Lord Lucas:

Moved by Lord Lucas

427: Clause 36, page 79, line 16, at end insert—“(c) institutions in England that cater for children placed with them for alternative provision by local authorities.”Member's explanatory statementThis Amendment seeks to bring unregistered alternative provision within the scope of routine oversight.

My Lords, in moving this Amendment, I will also speak to my other amendments in this group.

This amendment concerns the practice of local authorities placing children in unregistered alternative provision. In my view, that should not happen. These children need quality provision, almost by definition. That they should be placed in unregistered provision by the state seems to me a complete dereliction of duty. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, has a rather more subtle and nuanced approach to this; I very much look forward to listening to it.

Amendment 427B suggests to the Minister that the Government should tighten up on, or give themselves additional scope to deal with, unregistered illegal schools that seek to disguise themselves by splitting into separate parts. This is merely a technical issue that the Government should address.

The other amendments in this group address the challenge that the Bill presents to the Haredi community. Obviously, the same principles that I am addressing here will apply to other religious communities where they provide substantial education for their children, but I am focusing on Haredi because I have been talking extensively to them—though I claim no authority to speak for them and no deep knowledge of their life. The Haredi are a venerable and peaceful community. They are contributors to commercial life and to the common good, though they keep themselves apart in many ways.

It is part of the British way, as I understand it, to respect religions. The Haredi community, as with other religious communities, has cultural values that differ from those of wider society, such as treating sexuality as a private, more intimate, subject and having both specific gender roles and a stronger community structure. However, in my experience of the way in which this country is organised, we allow space for these differences and do not attempt to eradicate them, although we set boundaries and should be confident in doing so. There have been religions where murder and child abuse have been common features, and we are quite right to say, “No, those are off-limits”, whatever our religious belief. Where we choose to set those boundaries will change over time and be a matter for debate, obviously, but we should be confident in setting those boundaries.

This Bill, as it is currently understood, places the Haredi system of yeshivas beyond the boundaries set in the Bill; yeshivas would be outlawed by it. The principal conflicts are around the requirement that yeshivas would have to register at schools and thus be bound by the curriculum and moral teachings that we expect of independent schools. This, the community feels, would be fundamentally in conflict with the Torah and would make it impossible for them to continue.

In moving these amendments, my interest is not so much in their wording—I am very conscious of their imperfection; I rather prefer the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester’s approach—but I wish to draw out from the Minister her Government’s intentions. Do the Government wish to crush Haredi education, or do they seek an agreed accommodation? If the Government’s wish is to crush, I expect that we will proceed, when we have heard from the Minister, to an exploration of the wider and deeper implications of such an approach for other religions and organisations. If the Government’s wish is for a resolution, what is the Minister’s opening offer? I can see a range of ways in which a resolution might be reached, although, as I have said, I have no authority to negotiate. The right reverend Prelate’s amendment is one obvious approach to that.

The contention of the Haredi community is that their children are home-educated and that, in addition, the older male children receive an extensive and intensive religious upbringing in the yeshivas. Are the Government prepared to live with the idea that religious education outside school, whether provided to children who attend school or who are home-educated, is outwith the reach of the independent schools regulations in the Bill? If the Government wish to regulate religious education, how do they propose to constrain the content of such education? A requirement that the education is not inimical to the life of the nation might be reasonable —yeshivas would pass that easily—but I would like to hear the Government’s position.

If the Government are prepared to accept that home education provided to a Haredi child is to be regarded as that child’s full-time education, what criteria will be used in judging that acceptance? The Government might, for instance, expect to see sufficient time set aside in a child’s life for the general education that they require in order to realise their potential as fully functioning members of society outside the Haredi community, should they so wish. That has always been my understanding of the current settlement with religious minorities.

Judging the sufficiency of that home education and the safeguarding of the children would be the task of the local authority, as it is for other home educators, but, given the particular character of Haredi life and its consistency, it might well be of help to local authorities and to Haredi communities if a standard way of assessing Haredi home education could be agreed. That is what I set out to do in Amendment 468, but I did so in rather too clumsy a way to wish to focus on it in detail.

If that is acceptable, are there other restrictions that the Government would like to place on the accommodation? I get the feeling that the concept of the school day—that is, the hours between nine and four, Monday to Friday—is important to the Government and that they would expect each Haredi child not to be at their yeshiva for more than a limited amount of time. Twenty hours has been mentioned, but there is nothing set down in the Bill. I quite understand why in the general context of dealing with illegal schools. None the less, if activity in the school day is important for the Government, surely the number of hours could be made specific in the context of an agreement with the Haredi community. Any agreement would, of course, be open for renegotiation by either side in the light of experience. It might be hard to get it right first time, but I would like to see this Government saying that the Haredi, different though they are, are a valued part of British life. We wish to support them. Where do the Government stand? I beg to move.

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and to associate myself with his remarks. I speak to Amendment 427C on behalf of my colleague, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, in whose name the amendment stands. He very much regrets his inability to attend today’s Committee debate. His amendment offers a reasonable and practical solution to the finely balanced tension between freedom and regulation in education provided by religious bodies.

As things stand, the Bill recognises two types of full-time education: education undertaken in either a school or an independent educational institution. The latter would need to be registered according to the 2008 Act and the requirement to register would apply to education that is more than “part time”. The need to include education provided by religious bodies in national mechanisms for oversight is well understood by all. The Church of England, for example, has taken enormous strides forward in both safeguarding training and safeguarding processes in local parishes that welcomed an average of 95,000 children each week in 2023.

We welcome the Government’s goal to strengthen educational oversight across the nation but, in relation to education provided by religious bodies, there are three issues with the Bill as it stands. First, as the National Society for Education wrote in its response to the Government on safeguarding in out-of-school settings:

“Compulsory state registration for religious activity involving children would significantly extend the role of the state in civil society and represents a considerable and major change to the nature of religious freedom”.

Freedom of religion and belief is a precious human liberty and legislators should think very carefully about the unintended consequences, as well as the intended ones, before enacting regulations that might inadvertently threaten that freedom and inhibit religious diversity.

