Clause 38
Education and Skills Bill
9:30 am
Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister, Children, Schools and Families; Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 188, in clause 38, page 20, line 2, after ‘cases’, insert
‘, in particular those relating to parents who are estranged from their children.’.
The clause gives the Secretary of State power to make regulations about parenting orders, and the amendment is intended to ensure that he would include in such regulations limits on the powers of local authorities to issue a parenting order in circumstances where the children are estranged from their parents. A 16 or 17-year-old child may have left home, as my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster said, on bad terms with their parents, and there may no longer be any contact. In those circumstances it would be unreasonable of the local authority to impose a parenting order on the parents, so the legislation should limit the power to make such an order in those circumstances.