Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Biggar on his excellent maiden speech on the importance of our national story in liberal schools. I also thoroughly enjoyed the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley. I welcome them both to your Lordships’ House.

We have heard many powerful and moving speeches from across the House, and they confirm that this Bill matters. It will affect the lives of the nation’s children intimately and profoundly, and it is important that we get this legislation right. We will engage constructively where the Government are intent on doing the right thing, but, as so many noble Lords have pointed out, there is work to do to improve the Bill, most particularly in its impact on schools.

Every child deserves safety, dignity and a fair shot at life, and we support the aims of Part 1: to provide stronger support for children in care, to build a child protection system that protects and to end the unchecked profiteering from services meant to nurture, not exploit. These are not just policy goals but moral imperatives, and they speak to the kind of country we ought to be.

Much was done by previous Governments—most conspicuously under the coalition by Ministers such as Sarah Teather, David Laws and Edward Timpson—to improve the lives of children in care, but we acknowledge that there is more to be done, more even than the Bill currently allows for. We heard compelling evidence from expert witnesses in Committee in the other place that the Bill misses clear opportunities to intervene earlier and more effectively in children’s lives. My noble friends Lady Cash and Lord Farmer spoke of the need to break the cycles of dysfunctionality.

One example is the timing of family group conferencing during care proceedings. Used too late, its value is diminished. The same is true in private law proceedings, where earlier use could help defuse conflict before it escalates. When it comes to deprivation of liberty orders for children, the Bill says little, despite the known risks and the urgent need for stronger safeguards. These are not technical oversights; they are missed chances to protect children sooner, to reduce harm and to shift the system from reacting to crisis to preventing it. That is what reform requires and, on this, the Bill falls short.

The Bill’s provisions on regulating children’s homes and independent foster carers also fail to confront the real issue, which is capacity. The fundamental problem in foster care is not a lack of oversight; it is a lack of homes. Yet, instead of addressing that constraint, the Bill turns to regulation—elaborate, bureaucratic and unlikely to deliver the change that is needed. My noble friend Lord Young of Cookham gave us the benefit of his personal experience. My noble friend Lady Cash also highlighted further problems in the system. We will look to amend the Bill to do what it should have done from the outset—expand fostering capacity and reduce dependence on a process-heavy system that too often delivers delay, not results.

On safeguarding, there are clear omissions. The Bill is silent on the place of smartphones in schools. There is a need to give children a break from the well-documented problems of digital technology, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady Cass, so eloquently explained. This is an issue of growing concern for teachers, parents and pupils. I commend the excellent research that Policy Exchange, the UK’s most influential think tank, has done on this issue.

More seriously, the Bill says little about the long-promised reform of the SEND system, where delay has real consequences for children and families already struggling to navigate a broken process. This issue was raised by many noble Lords, including my noble friends Lady Berridge and Lady Fraser of Craigmaddie, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington.

My noble friends Lord Moynihan of Chelsea and Lady Sater, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, also brought attention to the fact that there is not one mention of the importance of sport or physical activity in the Bill.

Far too much of this Bill is being left to secondary legislation. This should alarm every Member of this House. It is not just a procedural shortcut. It is a clear signal that the Government do not yet know how their own reforms are supposed to work. The noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, called strongly for the clear use of data and measurement of goals. Clause after clause is a placeholder for policy that has not been written, capacity that has not been planned and consequences that have not been thought through. That is not just weak government; it is disrespectful to this House and dangerous for the children who will live with the consequences. We will bring forward amendments to address all these points. We urge the Government to use the time ahead not to defend the text as drafted but to improve it so that it meets the scale of the challenge and the seriousness of the moment.

I turn to Part 2 of the Bill. As the Minister will have heard, our concerns are far more fundamental. The Bill does not take account of the careful cross-party consensus built up during the last two decades which has driven up standards in schools in England, even if they have deteriorated in Scotland and Wales, as my noble friend Lady Fraser demonstrated so persuasively in the case of Scotland.