The possibility of unintended consequences brings me to my second point. There is a risk that imposing extra bureaucratic burdens on many volunteer-run out-of-school settings would have an unintended chilling effect. Those unintended consequences might easily follow from a new burden to tot up religious educational activities, such as choir practice, for fear of exceeding the part-time hours below which registration is not required. This is to say nothing of the practicalities of securely and safely holding all the personally identifiable data that registration and keeping details current would impose on the Government as well as the religious educational institution.

Thirdly and finally, there are the difficult edge cases such as yeshivas that do not quite fit any of the categories that the Bill proposes. No one disputes that such out-of-school cases demand adequate scrutiny to ensure that children are being educated both broadly and safely, in addition to any religious component of their education.

This brings me to the amendment proposed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester. It would offer a balanced and proportional route forward by ensuring that the provisions of the Bill can be met where a setting such as a yeshiva limits itself only to religious education; that the local authority has been clearly notified that an attendee has suitable out-of-school education separately and with sufficient time set aside to allow children to receive that broader education; and that the provider of that religious education demonstrates to the local authority that it provides the required safeguarding measures. I commend the amendment to the Minister and the Committee.

My Lords, I first thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester for tabling this Amendment. I respect his gentleness and his nobility—it is very much appreciated.

I begin with just a couple of remarks. I very rarely speak in the House and, when I got here, I was given very sage advice that the more you speak, the less people listen. I therefore beg the attention of the Committee in this case, as it is a matter of great importance to me. It may come as a surprise to my fellow Labour Peers but, in the 14 years that I have been here, I have never once voted against the party. Party loyalty is a crucial part of our constitutional system. I therefore just say that this is a very important matter to me. It is not a matter of conscience—Clement Attlee used to say to Ministers who publicly rebelled, “I thought that conscience was supposed to be a still, small voice”—but a matter of obligation.

I am the Lord of Stoke Newington and of Stamford Hill. Stoke Newington does not really matter in this case, because people there do not care, but Stamford Hill is the centre of the last remnant of European Hasidic Jewry. Their origins mainly lie around 17th-century Ukraine but also Poland. Of the 6 million who were murdered by the Nazis, 3.5 million were Hasidic Jews. They were absolutely devastated by that.

They are a very strange bunch—very mystic, spiritual and absolutely not involved in Zionism or things like that. Those who live in Israel refuse to serve in the Israeli army. They are non-violent, and very committed to exile and a kind of redemption through prayer. For those here who are Muslim, I would say that they are very close to the Sufi tendency. For those who are Christian, I would say that they are probably closest to the Amish. In the film “Witness” with Harrison Ford, there is actually that mistaken identity moment with the child.

I was brought up close to them but not of them. Obviously, my story is different. At the age of 14, I became a socialist and an atheist and my troubles began—and the party’s troubles also probably began at that moment. I have always had a relationship with them, both family and personal. To me, they are a very precious remnant of a destroyed culture. It is a glory to our country that this very peculiar religious community could exist only in our country. It only survived in our country in all of Europe.

I could tell you stories I was told when I was young. They had no idea that all their rabbis, community and family were in Ukraine, Poland, Hungary and those areas. After the war, there was no one there. I met people who went on delegations to find their family and find out why their letters were not being answered. All were destroyed. I have personally travelled through Ukraine and gone to the villages and towns where Jews made up 60% or 70%. Nobody is there. It is all gone. The synagogues are ruined; the cemeteries are desecrated. In only our country did this community survive.

They are a historical anomaly. They should not really exist; they should have been wiped out. It was not only the Nazis; the Bolsheviks—the communists—absolutely laid them to waste. They abolished religious education and yeshivas were illegal, so we should take great pride that our country is unique in Europe in having some kind of continuity of presence for this community and in the way things were sorted out with the yeshivas.

I heard very carefully what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, and I share completely this desire to try to find some accommodation and understanding of how this works. It is a ridiculous state of affairs that I have to be in Stamford Hill and defend Bridget Phillipson from the accusation of being a Bolshevik. This is an insane circumstance. I assure them that she is absolutely not, but the historical memory of the community is precisely reminiscent of the Soviet Union: suddenly, their education will be banned, their way of life will be criminalised and they will be packing their bags. It is a very moving situation. As I say, I speak as a matter not of conscience but of obligation.

The arrangement we came to in the 1944 Act was very wise, in my opinion. It is absolutely vital to say that the accommodation was based on this: the yeshivas are not schools; children are home-educated. However, they spend an awful lot of time in these yeshivas, studying the Talmud and these things. I assure noble Lords that I was very grateful not to be part of that, but that is what they do. So the children are, technically speaking, home-schooled.

I generally support this Bill and would have supported it unconditionally if it was not for this area. On well- being, I worked for many years, until he died, with Rabbi Pinter, who was the leader of the Haredi community on educational matters. There have been enormous steps forward in relation to home schooling, including internet packages. I am just assuring noble Lords that the parents of these children are absolutely committed to their well-being and their education. When it comes to safeguarding, there has been the most dramatic improvement in this: every place has a phone number and a designated officer. I can testify that there have been huge changes relating to the well-being of children and the safeguards around them. I really commend them for that.

However, their anomalous way of life is very much based on the study of the Bible, of the Talmud. Now within that, they do maths and textual analysis; they do all those things. I am not concerned about the intellectual quality of the children’s education; it is just very different in its structure. So the purpose of this amendment is in some way to restore the 1944 modus vivendi in relation to this and assert that the yeshivas are not schools, they are places of religious education. It is vital—which is the second part of the amendment—that the state insists on supervising the quality of home-schooling. I know from extensive discussions with the community that they are absolutely ready to engage with that. When it comes to the safeguarding measures, as I say, I am fully persuaded that they have taken resolute and determined action across their community.

