Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill: motion to disagree with Lords Amendment 44

MPs voted on 9 March 2026 to reject Lords amendment 44 to the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, passing the motion to disagree by 315 votes to 109. The Lords amendment would have required local authorities to give consent before any child who had ever held a child protection plan could be withdrawn from school to be home-educated. By voting to reject it, MPs kept the bill's existing consent mechanism without extending it to cover all children with a history of child protection involvement. The vote matters because it determines the scope of local authority oversight over home education for some of the most vulnerable children. Under the bill as it stands, certain children require local authority consent before withdrawal from school, but the Lords amendment would have widened that group to include any child who had ever been subject to a child protection plan, regardless of their current circumstances. Supporters of the amendment argued this would close a gap that allowed children with safeguarding histories to fall out of official view. The government argued the change risked deterring families from seeking help, on the grounds that parents might avoid engaging with child protection services if they knew doing so would trigger a future consent requirement on home education. The vote divided almost entirely along party lines. All 307 Labour and Labour and Co-operative MPs who voted backed the government's position to reject the Lords amendment, as did four Green MPs and two Independents. All 97 voting Conservatives opposed the government, joined by three Democratic Unionist Party MPs, one Traditional Unionist Voice MP, one Reform UK MP, and six Independents. There were no notable cross-party rebels. The Conservative case was made by Laura Trott, who argued the amendment was specifically designed to address failures identified in the serious case review following the murder of Sara Sharif, and that the unamended bill would not have helped that child. The government's position was set out by Olivia Bailey, who maintained that extending consent requirements in this way was wrong in principle.