Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Lords Chamber

None of these amendments denies the state its powers. They ask that those powers be exercised with care and in a manner that is compatible with the Human Rights Act. None of them weakens safeguarding; they aim to make it more accurate. None of them privileges parents; they exist for the sake of children. I urge the House to support them.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, new Section 434A(6)(b)(i) asks the local authority to consider

“that it would be in the child’s best interests to receive education by regular attendance at school”.

But no child attends school: they attend a school. They might attend the school where the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, works—fine—or they might go to the school depicted in episode 2 of “Adolescence”. That would have me hoicking my child out in a millisecond, and there are a lot of schools like that.

My noble friend’s Amendment 175ZD is therefore an important potential addition to the Bill. There should not be a presumption that any school is better than any home education, but that is where we are heading with this bit of the Bill. We are putting a duty on local authorities to judge and giving them the presumption that the child should be put into school. It is like buying IBM when I was young: it is the safe choice. If local authorities allow someone to be home educated, they are taking all the risks on themselves, but if they chuck the child into school, any school, there are no risks. So all the emphasis on how a local authority officer should behave is focused on pushing a child into school, whatever the circumstances.

That is a deep fault in the Bill, and Amendment 122 from the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, is the right solution to it. There should be some court oversight of the judgment of local authorities, otherwise there is a complete imbalance. We know how local authorities behave; they drive into the easy answers because that is life—I only have 70 years’ experience of it. Going for the safe answer is the natural, human thing to do, and you are asking a huge amount of a local authority to expect it to stand up against that. We must produce a countervailing force somewhere in the Bill. I would choose Amendment 122 from the amendments on offer, and I hope that the Government will see the wisdom of moving in that direction.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, we have come a long way on the issue of home education and safeguarding. I want to start by thanking the Minister for her comments at the beginning of this group. I was also taken with the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, who reminded us that education is compulsory, but schooling is not. We want all our learning and education, whether it is in school or at home, to be the best that can be provided. We want our schools to be safe and we want children who are home educated to be safe.

I remind the House of where we currently stand. Any parent can take their child out of school just like that: no notification or form-filling, they just take their child out. They take them to their home and apparently, hopefully, maybe or definitely home educate them—we do not know. There are some parents who are absolutely determined that their children get the best home education that they can give them. However, we also have situations at the other extreme, where, for example, unregistered fundamentalist religious schools have been closed down. They home educate children in small groups, because they are allowed to, and nobody knows what is going on in those schools. That cannot be and is not right.

You can have a home educator who brings people in to enthuse and inspire; you can have home educators who link up with other home educators and organise summer camps or particular field trips. That is wonderful. However, at the other end, you can have a home education system where an individual is brought in to teach the children who might, for example, be a paedophile, and we would never know, because there are no safeguarding requirements. That is not the way that our education system should work. Our children, whether they are at home or in school, should be safeguarded and properly taught. They should learn and be inspired, enthused et cetera.

I am of conscious of three amendments that are really important. I like the idea—although that is the wrong word—of Amendment 125 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. I want to see us move more and more to where home educators regard local authorities not as interferers but as people who can support and work with them. One of the things that we need to understand is why parents want to home educate, and, if they choose to go down that route, how we can support and help them. A pilot scheme, where we have a conversation with parents before they go down the route of home education, is not interfering, bullying or suggesting that they do not do it, but listening to the concerns.

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[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I got around to reading all these amendments only today, and I was quite impressed. I felt that in some ways this is your Lordships’ House at its best, because this is all from personal experience. People are talking about something they know very intimately and can therefore put the necessary emphasis where it matters: the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson—le petit Guillaume—and the noble, Lord Wei, with his home schooling.