Greater autonomy for the front line, through the growth of academies and free schools, provided with sharper accountability—my noble friend Lord Agnew was absolutely right to talk about the Damoclean sword of consequences—and intervention when schools fail, has ensured that England has risen up every international measure of educational performance. Many other noble Lords, such as my noble friends Lord Young of Acton, Lord Fink and Lady Fleet, have spoken of the huge successes of the programme. The reforms driving this improvement have been shaped, supported and implemented by politicians from every major party, from my noble friend Lord Baker to the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett and Lord Adonis, the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, Nick Clegg and David Laws during the coalition years, and my noble friends Lord Harris of Peckham, Lord Agnew of Oulton, Lord Nash, Lord Hill of Oareford and Lady Morgan of Cotes.

These measures, which touch on schools, do not all give rise to concern. There are manifesto commitments in the Bill which we want to see succeed, but they must be made to work. The proposal to roll out free breakfast clubs to all primary schools could offer real value, but only if issues around funding, staffing and delivery are properly addressed.

We recognise the case for a register of home-educated children, not least to ensure that no child becomes invisible to the system. However, as drafted, the Bill does too little to protect children already known to social care—those at the highest risk—yet overreaches into the lives of families who are not. My noble friends Lord Frost, Lord Wei and Lord Jackson have raised concerns in this area. New Section 436C mandates local authorities to collect extensive data from all home-educating families, including details about who is educating the child, how often, where and whether any third parties are involved, even for families with no history of safeguarding concerns. The noble Lord, Lord Hacking, described the clauses as too long and too complicated. Meanwhile, there is no tiered or risk-based enforcement mechanism. This is a blunt instrument and poor policy design.

There are measures in this Bill that do not merely pause the progress we have seen in our schools but threaten to undo it. As my noble friend Lord Hill of Oareford, brilliantly argued, what is most troubling is that the Government have offered no serious explanation as to why these changes are being made. There is no analysis, no evidence and, as my noble friends Lady Fleet, Lady Meyer and Lord Moynihan of Chelsea all pointed out, no clearly defined problem for which these sweeping proposals are the solution.

Take one extraordinary provision: Clause 50 repeals the legal duty to convert failing schools into academies. For over a decade, this duty has underpinned one of the few unambiguous successes in public service reform. Schools deemed to be underperforming were matched with strong academy trusts. Leadership was renewed, expectations were raised and, crucially, results improved. Without that power, as we heard from my noble friend Lord Harris of Peckham, thousands of children in our poorest communities would have been deprived of an excellent education which transformed their lives immeasurably for the better. Hundreds of schools serving some of the most disadvantaged communities were improved yet, with no consultation and no rationale, this Bill abolishes that duty.

In the same breath, Clause 49 hands the Secretary of State extraordinary powers to intervene in any academy—not when it has failed, or even when it has breached its agreement, but simply when a breach is anticipated. That is a staggering threshold. Worse still, Ministers may then determine precisely how that imagined breach must be rectified. This is not evidence-based reform; it is micromanagement by suspicion.

Clause after clause strips away the very freedoms that made the academy model work. Clause 46 of the Bill imposes a blanket requirement that all teachers in academies must hold qualified teacher status. It abolishes the current discretion that academies have long held, which is the freedom to hire brilliant, capable individuals from beyond traditional routes: the coder turned computing teacher, the actor turned drama coach, the engineer teaching physics in schools where such teachers are desperately needed. The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, argued that technical subjects are best taught by those with practical experience, and she is correct.

Clauses 53 to 56 invite local authorities and adjudicators to override decisions on admissions, pupil numbers and exclusions, thus centralising control where autonomy once delivered results. Clause 57 goes further by allowing local authorities to propose new community schools and pupil referral units, reversing the principle that new schools should be academies or free schools. In doing so, it reopens the door to precisely the local bureaucracies whose record of school improvement was so consistently weak that it gave rise to the academies programme in the first place.

Then there is Clause 47, which mandates that academies must follow the national curriculum. My noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes has expressed concern about this change, as did other noble Lords. The clause also gives the Secretary of State very substantial powers— Henry VIII powers—which now also apply to academies. Indeed, together with Clause 63, this Bill introduces some of the broadest Henry VIII powers we have seen in modern education law. My noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking expressed concern about the transfer of such powers to the Secretary of State, and the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, also addressed the issue. I am interested to hear the views of the Minister on the issue of such powers in the Bill.