I am always turning up to their yeshivas and, to their great amusement, they call me “the Lord above”. That might sound sacrilegious, but I am the Lord who lives above a shop, so that is a matter of great amusement within the community. I am present in that community, ensuring that the safeguarding and the well-being is adequately enforced, and I can testify that it is. So I say to my Government that I do not think for a moment there is any intention to persecute or render illegal Hasidic education in this country; sometimes there are just unintended consequences of well-intended actions.

I absolutely support, as a matter of my own faith, working-class education, improvements in working-class education and vocational education, but that is not the issue here. Due to the phrasing of the Bill, the very foundation of the way of life of the Hasidic community in terms of their education is threatened. They are in a very great state of anxiety in relation to this. I do not think anything in this amendment undermines in any way the general structure of the Bill. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that I think it gives us an opportunity to discuss how to reach an appropriate, negotiated settlement that can put the well-being of the child absolutely at the centre and the safeguarding of children absolutely and unconditionally in place. The quality of the home education has been really attended to— I can bear witness to this from within the community. All they are asking is for a pause in this, so that they can express their anxieties and their fears and, as “the Lord of Stamford Hill”, I felt it was appropriate to represent those concerns.

My Lords, I want to speak briefly in overall support of Amendment 427C, which has just been so well moved and spoken to by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford, on behalf of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, and the noble Lord, Lord Glasman. I support the thrust of the Bill and what the Government are doing in these sections. I suppose, in a way, my remarks are directed not just towards the Minister but to her officials who will be listening. I would encourage them to engage with the thrust of this Clause: if this is not necessarily the right wording, then something along these lines.

Those of us who have had the privilege of serving as Ministers in the Department for Education—I was going to say “served time”, but I do not quite mean that—know that these are difficult issues and have become more complicated. While we have heard a particular focus on a particular religious group, I know from previous conversations, in relation to both yeshivas and other religious institutions, that there is always a reason why there should be an exception, yet we also know that there will be those who seek to subvert any exception for the wrong reasons and it is the young people who will lose out.

What attracts me to this particular amendment is the fact that the local authority would be involved in terms not only of registration but of safeguarding assurance. I have some concern: we do not want to go back to 1944, when the world was very different—we are in 2025 and we know a lot more about different institutions—but, overall, as we know and have heard set out so powerfully, there are many communities who want both to comply with the law and to have their practices and customs respected. I hope that, even if it is not with this amendment, discussions behind the scenes before we get to the next stage of the Bill can find a way through so that these provisions are able to go through with the support of the whole House.

My Lords, I oppose Amendment 427C and the gist of the speeches and comments that we have heard so far. In doing so, I tread with great care, because I realise the history, the sensitivities, and the passion and commitment of those people whose lives would be involved. I do not pretend to be part of that community or to criticise it in any way. I am very proud that our country welcomes people of all faiths. I have always been a defender of faith schools and served for a while on the board of Church of England schools. As a Minister, I argued—sometimes with great difficulty within my own party—for continuing with faith schools. That is the background I come from, but I cannot support this amendment.

Over the past 12 months, together with the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, I have had the privilege of meeting young adults, some up to the age of 30 and some in their late teens, who have been students at yeshivas and educated within the system, living within the community. To be honest, they would not recognise the description that the noble Lord, Lord Glasman, has just given. They would not describe their own education and their own lives in that way. So I think our starting point should be that, as with any school or any community, there is a risk to children if we do not protect them in an orderly way and in the way that we should.

I am not opposed to this community being able to continue to educate in its own faith. Why would we not wish it to do that when we allow every other faith to do the same? But that is possible already. There are Haredi-registered schools where parents can send their children. It is not the case that if you close down the yeshivas, no one can have a school based on this faith. They can—and it is in the registered sector. What I have a problem with is the yeshiva. This is where I oppose Amendment 427C. My argument for doing so is very straightforward: if you are there at 8 am and you leave at 6 pm, it is a school. Whatever you do at home afterwards is not full-time education. If you are there at 8 am and leave at 6 pm, it does not in any way have that balance of education that I think we want for everyone.

I understand that it is difficult to get the balance right and decide where to draw the dividing lines. It is not easy and there is an element of compromise, but what I have heard from the people who have spoken so far is that we all welcome the Bill and we all want things to be regulated to protect children—but not this religion, not this faith, not this group. I cannot buy into that. Every child, including children in this community, deserves to be safeguarded and to have a broad and balanced education, which we are all signed up to. Unless you register it, I cannot see how this will happen.

Where I think the debate comes in is the nature of the registration and the consultation with the community. I urge the Minister, as I know she will— I suspect the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, spoke with her already on this—to try to get an understanding and, where possible, to fit our wish to regulate to protect children with the rights of the community to continue to educate its children in its faith. I would not want to stop that, but I would not want to support anything that excluded children from this community from being safeguarded in the way that children from other communities are.

My Lords, I support what my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley has just said. Perhaps I can say to my noble friend Lord Glasman that I am Lady Blackstone of Stoke Newington, so we share part of our region in our titles. I am familiar with the Haredi community and have been for very many years, and I admire a great deal of what they do, but I am concerned about what is happening to some of the boys in this community. I share the concern based not only on the meetings that I have had, with my noble friend Lady Morris, with some of the young men who have been through these institutions, but also on the very good charity Nahamu, which is concerned about the abuses of children that are taking place in these yeshivas in north London and, I think, Manchester as well. The trustees of Nahamu are proud members of the Orthodox Jewish community and they are concerned about what is happening to fellow Jewish young men and boys. I think that we should respect that concern in considering how we approach the whole issue of these yeshivas. I will speak at greater length in the next group about what I and my noble friend Lady Morris think we should do to make sure that these young men get the education they deserve, which they are not at the moment, and that their experience is properly safeguarded.

My Lords, I rise to support and compliment the amendments to Clause 36 in the names of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, my noble friend Lord Lucas and the noble Lord, Lord Glasman. The amendments seek to ensure that institutions that provide only religious instruction alongside guaranteed out-of-school education are not wrongly categorised as independent educational institutions under this Bill.

