Part of Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill - Committee (9th Day) (Continued) – in the House of Lords at 4:00 pm on 2 September 2025.
The Earl of Effingham
Opposition Whip (Lords)
4:00,
2 September 2025
My Lords, the noble Lords, Lord Lucas and Lord Wei, are seeking further clarification on His Majesty’s Government’s intentions about the use of data from the children not in school registers at a national level. These are indeed valid points to probe, although we might suggest caution around creating a transparency register as set out in Amendment 307, with the additional workload burden it may have on currently overstretched resources.
It is worth noting that there is already a register of information processing, often referred to as a record of processing activities: a document that outlines how an organisation handles personal data. It is a key requirement of data protection Laws such as GDPR, and serves as an inventory of all processing activities to ensure transparency and accountability within data handling practices.
Amendment 308 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, sets out some of the purposes for which national data should be kept, including monitoring the overall number of children receiving elective home education or children missing education. We will listen with interest to the Government’s feedback on this amendment.
As a bill passes through Parliament, MPs and peers may suggest amendments - or changes - which they believe will improve the quality of the legislation.
Many hundreds of amendments are proposed by members to major bills as they pass through committee stage, report stage and third reading in both Houses of Parliament.
In the end only a handful of amendments will be incorporated into any bill.
The Speaker - or the chairman in the case of standing committees - has the power to select which amendments should be debated.
Laws are the rules by which a country is governed. Britain has a long history of law making and the laws of this country can be divided into three types:- 1) Statute Laws are the laws that have been made by Parliament. 2) Case Law is law that has been established from cases tried in the courts - the laws arise from test cases. The result of the test case creates a precedent on which future cases are judged. 3) Common Law is a part of English Law, which has not come from Parliament. It consists of rules of law which have developed from customs or judgements made in courts over hundreds of years. For example until 1861 Parliament had never passed a law saying that murder was an offence. From the earliest times courts had judged that murder was a crime so there was no need to make a law.
