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The Earl of Effingham (Con)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 19 June 2025

Debate

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Contribution

My Lords, corporate parenting means providing the best possible care, safeguarding and support, ensuring that children thrive and have opportunities to reach their full potential. It involves actively promoting their well-being, health and education, and preparing them for adulthood, mirroring what a responsible parent would do. As such, Amendment 147 seeks to ensure that local authorities must consider the rights of looked-after children to British citizenship, which is exactly what a responsible parent would indeed do. It is important that a local authority is able to focus on the well-being of the child and to consider whether this should apply to citizenship. It is certainly a most relevant issue for the Minister to opine on. Amendment 152, which seeks to remove Clause 22(1)(a), would extend the local authority duty to take care of looked-after children to the Secretary of State “exercising immigration, asylum and nationality functions”. We can see plausible reasons why the Government would choose to include that exemption but it merits further discussion and we look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to a potentially sensitive and complicated subject.

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