Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 208 in this group. It is a pleasure to follow the noble and right reverend Lord. While I might not agree with everything he said, the debate on British values was an extremely common theme of my time in the Department for Education. It is a commentary on the world we live in that we now need to define what we mean by democracy, but I do not disagree with the point the noble and right reverend Lord made. I thank other noble Lords who added their names to Amendment 208: the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett.

As this amendment was debated in Committee, I will not take too long to introduce it. But I also do not think that I really need to convince the Government Front Bench, given that, just before Christmas, we had the arrival of the Government’s long-awaited violence against women and girls strategy. It was good to see the commitment:

“The Minister for Skills is exploring the most effective route to make Relationships and Sex Education … mandatory for young people under 18 in further education colleges”.


Unknown to many—including, presumably, some noble Lords in this House—and rather extraordinarily, hundreds of thousands of young people aged 16 to 18 are currently excluded from the benefits of relationships and sex education if they happen to be in further education colleges. This is despite the fact that this group experiences, for example, the highest rates of domestic abuse. An estimated 608,000 students aged 16 to 18 study in either further education or sixth-form colleges in England. Although further education colleges can deliver relationships and sex education on a voluntary basis, provision is inconsistent, unmonitored and often with scant training or support for those who are asked to teach it.

The campaign has the support of the Association of Colleges. I am also grateful to the Let Me Know young people advocates, Tabitha and Angela, who spoke so movingly at a briefing last week for Members of this House on why the extension of this education is needed for their age group. I also pay tribute to the efforts of Faustine Petron of Make It Mandatory, a survivor and formidable campaigner who identified the gap in education for this age group, having been unsupported during her own experience of relationship abuse. Some 105,000 people have now backed her petition.

Recent research from the Institute for Addressing Strangulation shows that almost half—43%—of sexually active 16 and 17 year-olds have been strangled during sex, and 70% of young people surveyed by the Children’s Commissioner have seen porn routinely featuring rape, strangulation and incest. This House and the other place have rightly been introducing, discussing and amending legislation on issues such as nudification apps, violent online pornography, harmful and abusive content across social media, and the non-consensual sharing of intimate images. That is why, at the same time, we must support the creation of space in the curriculum for all 16 to 18 year-olds—the very age group most likely to be having to deal with the reality of these and other relevant issues—so that they receive a proper education on these matters. As the young people I met last week said, for them, these issues are not theoretical. The more than 600,000 young people in further education colleges have as much right to that curriculum as the rest of their peers.

I am grateful to the Minister for her engagement on this issue. I shall listen very carefully to what she says. As I say, I think she agrees with the overall thrust of this amendment. If this is not the right Bill, which I think reflects the conversation that she and I had, I ask her to say which one would be, and, if one of those who support this change were fortunate enough to secure the ability to bring forward some legislation sooner than the next Department for Education Bill, I would be grateful if the Government would indicate their support for it.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 220, relating to the guidance for schools on gender-questioning children, which is still long overdue and which I think we have to ensure happens as quickly as possible. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for having pursued this and for tabling her amendments.

This is incredibly important and necessary to clarify issues for parents, for teachers in understanding and knowing exactly how they might deal with the difficult questions around gender-questioning children, and of course for children themselves. Obviously, this relates to some of the controversy and the failure to issue the EHRC code in relation to the guidance coming from the Supreme Court judgment, but it stands on its own terms.

When I talk to teachers and parents, there is still a lot of confusion about the demands of the Equality Act 2010’s gender reassignment protected characteristic and how one deals with that, and duties in relation to it, and how that might clash with, for example, safeguarding or free speech. That leaves teachers exposed and unclear.

I want to refer to what it feels like for parents who, across the UK, have been shocked to discover what their children have been taught or told in classrooms and have sounded the alarm on some teachers covering highly sexualised age-inappropriate content with young pupils and, in some schools, even affirming children in their gender identity—that is, social transitioning—without the consent or knowledge of their parents. It is understandable that that has caused alarm. For three to four year-old children just starting to learn to tell fact from fiction, the difference between make-believe games with friends pretending to be princesses, playing families or whatever and telling children at this stage that a person can literally change from one sex to another can be hugely confusing. I understand that this is not the Government’s intention and that they want to clarify it, but that is why I think the guidance should be urgently introduced and explained to schools and the Government should make clear what is and is not permissible.

Too often, it is left up to grass-roots activists otherwise. Recently, an article hit the media about a group of women—one a retired midwife, another a retired solicitor and another a mum of two—from a group called Protect and Teach who said that many schools do not have the appropriate safeguards in place. They are especially worried about outside organisations being invited in to effectively teach children, some as young as primary school, about inclusiveness, which might sound harmless until you look at the kinds of teaching materials used by these third-party organisations that research shows have very flawed policies, muddling up sex in the Equality Act 2010 with sexual identity and gender.

That is one of the reasons why we have concerns. Some of the work the group did, for example, showed that 75% of Church of England schools had problematic policies in relation to, for example, anti-bullying policies, which are not directly related, but practically all the material used in those policies focused on transgender identity, not bullying in any other way. The message of this was that affirmation was the way forward and young people needed to be kept safe from polarised debates, which would indicate a one size fits all. So I am straightforwardly saying that we need clear guidance. The Government must issue that clear guidance. Schools need help with this. It is not easy—nobody is saying it is—but what we cannot do is just leave it open.

I will make one final point on Amendment 206 from the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth. I commend him for doggedly and persistently pushing this amendment, which I have heard a number of times. I commend his celebration of British values, because I think that is important, and I have said that before, although I do not agree with the content of all the British values listed. The “respect for the environment” paragraph is particularly contentious and weak: I have written “twaddle” here. That is probably not a parliamentary word, but I have written it down.

The section on democracy includes that the Government should be accountable to Parliament, which is something we could learn a lesson from. The Government are not always accountable to Parliament—there are far too many Henry VIII clauses, in my view. It also notes that democracy, as a value, should mean regular elections, which would suggest that you should not cancel them, as we are witnessing at the moment. It talks about the importance of the rule of law, which immediately reminded me of what is happening to jury trials. It finally says that “freedom” should include freedom of thought and conscience, freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly and association. As somebody going through the Crime and Policing Bill, I did think it was perhaps worth sending the British values amendment of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, to the people pushing that Bill. I assure noble Lords that freedom of thought, expression, assembly and association are not safe under that Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 207 to create a duty to keep schools open for attendance. The speeches that have been made excellently explained why.

I arrived in this House during lockdown, and I was shocked—genuinely, to the core—by the ease with which people in this House on all sides clamoured to close down schools. It was an extraordinary thing to witness. I could not justify it at the time and argued against it. That argument—which was a minority argument, not just put forward by me—was treated as though somehow those of us who were worried about schools closing were the irresponsible ones; whereas I think it was the other way round. I genuinely think that many of the issues that the Bill is trying to tackle—many of the real problems and challenges that we face with young people today—were created, exacerbated and turbocharged as problems during that period. Schools were closed down, which meant that adults broke the social contract with children—not for their sake but ours—and it was against all the evidence. I am very keen to hear the Minister’s response to this, even if it is not tested in a Division of the House, as I think that this will be a huge, important lesson for us to learn.

I will note a few of the problems that have already been raised. We have a mental health crisis, which we talk about regularly—as we will later and have been throughout the Bill—as though it came out of nowhere, but there is serious reason to imagine that young people’s mental health suffered during that period. But we are also talking about behaviour. A lot of teachers will tell you that once that social contract was breached, it created discipline problems because pupils were no longer in class. We have increasing numbers of parents withdrawing their children from mainstream schools. The habit of going to school was broken. We have spent a huge amount of time in this Bill talking about home-schooling, which is going up, and that is partly because schools were no longer considered necessary. I said then that if you tell pupils that truancy is okay in certain circumstances, it will be hard to get back to normal. If you say, “You shouldn’t come into school”, it will be hard to say, “You must come into school”.

