Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)

The amendments in this group cover a wide range of issues, including review of the Act, disapplication and commencement. I will begin with Amendment 502YR tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, which seeks to protect a parent’s right to determine their child’s education in the event of a national emergency or an authoritarian Government, by placing judicial oversight above executive restrictions. This amendment would actually be ineffective as, quite rightly, Parliament is sovereign. Any law passed by a current Parliament can be changed or repealed by a future Parliament. Provided the education a child receives is both safe and suitable, existing legislation makes clear that most parents have the right to determine the form of education that best meets their child’s needs. We have of course discussed this at length in Committee and the Bill does not change it. Turning to Amendment 502C, on reviewing the Act, I start by commending the commitment of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, to post-legislative scrutiny, which, as he identified, has been government policy since 2008 and part of the process for legislative progress through this House. I remember the discussions around putting it into that position in my last period of time in Parliament. I supported it then; I still support it now. In the interim period between 2010 and 2024, among the range of things that I was able to do, I was very pleased to be able to advise foreign Parliaments about the significance of post-legislative scrutiny, drawing on precisely the work of the noble Lord and the experiences of this Parliament in putting those into operation. Alongside that amendment, we have Amendment 502YN, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, which concerns a review of the operation of the Bill’s measures. This Government agree on the importance of having an appropriate mechanism for the proper evaluation of the impact of legislation, ensuring that it meets the goals that it sets out to deliver, especially given the size and wide-ranging ambitions of this Bill in particular. I assure noble Lords that the Bill will be subject to post-legislative scrutiny in the usual way without this amendment. We fully expect that this evaluation will be carried out within the first five years of the legislation coming into force.