We are left with this: the Government propose to dismantle what works, impose what they cannot defend and call it progress. Children do not learn better because Whitehall takes charge of school uniforms; they will not succeed if this House fails to question legislation that takes us backwards, a point made by many noble Lords, including my noble friends Lady Eaton and Lord Eccles.

Perhaps most importantly, the Bill is a chance to shape the next decade of school improvement in England. Let me be clear: we on these Benches would welcome that opportunity, if the Government were serious about rising to it. The first phase of academisation tackled deep, entrenched failure in a minority of schools. The second built a national network of trusts, many of which used their freedoms to innovate, improve and deliver for children.

Now the task before us is clear: to scale what works. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Huyton, made the case for this in her excellent speech. We should take the best of our MATs and local authorities and embed that excellence across the system to improve outcomes for pupils, back our staff—my noble friend Lady Shephard and the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, emphasised the need to support our brilliant head teachers and teachers—with better support and career progression, give parents meaningful choice and build a school system that is not just higher performing but more resilient and fairer.

The lesson from both academy trusts and local authorities in the recent regulatory and commissioning review was clear: if we want lasting improvement, we need a self-improving system, not one run from Whitehall. None of this is about ideology; it is about what works. We have seen that progress comes when we combine autonomy, accountability and ambition. Let us not quietly dismantle what works, let us build on it. It does not have to be this way. With the right amendments, this Bill could lay the foundations for a genuine self-improving system—one that drives outcomes, strengthens leadership and places children, not institutions, at the centre. I hope the Minister and her department will meet these proposals with the seriousness they deserve, because we do not get many chances to get this right.

I will give the final words to my noble friend Lord Harris: you can recover from a bad first job, even a second, but a child gets one shot at education. No do-overs. No second drafts. So our duty is simple: we must get it right the first time, and that begins by getting this Bill right here and now.

Female Genital Mutilation

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Finn]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to support international efforts to end female genital mutilation.

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Baroness Sugg) (Con)]

My Lords, the UK is proud to support the Africa-led movement to end female genital mutilation. Since 2013, DfID programmes have helped more than 10,000 communities pledge to abandon FGM. In 2018, we announced a further £50 million UK aid package to tackle FGM. Today, which marks the International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM, the Secretary of State has announced funding to the World Health Organization and the United Nations to support affected countries as they address FGM through their health and legal systems.

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

I thank the Minister for her response. In 2013, the UK Government made a very welcome commitment of £35 million to be spent in efforts to end female genital mutilation. However, there are some genuine concerns that a large proportion of that sum failed to reach women on the front lines, with the result that very little has actually changed. Can my noble friend assure the House that the £50 million to which she referred that DfID promised in 2018, which is again very welcome, will reach the grass-roots activists who have been risking their lives to end this appalling abuse of girls?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for raising this issue today. FGM is a human rights violation that can result in a lifetime of physiological and emotional suffering. She is absolutely right that supporting grass-roots activists must be key to our approach to ending FGM. The first phase of our support built the Girl Generation, the largest ever global movement, which consists of over 900 grass-roots organisations. Our new programme will continue to support organisations based in affected communities, many of which are led by women and young people working on the front line to end FGM. We will also have a specific fund to support grass-roots activists and youth initiatives, with small grants to lead change in their own communities and to hold their own Governments to account.

International Women’s Day

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing forward today’s debate and for giving us the opportunity to celebrate International Women’s Day. It is humbling, as ever, to follow in the footsteps of such inspiring women on this important day. But in this august Chamber, which has seen debates on and the passage of many important Bills that further the cause of gender equality, it is perhaps time to recognise the limits of legislation in getting us where we need to be.

I say this on the 100th anniversary of the sex disqualification Act, which opened up the professions and universities to women. It was an essential step, but not nearly sufficient when it comes to true equality of opportunity across the gender divide. What we now see is a system where the letter of the law is gender neutral but, in practice, we are a long way from declaring victory. For a start, we cannot legislate away a sexist culture. The law protects us in extremis but not from everyday casual sexism. It happens to all of us. Only recently, as I insisted on a particular detail in a contract, my boss was asked, “How do you put up with her?” In a man, it is seen as attention to detail but in a woman, it is—what?—nagging or being bossy.