Certainly, as a teacher, I lectured young people—many a time—saying, “There is nothing more important than going to school. There is nothing, nothing, nothing more important than your education”, and then suddenly as a society we said, “Oh, there are lots of things that are more important than going to school or your education”, so they learned a very bad lesson.

We will come on to talk about the problems with smartphones. What did we do when we sent all those young people home? First of all, we told them to look at screens to get lessons—a lot of the time we did not bother even supplying the lessons on the screens—and what they did was spend a lot of time on their phones. They were not out socialising. They became desocialised—anti-social.

The final reason why we have to remember that this is so important is that a cohort of young citizens was told, “If there is a problem, you stay at home, you withdraw”. I think that if we say to young people, “If you feel ill, you aren’t up to coping with going out and being part of society”, we are creating a medicalised fragility and an acceptance of illness as a reason to withdraw that have led to massive social problems. We are now paying for that with a huge welfare bill. Many young adults now lack the resilience to become economically active.

The cost of what we did was enormous and we are yet to come to terms with it. The Bill is trying to deal with a lot of the problems created by that period, and this amendment is therefore important in raising the possibility that we should not, as a default, close schools. The default should be that we do not, that we owe it to children to have their education and that schools are kept open for attendance. There has to be an extremely good reason why schools are closed, and that should be thought through deeply. As someone who was here when we were deciding, let me assure noble Lords that it was not.

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

My Lords, I too support the amendment. We have relied through history on a presumption that schools will stay open, even in adverse circumstances such as epidemics or bombardments. But once we closed schools for Covid, we set children adrift because there was nothing in law to balance their interests against those of adults. Children stayed locked up for months, learning little even when schools made great efforts to provide online learning.

I shall not repeat what others have said, but the story of the continuing harm to children—their academic progress, social development, health and happiness—is still unfolding. Ofsted did some of the earliest work on this in autumn 2020, when my inspectors made a series of fact-finding visits to schools and published monthly reports on the impact of Covid on schools and children. They reported that children were lonely, bored and miserable—the advance warnings of the lasting problems that we now see. I spoke about this publicly a number of times, but the tide of emotion was too strong for people to hear.

With hindsight, the existence of a formal duty and a mechanism to ensure that the available evidence, such as the reports I mentioned, is considered and weighed up against the representations of the adults who work in schools, health sector representatives, and so on might have helped to focus minds. I believe that there is an opportunity here for the Minister to get ahead of potential recommendations from the Covid inquiry.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, this group of amendments returns to the issue of balancing the rights of children who are excluded from school with those of other children and staff in the classroom. All three of my amendments were tabled in Committee. Before I speak to them, I want to acknowledge the very positive evaluation of the impact of the behaviour hubs programme that was just published, and I thank all those involved.

In Committee, the Minister referred to the statutory Working Together guidance, which says that the local authority and partners should identify problems and unmet needs, including for children facing multiple suspensions or permanent exclusion from school. She referred again to the changes that the Government are making to local authority children’s services with a greater proposed emphasis on early help. Of course, this is how all of us would hope that the system would work but, by definition, when a child is permanently excluded, that early intervention has not achieved its goals.

To take my amendments in reverse order, Amendment 219 would make it clear that there is a presumption against reinstatement in a mainstream school after a child has been permanently excluded twice. As my noble friend Lady Spielman said in Committee, there is good evidence that these children do not go on to thrive in mainstream and are more likely to have their needs met through high-quality alternative provision. We all know that there is not enough of this currently, but that is for a different debate. Perhaps the forthcoming schools White Paper will address it. However, can the Minister confirm whether the Government plan to make it clear in future updates of the suspension and exclusions guidance that if a child has twice been excluded from a mainstream school, there is a presumption against placing them in another one?

My Amendment 218 reflects the anxieties that many parents and head teachers have about having a child in their classroom who has committed serious violence or sexual assault. We heard several examples of this in Committee, and the Minister talked about how the Government would,

“trust head teachers to use their professional judgment based on the individual circumstances of the case when considering whether to exclude a pupil, and we will protect their right to do that”.—[Official Report, 16/9/25; col. 2132.]

However, in Clauses 54 to 56 the Government are strengthening the ability of local authorities to require academies to accept a particular child via a managed move, so we need the clarity that my amendment brings. Again, can the noble Baroness confirm whether that will be in the forthcoming guidance?

In these debates, we rightly focus on the excluded child, but we too rarely speak with equal clarity about the children who remain, those whose learning could be disrupted, whose classrooms become unsafe and whose trust in adult authority is eroded when serious behaviour is not addressed decisively. Exclusion decisions are not made in a vacuum; they are made in the context of 30 other pupils and the staff responsible for them. Any system that weakens the ability of head teachers to act risks failing not one child but many. This is about not giving up on children but recognising when repeated failure in mainstream indicates that a different setting is more likely to meet a child’s needs and keep other children safe.

Finally, Amendment 217 aims to ensure that children who are permanently excluded are guaranteed a proper assessment by the local authority. I understand that schools need to inform the local authority when they permanently exclude a child. Of course, in strong local authorities this results in an assessment, but it is not consistent. I know the Minister understands just how vulnerable a child who is permanently excluded can be, so I hope she will agree to make this assessment a requirement. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, one year ago today, on 3 February 2025, 15 year-old Harvey Willgoose was tragically stabbed in the heart at All Saints Catholic High School in Sheffield. It happened in the school courtyard in the lunch break, and the perpetrator was Mohammed Umar Khan. An independent review has been commissioned by the school’s trust on what it calls “missed opportunities” and “too many red flags” about Mohammed Khan’s previous behaviour. Khan’s record showed around 130 incidents of concern relating to violence, anger issues and even carrying weapons, yet somehow teachers did not feel able to handle that. Allegedly—the trust is looking into this—some teachers said that they raised the alarm but were ignored or it was pushed away from them.

It is important that we note that teachers should never be frightened to intervene for whatever reason by asserting adult authority. One problem we have to address is making sure that we do not in any way send a message that teachers cannot have the tools that they need to deal with challenging behaviour in schools. It is therefore important that suspension and permanent exclusions are part of the tools that reinforce and deter serious misconduct across schools, signal that certain behaviours have severe consequences and allow boundaries to exist and be reinforced. That is beneficial to all pupils as well as staff. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, that sometimes we forget those children who are sitting there and are victims of the misbehaving or violent child. It is for that reason that I have added my name to Amendment 217, which would require local authorities to undertake an assessment of the needs of any permanently excluded child. I am sure that one reason many head teachers are nervous about permanent exclusion is that they do not want that to be the end of the educational road for the child and they do not want the child to disappear. It is very important that we do not allow that to happen.

Amendment 218, which probes the Government’s willingness to introduce a presumption against the reinstatement of a child excluded for very serious matters, such as possession of a knife or other weapon, sexual assault or assault against a teacher, would be key in backing up teachers’ ability to be authoritative and feel safe when teaching. Pupils need to be relocated to an environment more suitable to their challenging behaviour and then they should be followed up because we do not want an argument to be used that permanently excluded, difficult, challenging children will end up in the wilderness with no possible options. These amendments cover that really well, and Amendment 217 aims to prevent that bleak outcome.

On Amendment 219, under which if pupils are excluded on two occasions it would not automatically be assumed that schools would have to take them back, I think that is important and I will be interested to hear what the Minister thinks about it, because it could prevent heightened risk to other staff or students. But I also think we should not presume that it is okay simply to move the problem to another mainstream school. It just feels lazy, like moving the deckchairs. More pupils are then put at risk in another school, but the problem is never tackled. They might actually need to be relocated to a more suitable environment.

