469: After Clause 62, insert the following new Clause—
“Child rights impact assessment(1) A Minister of the Crown must prepare and publish a child rights impact assessment in relation to any legislative provision, policy decision, budgetary decision, or other decision of a strategic or operational nature that has or will have a direct or indirect impact on children’s wellbeing,social care or education, which are undertaken by virtue of the provisions in this Act.(2) The purpose of a child rights impact assessment is to secure better or further effect of the rights set out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).(3) A child rights impact assessment must include consideration of the views, wishes and feeling of children and young people affected by the decision, insofar as the Minister is able to ascertain those views.(4) A child rights impact assessment should be undertaken on all relevant legislation, policy and budget development which are undertaken by virtue of the provisions in this Act at the earliest possible opportunity and prior to making final decisions.(5) The UNCRC includes the rights and obligations set out in—(a) the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child Part 1;(b) Articles 1 to 6(1), 6(3) and 7 of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict;(c) Articles 1 to 10 of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography;(d) any other Optional Protocols to the UNCRC that the United Kingdom may in future ratify.(6) The UNCRC rights and obligations for the purposes of this Act are subject to any reservations, objections or interpretative declarations by the United Kingdom as may be in force at the time. (7) The UNCRC rights and obligations for the purposes of this Act should be interpreted in the light of General Comments prepared by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child under rule 77 of its procedure and Concluding Observations made by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in response to a United Kingdom report under Article 45 paragraph (d) of the Convention.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment will introduce a statutory requirement for Ministers – and thereby government departments – to routinely prepare and make publicly available a children’s rights assessment of the impact and/or expected impact of any proposed legislation, policy, budgetary decision or other strategic or operational decision undertaken by virtue of the provisions in this Act as they relate to children’s wellbeing, social care or education.
My Lords, having worked on these amendments with my noble friend Lady Lister, and in her unavoidable absence from the Chamber today, I shall move Amendment 469, speak to Amendment 470 and also mention Amendment 502F.
Amendment 469 introduces a duty routinely to prepare and make publicly available an assessment of the expected impact of any proposed legislation, policy, budgetary action or other matter that will have an impact on children. Amendment 470 provides for a more general duty, requiring Ministers to consider, protect and promote children’s rights as set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Together, these amendments probe all options in the round. Amendment 502F, which is broader in scope, is complementary, but a clear duty to have regard to the UN CRC is preferable to the somewhat vaguer qualification “the desirability of”.
Amendments 469 and 470 had input from the NSPCC as part of the Children’s Charities Coalition, the Children’s Rights Alliance and UNICEF UK. They would place a clear duty on Ministers to have due regard to the UN CRC, although those bodies ultimately aim for full and direct incorporation of the UN convention in law, as in Scotland.
Three years ago, the British Academy published a report Reframing Childhood. It was the outcome of a wide-ranging programme chaired by my noble friend Lady Lister. Three themes emerged, each of relevance to this Bill. The first was “being and becoming”; this drew attention to the importance of childhood as a state of being of great significance to the child. The final theme was “children’s voices and participation”, and the second was “children’s rights” as articulated in the UN convention. This is missing from the Bill.
The Secretary of State has argued that the Bill represents the importance of understanding and promoting child-centred policy. Key to this is children’s rights. They help us value children as children, particularly those in the most marginalised groups. A children’s rights approach could encourage more coherent policy-making. These two amendments offer a practical way for the Government to explicitly enshrine a child-centred orientation in legislation.
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Noble Lords may remember that on the first day of Committee the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, suggested that
“the purpose of the Bill has a golden spine running through it, and that is the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child”.—[Official Report, 20/5/25; col. 158.]
When reminded of that during her summing up, the Minister said:
“We recognise that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is an important thread”.
But she went on to say:
“but that does not necessarily mean that it can be used as a trump card on every future occasion”.—[Official Report, 20/5/25; col. 207.]
Perhaps it is not a trump card but, having ratified the convention, we are obliged to treat children’s best interests as a primary consideration and the amendments would enable the Government to do so.
In closing, I offer the view a view from Ben, a 13 year-old boy who watched the Second Reading debate from the Gallery and sent a long and thoughtful email. He wrote:
“When I saw the amendment … for the child rights impact, I felt … amazed and happy and a bit shocked because it is such an amazing and huge thing … It feels like if we had this law it would be such a huge psychological safety net … I think it is … important to have that in law. I feel like this Bill should be for children and I liked it when you said, ‘if not now, when?’ I agree with that”.
So, if not in this Bill, when? Let us not disappoint Ben. I beg to move.
