Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Wei

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I am very grateful to the Minister for what she said. I entirely understand the limitations of discussions with officials, which is why I want to talk to her again about tribunals. Tribunals are an established part of mediating between the citizen and the state. In situations like this, or in many circumstances similar to those we are talking about—and this is by no means the only time we will discuss this; the next time will be when we are talking about best interests—when you have a hard-pressed local authority that may have a particular prejudice against home education and may be making life extremely difficult, as some of them do, you want an effective right of appeal. The system of appeal to the Secretary of State has existed in various forms in various bits of legislation for a long time. I am aware of one occasion when the Secretary of State agreed with the complainant. It does not work as an effective forum. It is not set up to be an effective forum. It does not allow for balanced and deep argument. The department is just not set up as a tribunal: it is not staffed as a tribunal, nor skilled as a tribunal. It is not the right place. I just say to my noble friend Lady Barran that I would very much appreciate her support for a tribunal amendment at Report, because that is what this appears likely to come to.

[Lord Wei (Con)]

We have heard in discussing this group of amendments a number of excellent suggestions for trying to take the edge off these complex—as the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, said—and, in my view, quite heavy-handed requirements on families. On the previous group, the Minister was very kind in offering discussions so that we can move forwards. Even though I have said that I oppose the register totally, that does not mean that I am shirking my responsibility as a legislator to help improve this legislation and to make it practical, based on the experience of someone from a home-educating family and having heard what was said by many Peers who have contributed to the debate. We are trying to make this practical and to make it work, so that people can get on with educating their children and local authorities can catch the perpetrators they want to catch.

There have been discussions about the tribunal, appeals and the fact that the department’s appeals process generally does not seem to behave in the way you would expect of a proper appeals process when parents complain directly. We have heard some quite sensible amendments in this group and the Minister has not indicated that she is willing to adopt any of the ideas in them. We will see later on. We appreciate the clarification that, when we meet officials, we will be told what the Bill is about and why it has been written in this way, but I hope we can also improve the Bill, which is the intent of us all. There have been suggestions on ways to improve its wording, in order to treat children in special schools and their parents with a bit more care and to have a statement of costs and benefits. These do not seem unreasonable.

I am afraid I am hearing a bit of a “state knows best” argument—that it should have 28 days to give a reason for its decision whereas parents should have only 15. That does not sound very fair to me and I am not sure it will sound fair to the British public, let alone to home-educating families. However, in the interests of time and given that we will discuss in further groups and potentially over the summer more of what we have talked about today, I will reflect on what has been said. I may return to this on Report but, for now, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.