Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, my Amendment 243 deals with climate mitigation and adaptation. It would make statutory existing government guidance that new school buildings must be both net zero in operation and adapted to 2 degrees of warming, and would require the Government to produce a safe and resilient schools plan, laying out how existing school buildings would meet these targets.

One issue is that the Government do not seem to know the scale of the problem—for instance, the department does not hold information about the amount of lost learning time due to flooding. We have done a bit of research on the impact of extreme weather recently. Storm Chandra in late January caused 80 schools to close or partially close in Devon, Dorset and Somerset. Over 400 schools closed in Northern Ireland on 27 January due to weather, and Storm Goretti caused at least 278 schools in northern Scotland to close. That adds up to hundreds of lost school days across the UK. Of course we expect some of this—we cannot get around the snow—but my point is that weather events are increasing, and we could risk losing a lot of learning days, not to mention the soggy books and school equipment that are left behind.

The UK has no statutory reporting system, and what data exists is only at the local authority level; it is primarily for parents, not for anything strategic. Can the Minister commit that the department will start to track this centrally so that we have some kind of usable data?

The wider issue is that we lack a plan for how to deal with what is coming down the road. Everyone knows that climate change is getting worse, and we need a climate adaptation plan for schools. It needs to come from central government, otherwise we risk creating a multitiered system, where some schools do better and some do not. Probably, almost inevitably, it will be the poorest schools that end up being closed when there is a bad flooding event.

We have a template to follow; a few years ago, the Mayor of London commissioned a report which tailored plans for 60 schools. Many of the solutions were very simple, such as flood doors, shading and ventilation windows, which could be deployed widely and cheaply. The London report found that 93% of schools in the capital reported overheating as an issue, 78% said that it had a significant impact on learning and 43% experienced it multiple times or continuously through the summer term. Yes, London is relatively dry or hot and there will be different issues, largely flooding, in areas like the West Country. But the climate science shows that we are getting hotter summers and wetter winters, and that will only increase.

I know that there will be costs but, as with all things connected to our changing weather system, it is much cheaper to act now than later. As a starting point, will the Minister consider asking schools about this as part of annual surveys, and commit that the department will assess any plans that schools have made and issue general overall guidance on what to do? On the basis of these bits of information, I suspect that it will become abundantly clear that what we need is a Department for Education led safe and resilient schools plan.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, in speaking to my Amendment 243A, I declare my interests as the director of the Free Speech Union and a member of the Knowledge Schools Trust.

The amendment would stop safeguarding policies and procedures in schools being misused for political purposes, a prime example being the recent cancellation of a talk by the Labour MP Damien Egan at a secondary school in his Bristol constituency, on the grounds that allowing a vice-chair of the Labour Friends of Israel to speak posed a safeguarding risk to children. The Bristol branch of the National Education Union said on its Facebook page, after Mr Egan was no-platformed:

“We celebrate this cancellation as a win for safeguarding”.


In another Facebook post, the Bristol branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign also described Mr Egan’s ban as a win for safeguarding.

At the Free Speech Union, we have come across numerous examples of school safeguarding policies being weaponised by political activists to silence their opponents, whether visiting speakers or members of staff. For instance, the Free Speech Union recently took on the case of a teacher in Henley who was referred to the local authority designated officer—LADO, the official in charge of investigating safeguarding concerns—because he showed his A-level politics class some Trump campaign videos from the 2024 presidential election. The teacher was accused of causing his A-level students, aged 17 and 18, “emotional harm”. In one document, local officials in charge of child protection suggested that the showing of the Trump campaign videos could amount to a “hate crime”. Incidentally, he also showed the students in his A-level politics class some of Kamala Harris’s campaign videos, but those did not raise any safeguarding concerns.

In another Free Speech Union case, a teacher at a primary school in Tower Hamlets was sacked and referred to his local child protection board after telling off some Muslim boys for washing their feet in the sinks in the boys’ lavatories. I could go on.

Safeguarding policies and procedures were put in place to protect children from abusive parents and sexual predators, yet the weaponisation of these policies by political activists risks local authority designated officers and local safeguarding boards not taking genuine concerns seriously. That in turn endangers children’s safety. It is hard to think of a more cynical form of political activism—but, of course it has the desired effect. What MP who is sympathetic to Israel in its war with Hamas will risk arranging a visit to a school in his or her constituency knowing, ahead of time, that they could end up being no-platformed and branded a safeguarding risk to children?

Amendment 243A would put a stop to this mischief. It says:

“When making safeguarding assessments or investigating safeguarding complaints in relation to teachers, visitors or volunteers in schools and other educational settings, no account may be taken of the political views expressed or presented by the subject of that safeguarding assessment or complaint, provided those views are not … unworthy of respect in a democratic society … in conflict with the fundamental rights of others, or … affiliated with any political party, group or organisation which is proscribed for the purposes of the Terrorism Act 2000”.


We urgently need to stop this cynical weaponisation of policies and procedures that were put in place to protect children from predators and abusers, not unfashionable political opinions.