I feel that we have completely failed children who are home educated; we have not understood how important that aspect of education is for many children. At the moment, there are excessive data powers, legal ambiguity and the erosion of long-standing parental rights. It is just so much worse than it could be, and I feel very sad about that. I have three grandchildren who were home educated; two are now studying at Cambridge and the other is making films, so their home education did not hold them back. I am concerned about the digital ID as there are no safeguards on sharing that information. There are unchecked powers for the local authorities, and there was no meaningful consultation or risk assessment. Therefore, home-educated children are subject to a higher level of scrutiny and data extraction, and it just seems that we are going to a place where a lot of children are going to be very disadvantaged, because being taught at home is not an option for them.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much support my noble friend’s Amendment 157A. One of the fundamental things that can come out of this register is proper information for Parliament on what is happening in home education, and I very much hope that we will receive that.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to the two amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin. I hope I will be able to see the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, on YouTube. Was it a goose, did he say?

Our creative industries are hugely important to this country—we are world leaders—and children and young people play a huge part in their success. One of my ex-pupils, Josh Bolt, was a regular on “Last Tango in Halifax” and, sadly, “Benidorm”; I know that the schooling side worked for Josh.

We are so lucky to have in this House people who have real expertise in particular areas. Obviously, the noble Baroness brings it in relation to the performing arts sector, so we have to listen with great care to what she says. During the coalition, we promised a review— I think PACT was involved—and that decision in 2014 needs to be looked at again. If young people are acting or performing, we need to ensure that they are safeguarded and that their education is there. We also need to ensure that the system does not prohibit them making a valuable contribution, not least to their own career development. I hope the Minister will say some warm and wise words on those amendments.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, has just said, particularly the thanks to the Minister for the time and consideration of civil servants and the many excellent government amendments in this group that reflect that.

I too think that Amendment 135A and the versions of it tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, are really worth considering and, alongside them, as the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, has said, Amendment 172A and other aspects of cyber security. This is a collection of information about children. We need to be very careful about it. I hope the Government will not allow local authorities to develop their own versions of software to do this but will do this centrally and to the highest standards.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, my amendments in this group pull in two slightly different directions. If the Minister and her officials are confused, I apologise, but I will try to explain why.

The main thrust of my amendments, as the noble Lords, Lord Crisp and Lord Hacking, both said, is to try to simplify the amount of specific detail required to be held on the register in future. I too very much welcome the Government’s decision to simplify a lot of the information that was in the original draft of the Bill and to leave a bit more room for professional curiosity on the part of the home education team in the local authority. My Amendments 135A, 135B and 146A all point in this direction and give the Government different options—a pick-and-mix menu to achieve this end. Amendment 146B would make it clear that a local authority can request further information where it believes that a child might not be receiving a suitable education or that their welfare may be at risk.

In the other direction is my Amendment 143B— I hope the Minister will be able to address this specifically when she sums up—which would establish a duty to record information relating to care proceedings. I think that is missing from the current list, but the Minister will tell me whether I am right or wrong on that. This would include information relating not just to the child but to their siblings. We are all aware of cases where siblings or half-siblings are in care proceedings, perhaps if they are babies or under five, but an older child might not be. It feels highly relevant, if a child is going to be taken out of school, that the local authority has that level of concern about other children in the family. I hope the Minister feels able to accept that and perhaps bring back a government amendment at Third Reading.

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[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendments 160 and 175ZC, which we have heard so much about. The noble Baroness, Lady Blake, when talking to Amendment 158, painted a very rosy picture of parents being signposted to happy centres where their children could all take wonderful exams and obviously achieve enormous success. However, the reality, from what I have seen and heard, is a very different thing. Amendment 175ZC provides a very clean solution.

Access to exams is the golden thread. We want as many of our students to succeed—they have to do their exams. If they are driving hundreds of miles, that is not going to work. I genuinely think that working in partnership with local state schools would be quite a simple thing. There is always room in an exam hall for an extra 10 people, and you have the invigilators already. It would be a very simple thing, so I urge the Government to accept these amendments.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, in the spring of 2024, my noble friend Lady Barran was kind enough to allow me to explore what is going wrong with GCSE provision for home-educated people. I was foolish enough to think that the election would be in October, so I never got to the end of that process, but it is clear from the work that I did that there are a number of things the Government can do to help.