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 502F in my name. I thank the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale of Richmond, who is unable to be here today, for lending her name to it, and Mr James Maurici KC for assisting us with its drafting.
The amendment is like Amendment 470, albeit differently worded, in seeking to give domestic legal effect in a somewhat different way, in the context of functions by public authorities under the Bill, to the rights of children contained in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. As the noble Baroness has just outlined, the purpose of the UNCRC is that children’s rights need specific consideration due to the special care and protection often needed by children and young people.
The UK has been a party to the convention for three and a half decades. It was signed by the Thatcher Government in 1990. Around that time my noble friend Lady Bottomley, then Minister for Health, said in the other place that the UK played a leading role in drafting it. Despite that, the convention has not yet been incorporated in our domestic law in England. The UN committee with oversight of the convention, as we have just heard, has recommended that it should be, so that the rights are enforceable.
In 2011, Wales became the first country in the UK to make the convention part of its domestic law by the Rights of Children and Young Persons (Wales) Measure 2011, and that legislation has been judged to be a success so far in Wales. Scotland has more recently followed suit through the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024. England, however, lags behind, and this amendment would go some way to addressing that.
The amendment would not give effect to the UNCRC generally in English law—that would be outside the Bill’s scope and would in any case require further consideration—but would apply to the exercise of any functions by public authorities under the Bill. The proposed duty is modelled on Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, the public sector equality duty. In particular, and importantly, it is a duty on authorities to have due regard to the convention rather than the duty of outcome, and thus it would not impose undue burdens on public authorities. Like the Welsh legislation, it contains a requirement for the Secretary of State to report every five years on how the Government have complied with the duty.
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 502G in this group. This amendment would ensure that Part 2 of the Bill complies with Article 2 in Protocol 1 to the European Convention on Human Rights, which the United Kingdom not only signed and ratified but incorporated into UK law by the Human Rights Act 1998.
My amendment is based on the wording of the second sentence of Article 2 of Protocol 1, which provides:
“In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions”.
Part 2 of the Bill directly engages this article, since the Government will be, in the words of the ECHR, “assuming many new functions in relation to teaching and education”. For example, local authorities will be given sweeping new powers to monitor, register and regulate the independent sector. The Secretary of State will be empowered to regulate proprietors of independent schools, arrange inspections, prescribe standards and suspend registration. He or she will be able to make regulations using Henry VIII powers so as to dictate which educational institutions are covered, and to mandate the national curriculum for academies using yet more Henry VIII powers to regulate the contents of the four key stages, as well as attainment and assessment targets. We are well within the Article 2, Protocol 1 envelope. I know that this Government take their ECHR obligations very seriously.
Without my amendment, these new powers in the Bill would impede the right of parents to ensure an education for their children which accords with their own religious and philosophical convictions. Why is that? It is because Article 2 is about parents having the right to choose which education and teaching is right for their children. As the Strasbourg court said in a Danish case, Article 2 of Protocol 1 aims
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UNICEF UK argues that children’s rights should be central to plans to improve children’s well-being and opportunities, as they are in these amendments. Having ratified the UN convention, the UK must comply with its principles and standards but, beyond ratification, Article 4 of the convention requires states to
“undertake all appropriate legislative, administrative, and other measures for the implementation of the rights recognized in the present Convention”.
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has ruled that the development of a children’s rights perspective is required for the effective implementation. In its 2023 report on the UK, it recommended that greater efforts to incorporate the convention into UK law and the development of mandatory children’s rights impact assessments for relevant legislation and policy should be taken. These amendments would be important steps in complying with that recommendation and would also bring England closer to the protection of children’s rights provided for in Wales, Scotland and Jersey. They would add teeth to the Government’s aim of child-centred action across departments and facilitate the Government’s mission-led approach in the opportunity mission in particular.
The duty on Ministers in Amendment 470 would ensure visibility of children’s rights and best interests in policy-making so that their needs and well-being were not overlooked. In line with Article 12 of the convention, it would mean listening to children so that they were heard and had their views respected. It would help to strengthen the public awareness of children’s rights, in particular through the publication of three-yearly reports. The duty could easily be integrated into existing decision-making processes. It is a step that other nations have taken, with positive results. A key element of the duty would be to involve mandatory children’s rights impact assessments, or CRIAs, as recommended by the UN committee in its report on the UK.
Amendment 469 spells out how CRIAs would be used to enable a systematic consideration of how children may be affected by a policy under development so as to identify, avoid or mitigate adverse impacts. They also enable policymakers to identify proactive measures, leading to better realisation of children’s rights. Evaluations have shown that CRIAs, properly conducted, are effective in improving policy-making from children’s perspectives. A comprehensive CRIA was provided for this Bill, but it reads more like an end-of-process assessment rather than one used from the outset to guide policy development. The expectation of the UN committee is that the CRIA would be part of the development of new policy and legislation from as early a stage as possible.
