Evidence session probes Education Minister with repeated questions
The Senedd’s Legislation Justice and Constitution Committee [LJCC] met on 12 May 2025 [Transcript , Video]. Agenda item 2 concerned the Legislative Consent Memorandum on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. This took the form of an evidence session with the Cabinet Secretary for Education, Lynne Neagle, and the Minister for Children and Social Care, Dawn Boden.
Three of the four Committee members were in attendance: Mike Hedges (Lab, Chair); Alun Davies (Lab); and Samuel Kurtz (Con.) Also accompanying Neagle were officials Alistair Davey, Deputy Director Social Services Enabling People division; Nicola Edwards, Deputy Director WG Equity in Education, and Iwan Roberts, lawyer, WG.
An expanded commentary on this item entitled “Welsh Government’s decision to “piggy-back” on an “England-only” Bill questioned at the Senedd” is available on Substack.
The author reports that the main issues of concern to the Committee were around the appropriateness of Wales being included in legislation that had made its way through the Commons as England-only proposals, and the disclosure of this to all parties at such a very late stage in proceedings.
Members had particular concerns to know whether or not WG had been actively involved with the development of this legislation. They also strongly protested the timing of events, with the amendments to includes Wales being laid in the Commons at the last possible opportunity before the Bill progressed to the House of Lords.
The tightly controlled timetable of the Bill’s Commons Committee Stage had already caused some internal disquiet about scrutiny having to be hurried, and the last-minute inclusion of Wales also presented Westminster MPs with a whole new matter for consideration, with no opportunity to do so. Senedd members too had felt slighted that the disclosure about Wales’ inclusion was made to them so late.
The commentary reports on Neagle’s response to the grilling from the LJC Committee members in some detail. A recurring theme was:
“the lack of time to take measures through appropriately, the lack of substantive communications from the UK Government and the rushed nature of the whole process.”
Home educating parents will find section 10, “Admission regarding CME databases” of particular interest.
Parents need to ask some harder questions still
A significant point is made towards the end of the commentary, where the overall presumption by Committee members that “the issue is not with the contents of the Bill, but the process of applying it to Wales” is called into question.
If there were no problem with the actual content of the Bill and it was only the manner in which it was so abruptly applied to Wales, then matters could perhaps be smoothed over despite the recent riding roughshod over the democratic process.
But we are prompted to consider some more fundamental questions:
“Will the Bill actually safeguard children – or as indicated by ‘growing bodies of concern,’ does it ‘fail to protect those most in need, whilst damaging the rights, wellbeing and education of the vast majority of children impacted by it?'”
The author concludes by emphasising the need for open and transparent scrutiny of what is being proposed, along with objective analysis of its potential impact in real time.
And from where parents find themselves today, it’s always informative to look back at how such issues were handled by previous administrations, especially when current developments demonstrate such a U-turn.
Consider for example the statement on Securing the Right to a Suitable Education for all Children delivered in a Plenary session on 30 January 2018 by the then Cabinet Secretary for Education LibDem Kirsty Williams. [Transcript, Video]
When the present Wales-only measures were presented in plenary, the concept of placing a compulsory duty on parents to register their children as home educated was condemned by the Labour-led coalition government of the day. Such measures could “potentially criminalise parents” and it was felt that “this element of compulsion” could have “the very real unintended consequence” of driving some parents “further away from engagement with statutory services.” At the time the Welsh government took the view that “placing the requirement on local authorities rather than parents” gave them the best possible chance of identifying as many children as possible.
How things change!
Is anyone else questioning the Bill?
Defend Digital Me [DDM] have worked tirelessly in recent months as their Policy page indicates. Their concerns have been about two Bills currently before the Westminster parliament – the Children’s Wellbeing & Schools Bill [CWSB] and the Data Use & Access Bill.
A Schools Week article from 3 February raises some of DDM’s concerns under the heading “Campaigners warn of schools bill’s ‘huge new powers.’ So-called “Henry VIII powers” will grant education secretary to amend or repeat other legislation with ‘minimal scrutiny'”
Readers needing to fill gaps in their understanding of the back story may find their Supplementary Briefing helpful, whilst those who absorb information more easily through diagrams than text may appreciate this graphic “New non-consensual data flows in Wales.”
DDM’s latest, Highlights for the House of Lords CWS Bill Committee Stage is well worth reading. It raises some excellent questions about Clauses 4 and 31 (Personal identifiers and Information-Sharing Duties and Databases) and much of the content pertains to Wales.
As to other bodies questioning the content and impact of the CWSB, there is no lack of material. Here is a selection. We encourage everyone to inform themselves as thoroughly as they can and to employ what they learn to good effect in their own spheres of influence. There’s a need to press for that essential, open and transparent scrutiny of the proposals – which, remember, are not yet enacted – along with serious analysis of their impact in real time and in the lives of real people, rather than just in the ivory towers of education officials’ planning departments.
- An Open Letter “CWS Bill is Dangerous” from Reclaim Rights for Children, signed by a wide range of academics and children’s professionals
- A London Daily News article about the 18 May March for Children rally, Children protest most dangerous piece of legislation in 30 years, quoting Cardiff-based education (SEND) lawyer Michael Charles, and referring to a book compiled by home educated young people.
- A broad-based website about Doing Education Differently, addressing issues around neurodiversity, alternative education and mainstream school reform – and inevitably, the CSWB!
- Those seeking to keep abreast of what is happening to the Bill may find the HE Byte’s suite of pages about it worth bookmarking.
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