Education in this country has never been a one-size-fits-all, state-run system. Home-schooling remains every parent’s legal right. One community, however, has been singled out by Clause 36: the Haredi, or strictly Orthodox, Jewish community, whose boys attend yeshivas, which are supervised religious settings, alongside receiving home-schooling. As one professor remarked about the Bill’s intentions, which in its supplementary documents almost exclusively singled out that community, it is fine to be Jewish in the UK in 2025 as long as you are not too Jewish. That should not be.

Yeshivas are not schools and they cannot become schools. They are religious spaces operating alongside home-schooling with a wholly different purpose. They are settings where young men engage deeply with their heritage, to develop their spiritual and ethical character and absorb the wisdom and traditions of the Jewish rabbinic corpus. Inculcating a lived faith is fundamentally different from teaching subjects like geography or history. Those subjects are generally limited to one or two sessions a week. Inculcating one’s children into a lived faith must be an immersive experience. That is what yeshivas are all about and why they are so central to our faith community. Yeshivas operate as supervised spaces with robust safeguarding and health and safety arrangements in place. They allow sufficient and flexible breaks to enable attendees to continue their home-schooling alongside yeshiva.

Yeshivas are not illegal schools; they are not schools at all. They operate alongside home-schooling arrangements. The children there do not have access to television, smartphones, video games or social media. Their daily routine is geared towards study and productivity, making the days longer and more suitable for home-schooling.

For the Haredi community, the home and the synagogue play a large, stable role in the education and communal life of these children—a three-pronged model once widespread across the UK. Yeshivas maintain robust safeguarding measures and provide safe and supportive environments where students thrive through mentorship, peer interaction and structured learning. Graduates go on to contribute significantly to a bustling social and economic community. To reclassify yeshivas as independent educational institutions would simply undermine their purpose and, in practice, force them to close. Changing yeshivas could even leave many children without the structure, support or space for their religious life and it would do grave damage to a thriving, contributing faith community.

Some critics claim that the strictly Orthodox community fails to teach basic skills. Yet these charges come from anti-faith lobbyists, not educational charities. Engagement with a Bill about child welfare should teach us to listen to small minority voices and not only to those who are most powerful and vocal. Humanists UK is entitled to its views, but Orthodox Jews are entitled to their faith. In reality, much work is under way to strengthen home-schooling standards and resources. I therefore urge the Minister to accept this Amendment, so that yeshivas are recognised for what they are: faith spaces operating alongside home education and not unfaithfully forced into a category in which they do not belong, even if they are, to quote, “too Jewish”.

My Lords, I was going to speak in support of Amendment 451, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, but perhaps he is going to introduce it when he winds up for his front bench. What I have to say is probably relevant to the wider aspects of this debate. I declare that I am a patron of Humanists UK.

I have listened to children speaking about the unregistered schools that they went to, of all faiths. Of course this is only about some schools. Nevertheless, I was very struck by what they had to say about the paucity of the curriculum, often about the enforced dogma of what was taught, sometimes about abuse and sometimes about a very anti-social and anti-democratic ethos. Of course this does not at all represent all faith schools, but those children themselves were not alone.

In short, we need to get a grip on unregistered schools, especially in the case of children for whom education has not been working well, as in the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. I very much look forward to my noble friend the Minister’s explanation of how we navigate this real problem in the free and diverse society we live in, as we must—we must navigate it. Unregistered schools are not all good—on the contrary.

My Lords, the concern of those who have spoken against Amendment 427C in the names of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and the noble Lord, Lord Glasman, is, if I have understood right, around whether these pupils are being safeguarded. Proposed new paragraph (h)(iii) says

“where the institution demonstrates to the Local Authority that it provides the required safeguarding measures”.

That is important. If it did not say that, I would be joining those who do not want this amendment.

The noble Lord said that it is wrong to call these schools and to think that they are providing education, and that the education being provided is in home-schooling. In terms of safeguarding, the amendment is very clear: the local authority must be satisfied that safeguarding measures are in place. Therefore, for me, the arguments fall away because the drift of them was about whether there is sufficient safeguarding for these pupils.

Because the amendment is quite sensitive, I was not going to speak to it or support it. Having heard the arguments, I am persuaded that proposed new paragraph (h)(iii) answers the question. Therefore, I am bound to support this amendment.

My Lords, I want to speak to this group of amendments on the poorly understood world of unregistered provision, including the types of religious institution that have had a lot of discussion already, as well as looking more broadly. I support two of the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Lucas—Amendments 427 and 427B.

Clause 36 is a constructive attempt to put sensible controls in place around the oversight of educational provision for children outside schools and colleges. It creates a wider category of independent education institution to supplement the narrower concept of an independent school. This is a complicated and messy landscape. I could draw out at least four strands—there are probably others—and they overlap. There are the alternative provisions, most often for children with severe behavioural problems. There is a huge patchwork of provision there. Some of it is registered and inspected, so it has a level of quality control, but much of the weakest is not, and there are no neat cut-offs.

A school puts two children in a volunteer-run community garden for one afternoon a week. That would be best viewed as part of the school’s educational model, and the school would be accountable for the child’s experience. However, if those same children are at the garden four days a week and are barely attending school, it is unrealistic to ignore the fact that the gardens become the children’s main source of education —though it is clearly an incomplete education—and that school registrations become a fiction, perhaps to avoid recording an exclusion.

It is often assumed that alternative provision is or should be a brief stint to prepare a child for reintegration into a mainstream school. However, the reality is that few children who move into alternative provision will successfully reintegrate. Hardly any such children take their GCSEs in a mainstream school. AP needs to be seen as a mode of education, not just as respite care.

Then there is provision for children with psychological problems, such as school refusal. Again, unregistered provision is often born out of excellent local initiatives. If a child makes use of such a programme for a short period as part of a plan to help them acclimatise to a suitable school, direct oversight might be overkill. However, if it becomes a de facto permanent placement, it has become that child’s main place of education and it needs to work to the same standards as other schools.