I should say that, at one point, I taught for several years in a further education setting pupils from the age of 14 upwards who had been excluded from schools in the local area. They were, to say the least, challenging. Many of them had been violent in their classrooms, but many of them had literally just gone from pillar to post, pillar to post, with no particular regard to the issues they had. When they were actually in a special class—I am not saying it was special because I was teaching it—at least it meant that we could focus on the difficulties they had.

My final thought, having sat through a lot of the discussions, is that we need to be aware that the deterioration—and there has been a deterioration—of young people in schools does not come out of a vacuum. We have just heard the discussions and the tensions around mobile phones. We do have to think that sometimes our policies can make matters worse. In that instance, I think that the question that was asked earlier about how we are actually going to police and enforce any ban on mobile phones in schools was worth asking, because the teachers are going to have to police it. That could lead to a lot more tensions.

Also, to refer to an earlier amendment, suspensions and permanent exclusions rose sharply when schools reopened after the Covid lockdown period, with suspensions up by 21% and permanent exclusions up by 16%. Following on from the earlier amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Young, in relation to lockdowns, I think we should understand that that period really did damage young people and led to a decline in behaviour. We have to take some responsibility for that.

In general, I think that the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, are a really useful way for us to reconsider how we tackle this issue.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

Children have a right to learn, and teachers have a right to teach. Permanent exclusion is far more than a disciplinary measure; it is a pivotal moment that can shape a child’s future. Consider the 2023-24 academic year, when almost 10,900 children were permanently excluded in England, with nearly four in 10 due to persistent disruptive behaviour. Without careful support, these exclusions can set children on a path of disengagement, low attainment and tragically increased involvement with the criminal justice system.

We know that exclusions disproportionately affect the most vulnerable. Children eligible for free school meals or with special education needs are far more likely to be excluded, highlighting the urgent need for support that is tailored rather than one size fits all. All too often, excluded children simply fall out of the system, their potential left unrealised.

This amendment would require local authorities to carry out a formal needs assessment, ensuring that support is timely, targeted and responsive. Professionals will be able to identify barriers to learning, social or emotional challenges and offer suggestions for appropriate interventions, whether that be reintegration into another school, alternative provision or targeted mental health and well-being support. Whichever route this intervention follows, it is essential, as evidence shows that without such structured intervention excluded children face long-term education disadvantage and reduced life chances.

This is not mere bureaucracy; it is a practical, evidence-informed measure, designed to safeguard children and give them a chance to succeed. It aligns with the Government’s commitment to exclusion and equality of opportunity, recognising that every child has value, talent and potential. It is our collective responsibility to provide a safety net for those most at risk. I urge noble Lords to support this amendment, not as a mere procedural formality but as a moral and educational imperative. Let us ensure that no child is left behind simply because they have faced challenges in their schooling.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2026 Lords Chamber

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, I do not accept that announcing yet another consultation is a serious response to a problem of this scale. A review at this stage, as she said, is just the cynical management of politics, and I hope that many of my esteemed friends in the other place will see it for what it is. We have got to send this back to the Commons. Regardless of whether we agree on a full ban or partial ban, we have a job to do. We must not lose this shot at helping and protecting our children in this way. We are not short of evidence; we are short of action.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, once upon a time, in a previous moral panic about children’s safety, parents reacted to the media and politicians catastrophising by stopping their offspring playing outside unsupervised. The unintended consequence was the creation of what became known as cotton wool kids, prone to risk aversion, anxiety, lack of resilience and social isolation. Ironically, to compensate, many of those children were forced to cultivate their activities online. Their social interactions became virtual, and here we are.

I worry that we risk similar unintended consequences now if we rush to pass a social media ban for under-16s, so I will be opposing Amendment 94A. I know it has become normalised that, whatever social, cultural or moral panics we encounter, we believe that we can legislate to make them go away. I fear that this sort of lawmaking can lead to avoiding tackling difficult problems and to attempts at quick-fix solutions that too often create a whole new raft of difficulties down the line.

I noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, blamed social media for eating disorders, radicalisation, terrorism, the mental health epidemic, ADHD, poor behaviour in the classroom, misogyny, violence against women and girls, and on and on. At this rate, all that Parliament would have to do is ban the internet for everyone and all problems would be solved. There is a danger of looking for easy answers and scapegoating social media for all society’s ills.

I worry about attempts to push this through too quickly or to fast-track it. It is interesting that the three-week fast-track consultation put forward in the other place has been discussed as though it is holding things back. The leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch, calls it more “dither and delay”. But this proposal is new; it has only just arrived here on Report as an amendment that would fundamentally change every citizen’s relationship with social media, not just children’s. I worry about attempts at steamrolling it through, with an assumption that everyone agrees that it is so obvious and inevitable that there is no point opposing it. I am grateful to the Liberal Democrats and the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, for an attempt at proportionality, even though I do not think it goes far enough.

We are hectored that this is what parents want. There has not been a referendum of parents, though there are polls. Many parents are pulling their hair out and will be tempted by it—it is so much easier to say, “You can’t because it’s against the law”, than it is to assert adult authority. Teenagers’ and children’s pester power can be the bane of all our lives. If only the law could be extended to ban other things and make them illegal—no, you cannot wear that hoodie; no, you cannot spend hours gaming; no, you cannot go to that sleepover; no, you cannot gorge on junk food; no, you cannot go to that party. In truth, this approach encourages parents to outsource their authority and shifts responsibility from parents to the state. All families ultimately are being told that they are incapable of managing their children's habits, and that is a dangerous precedent. It can disarm parents in the name of empowerment. Is there really a consensus among parents on this? Many of my friends are split down the middle, so I do not think we can claim the evidence is in.

What about the incontrovertible scientific evidence that backs a ban? The jury is out. The causal relationship between social media and mental well-being in teens and young people is much more contested than has been implied. Recent extensive research by academics at Manchester University found no evidence that social media has increased teenagers’ symptoms of anxiety or depression. The chair of the National Suicide Prevention Strategy Advisory Group, Professor Louis Appleby, points out that the evidence is, at best, circumstantial, noting that self-harming in the young began well before social media took hold in that age group. That reflects what I know from my own work in relation to mental ill-health and young people; I do not think it can totally be blamed on social media.

An Oxford University study of nearly 12,000 children showed no correlation between screen time, including social media, and mental health. Instead, the way in which children engage with social media is what determines its impact and—shock horror—in many instances, evidence shows the positive impact of social media use. The noble Lord, Lord Bethell, said that no more research is needed. That is anti-scientific and complacent, and I do not think it is true.

Let us be clear about what this amendment as drafted would do in relation to user services. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, pointed out the dangers to, for example, WhatsApp, websites such as Wikipedia and so on. That needs clarifying at the very least.

Despite histrionic headlines, social media can be used for self-educational ends. There is a new generation of autodidacts who are teaching themselves coding, video producing, editing and even musical instruments, languages and chess. I know that sounds rose-tinted and a bit glib, but social media often is a tool for connections—finding your tribe, making new friends—and a place where you can cultivate solidarity and autonomy as a young person. It can be a counter to the social trend towards fragmentation.

What about allowing the young to explore diverse political perspectives? On the eve of 16 year-olds being given the vote, surely it is important, if not essential, that we do not narrowly restrict soon-to-vote teens to state-sanctioned media channels. We want them to broaden their horizons, and explore and develop a democratic curiosity about the world, and they are going to do that online. When talking to school pupils, as I do often, I recommend that they find out about their peers around the world as part of them learning about international relations. What civic lessons might British children learn by looking at those brave protesters in Iran whose commitment to freedom has given them the courage to take on a theocratic Islamic regime and whose stories we know because they used social media to organise and to connect with each other and the rest of the world? That was, of course, before the ayatollah shut down the internet—oh, the irony.

