Anglican Communion, a very difficult task indeed. He deserves the support and the prayers of us all, because what my noble friend Lord Herbert said about Uganda is, frankly, toe-curling. I do not see how any Christian can give support to a regime that will punish with a death sentence people who follow particular inclinations in their lives. He has my complete support in the hard work that he seeks to do there.
It is appropriate to turn to the role of government. I agree with my noble friend Lord Robathan, who made the point that he was not a supporter of the nanny state—he did not put it in those words. Nor am I, but I think that the Government have a real task to encourage family life and to do all they can, to touch on the point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford, to ensure that there is proper housing available. It is difficult to hold a family together if it has to live in the sort of conditions that the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, so movingly described in his speech.
There is another thing that I would like to see government do. I am one of those who believes there is a real virtue in a civil national service for young people who reach the age of 18. After all, if we do not treat our children properly, we are sabotaging our own future. I am not suggesting that it has to be full-time, and it can be in conjunction with university or other studies or occupations, but there is real value in giving, or encouraging in, young people a sense of civic and national pride and patriotism—I use that word deliberately—by obliging them to perform certain tasks of a civil nature. The National Trust encourages this, and it is very good that it should, but it really should be for every young person to have that opportunity, and it should be underwritten by government funding, whichever party is in power.
I am one of those who just escaped national service. I was old enough and had it deferred: in those days, if you went to university, it was virtually automatically deferred until you got your degree. By the time I had graduated in 1960 or 1961, it was all over. I rather regret that, but nevertheless, there we are. There is a great deal to be said for reform of civil national service for our young people. It would chime with many of the recommendations made in this hefty and lengthy report, on which I congratulate the two Archbishops and all those responsible for it. Again, I thank the most reverend Primate for giving us the opportunity to debate this in your Lordships’ House.
Lord Hacking (Lab)
My Lords, I hope the noble Lord will allow me to break in just before he sits down. I did not avoid national service: I did my two years and there is much that he said that is true about it. But, having listened to the whole of this debate, the emphasis surely should not be on marriage. We understand entirely why the noble Lord, Lord Herbert of South Downs, feels so strongly about marriage, but the centre point is the family and the household.