As has been touched on, there are programmes for children who are home-educated, including sports, music, art and other worthwhile activities. Parents are entitled to home-educate, and sports, music and art are all part of a rounded education, but, if an organisation is running five different programmes, one each day, and a child attends all of them, the reality is that, at that point, the organisation is best viewed in the round as having the characteristics of a school—or at least an independent education institution—in taking responsibility when parents are not present for a large part of the week. It is hard to see why such an entity should sit outside the legal framework that protects children’s education and safeguarding.

Finally, I need to talk about illegal schools. It is depressing that they exist, and even more depressing that some of them operate knowingly and intentionally outside the law. Ofsted has a small budget to investigate suspected illegal schools and to warn those that are outside the law that they must register with the Department for Education. It has successfully prosecuted proprietors of such schools, at least one of them twice; I should day that I do not think any of those prosecutions related to a Jewish-affiliated institution. Current legislation just is not equipped to deal with bad-faith operators. It dates back to a time when it was almost unimaginable that a school that had omitted to register would not do so when it was pointed out.

It has been extraordinarily easy for operators to sidestep the law. There is a kind of artificial separation. An operator running multiple illegal institutions, teaching the same group of children in one location in the morning then bussing them to another location to be taught in the afternoon, may claim that they are separate institutions and that neither reaches the threshold to be considered as a school, but, clearly, the reality is that it is a single school. That is why I support my noble friend Lord Lucas’s Amendment 427B. There needs to be a sensible ability to take a holistic perspective so that avoidance does not readily happen.

We have had a lot of debate about institutions that rely on the fact that children are not being taught subjects such as English and mathematics, but only an exclusively religious programme, to say that they are not schools. It is a shocking fact that there are British citizens reaching adulthood without the most basic education that they need in order to play their full part in British society and the workplace, if they choose to do so, as adults. They may not choose that, but pre-emptively taking away their capacity to do so should concern us deeply. It seems unreasonable that an institution that is part of such a model should want to be outside the scope of any meaningful scrutiny. We know from IICSA and from many previous cases that, sadly, a strong religious affiliation is not a guarantee that children will be completely protected from the kinds of harm that adults can inflict on them.

It is worrying that so many people do not want to acknowledge or discuss this problem and its tensions. There is widespread hesitancy to venture into sensitive areas linked to faith or ethnicity; we have seen this where other issues have arisen recently. I can see the temptation of offering an opt-out, as proposed by my noble friend Lord Lucas, yet I also know that the better path is to carry on working to try to find models that do a better job of reconciling the desires of a faith group and the important rights of children. I know that many of my colleagues, including my noble friends Lord Nash, Lord Agnew, Lady Morgan and Lady Barran, worked hard in their time in government to try to find those next steps and better accommodations. An opt-out is just not, in my view, sensible or workable. At the point when this country has become simply a patchwork of self-segregated communities, cut off from each another, there will not be much of a nation left.

I note that there is an evolving picture internationally around the same issues that we have been seeing in schools in England. As chief inspector, I talked to my counterparts in countries such as France and Sweden, which are seeing parallel trends. This is something that needs discussing, not just domestically but internationally. I believe that it is impossible—and, indeed, undesirable—to try to make tidy regulatory categories covering every kind of provision outside school. They quickly become obsolete, as would any micro-precise thresholds.

Overall, the extension of scope in Clause 36 is important and justified, but it is also important that the regulations that are made are clear and well understood, and that enforcement is adequately funded, with enough resource for Ofsted to carry on its investigatory work and for the DfE to act where it should. There has to be a high level of transparency about the work, to help stave off pre-emptive attempts to brand this difficult work as biased or unfair. We must carry on doing all that we can to make the intrinsically knotty subject matter here fully discussable.

I strongly support Amendment 427C and pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Glasman, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, who made the two opening speeches. All the speeches today have shone a light on what many people in the country are not aware of.

I was a councillor in Hackney many years ago and I knew this community. What was most interesting to me in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Glasman, was that he was able to explain how much effort has gone into improving the whole question of safeguarding. That must be something that we are all concerned about in any school.

For me, this is very clearly about the fact that the yeshivas are not schools. They are no more a school than the Sunday school that I went to for many years as a youngster. That was nothing to do with the church—it was a separate Sunday school, set up by some very nice people in the countryside, and I went every Sunday afternoon for many years. It was not a school in the sense of education; it was about religion and understanding the history of Christianity and all those kinds of things. I can see exactly what the yeshivas are doing.

We might think that Governments cannot possibly be misled, but it seems that, under Clause 35 of the Bill, yeshivas will be regulated as if they are schools. That is wrong. We have heard about what goes on there. We know that it is a place for young men to engage with their heritage and build their spiritual and ethical character. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, mentioned some of the young men she had spoken to who were unhappy about what is happening. I am sure that if we went around many of our schools and spoke to young men about what was going on in their school, we would always find somebody who has a real problem, but that does not mean that there is anything wrong with what is happening overall.

It seems to me—maybe the Minister can tell me I am wrong—that there has been very little engagement prior to the drafting of the Bill with the community about the central role that the yeshivas play in the communities. Was there any real discussion? It seems to me, having listened to what people are saying, that we have underlying support for safeguarding. Surely, if the department had spent time talking to the community to know what was going on in those schools, and talking to the local authority, this could have been solved without such an amendment and without having to go through this whole debate. It could have been solved by a bit of common sense and good will, with people sitting around a table.

I hope that that might still happen, and we can find a sensible and practical solution that would allow the yeshiva schools to stay open. I am calling them schools but I am not implying that they are schools; as I said earlier, they are not schools in the sense that we all know what a school is. We could then address remaining concerns about safeguarding and the links between home education and yeshivas. We must try to settle this; otherwise, we will see them all closing and we will be left with a much more difficult situation to handle.

Recognising just how many people feel strongly about this, I urge the Minister to look at this again and come back on Report with wording that may be slightly different and more satisfactory to the department. This really needs to be looked at.

My Lords, I had not anticipated speaking until the next group. I declare an interest as a senior research fellow at Regent’s Park College, Oxford, which is researching freedom of religion or belief in the UK. A number of Peers have entered into talking about this human right without, I think, fully appreciating its impact.