I have long argued against a narrow focus on quotas, preferring merit and persuasion, but the time has come to ask who is deciding the merit. We need to stop playing by male rules and unpick the male bias that pervades every aspect of our economy and society. The Hampton-Alexander review into improving gender balance in the FTSE leadership found that merit was coded “male”. Briefs to recruit people to senior positions are written for men. Concerns were often raised that women lacked City experience because they were less well-known on the networking circuit. Similarly, in a recent book called Invisible Women, it was found that everything from crash test dummies, to office heating settings, to medicine dosage, is all coded for men.

We now live in an age where female qualities are better understood and recognised. In the magnificently titled book Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?, the author highlights the bias towards confidence, and even self-absorption, as qualities. This blocks opportunities for women, and indeed for men who do not obviously exhibit those qualities.

The question is not whether male and female brains are different, but why society still insists on labelling male brains as better. My daughter, studying physics at university, was recently appalled at the treatment by male students of a top female lecturer. They repeatedly interrupted her, questioning her analysis and intelligence in a way they simply did not do with male professors. This is not an isolated incident. Studies show that students appear to evaluate women poorly simply because they are women.

Top companies know the benefits that ensue from more gender diversity, not least in financial performance, but despite some excellent progress there remains a profound sense of inertia. Indeed, the Hampton-Alexander review demonstrates that, even with the facts on superior performance and the prospect of more transparency and disclosure, listed companies can and do continue to resist change.

In a debate last year in this Chamber on women in public life, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, made the point that we have tried to “make nice” and adjust our demands to the male norm, but it is time to structurally re-engineer our whole society. Only then will we be able to unpack inbuilt cultural gender bias that the law cannot reach. The noble Baroness’s speech resonated in so many ways. Countless times, I have been told not to make a fuss, but we need to be less complacent and continue to fight. She finished her remarks by calling for quotas and all-women shortlists. In the face of the evidence and the lack of progress, that is harder to resist. We need to stop messing around and take this agenda seriously. It is worth making a fuss. Until and unless we do so, women will be behind for another century, and that is simply unacceptable.

Windrush

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Finn]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that compensation is paid promptly to those affected by the Windrush scandal; and when they intend to publish the review by Sir Alex Allan into the conduct of the Home Office.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, the public consultation on the Windrush compensation scheme runs until 11 October. We will announce details of the final scheme and how to apply as soon as possible after the public consultation has ended. The review carried out by Sir Alex Allan was an internal review commissioned by the Permanent Secretary. The Home Secretary is considering whether a redacted version of the report can be published.

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for her reply. Does she agree that justice for those damaged by the Windrush scandal, as well as the urgent need to restore public trust in the Home Office, require that Sir Alex Allan’s report be published without further delay? It is always cover-up that causes the most harm, and full disclosure is now required. My right honourable friend Amber Rudd resigned as a result of what took place. If there is any sense that the Civil Service is closing ranks to protect its own, there could be a serious loss of public confidence.

Role of Women in Public Life

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Vere of Norbiton for moving this Motion to mark 100 years of women winning the right to vote. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Desai, with whom I agreed on quite a lot.

It is always good to stand and reflect on how far we have come and how much more there is to achieve. It is right to pay tribute to the extraordinary—and the ordinary—women who put their lives on the line for equality, and to those who have tirelessly and passionately advanced the cause, a number of whom are sitting in the Chamber this evening. But we should remember the motto adopted by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters when they founded the WSPU: “Deeds not words”. It is easy to talk about equality and to impose arbitrary quotas. It is far harder to ensure that all talent flourishes and to show the courage, honesty and relentless determination needed to tackle the real problems.

