Campaigners criticise Children and Families Bill's online 'public reading'

The online consultation into the Children and Families Bill, which closed this week, is part of a House of Commons pilot scheme into the public reading initiative. But the consultation was only open for 14 days and attracted fewer than a thousand responses in total.

The SEN section of the bill attracted the highest number of comments, with 390 members of the public posting their responses in the online forum. But other areas of the bill received only two responses.

James Robinson, children and young people’s campaigns and policy officer at Mencap, said the way in which parliament conducted the reading raised questions about whether it was a “meaningful consultation”. 

“That hasn’t fully been the case with the public reading,” said Robinson. “It hasn’t given people much time to look at it – in that sense the value of it could be negated.”

“This is a new initiative so there is no previous evidence we can use to say that it works. It will be interesting to see if it does inform the bill, or if it is just paying lip service to trying to get public views.”

Responses collected through the public reading are intended to inform discussions conducted by the bill committee – a group of MPs appointed to examine the legislation as it passes through parliament.

On the launch of the public reading, the deputy speaker of the House of Commons, Lindsay Hoyle, said the exercise aimed to: “Reach out to wider cross-section of society and encourage more people to connect with parliament during the legislative process.”

But Robinson suggested there was little public awareness of the public reading, because publicity around the process had only been generated by a press release circulated to journalists and organisations in the children and families sector.

“It was initially advertised with a press release and relied on word of mouth to get it out,” said Robinson. “Mencap and a lot of other organisations took the responsibility to advertise it widely on social media, to make sure people were aware of their ability to feed into this.

“Without us and other organisations using our initiatives, I’m not sure government would have got as many responses as it has done.”

Matthew Dodd, acting principal officer at the Council for Disabled Children (CDC), said he was concerned about the timescale of the consultation. He said CDC used its network to promote the initiative, but parliament did not contact the organisation directly to encourage them to do this.

“The Every Disabled Child Matters campaign has a lot of parent members. They circulated it to all their parents who then had an opportunity to input,” said Dodd. “As a principle, the public reading is great. But its success will depend on how well it’s used to inform the debate of the public bill committee.”

Clare Bull, policy and public affairs officer at Ambitious about Autism, said the number of responses to the SEN section of the public reading demonstrated the strength of feeling among families that the government should amend these parts of the bill.

“What’s clear in all the consultations to date is that families want the birth to 25 plan, and there is huge concern that the bill won’t deliver that,” said Bull.

“The value of the public reading will be determined by the action the government takes on its responses. If the bill doesn’t change, it will have been a tokenistic waste of time. Hopefully it will result in some positive changes.”

The section of the children and families bill that attracted the second highest number of responses in the public reading related to plans to introduce childminder agencies.

Proposals to offer unpaid time off work for people to support pregnant women in antenatal appointments, and changes to employees' rights to request flexible working, both received two responses.

The government’s plans to reform the Office of the Children’s Commissioner attracted five comments.