In relation to the “institution”, as it is referred to in the Amendment, if this amendment were accepted, can the Minister outline where it would sit with the other out-of-school settings work that is going on, because I think it would sit as an out-of-school setting? I do not think that they are charities, otherwise they would already have safeguarding responsibilities. Could there, in some respects, be good unintended consequences of the amendment, in that we take an out-of-school setting and bring it into the safeguarding world, with DBS checks, et cetera?

Freedom of religion or belief is not an absolute right. It is sometimes put into a debate as if it cannot be curtailed. It is important to remember that the children to whom we have been referring also have the right to freedom of religion or belief. Parents have the right to bring up their children in the faith that they wish them to have, but that does not mean an immersive experience that does not allow a child to exercise their right to know, through a broad and balanced curriculum, about the world and nation that they are growing up in and about other faiths and humanist and other belief systems. This is a very difficult world—not just in the Jewish context but in the context of Christianity, other faiths and some atheistic traditions—in which to try to shield a child from knowledge so that they never choose a different type of Jewishness or a different religion for themselves.

I hope that, whatever situation we end up in with regard to these schools, we bear in mind that these children have freedom of religion or belief and should have an education that enables them to exercise that right fully. I hope that that will be part of the considerations and the engagement with the community, as we come to a position on these institutions. It is accepted in the amendment that they are institutions of some category, not some kind of faith space.

My Lords, I was head of a Church of England primary school and my daughter went to a Jewish school. I am conscious that, in my home city of Liverpool, one-third of the schools are faith schools. I want to reflect on what various noble Lords have said, and I want to speak very carefully because I am still considering everything that has been said. I have found it, at times, quite challenging.

Let me deal with an issue that I do not find challenging, which is my Amendment 451. Children who are suspended from school are the responsibility of the school, while pupils who are permanently excluded from school are the responsibility of the local authority. Secondary schools that have pupil referral units, called PRUs, are often able to put suspended students into the referral unit. I have visited many of them and been astounded and impressed by how they have supported students. Instances of expulsion—permanent exclusions, as we now say—are very limited.

Let us remember that young people who are permanently excluded from school often have severe behavioural issues, which perhaps could have been picked up when they were younger and perhaps could have been supported in a different way. Many of them have severe behavioural problems.

Many—quite a high percentage, I think, and certainly over 80%—have special needs. They are the very young people who should not be excluded from school; they should be in school but, clearly, schools have a right to teach, and pupils have a right to learn. When they are excluded from school, local authorities may put them into what we call alternative provision. There are two types of alternative provision. There is alternative provision that is registered, which means that it is inspected from time to time by Ofsted. I have visited two alternative providers and been incredibly impressed by what I have seen. Many local authorities choose to put permanently excluded pupils not into a registered provider but into an unregistered one. Why? Because it is much, much cheaper. That is no way to treat a young person, no way at all.

Some of those unregistered providers do not keep a register. The young person comes and goes. There are no proper qualifications among the so-called teaching staff, et cetera, et cetera. As I have mentioned in debates in this Chamber, that is not to say that some unregistered providers are not very good, but it is still no way to treat a young person. This amendment is very simple. All it says is that any alternative provider—those schools or units, because when we talk about a school, we are probably talking about a school of 20 pupils—should be registered. We should know that there are qualified staff, qualified support and quality learning for those pupils. We should know that all the things we expect take place and that there will be, from time to time, Ofsted reports on those schools. I have looked at many of those Ofsted reports and been incredibly impressed by the work those alternative providers do. That is the simple request: that we should not allow the most vulnerable children and young people in our society to be treated in this way. They have the right to go to a proper institution—a proper school.

I now come to the other amendments. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris—it used to be “I agree with Nick.” I am sorry, I am not comparing the noble Baroness with Nick Clegg. I want children—young people—to have an education, whether in a school or, in some cases, at home, which is broad and balanced, which equips them for life, which they enjoy and which brings out their best qualities. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, does not mind me mentioning this, but I remember that several years ago, she came to me in a discussion about a particular faith school—a Christian school, actually—where the pupils were treated in quite a challenging way. One boy, for example, happened to tell the school that he was gay, so he was pushed into a cupboard and locked in there until he came out and announced that he was not gay. I am not going to mention the school, but I think it employed its own inspection regimes. Because it was in charge of its own inspection regimes, that company—

I am not sure that the noble Lord is remembering the situation accurately, so it would be best in future to consult before referring to something that I think was many years ago. I say that with no disrespect to the noble Lord’s comments.

I raise it only because it is a shocking condemnation of a schooling situation where young people cannot be themselves or have a proper education. I respect different religions and their rights; as I say, my daughter goes to a Jewish school where there are Hebrew lessons, the children are taken out at various times and there is a whole range of different faiths. The children’s faiths are respected and there are opportunities for them to develop learning and an understanding of their faith. That is all good and positive.

I do not have an issue with any particular faith bringing up children and young people in that faith, but I do want to see those children and young people have schooling that is registered and/or inspected. That is all we should ask for as a society. Anything that does not carry on the tradition of this country—one of the most successful multicultural and multifaith nations in the world—or develop what we believe in, we need to legislate against.

My Lords, I will keep my comments brief. We have had an excellent debate and these Benches support the aims of this Clause: to ensure that children learn in settings, where they provide all or the Majority of a child’s education, that are safe and regulated. I have a couple of technical points of clarification that might win the prize today for the most boring question asked of the Minister. I confess that I have read and reread the Bill and the policy notes and still do not quite follow it.

Section 92 of the Education and Skills Act 2008, which this clause amends, includes institutions that offer part-time education within the definition of an independent educational institution. I am unclear what the status of those institutions will be in future and why they do not form part of the revised definition. If the Minister wants to write, that would be fine. I am sure there is a simple and obvious answer that I have missed.

The regulation-making powers in this clause, if I have understood them correctly, are much wider than those in the 2008 Act. New Sections 92(3)(c) and 92(3)(d) seem to give the Secretary of State unlimited flexibility to redefine full-time education without proper scrutiny in Parliament. I suspect the Minister will tell me that it will use the affirmative procedure, but all of us know that that is very restricted scrutiny.