As for safety and whether this ban will throw children off a cliff edge, it risks not equipping youth with the skills to safely and responsibly navigate the online world, knowing how to identify problems, spot dodgy red flags and apply strategies to deal with them. As the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, pointed out, in all likelihood, many pre-16 year-olds will find ways of migrating to even riskier unregulated platforms or the dark web without guardrails and zero moderation. Our teenagers and children are clever and, dare I say it, devious. They will find a way. They will use VPNs—but it is okay, because noble Lords are going to ban those too. I hear that there is already a roaring trade in fake IDs among pre-teens.

Finally, how will over 16 year-old adults be affected by this ban? Whereas the Online Safety Act age-gated only certain types of harmful content, Amendment 94A would age-gate entire platforms, even when the content is child-friendly or harmless. According to Big Brother Watch, a 70 year-old accessing the neighbourhood news, a 50 year-old looking up the history of golf on Wikipedia, a 30 year-old small business owner responding to customers on Instagram and a 17 year-old wanting to message parents on the way home from school would all require age-verification measures. That is the threat to adult civil liberties and the right to privacy and, in effect, it means that we will have to digitally verify to participate in the public square. I do not necessarily think that young people will gain from this, despite the hyperbole.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I remind the House that we are on Report, and I think some of the contributions are in danger of erring on the wrong side of self-regulation. We should stick to the point; I will be very brief and simply try to explain for the benefit of the Government Front Bench, because in various Bills going through Parliament in the last month or so, this subject has raised itself in various forms. I sometimes notice the Front Bench being slightly amazed at what is coming at them from all sides and not necessarily understanding why. That is largely because they were not in your Lordships’ House at the time we went through the lengthy discussions about the Online Safety Act. What they are hearing today is a collective howl of rage and frustration across the House because what we thought we were very clear was meant to happen has not happened. I will give one or two facts which back up the view of my noble friend Lady Kidron that, whatever we do, we have to gather together—the right reverend Prelate made a very good point—and collectively send a message to the other place that this situation is simply not good enough.

Today, within the last 10 hours, a court case has been going on in California against Snap, Meta and TikTok where a group of parents are accusing those organisations of creating products which are addictive. It so happens that in the last 24 hours, Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, has settled with the complainants. That is because, I suspect, if they had not settled, the chief executive of Snapchat, Evan Spiegel, would shortly have had to appear in person in the court to answer the case against his company. He chose not to do so. Mr Zuckerberg is apparently also in the queue to give evidence at this trial, and it will be interesting to see whether his company takes the same route.

Yesterday, along with many other colleagues, I was part of a session of Learn with the Lords in the Education Centre. I took the opportunity to talk to the young people, most of whom were 14 and 15, about what they thought of a social media ban, which all of them were aware of—probably through social media. Almost without exception, they said they were against it and gave the sort of reasons one would expect, such as “That’s where we get our news from”, and so on. The teachers were completely and utterly in favour of a ban. We can take from that what we will, but I suspect the fact that they see day in and day out in the schoolroom the effect on the pupils they are trying to help, to develop and to manage—and to mitigate, in some cases, difficult behaviours—means that are completely united that this is unsustainable.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, mentioned that in Australia they have a different regulator, an e-safety commissioner. Comparing the e-safety commissioner in Australia with what we have in Ofcom is a bit like comparing “Crocodile Dundee” with “Dixon of Dock Green”. The difference is that stark.

Last week in the Peers’ Lobby, I met one of the bereaved parents whose child has died as a result of exposure to social media. I told that bereaved parent that a group of us were going to meet the chief executive of Ofcom within the next couple of weeks. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Simon, would you give the chief executive a message from me?”. I said, “Yes, of course”. He said—and you will excuse my Anglo-Saxon—“Would you kick her up the arse?”.

Equality and Human Rights Commission: Code of Practice

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend is right that it is important, and it is the basis of the Equality Act, to recognise the rights of all those with protected characteristics within it. What was helpful in the Supreme Court’s judgment was the absolute clarification that trans people’s rights remain protected within the Equality Act 2010. We have been clear that the laws to protect trans people from discrimination and harassment will remain in place and that trans people will still be protected on the basis of gender reassignment, which is a protected characteristic written into the Equality Act.

Work is already under way to fulfil our commitment to advance the rights and protections afforded to LGBT+ people, and that includes delivering a full trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices, working with the Home Office to deliver our commitment to equalise all existing strands of hate crime, and working with the Department of Health and Social Care to improve services for trans people.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, does the Minister have any advice for women such as Miranda Newsom, who, assuming that the Supreme Court had settled the matter, challenged a biological male in the female-only changing room at a council-run leisure centre in Southwark and received a torrent of abuse from the man, yet it was she who was punished and barred from the gym? Can the Minister assure the House that after the victory of the Darlington nurses the Government are urgently instructing NHS bodies to bring their policy fully into compliance with the law? If they do not, they are complicit with unlawful behaviour of service providers.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The Government have been clear that the judgment provides clarity around the definition of sex within the Equality Act. We have been clear that therefore all providers should be following that, taking specialist legal advice where necessary, and ensuring that, with respect for everybody’s rights and dignity, we can make progress on this in a way that respects the law but also ensures that everybody is able to have the rights and protections that the Equality Act so importantly laid down in 2010.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, I too oppose the removal of the defence of reasonable punishment. I realise that Amendment 97 from the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, no longer does that directly, but it is intended as a staging post, and this is why I would like to talk about the issue.

As a child, I was subjected to physical punishment. My parents were overly strict. My father came from a military background and my mother had little patience with children. I was also a boarder at a Catholic school, where the nuns were extremely strict. On one occasion, I was caught talking to my neighbour and was made to kneel on the platform by the teacher’s desk with tape placed over my mouth for the rest of the lesson. This was a clear violation and would rightly be unacceptable today.

However, we must draw a distinction between physical punishment and hitting a child and an occasional light smack that causes no harm. These are not the same morally, psychologically or legally. English law reflects that distinction. Any punishment that causes injury, leaves marks, involves implements or amounts to abuse is illegal and rightly prosecuted. The defence of reasonable punishment applies only to the lightest chastisement where no harm is caused. It does not excuse abuse nor physical punishment. It prevents ordinary parents being treated as criminals when, from time to time, they apply proportionate discipline to an unruly child. To remove it is another step towards a nanny state where the balance between parental responsibility and state intervention is quietly but significantly shifted away from families and towards government control.

All children are not the same. Some respond to a word or a look and never need to be scolded; others test the boundaries. For those children, the calm assertion of parental authority is not cruelty but guidance, helping them learn limits, responsibility and respect for rules. I am also a parent. On one occasion, after repeatedly warning my eldest son, I smacked him lightly on his bottom. It did not hurt him, but he was so shocked that I followed through that he howled in indignation. His pride was hurt. After that, when I warned him, he believed me. It was not fear; it was authority, exercised once and never repeated.

Surely this should not be criminalised. Polling consistently shows that more parents favour retaining the current law than banning smacking. We are told that the law is unclear. It is not. The current test is simple. If harm is caused, the behaviour is illegal. Removing the defence would replace that clarity with subjective judgments, creating confusion for parents, police and social services.

The experience in Wales and Scotland, which my noble friend talked about, is that bans have led to thousands of additional referrals to social services, diverting attention from children who are genuinely at risk. A similar ban in England would cost at least £145 million, at a time when services are already under extreme pressure. What is needed is education, support and awareness, not criminal law. Legal bans invite denunciations, investigation and fear, not better parenting.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, when I saw Amendment 97, I was pleased to see that the focus was on the post-implementation review report on the Children (Abolition of Defence of Reasonable Punishment) (Wales) Act. I am keen that the UK Government dig deeper into the impact of what is known as the Welsh smacking ban. I am keen that the Government review the evidence and data and, I hope, draw a conclusion that this should not be brought into UK law—but that they do that by looking at the evidence.

