Most of this article appeared in Rabbi Asher Gratt’s Substack on April 29, 2025, and is republished by kind permission, with additional material from Tristram Llewellyn Jones.
IN A dramatic escalation of the national debate over the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which has its Second Reading in the Lords tomorrow, a leading King’s Counsel (KC) has issued a devastating legal opinion, warning that key provisions of the Bill contravene fundamental constitutional principles and human rights protections.
Aidan O’Neill KC, one of the UK’s foremost constitutional law experts, described the Bill as ‘opaque, discriminatory and intrusive’.
Simultaneously, more than 10,000 members of Britain’s Orthodox Jewish community have signed a powerful Declaration of Parental Rights and Educational Freedom, vowing they cannot and will not comply with the Bill if it becomes law in its current form.
The Christian Institute commissioned the Opinion because of the draconian powers in the Bill over families who home educate. The Institute defeated the Scottish government’s Named Person policy in 2016, and their QC was Aidan O’Neill. He also represented Women for Scotland at the Supreme Court in their successful challenge to trans policy.
Concerning Clause 33, O’Neill states: ‘The data protection provisions . . . are remarkably opaque and lacking in any proper specification such as to comply with the Convention principle of legality.’
Highlighting discrimination against home-educating parents: ‘Home-educating parents are being required to reveal to the State, for inclusion on a register, a level of information that is not held on school-attending children . . . This is clearly discriminatory.’
Drawing chilling historical parallels, he observes: ‘It appears home-educating parents will have to report to the local authority that their child attends Sunday School . . . This has echoes of totalitarian states.’
Summing up his overall assessment: ‘All this is remarkably intrusive.’
O’Neill warns that unless the Bill is substantially amended, it will likely lead to extensive legal challenges, damage public trust, and provoke serious constitutional and human rights conflicts across the United Kingdom.
In response to these dangers, more than 10,000 Orthodox Jewish parents and citizens have signed a historic Declaration affirming:
- That parents, not the state, have the inalienable right to guide their children’s moral, religious, and educational upbringing;
- That the Bill’s sweeping powers violate core protections under the Human Rights Act 1998;
- That the Government’s actions represent a grave breach of the constitutional covenant with the British people.
Britain’s democracy, built on restraint, accountability and liberty, stands in grave danger if the core principles of constitutional governance are abandoned. By violating these principles, the Government has broken its constitutional covenant with the British people, betrayed their trust, and thereby forfeited its moral and legal legitimacy to govern. Parliament is duty-bound to act urgently to defend Britain’s constitutional order.
The Declaration, alongside the KC’s legal opinion, sends a clear and urgent message to Parliament:
- Respect parental rights and religious freedoms;
- Defend the historic boundaries that protect private and family life;
- Prevent the dangerous politicisation and secularisation of the education system.
Supporters warn that once such constitutional protections are surrendered, they are rarely reclaimed without deep national trauma.
As Aidan O’Neill KC and thousands of concerned families have made clear: Britain stands at a crossroads. The future of liberty, conscience, and family life is at stake.