I am very pleased that my noble friend Lord Lucas has raised unregistered alternative provision, which benefits from neither safeguarding nor educational oversight, in his Amendment 427. It is extraordinary, as other noble Lords have reflected, that, rather like unregulated provision, we put very vulnerable children and young people in unregistered provision without any safeguards available. I agree with him that we would ideally have no unregistered provision but, at a minimum—this also applies to Amendment 451 from the noble Lord, Lord Storey—we would have some safeguarding regulation of those settings, even if children were going there for a short period. There is always the infamous “Dave the car mechanic” with whom some children apparently spend time. We should at least have appropriate safeguarding checks and I am interested in what the Minister thinks about that.

I now turn to the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Lucas, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and the noble Lord, Lord Glasman, all of whom have raised issues that can arise for children whose parents choose an educational path that aligns with their religious tradition. The Minister and the whole House have heard both sides of the argument very clearly today and the valid concerns that have been raised by faith groups about the impact of the Government’s legislation on their communities. Those were eloquently put in particular by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford and the noble Lord, Lord Glasman—who I promise we will still listen to however much he speaks.

I close by aligning myself with my noble friend Lady Morgan of Coates. We want to retain what I think the noble Lord, Lord Glasman, described as the “precious” tolerance that many of us, including my own family, have benefited from this country welcoming us with, but also to ensure that the rights of every child are upheld. I hope very much that the Minister will put her not inconsiderable abilities to the task.

My Lords, first, I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, that she is right—those questions were very boring, but I am sure that they were none the less important. I will write to her to respond to those specific points. The rest of the debate, however, was not boring, and was also important. I hope that I will be able to respond to the wide range of issues that have been raised and the conflicting positions that are part of what we need to wrestle with in taking this legislation forward.

This group of amendments impact Clause 36 and concern which settings are and are not brought into the system of regulation found in Part 4, Chapter 1 of the Education and Skills Act 2008. It might therefore be helpful if I first outline the intent of Clause 36. As I say, the clause concerns the settings regulated by that framework. Among other things, regulated settings are required to register with the Secretary of State and be subject to regular inspection against prescribed standards. At present, that framework applies to independent schools.

Clause 36 expands this framework further. Under this clause, settings will be required to register with the Secretary of State if they provide full-time education to five or more children of compulsory school age or one or more such children with an EHCP or one who is looked after by a local authority. This change will bring more settings that provide a full-time education into this well-established and effective regime. Typically, the settings impacted by this change will be those that operate during, but not necessarily only during, the school day, and we will produce guidance to help those potentially impacted by this change understand what is expected of them.

For understandable reasons, a significant part of this debate has focused on the issue of Haredi children and yeshivas. I will respond to that, but in doing so, I reiterate the point that the noble Lord, Lord Marks, is just wrong in suggesting that this legislation is aimed at yeshivas. As I have said, this measure is about ensuring that, where settings are providing a full-time education to children, they are registered and subject to regular inspection and meet certain standards. I accept that there has been concern among the community, and I will respond to that now.

Let me be clear that this measure does not presuppose an inherent problem with a child being educated at a yeshiva or the quality of home education. It is about ensuring the suitability of settings that provide full-time education to children. On the basis of how we define “full-time” and “engagement”, we intend to produce guidance to assist people in understanding whether the education setting they run needs to register with the Secretary of State. It is likely that this guidance will be similar to our existing approach and therefore the starting point will be that settings operating during the day for more than 18 hours per week will be regulated. I say in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, that I very much doubt that she attended Sunday school for 18 hours per week.

I emphasise that in expecting institutions operating for those hours to register, there is no requirement in the Independent School Standards, or in standards akin to those that we will bring forward for these institutions, for a setting to provide a wholly secular education. There is no requirement for them to deliver the national curriculum, for example. In response to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, there is considerable flexibility provided around the curriculum. These standards are well-established minimum standards which already apply to many registered settings that do not consider themselves to classically be schools. The regulatory regime gives Ministers flexibility to decide on which standards apply to different types of regulated setting. We will carefully consider options on the standards that will be used to regulate settings. In doing so, I assure noble Lords that there has been considerable engagement with the Haredi community up to this point—I have met with the Yeshiva Liaison Committee and my officials have ongoing engagement with the community. My former colleague Stephen Morgan met the yeshiva community on these issues and we undertake to continue that engagement as we clarify the nature of the regulations and the extent of those that will be included within it.

It is right that full-time educational settings are registered and subject to regular inspection. This will lead to children who currently attend these settings learning in a regulated and safe setting which is subject to regular inspection. For that reason, we believe that Clause 36 should form part of the Bill and is an important improvement on the current situation, as has been recognised by several noble Lords in this debate.

There are several amendments which seek to further change the application of this regulatory framework. Both Amendments 427A and 427C seek to exempt settings which provide religious instruction. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, via Amendment 427A, appears to wish any setting which provides any form of religious instruction in addition to education elsewhere to be exempt from the regime in the 2008 Act. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford, in introducing Amendment 427C, seeks to exempt settings which provide only religious instruction or guidance to children of compulsory school age, provided certain other conditions are met.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and others, that in this country we are rightly tolerant of faith education. I remember the arguments that my noble friend Lady Morris had in defending that principle when we served in the previous Government in the Department for Education. We should be proud as a country of the many faith schools that operate. That principle has been supported by successive Governments, and in each of those Governments we have seen support for the development of new faith schools as well as for the protection of those that existed. I hope no noble Lords believe that this is in some way an attack on the ability to deliver a religious education, either within a school setting or as a freedom for parents as part of their right to home-educate their child. This provision is about full-time education, not about the religious approach of the institution.