As somebody in Wales, I have obviously been involved in this debate for some time. I have had lots of media discussions and spoken on the issue over the years. Having heard the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, talk about the report, I felt as though we probably read different reports and had different interpretations, which just shows that it is worth digging into. I have some serious reservations about the success of the law change, as there have been some rather unintended, though predictable, outcomes. I want to raise a few of those.

I understand that the proposers of this amendment are motivated by concern about the abuse of children, but it is important to note that we are all motivated by a concern about the abuse of children. That is something that we share. But one of my worries is the impact of the law change, given the pressures it is placing on social services in Wales. Thousands of new referrals have been made to Welsh social services that have involved the police, and these are costing millions of pounds and lots of time. To be honest, this can mean that real abuse is being squeezed out or relativised by what is happening.

The influx of referrals is not a surprise when any report of smacking automatically triggers an investigation by social services. The escalation of reports is no doubt because of the Welsh Government’s guidance to a wide range of organisations which work with, care for or volunteer with children that anyone who witnesses a parent smacking a child should immediately contact social services. My concern is that valuable resources are being taken away from protecting children who are at genuine risk of harm and diverted into trivial cases where harm has not been caused. Even if people ideologically do not agree with the chastisement of smacking, it is not the same as abuse. Even the most zealous anti-smacking campaigner—or so I thought, before I heard some people in this debate—should concede that a well-intentioned tap on the back of a tot’s hand or leg by a parent who loves their child does not mean that they are an abuser.

I was a bit shocked when I heard the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, say that any child might say, “If I don’t get a good grade, I’ll be beaten”. It is a shocking thing to hear a child say that, when it is actually illegal to beat a child in this country—of course it is. The idea that that is the same as smacking, in the way that the law in England permits, and the conflation of brutality with smacking—a mild physical chastisement as parental discipline—is the kind of sleight of hand that distorts the evidence, makes this a far too emotional discussion and is so insulting to parents. That is what I found shocking.

If we examine the guidance notes issued by various Welsh local authorities, we can see how resources that might be best spent protecting children at serious risk of beating if they do not pass their exams, for example—and that would be worth investigating—can become diverted. One example used in a guidance note was when a teacher reported that a young pupil stated his father smacked him because he was naughty. The advice from the Welsh Government was that the teacher should trigger a Section 47 investigation, which would include two uniformed officers visiting and talking to the four year-old. That sort of escalation, dragging the family into the orbit of social services and police forces, is what I worry about. There are obvious implications for the workload of front-line staff with a statutory duty to investigate all referrals, regardless of severity. That creates a danger of services being unable to prioritise cases where there is a genuine risk of abuse or neglect.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, if I may speak again, I believe I was just accused by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, of insulting parents, which I have never been accused of before. I would like to explain myself slightly. The law, as far as I understand it, is that the bruise must be not visible within three days. On dark skin, you can get quite a lot of force into a mild slap to leave a bruise that cannot be seen in three days. If one side is that we are practically calling parents punch-drunk, mad people and the other is, “It’s a light tap, because a child has done something wrong”, there is a huge area between them. To call me insulting to parents is what I find insulting myself.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I do not think that that was an intervention on my speech, but there is a huge difference between a small tap and beating a child; that is the point. A small tap should not be illegal; beating a child is illegal.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, when the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, started her contribution, she said that we should look at the evidence from Wales, and I thought, fair enough. That is what the Government are going to do, are they not? But then, towards the end of her contribution, she said that we should look at the evidence from Wales but not emulate it. That evidence suggests that we take this course of action. We are all getting hung up and concerned about the harmful effects of social media and of mobile phones. What about the harmful effects of smacking? It is hard to believe that 40 years ago, we still had corporal punishment in schools; they probably debated it in this Chamber. Children were caned or slippered. A few noble Lords probably got up and said that this was not a good idea. We can imagine the contributions, at the time, from the likes of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, about that suggestion. I am sorry—I must not do that.

We have had a debate, and the work and experiments in Wales have been mentioned several times. But the most important people in all this are the children, are they not? What about them? Children who experience physical punishment are up to 2.6 times more likely to develop mental health problems, and up to 2.3 times more likely to go on to experience harm through more serious forms of physical abuse. This is the most worrying thing to me.

In 2023-24, over 700 children—we are probably talking about young children—contacted Childline to complain about, worry about or cry about physical abuse. What do we do? We go chatting on about all sorts of other things. I am disappointed that we are not having a Division on this: I would like to know how people feel. I am sure that the majority of Labour Members are absolutely on the side of doing away with corporal punishment. Some have been noticeably quiet, and I understand why; that is perhaps a cruel dig. I also accept, however, that we want to look at what has gone on in Wales and use that as the basis for coming to a conclusion. I am sure that those Members are genuine about this and are not using it as an opportunity to delay the matter beyond the general election. If they are still in office—and they could well be—could they please bring this forward immediately after the general election, and let us have a vote on it? This is a corporal punishment issue that is just as important as it was 40 years ago.

Equality and Human Rights Commission: Draft Updated Code of Practice

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I recognise that, as my noble friend says, trans people are concerned about the implications of the recent Supreme Court ruling. As I have said, we are considering both that ruling and its implications carefully. However, we are clear, as was that ruling, that the laws to protect trans people from discrimination and harassment will remain in place. Trans people will still be protected on the basis of gender reassignment, a protected characteristic written into Labour’s Equality Act.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords—

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords—

Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

3rd reading
Thursday 23rd October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, Ministers have noted in many of our exchanges that the Bill which we have discussed was a great improvement on the original Bill put forward by the previous Government. That is true, but it did not make it a perfect Bill. In fact, all sides of the House have constructively improved the content of the Bill. I really appreciate that the noble Baronesses, Lady Sherlock and Lady Anderson, put forward amendments that were not rewrites of the Bill, as we sometimes see in this House, but were based on listening to the debates that we had in Committee and so on. It is therefore much improved.

I want to note, in general but relating to this Bill, that those of us who have raised issues around civil liberties, privacy rights and transparency were not doing so to be soft on those who fraudulently take advantage of public funds in any way whatever. Those issues of civil liberties, privacy rights, transparency, accountability and so on were based on a firm belief that when the state takes more power, it is our responsibility to represent the public—not just in terms of money that is taken from them but the threat to rights that might be taken from them. I appreciate that the Government Front Bench listened to some of those concerns. I wish that they had listened to a few more but, for now, I think there was constructive engagement from all sides, and I appreciate that very much.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, I am probably the last person to speak and mull over all that has happened. I thank sincerely the noble Baronesses, Lady Sherlock and Lady Anderson, and their team. They have been very helpful to us in answering our questions, trying to agree with us and offering a meeting to discuss the part of this Bill on carers. We appreciate and look forward to that departmental meeting, together with, I hope, one of our MPs, so that we can have a reasonable view towards ping-pong and what goes forward.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, as everyone has, for many things that we worked closely on and supported. I also thank particularly the Conservative Front Bench, who have not been confrontational but have tried to work to get a better Bill. The Bill has been quite exemplary in the way that people have worked towards improving it in many ways. I obviously also thank my noble friend Lady Kramer, who has worked with me on the Bill, and Adam Bull, our legislative and political adviser, who has been giving me support throughout.

We have among us—the Cross Benches, the Government, the Conservative Benches, this Bench and the Bishops’ Bench—all improved the Bill. I hope that the improvements we have made will last through ping-pong and that we end up with a better Bill—not a confrontational Bill but one that will help public funds, which is obviously its aim, while protecting the vulnerable in society who are not really going to be the paymasters of dealing with errors in the past. Congratulations to all, including the staff in the background of the Government who have made this such an interesting exercise, even though I am surprised that we have got to Third Reading so quickly after Report, and in almost indecent haste. If all legislation could be so quick, it would be a great advantage to this House and the other House. I hope that the Bill passes successfully.

Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 21st October 2025 Lords Chamber

I hope that gives a good explanation of the way in which the EVM operates and all the steps we have taken. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I appreciate the reassurances given by the Minister—they are taken into account—but none the less I have two amendments that could go even further. I hope that the Minister can listen.

Amendment 50 seeks to ensure that affected parties are informed by their own bank when they are flagged following an eligibility verification notice. To note, the EVM will by design, as has been conceded, detect not only serious fraudsters but people who have been flagged because they have erroneously received an overpayment, possibly due to the DWP’s own mistakes—a possibility not acknowledged enough by measures in this Bill, in my opinion. Because of this, it is important that individuals identified by the power understand the basis on which they have been subjected to greater scrutiny and intrusion.

I stress that this amendment is not intended to compromise investigations or tip off fraudsters, as was implied in Committee. In fact, it would come into play only after an individual has been identified by the EVM. This matters because one principle of the rule of law, which I know this Government are very keen on, is that if you are accused of wrongdoing, you should be told the basis for that suspicion.

Being flagged by the EVM should not constitute reasonable grounds for suspicion in and of itself, as dealt with in Amendment 52, which I will fully support when we get to it. There is even less reason for an individual who is not suspected of any criminal wrongdoing but who may be the victim of DWP administrative error to be subjected to further checks and requirements without even being told why. It is just not good enough for the DWP to warn people in the personal information charter that the bank account information for the recipients of benefits may be provided to the department. People need to be informed at the moment when the powers bite—that is, once they have been flagged. It is important to note that organisations such as the Public Law Project are keen on seeing this being made a reality.

To humanise why this amendment matters, last week several leading charities and advocacy groups, including Big Brother Watch, Age UK and Disability Rights UK, sent a joint letter to DWP Ministers, highlighting the potential human impact and real-life costs of this Bill’s powers. It included testimony from members of the public receiving pension credit, who told their stories to Silver Voices, the advocacy organisation for older people. I was particularly struck by the testimony of Sue from Manchester, who recounted her experience of having to clear her name due to a previous wrongful flag by the DWP, which accused her of having multiple undeclared bank accounts. Sue said,

“I had to get letters from each of those banks to clear my name as none of the banks answered the DWP. The mental anguish this has caused me is unbearable and nearly sent me under”.


I appreciate that the DWP has gone to great pains to emphasise that it does not consider the EVM to be a government surveillance power, but the idea that you could be flagged by an algorithm that has rifled through your private bank statements and reported you back to the department for further checks, all without you being informed, is—and I say this tentatively—Kafkaesque, so I would like Amendment 50 to correct that.

I have also tabled Amendment 62, which requires that the code of practice include scrutiny provisions about the algorithm used by banks—an issue I raised quite a lot in Committee, with some support from fellow Peers. The situation is that the bank accounts of millions of people will be scoured by third-party algorithms that neither the Government nor banks had any hand in creating. It is therefore essential that we be able to scrutinise exactly what these algorithms are doing. I know that the Minister understands the concerns; she has just explained and articulated that well. The Government have said that the code of practice is not the appropriate vehicle for such scrutiny, but we still have not been provided with any alternative. What is more, there has been ministerial opposition to amendments designed to provide greater transparency over the eligibility indicators, which I find worrying.

The Minister characterised the algorithm that will be deployed for the EVM as merely comprising two tests that must be met to determine whether an individual can be flagged: whether an account receives a relevant benefit, and whether the account meets the criteria set by the DWP and the EVM. The Minister also said in Committee, and again today, that it is the DWP that will review all the information received and DWP staff who will make any decisions about entitlement where potential fraud or error is identified. But—and it is a big but—that review will only take place on the basis of information returned from the EVM, meaning that we have to be able to scrutinise exactly what is being picked up by the algorithm. They may be simple tests, but they will be applying unpublished eligibility indicators that can complicate issues, depending on what those eligibility indicators require banks to search for.

There may be little to scrutinise in algorithms which simply detect whether someone has more than £16,000 in their bank account, or whether, for example, 50% of their transactions have occurred abroad over a period of four weeks. However, should the algorithms have to assess conditions that are more complicated, the algorithms deployed by banks will necessarily be more involved. For example, for relevant benefits currently in scope, such as pension credit, employment and support allowance, and universal credit, could the DWP require banks to find people who they suspect are claiming ESA when not actually suffering from a disability or health condition that affects how much they can work? Or could the DWP require banks to identify recipients of pension credit who live with a partner but claim to live alone?

That might be misplaced suspicion, but exactly how the algorithm determines this sort of complex information, and what information it extracts to reach its conclusions, requires oversight. People will otherwise be worried and paranoid; we otherwise risk them being identified for further scrutiny and investigation, potentially on the basis of flawed algorithmic logic. As I emphasised during Committee, determining whether bank accounts meet the eligibility criteria for an EVN requires judgment. It might not be human judgment but algorithmic judgment, yet the question is: what are those criteria? What will the algorithm be asked to search for?

--- Later in debate ---

I urge the Minister, please, to heed the warning and not let fraud be the way we are amending police powers.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, for tabling these amendments. I think they are genuinely key, and very important to resolve before we pass this Bill. I do not think they are minor or unimportant at all. Throughout the debates in Committee, and continuing here, concerns have been raised by some of us about the enormous state power created by the Bill. Largely, we have focused on things such as privacy rights and so on, and these are very important, but this actually gives draconian powers of force to a new body in a way that should make us gulp, in my opinion.

In earlier groups today, people have been very keen to say that the problem is not that this Government will misuse the powers but that we have to worry about future Governments. It is a kind of lurking spectre. Everybody knows who they are referring to. There is a notion that there will be future nasty Governments out there who might misuse the powers but that this Government are absolutely well intentioned. I think that is a little bit of a cop-out because it is this Government who are creating an enormous new set of state powers, and this Government have to answer to why they want these particular powers of force.

I think that is important, not because I have any suspicion about the intentions of the noble Baronesses who are our Ministers here—obviously not—but, none the less, what are the Government doing accruing this force?

I was squeamish about the PFSA having police powers to search, enter and seize, but it did not have the reasonable force clause. The thing I find most difficult to understand is the idea that the sort of major fraudsters that the first half of the Bill deals with are somehow subject to only half the force, but, suddenly, we get on to the people on benefits and physical force is justified. What does that say about our set of priorities? I am not being paranoid to go, “What? You actually think those people are the enemy, so you need to use physical force?” That is one thing.

The second thing on that, by the way, is the idea of physical force against the body versus physical force against property. Of course, there is a distinction, but I do not know if noble Lords have ever been there when somebody has come in and started booting your furniture round or kicking down the doors—I have; it was not the DWP or, indeed, the police. Anyone who has been on the receiving end of somebody destroying property around them will know that it is intimidating, frightening and scary, so I am worried not just about the bodily force but about having the right to do that to your property.

To return to our discussion on an earlier amendment, these are DWP officers. What? I do not want DWP civil servants, who might have been on a minor training course, to have that power. I think it is wrong. For them to have that power of physical force aimed at people on benefits seems wholly wrong and morally dubious.

I note that a number of times the Minister has emphasised the importance of this Bill being hard on fraud. I just want to reiterate a point that the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, made earlier, which is that worrying about some of the aspects of this Bill does not make you soft on fraud. As far as I am concerned, when public money is fraudulently obtained by criminals or malign forces, or just by people on benefits acquiring money they do not deserve, I consider that to be an attack on the public, and I think we should be hard on it. But the way that you demonstrate you are hard is not by playing the hard man. It is not about throwing your weight around; it is about having the appropriate form of state legislation to deal with it. I am afraid this part of the Bill really gives me pause about what is driving this, and I do not even think it will get us anywhere in resolving the problem of people malignly stealing public money.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I would just like to ask the Minister three direct questions. First, why are people in England and Wales so much nastier that they need this force, whereas the Scots do not? That is not, it seems to me, a very sensible distinction. It should be either all of us or none of us.