The increase in the number of female Conservative MPs owes a huge debt to a force of Baronesses—my noble friend Lord Sherbourne assured me earlier that “force” was the correct collective noun. The combined force of my noble friends Lady Seccombe, Lady Morris and Lady Jenkin has certainly helped to support and promote many female MPs and candidates. I know that when my noble friend Lord Maude, as party chairman, made it his mission that the Conservative Party’s MPs should be more representative of modern Britain, many were sceptical about whether we could succeed without all-women shortlists. I have heard the persuasive arguments in the Chamber, but I still believe that quotas and targets are rarely the answer by themselves. Persuasion and merit work far better.

While the battle is well under way, it is far from won. The moral and business cases for promoting women are beyond question, so we need to ask ourselves why more women do not rise to the top tiers of public life. While organisations mostly acknowledge the need to be more inclusive and policy intentions are clear, their implementation is often inconsistent, unco-ordinated and lacking in real drive and commitment. “Deeds not words” must remain the maxim.

The narrow focus on targets and quotas has failed to change the culture, and indeed can sometimes harm the cause. Our successful experience during the coalition Government of increasing the number of women appointed to the boards of public bodies demonstrated that quotas in isolation had previously failed to work. They failed to address the real barriers and obstacles that women faced. A key point was that the insistence on track record and proven experience meant that the same candidates were constantly being recycled from one board to another and did not allow for new participants. By replacing such a requirement with an emphasis on talent and ability, we managed to expand the field of female candidates. We made other small changes, such as the requirement that job advertisements should be written in intelligible English, and we held events to persuade and encourage women to apply. It was not rocket science, but the difference was quite clear: over 45% of appointments to public bodies in 2016-17 were to women, which continued an upward trend from five years ago when the figure stood at 34%.

We applied a similar practical approach when tackling gender diversity in the Civil Service. We commissioned a report from the Hay Group, which was given a remit to be brutally honest, identify real problems and barriers, and make practical recommendations. Its Women in Whitehall report was an eye-opener. Despite policy being broadly in line with best practice, and in some cases being described as “leading edge”, the culture and leadership climate was identified as preventing women progressing into senior roles. Line manager practice was variable, so experiences of leadership and talent were something of a lottery. Many women simply did not believe that the rhetoric on policy and promotions matched the reality on skills and behaviours.

I do not have time to go into all the detailed findings, and I am sure noble Lords are grateful for that, but I will highlight some of the more revealing. One man described the contrast between the stated way that promotions are made—on competence—and the way that they are really made, which was on personal recommendation and cronyism. A woman described how she applied for a promotion but failed to get an interview because,

“I would have performed better than the preferred candidate—it was his turn for promotion”.

The leaders of the Civil Service were described as simply “not leading” and the culture as “cut-throat and underhand”. It was all quite shocking, and we commissioned further reports on LGBT, BME and those with disabilities, which in turn informed the Talent Action Plan, published in March 2015.

I mention this plan because I fear that what has subsequently happened highlights the ongoing gap between words and deeds. The Talent Action Plan was a two-year plan with key deliverables and specific and measurable objectives. In March 2016, the Cabinet Office published a detailed progress report, highlighting an increase in unconscious bias training and that all Permanent Secretaries now had diversity objectives. However, it is relatively easy to increase training and to write objectives; it is far harder to address underlying problems of culture and the various application of policies across departments. The two-year progress report on the implementation of the Talent Action Plan was due last March. It has not been published. The Minister for BEIS at the time wrote after a debate in April to say that the,

“Civil Service has implemented the majority of actions”.

The plan has now been superseded by the diversity and inclusion strategy, which tells us:

“We have made good progress but we know that we need to go further”.


There is no granular and transparent evidence to show what practical advances were made, what remedies worked and what practical issues remain. This was the original commitment. I worry that without such focus the diversity and inclusion strategy will be yet another grand strategy, full of bland and worthy platitudes, but which, like so many, fails to implement itself.

The commitment to women’s progress in public life is hard work and we need to get it right. It requires strong leadership and concerted action. I applaud, admire and pay tribute to those who fight, and who have fought, long and hard, but the battle is not over. It will not be over until the old joke—“That’s a very good point, Miss Smith, perhaps a man would like to make it”—becomes unrecognisable and part of history. I fear that we are still some way off that time.