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My last point is this. I ask the right reverend Prelate to consider this. I think he has tabled this amendment to protect yeshivas, but it opens up the ability of anyone of any faith to set up a school where children are getting religious instruction from 8 am to 6 pm and home education after that. That is a direction of travel that we would not wish to embark on, so I oppose the amendment.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I do not read this amendment in the same way as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, does, but I will come to that. I start with renewed thanks to the Minister for the time that she and her officials have given to me and thanks to the right reverend Prelate for tabling this amendment.

This Bill exemplifies how we are setting clear expectations of the standards that we should set for people who choose to educate their children outside the school system. We should not be ashamed of that. This is an honourable and right thing to do. My main answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, is that, if they are not achieving home education, they are in trouble. There must be home education which is up to the standard we think it should be. If not, it will be in contravention of this Bill.

However, that does not appear to be the problem, at least with the Haredi communities that I have been in correspondence with. We have principles—and they have principles—about how children should be educated. The Prime Minister and others in government have made much of their respect and care for our Jewish communities. It would not be consistent with those statements to tip hundreds of families within the Haredi community into conflict with the state and courts without doing our best to reconcile their views on education and ours.

However, tipping them into conflict is what this Bill in its raw form does, as the Government’s own impact statement accepts. The Haredi community, for all the differences between its ancient traditions and our secular ways, is entirely worthy of our care and respect. It is law-abiding. It makes a positive contribution to our economy. Its children lead productive and fulfilling lives. There is clearly a lot of good going on.

We should therefore step back from the punitive approach that this Bill allows for and enter a process of building a mutual understanding. What does Haredi education achieve in practice? What exactly are their religious red lines? What aspects of Haredi education do we want to see improved? What is the best way of getting that? We have clearly put the Haredi community, or substantial parts of it, in a state of fear. The Government are pushing through this Bill unamended, asking the Haredi community to trust in the department’s good will to devise regulations it will be able to work with. This surely is the time for a clear statement from the Minister that the Government are committed to reaching an outcome that allows both sets of principles to be observed.

I understood from the officials we met that yeshivas to be regulated as IEIs under this Bill are not to be expected to provide the whole of a child’s education. This is most welcome and a cornerstone of eventual agreement. Yeshivas provide religious education; their children’s general education is provided through the elective home education system and should be held to the same standards as we are holding all elective home education to. I hope the Minister will be able to confirm that understanding.

Discussion will throw up some areas of fundamental agreement, such as safeguarding, where the focus will be on getting the mechanisms right, and other areas of deep disagreement. We should be determined to resolve those disagreements. My limited experience of listening to the Haredi community and my long experience of listening to the DfE gives me a lot of confidence that we will see a positive outcome for both parties. We should set a reasonable timescale for this process. A couple of years, as discussed with officials at our most recent meeting, will be a period long enough not to cramp discussion and short enough for it to be clear that those discussions must reach a conclusion. We should involve all the main strands of Haredi thought. The DfE has been here before in successfully setting up an elective home education working group in an environment of strong and diverse opinions. Such a working group would build confidence within the Haredi community that it was heard and understood. A Minister should be involved, as some of the questions to be resolved clearly require the application of ministerial judgment.

We should understand the depth of our misunderstandings. We find it hard, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, illustrated, to believe that children will have the energy and focus for a good general education if the school day is full of religious studies. But as the right reverend Prelate said, they do not return home to their devices, computer games and all the other things that distract our children; they lead a much more focused life—they clearly do. If you look at the outcomes, the people they grow up to be, they clearly do absorb, very effectively, a good, broad general education. If we express our wishes in terms of the results we desire, not in terms of structures created for other purposes, I believe that we will build mutual understanding and trust. We should listen to the Haredi community’s exposition of its principles and explore how those principles can be upheld, at the same time as we uphold ours. I very much hope that the Minister will, in her reply, commit her Government to such a course.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, faith schools play an important part in our country’s education and are to be valued, but as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, rightly said, we also believe that all children should have access to a broad and balanced curriculum. If we accommodate changes for one religious faith group, that should be available to any faith group or religious group that wants the same. We have, as a country, probably created one of the most successful multicultural, multifaith communities in the world. We should cherish that, but we should also be aware of the dangers that potentially lie ahead.