Secondly—because I think it should be none of us —can the Minister explain why it is suitable for DWP officers to do something against individuals who are thought to be fraudulent, while officers of a similar kind do not have the power to do it if it is organised crime? Can she explain why that is?

My third question is extremely simple. Everybody who has ever had a ministerial job that involves this kind of thing knows, as the noble Lord, Lord Harper, said so clearly, that you absolutely need to be trained to do this. Can the Minister say who is trained, how much training they have and whether there is a budget for that training? If her answer is not satisfactory on any of those, I suggest she accepts the amendment which gets rid of this entirely.

Let us get to a sensible world in which the police have powers—for which, in most places, people trust them—and civil people do not have powers. We should remember the comment from the noble and right reverend Lord that was very simple: you know when a policeman is there, but how do you really know that this is a DWP individual? You have to look at some piece of paper, perhaps, but you do not know that. I think this is a very dangerous proposal.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Tuesday 16th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendments, but I really want to follow on from what the right reverend Prelate said about racism. Racism has been rife in schools from as far back as I can remember, but at that time social media was not there to inflame it further. Over recent years, it has become racism about not just colour but religion. The right reverend Prelate mentioned Islamophobia, but most underreported acts of bullying against faith are not Islamophobia.

People from my community endure it quietly. Where do they report it when, as often as not, it is the most misunderstood way of bullying? Parents say to me that children have told them that they will burn in hell and that, if they do not change their faith, this or that will happen. We have to find solutions that involve not just the teachers—they have more than enough to do already—but making sure, first, that what we say and do is reasonable. Secondly, families cannot abdicate from their duties in what happens in and out of school. They need to be part of the solution because, unfortunately, we have a lot of dysfunctional families— not by choice but, often, because of the economics of everything. We need to find ways for every child to go to school knowing that they will learn, like every other child, and not be fearful of going.

I grew up in a fearful atmosphere. That fearful atmosphere is back—even more now than ever before. It is amplified by social media. So I say, on my noble friend’s amendments, that yes of course the police have a duty; so do local authorities. They need to be the support mechanisms for the teachers, not standing on the sidelines waiting to offer help. They should be intrinsic in the integrated plans to make sure that we can respond to the needs of children who come with problems—not of their own making, mostly, but from their surroundings and their environment. We should not make excuses and say that it is acceptable and that everything should be on the teachers. It is not fair, and they are not well enough equipped.

As a child who went through a miserable time at school, I knew what bullying is like, dreading to go into school in case you are be beaten up by the next skinhead around the corner. I did not become a bully; I actually became resilient. We have to make sure that resilience is part of the teaching of our children.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will raise some reservations that I have about Amendments 501 and 502E, on bullying in schools, and Amendment 464, on the reporting of racism or faith-based bullying.

Bullying is a label that has been subject to the phenomena of concept creep. Bullying has now expanded enormously. It is an elastic term and so a wide range of behaviours can be described as bullying. I fear that it is becoming a vehicle to encourage pupils to lack resilience —a point was just raised about how we deal with the issue of resilience. I have written about this extensively. For now, I note that, via anti-bullying initiatives in schools already, pupils are taught that words hurt and damage, that words can become interchangeable with violence, and that name-calling is on a par with physical intimidation. Inevitably, that can lead the young to believe that speech is violence. I think all of us can acknowledge that that is a problem at the moment, with people who say that speech is violence then feeling able to use violence to deal with speech they dislike—a very current issue.

--- Later in debate ---

I urge upon the Minister who replies to the debate that all I have been proposing is common sense but is not properly provided for at the present time. The Michael Sieff Foundation made a calculation of the savings that would be made over a five-year period if the sorts of measures in these amendments were taken. It runs to over £100 million because, if we can help those children not to end up in custody and when they get into trouble with the police to be disposed of by the court in a way that does not lock them up and take them out of education and their families, we have a far better chance of making them into responsible citizens who might even pay their taxes.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, this group of amendments is important because I think we have a crisis in SEND provision. I am particularly attracted to Amendment 498, on the SEND provision review, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Holmes of Richmond and Lord Watson of Invergowrie, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. Also, on Amendment 502V in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, on the need for more transparency and reporting on SEND funding in state-funded schools, that seems a key and obvious demand, because the SEND issue is having a huge financial impact on schools and education in general.

But for me, as well as that, the issue of SEND provision is important because it potentially shapes how young people see themselves, and in some instances they are being encouraged to develop a habit of dependence and pathologising their own everyday experiences. One in five children in the UK are now identified as having SEND needs, and the number of education, health and care plans for those with the most severe needs has increased by 83% from 2015-16 to 2023-24. The number of 11 to 15 year-olds receiving disability living allowance for which the main condition determining eligibility is a learning disability such as ADHD increased by 70% between 2018 and 2024. So something peculiar seems to be going on and, as part of explaining what is happening here, we need to acknowledge that there is a widening social definition of mental health and neurodiversity—an issue I will raise briefly again in the next group.

Informally, if you go into any school and talk to pupils of all ages, as I do—obviously, as teachers do and those who are familiar with young people—young people regularly describe themselves these days through the prism of a range of mental health acronyms or their particular divergence from the neurotypical norm. They use the language of medical textbooks and psychiatry with ease. Meanwhile, teachers too think in terms of these labels—I am sure that we are all watching “Educating Yorkshire” on Channel 4; it is great viewing—and, almost inevitably, if there is a behavioural issue, staff suggest testing the pupil for ADHD as both an explanation and a solution. So investigating what is going on here is essential, and that is why I am interested in the review.

In that context, I hope that the tablers of the amendment and the Minister get the opportunity to read—if they have not read it already—a new Policy Exchange report entitled Out of Control: Addressing the Rise in Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Disorders amongst Children and Young People. I do not always agree with Policy Exchange, but I found this report fascinating. One issue it identifies is a bug in the system of support. It argues that it is

“designed to meet the needs of a small number of specialised cases, rather than the sizeable”

numbers that it is now expected to support. Even more troublingly, it says:

“These systems of support can also incentivise diagnosis-seeking behaviour … which has squeezed support for those with the most severe needs”.


Those kinds of issues were touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Gove, in an earlier group.

So, to return to spending, spending on EHCPs for those with SEND has ballooned, but funding per head has fallen by nearly a third since 2015-16. So I hope that the tablers of the amendments and the Minister will consider the risks of overdiagnosis in relation to SEND but also how current support may inadvertently encourage an escalation in perceived need, rather than target the support where it is absolutely needed the most, as has been vividly described by some of the speakers on this group.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, in contrast to the previous speaker, I would say the following. I do not know how many noble Lords attended the rally held in Parliament Square yesterday by parents and children about the SEND review, on getting it right, or how many noble Lords attended the drop-in held in our committee room upstairs, which was full of joy and optimism, with lots of Members of Parliament from across the political spectrum—including our new Schools Minister, Georgia Gould—who called in to listen to parents and children. It gives me hope and optimism that, if those listening exercises are taking place as this review goes on, we will end up with something that is worth having and that has involved listening to the people who are at the sharp end of this.

