Lobbying Ministers and other politicians is one of our main activities. We work on a range of Bills in Parliament, dealing with many different aspects of children's rights. Some of our recent successes include:

• Statutory guidance on pupil participation was introduced following lobbying by CRAE and others during the passage of the Education Act 2002.

• Following strong lobbying by CRAE and others, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 makes it clear that advice agencies cannot be prosecuted for giving advice to children on sexual and relationship matters.

• In 2004, the minimum wage was extended to 16 year-olds, following pressure from CRAE and others.

• As a direct result of our campaign, there were 11 major changes made to the Children's Commissioner's powers and independence, as the Children Act 2004 was going through Parliament.

• In that same Act of Parliament, we managed to persuade Government to introduce new duties on social workers to give due consideration to the wishes and feelings of children involved in child protection investigations and children in need assessments.

• Statutory guidance on pupil participation was extended to nursery education in 2006, following lobbying by CRAE.

• Ministers promised that the new Equality and Human Rights Commission (established October 2007) would work with and for children, following strong lobbying by CRAE.

• A new law has been passed that introduces a minimum age for company directors (16 years) from October 2008. Fearful that this could affect young people involved in running charities, CRAE lobbied in 2006 for an exemption. Ministers agreed that regulations would be drafted to protect young people running charities.

• The Government has recently (July 2008) agreed to issue statutory guidance on Children in Care Councils and says Ofsted will inspect them, following lobbying by CRAE.
  
  
• Following our lobbying during the passage of the Education and Skills Bill (current), the Minister Lord Adonis has agreed to amend statutory guidance to make it clear that children can attend exclusion appeal hearings. He is also considering introducing a right of appeal for children subject to school exclusion (currently only parents can appeal).

Some of our lobbying unfortunately has not yet resulted in improvements in legislation. For example, we want major changes in how the criminal justice system deals with children in conflict with the law, and have worked on several Bills to try and achieve this. Right now we are working on the following Bills:

Children and Young Persons Bill

The Children and Young Persons Bill will be debated again in the House of Commons on October 8. The Bill requires all Secretaries of State to promote the well-being of children. CRAE is pushing for an amendment which will explicitly include the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in Ministers’ statutory function.

CRAE is lobbying for other amendments to the Bill, relating to the need for an explicit provision requiring contracted-out social work practices to comply with the Human Rights Act; and extra duties on local authorities to support sibling contact. We are supporting an amendment to strengthen independent advocacy for children in care.

Education and Skills Bill

Leading for Participation Works, CRAE is seeking amendments to the Bill to increase the rights of children to have a say in decision-making within schools, including in the exclusion process. We have had some success with this – see above.

For more information about our Parliamentary lobbying, contact Catherine Billingham at cbillingham@crae.org.uk.