In response to an Oral Question earlier this year, my noble friend the Minister confirmed that
“the Government recognise the importance of considering children’s rights in that way”.
However, she added that they were continuing to encourage departments
“to carry out children’s rights impact assessments when they are making policy changes”.—[Official Report, 27/1/25; col. 9.]
But the fact that her own department does not collect information on the number of CRIAs carried out, as revealed in the Answer to a Written Question, shows that the Government do not know how many actually are carried out.
In discussing this with my noble friend Lady Lister, she described trying to get a CRIA published on previous asylum legislation as like trying to get blood out of a stone. When one finally emerged for Third Reading of the Illegal Migration Bill it was, alas, inadequate —a post hoc attempt to justify measures that actually undermined children’s rights.
Moreover, when asked about CRIAs, there is the tendency for departments to respond by referring to equality impact assessments carried out under the public sector duty, but EIAs are no substitute for CRIAs, which require consideration of children’s best interests and the full range of children’s rights. In the interests of good government, I urge my noble friend the Minister to accept the case for mandatory CRIAs that follow the UN committee’s guidance.
Over 115 organisations support these amendments, representing national charities and grass-roots groups, spanning areas such as child poverty, disability, youth justice and social care. More than 25 academics have written to the Minister for Children and Families to voice their support, pointing out that it is simply not possible to meet children’s needs in any of the areas covered by the Bill without first respecting and promoting their rights. Members of the Committee may have received an email from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, which states that:
“It is essential that this legislation includes measures for ensuring children’s rights are upheld”—
hence it, too, is supporting the amendments.
I suggest that the significance of the amendment is threefold. First, it would be an important initial step on the road to bringing the law of England in line with that in Wales and Scotland in terms of giving legal effect to the convention that we signed up to over three and a half decades ago.
Secondly, the new duty it would introduce would apply to the exercise of any functions conferred under the Bill in relation to children’s social welfare and schools, and all the better for that.
Thirdly, the amendment would have added importance in combination with Amendment 502M, proposed by my noble friends Lord Young and Lord Brady, which seeks to create a duty to keep educational institutions, early years provision and childcare premises open for in-person attendance during civil emergencies “so far as is reasonably possible”, and those words would engage the UNCRC “have regard to” duty under my amendment. The combined effect of the two amendments would be that any decisions by public authorities on school closures in such situations would have to be taken having due regard to the UNCRC.
The two amendments together would provide powerful protections in the future against a repeat of what happened during the Covid pandemic in terms of school closures, the documented effects of which include the highest annual rise of children living with obesity on record; severe impacts on children who are victims of domestic abuse; the amplification of differences in educational attainment between children who come from well-off families and those less fortunate; a marked decline of participation by children in sporting and extra-curricular activities; and a significant increase in mental ill-health, self-harm and suicide among children and young people.
The Government have made much of their commitment to fulfilling the UK’s obligations under international law; indeed, the Attorney-General gave a lecture about that only a few days ago. This amendment would contribute to achieving the objective by giving domestic legal effect to the obligations the UK has long signed up to in the international sphere. I urge the Minister and the Committee to consider it carefully.
“at safeguarding the possibility of pluralism in education which is essential for the preservation of the ‘democratic society’ as conceived by the Convention”.
Our very own Supreme Court recognised this need for plurality in a case in 2020 concerning members of the Orthodox Jewish community. The court stated that their needs are different from those who are not members of that community, and they have a need for their own community facilities, including schools. The same could be said for members of other faiths who choose schools which support their religious and philosophical convictions, such as Christian schools.
This is all about the primacy of parental choice. I repeat: it is about the primacy of parental choice. Whether it is an academy, a single-sex school, a language or music school, a faith school or indeed a maintained school, parents must have the freedom to choose an institution whose ethos accords with their own religious and philosophical beliefs and with what they perceive is best for their children. This may mean choosing a school which has freedom to innovate, without regulation by the state, so as to promote the skills and talents of each pupil, including varying the curriculum or attainment targets and adapting assessment procedures or the daily schedule with a view to bringing out the best in each and every child. All these are the hallmarks of our diverse educational landscape and exemplify the rights which Article 2 of Protocol 1 protects.
As it stands, Part 2 fails to respect such rights. Therefore, my amendment is surely unobjectionable and indeed to be welcomed by all who value maximising the unique talents of our children in an educational environment consistent with the religious and philosophical upbringing their parents have chosen.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Order Paper · Order Paper