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[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, it was a pleasure to listen to the speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, which was about a modest change to the remit of the TRA. However, I support Amendment 190, to which I have added my name, precisely not to extend the TRA’s remit in two particular ways—that the TRA should be allowed to consider, as the noble Baroness opposite said, complaints about behaviour before someone becomes a qualified and practising teacher, and that it should be allowed to consider complaints after someone has stopped teaching.

I do not know whether there is any confusion in the minds of anyone in the Government. Clearly, if someone interrupts their teaching and then wants to come back to it, that is a different matter. If we are talking about people who have permanently left teaching, though, it seems unreasonable for the TRA to proceed. With regard to people against whom the TRA might seek to proceed before they have started teaching, the National Education Union says:

“Once the door is opened to pre-career conduct, it becomes very difficult to draw principled boundaries. How far back should investigations reach? Should conduct as a teenager or student be included? What weight should be given to immaturity, context, or personal development?”


What about what both the noble Baroness opposite and I described in the meeting with Minister Gould, which I was very pleased to attend, as “youthful high jinks”, which in no way reaches any kind of criminality but someone might seek to complain about?

There is a real problem here. Even Minister Gould said that she could see we were saying that these proposals seemed to be too much of a broad brush, and that is indeed my concern. Teachers are rightly held to very high standards and, although we heard some egregious examples of bad behaviour from teachers, in general the vast majority not only are held to high standards but meet and exceed them. Therefore, to create the pressure of the possibility that someone could complain about pre-career conduct or post-retirement conduct seems to be an unnecessary burden to put on both the teaching profession and the TRA, which is not currently able to manage the workload it has, although that is not my prime consideration.

Noble Lords will have heard from the noble Baroness opposite that during the meeting we hoped that there might be some movement on this. Like her, I have now had the letter from Minister Gould, who says:

“I also want to assure you that we are committing to setting out in guidance a framework which makes clear the factors that will need to be considered before the TRA can proceed with an investigation … We will do this in consultation with the sector and unions in due course”.


As the noble Baroness opposite said, and as has been said from many corners of this Chamber on many occasions, setting out guidance in a framework is not the same as having something in the Bill. The NEU concludes:

“Even if guidance later seeks to limit this, primary legislation would authorise the power, and guidance alone cannot cure an overly broad statutory remit”.


It is with regret that I say that I think the Government have got it wrong on this. However, I am slightly pleased that there will be a consultation and I am sure that the sector and the unions will engage very vigorously in that. If this amendment is not accepted, I hope that this being in the Bill does not set the tone and imply that we think there is every reason to have open season on anyone who might become a teacher or once was a teacher.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am thoroughly in favour of Amendment 191A. I have been involved in that sort of situation a couple of times in my life. It makes an enormous difference for someone facing a perilous investigation to have someone beside them to make the points that make it clear that the school—or whichever organisation—has got it wrong. It is a very hard thing to do yourself; it is much easier if you have someone beside you to take that burden. I recommend that the Government pursue Amendment 191A.

I also very much hope the Government will pursue the amendment advocated by my noble friend Lady Spielman. We have to get the complaints system right. I had a go at this in Committee and got bounced by the Government consistently. It would really reduce the burdens on people dealing with complaints to have something that takes the weight off, has a really good triage system, is really good at explaining to people why their complaint is rubbish and nonsense and is equally good at making sure it gets to the right person with the right advice tagged to it. It would also increase the effectiveness of justified complaints. Parents taking to social media and having the police called on them is not the right way forward.