Accepting either amendment would mean accepting a two-tier system where some children receive an education which is potentially less safe and subject to less oversight than that of their peers—that case was exemplified very clearly by the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman—purely because the educational setting that they attend full-time offers religious instruction to a greater or lesser degree. It is an important principle that settings whose hours of operation suggest that they are operating like a school and providing all or a Majority of a child’s education are regulated. Clause 36 supports that principle and, although I understand the position from which the amendments are coming, Amendments 427A and 427C would undermine that principle.

Amendment 427B in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, was described by him as technical, but I understand the point about it being an important anti-evasion measure where the concern is to ensure that settings cannot escape regulation by splitting their provision across several sites. I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, that the offence of operating without registration concerns an institution operating without registration. A single setting which purported to be part-time but which was making split provision to avoid registration—for instance, offering a morning and an afternoon session at different premises—would likely be considered a single institution and be required to register. Clause 42 of the Bill gives Ofsted stronger powers to investigate complex arrangements such as those.

Amendments 427 and 451 concern the regulation of alternative provision—education provided outside a mainstream or special school. Amendment 427 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, seeks to bring all alternative provision into the system of regulation which applies to independent schools. Amendment 451 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, seeks to prevent the use by local authorities of alternative provision which is not registered. As I have already stated, Clause 36 concerns the regulation of full-time settings. Alternative provision is in many cases a short-term or part-time arrangement. For that reason, we do not believe it would be appropriate or proportionate to apply this system of regulation which applies to independent schools to a non-full-time provider. But that does not mean that we do not recognise that there is an issue.

With regard to the noble Lord’s particular concern expressed in Amendment 451, it is already the case that local authorities should not commission alternative provision in an independent school which meets the criteria for registration but has failed to register, not least because the operation of an unregistered independent school is a criminal offence.

In relation to the broader points made, including by the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, we recognise concerns about inconsistent oversight of part-time, non-school alternative provision and the risks this poses to vulnerable children. That is why the Government published a comprehensive package of reforms last month to raise standards across the sector. These include new voluntary national standards supported by guidance to help local areas begin implementation ahead of future legislation to make the standards mandatory. Under our plans, local authorities will also play a strengthened role in quality-assuring provision against these standards, while schools remain responsible for ensuring that placements meet individual needs. I would be more than happy to provide further information about those changes that we identified last month and the future intent there.

Finally in this group, Amendment 468, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, seeks to require the Secretary of State, if requested, to declare that an alternative system of education, when carefully followed, is expected to constitute a system of suitable education for most children. As we have already discussed at length in Committee, the law is clear that parents already have the option to educate their child otherwise than at school, but that education needs to be suitable to the age, ability, aptitude and any special educational needs that the individual child may have. There are no formal criteria in legislation for suitable education beyond this, because each individual assessment must rest on a balance of factors for each child. Identifying whether education is suitable sits best with local authorities, which can make inquiries as to the education of individual children. Amendment 468 would cut across that principle. It would remove the personalised approach that is inherent in the current system. For that reason, I hope the noble Lord will not press his amendment.

The debate on this group has concerned the regulation of full-time educational settings. The discussion has touched both on that principle and on the regulation of part-time settings, which would be inappropriate to regulate as if they were full-time. I hope that, reflecting on the discussion, and bearing in mind the considerable discussions and engagement that have already happened and the commitment to continue that engagement, noble Lords will feel able not to press their amendments.

I am very grateful to the Minister for that extensive reply. To pick up on some of the issues in the debate, I entirely understand what the noble Baronesses, Lady Morris of Yardley and Lady Blackstone, are saying. If children are not receiving their entitled education, we need to do something about that. That is part of the basic contract, as I understand it, between the state and any education system. The child has a right to an education, and if for whatever reason it is not being provided, that is not tolerable.

It is surely important for the Government to indicate to the Haredi community and others which way forward they favour. I hope I am not leaping too far ahead in my understanding of where the Government want to go, but are they preferring to say that they would like to see yeshivas registered as schools but they will make sure that the regulations that apply to yeshivas do not require them to violate their religious principles in the way that they teach? In other words, is the accommodation to be within that element of what we might normally require a school to provide by way of education, so that yeshivas are schools but are allowed to teach in a way which is consistent with the Torah and with their belief? That is one way forward.

The other way forward is that proposed by the right reverend Prelate and myself. I do not recognise the characterisation of the amendments in the Minister’s reply. We are specifically saying that settings should be exempt which do not provide education and which provide only religious instruction. In other words, the children’s education has to happen somewhere else; there has to be another space, another institution, which is providing that education. The religious space is not regarded as a school, because there is another space which is regarded as home education or a school. If there is somewhere else that is regarded as providing that child’s education, why should the yeshiva, or whatever, be regarded as a school too, because the function of education and school is being provided elsewhere?

First, I would like the Minister’s guidance on whether we are looking at a structure that aims to take yeshivas out of the definition of a school and makes it clear how a child’s education is being provided—whether that is the preferred way forward—or a structure that makes it possible for education consistent with the Torah to be provided within a regulated school. We owe this community a clear way forward, whereby they can focus on what they need to do and where they need to get to, and so those of us who support them can say, “You need to do this”, or “Let’s have a go at the Government because they are asking too much”, so we can have a dialogue on this issue. At the moment, we have a blank as to the Government’s intentions, and that really is not fair or satisfactory.

I really hope that the Government will find that answer. If the Minister wants to reply now, I shall understand, but otherwise I would be very grateful if she wrote to me giving a clear view of the Government’s preferred way forward. What is their opening offer? What would they like to see happen? The Bill as it stands just says, “Destroy these communities”. That is not the impression I get from what the Minister has said, so what is the other way forward? But for now, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment 427 withdrawn.

Amendments 427A and 427B not moved.

My Lords, before we start debate on the next group of amendments, I want to make a couple of points. The Committee will have to adjourn before 2 o’clock so that we can get the Chamber ready for Oral Questions. If noble Lords want to make the Whip very happy, they will speak very swiftly so we can conclude this group of amendments before 2 o’clock. If not, I will have to adjourn mid-group—it is quite a huge group—and then we will continue after Oral Questions this afternoon. I remind all noble Lords to be brief in their comments on this group.