“We’re Leaving Children Behind”: Inside England’s Growing Battle Over Children’s Rights

Created: 1 December 2025

On a grey autumn morning in Westminster, as MPs filter through the gates of Parliament and the city hums with its usual urgency, a different kind of pressure is quietly building. In offices, community centers and charity hubs across the country, organisations that seldom appear side-by-side in public have been working toward a shared goal: convincing the Government to embed children’s rights into English law.

For many of them, the moment feels long overdue.

More than 120 charities and organisations, from global names like UNICEF UK and Save the Children to grassroots legal advocates such as Just for Kids Law, have coalesced behind one message: England must stop treating children’s rights as optional. They argue that without a legal requirement for Ministers to consider children’s rights, every major policy affecting young people carries an unwritten risk.

The coalition is now urging Ministers to support amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. These amendments, supporters say, would be transformative: they would require Ministers to consider children’s rights in every relevant decision, and would make Child Rights Impact Assessments a statutory duty, not a courtesy.

For a country that signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child decades ago, campaigners say this is the missing piece.

A Nation Out of Step with Its Neighbours

To understand why the coalition’s demands have gained urgency, you have to step back and look across the UK.

In Wales, children’s rights sit at the heart of policymaking, woven into legislation since 2011. Scotland has spent years building its own legal framework, determined to give children stronger protections. Northern Ireland has worked longstanding rights structures into governance.

But England, despite its size and influence, remains the outlier.

Campaigners describe the situation not as neglect, but as drift, a kind of quiet, unintended inertia in which children’s rights simply never became the default lens for government thinking. And as other nations codified their commitments, England stayed still.

For many in the sector, this divergence has grown uncomfortable. The contrast is stark: in Wales, for example, Child Rights Impact Assessments have become routine. In England, they are sporadic, sometimes unpublished, and often prepared too late to shape decisions.

The Human Stories Behind the Policy Gap

Policies can appear abstract when described only in legislative terms. But the effects of not considering children’s rights are felt most acutely in real lives.

Legal advocates point to examples from recent years: school exclusions made without adequate safeguards; changes to local authority budgets that reduce services for vulnerable young people; immigration decisions affecting children who have lived most of their lives in the UK; delays in mental health access that leave families in crisis.

Each situation might seem unrelated. But to children’s rights specialists, they’re linked by a common thread: the absence of a legal requirement to assess how policies might impact the wellbeing, safety or dignity of young people.

Many charity workers say they’ve seen the same pattern repeated: issues that concern adults often receive thorough examination, while those affecting children rely instead on goodwill, ministerial discretion or pressure from campaigners.

It’s this inconsistency, they argue, that makes the case for a statutory duty so compelling.

What the Amendments Aim to Change

Baroness Lister’s amendments, though concise, would reshape how the government approaches children. Ministers would be legally required to take children’s rights into account when exercising functions related to education, social care and children’s wellbeing. This would move consideration of children from an optional extra to a mandatory part of policymaking.

The second amendment introduces a requirement for the government to publish CRIAs for any particular law, policy, budget proposal, or significant strategic decision. Transparency is critical: assessments would no longer be documents created behind the scenes, if at all, but shared publicly so that decisions affecting children are open to scrutiny.

The Long Arc of Advocacy

For those who have spent years pushing for these reforms, the campaign is about more than legislative clauses. It is about shifting the culture of governance in England.

Children’s rights organisations have long argued that policies affecting children should start with a simple question: How will this impact a young person’s life?

But without a statutory driver, they say this question is asked inconsistently. Some departments regularly consider children’s rights. Others rarely do. And some decisions affecting children fall through the cracks entirely because they sit within ministries that don’t traditionally engage with children’s issues—despite their significant impact.

This is why the coalition spans such a wide range of organisations. Groups focused on education stand beside legal advocacy charities, who stand beside youth mental health

campaigners, who stand beside international children’s rights bodies. Each sees the same systemic gap from a different angle.

The Political Undertow

Politically, the proposals come at a complex moment. On the one hand, there is growing cross-party interest in improving the lives of children, especially those facing poverty or social care involvement. On the other hand, some Ministers are wary of adding new statutory duties, particularly those that might be perceived as constraints on policymaking.

Behind closed doors, the debate often centers on the same tension: flexibility versus accountability.

Supporters argue that rights-based assessments don’t hinder good policy, they enable it, by ensuring decisions are fully informed. Sceptics worry about creating new layers of bureaucracy. But as one senior charity figure has framed it in the past, bureaucracy can also be protection: a guardrail that stops the state from inadvertently harming children through oversight or haste.

Why This Matters Now

England is at a turning point. Child poverty figures are rising, and schools are under mounting pressure. Youth mental health services are overstretched. Local authorities are warning that children’s services face unprecedented strain. In this landscape, campaigners say the absence of a statutory duty is not just a technical gap; it is a structural weakness.

They argue that rights-based scrutiny could illuminate unintended consequences before they become crises, helping to prevent policy failures that disproportionately impact the most vulnerable children. Embedding children’s rights wouldn’t solve every issue, but it would create a stronger foundation for everything that follows.

The Road Ahead

The fate of the amendments now rests with the Government. If approved, they would mark a significant shift in how the nation governs its youngest citizens. If rejected, campaigners fear England will drift further from the standards set not only by its neighbours, but by international best practice.

For now, the coalition continues to grow, and the voices calling for change have never been louder. Whether this moment becomes a turning point or another missed opportunity will become clear in the coming month

But one thing is certain: the debate has re-centered a question that policymakers can no longer ignore. What does it really mean to put children at the heart of decision-making, and who is responsible for ensuring that happens, not in theory, but in law?