I am actually encouraged by the fact that our new Minister in the Commons has been the leader of a council, has been the Local Government Minister and has hands-on experience of what it is like dealing with the SEND system. I say to my noble friend the Minister that I am encouraged that the Government are listening to parents and children with that direct experience, and that gives me hope that this review is going to produce the right outcome.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I want to underline, in respect of Amendment 462, the importance of the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, about reducing the pressures on CAMHS. The family courts are being frustrated, as I know from recent experience, and impeded in reaching necessary long-term decisions about the future for children. They are told, week by week, that they are waiting for an appointment with CAMHS and then that they are waiting for an assessment report from CAMHS—and then that they are waiting for the recommended treatment to take place. If Amendment 462 serves to help with those tasks, children, their parents and the courts will benefit. The courts are being criticised for the delays in reaching decisions, and certainly the problems with CAMHS contribute to those delays.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I really want to challenge the assumption of some of the amendments in this group that what we need is more dedicated mental health practices and provision in schools. One of the problems is that there is too much emphasis on mental illness and mental health in education at the moment. That awareness is taking up too much time in school life, is over-preoccupying young people and is becoming a real problem.

If you look at what is going on in schools at the moment, there are indeed endless numbers of staff, volunteers and organisations with responsibility for emotional well-being: mental health leads, support teams, emotional literacy support and assistance, mental health first aiders, counsellors, and well-being officers. If you go into any school, the walls are covered in information about mental illness, mental health and so on; it is everywhere you go. Yet despite this booming, school-based mental health industrial complex, almost, the well-being of pupils continues to deteriorate—or that is what we are told.

Mental health problems and diagnoses are rising at the same time as all the awareness initiatives are taking place. Something is going wrong and that at least needs some investigation, but these amendments just assume that we should carry on doing the same and more of the same. Along with the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, I think that real, critical thinking needs to be done around some of the awareness campaigns.

I want to challenge the idea that schools are the vehicle for tackling the undoubted spiralling crisis of unhappiness among young people. It is also important that we untangle that from the crisis of CAMHS. There is actually a serious problem in NHS mental health support for children, and I would like that to be taken on. That is very different from the kind of discussion we are having here about schools, which is that mental distress becomes such a focus of all the discussions in schools.

I tend to agree—for possibly the only time—with Tony Blair on this. He said,

“you’ve got to be careful of encouraging people to think they’ve got some sort of condition other than simply confronting the challenges of life”.

That is true. Starting with children, we are encouraging the young to internalise the narrative of medicalised and pathologised explanations and the psychological vocabulary of adopting an identity of mental fragility, and that is not doing them any good. That can then create an increasing cohort of young people and parents demanding official diagnosis, more intervention and more support at school.

Dr Alastair Santhouse, a neuropsychiatrist at the Maudsley, argues this in his new book, No More Normal: Mental Health in an Age of Over-Diagnosis. He says that it has become crucial to reassess what constitutes mental illness, so that we can decide who needs to be treated with limited resources and who can be helped in other ways. He is talking about the NHS, and he warns that the NHS has buckled under a tsunami of referrals for some conditions. He also says that other state services such as schools are straining to the point of dysfunction in dealing with this issue, and I tend to agree with him.

I admire the passionate intervention by the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, calling for measurement and evidence, but one of the problems is that I am not entirely sure we know what we are measuring. There is no clear definition of well-being to measure. The psychiatric profession is making the point that the definitions of what constitutes mental illness are now contended—there are arguments about them. What are you measuring? This woolliness of definitions is becoming a problem in schools.

The counsellor Lucy Beney, in her excellent recent pamphlet, worries that this means that mental illness in schools is leading to a kind of diagnostic inflation itself, as pupils compare notes on what they have got and go to different professionals to ask what they have got and so on. It can create a sort of social or cultural contagion, enticing the young to see all the ups and downs of life through the prism of mental health, which can be demoralising and counterproductive. There is no doubt that too many children and young people are not thriving mentally and emotionally in the UK today, and I would like to have that discussion, but I do not think that well-being and mental health is necessarily the way to do it. Schools are definitely not the places to solve it.

A lot of the well-being initiatives, counselling and therapeutic interventions encourage young people to look at life through the subjective filter of their own feelings and anxieties. That, in turn, is likely to lead to inward-looking, self-absorbed children. The role of education in schools is to introduce new generations to the wonders of the millennia, of knowledge outside their experience, which takes them outside themselves. That is what schools are for. That is what teachers are good at. It is not just about gaining credentials. In fact, I hate the credentialing aspect of it. But if you get into a brilliant novel, the law of physics, the history of our world or evolution, you forget your troubles. If you are constantly talking to the counsellor about your troubles, yourself and endlessly thinking of your own well-being, it is boring, demoralising and stunting. It is enough to make anybody depressed, including the young. It is important that schools do not get completely obsessed with this issue. I fear that they have, and it has made matters worse.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, first, I want to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that the World Health Organization has a clear definition of well-being:

“Well-being is a positive state experienced by individuals in society … Well-being encompasses quality of life and the ability of people and societies to contribute to the world with a sense of meaning and purpose.”


So this is not about self-focus; it is clear that it is about people being in a position to contribute. The WHO goes on to say that a society’s well-being can be

“determined by the extent to which it is resilient, builds capacity for action, and is prepared to transcend challenges”.

Perhaps most of us can agree that that is something society needs to do much better.

I am afraid that I disagree entirely with the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman. The noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, said that the Dutch score particularly highly, along with Denmark, in the recent PISA figures on children’s well-being, and we score astonishingly badly. I was looking at a publication from a few years ago, The Dutch Way in Education. The publisher of that notes how the Dutch system measures not only academic achievement but also the well-being and involvement of students. I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, that I have raised the study he referred to a number of times. I would like to raise it tonight, but in the interests of the Committee making progress, I will not. Every time we are told how much progress our schools have made, saying, “Look at the exam results”, I say, look at the state of well-being of our pupils. I say particularly to the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, that if we measure only the exam results, that is what we are going to judge our schools on. That is what we have been doing, and it is what has got us into this position.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

“You can be sure that when these Henry VIII clauses are introduced they will always be said to be necessary. William Pitt warned us how to treat such a plea with disdain. Necessity is the justification for every infringement of human liberty”.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Sewell of Sanderstead, gave us an inspiring scene-setter for the next groups of amendments that we are discussing. It was a taster of why the decisions that we make on this Bill matter to so many pupils and young people. This is why I urge the Government not to throw the baby out with the bath-water and, in many instances, to think again. I have my Amendment 506A in this group, which simply says that, before the Bill is passed or enacted, the Government’s own curriculum review needs to be published and consulted on.

The legislation before us requires that all schools follow the national curriculum, yet there is no agreed national curriculum. Instead, the Government want to review that curriculum, which is fair enough, but that review will not even be published before we are asked to vote “blind”. It is simply wrong for a Bill to force schools to follow a particular curriculum when we have not been told what is in it: cart before horse and all that.

More broadly, we have spent a long, long time on this Bill so far. Outside of here, the Bill is informally known as the Schools Bill, yet we have managed not to discuss the whole reason for schools—to educate children into the world of knowledge—until this point. Educating children requires us to agree on what the content of that education consists of. The curriculum is not, or should not be, an afterthought. It is key: the raison d’être for schools as vehicles used by one generation to pass on to the next the canonical knowledge of humanity. When taught well, it is our greatest tool for social mobility. It is neither a fixed body of knowledge nor frozen in aspic. It changes over time. It is often contested and can be challenged, but it is a key component of educating the young.

The argument epitomised by this group of amendments asks whether every school needs to follow the same curriculum that every school must follow, yet we do not know what curriculum we are talking about, despite how important the curriculum is. The Government recognise that, which is why they set up the review. Taking three of the amendments we have here gives us some sort of meat on what the curriculum bone might be or what the arguments might be. One calls for financial education in primary schools, which we have already heard motivated. There is one to come on education for growing food and food preparation and another on education for voting.

You might say that those curriculum-related amendments are “hobby-horse” amendments. I am not saying that in an insulting way: they suggest the interests of the people putting them forward. They could all be creative and positive in a particular head’s hands with certain groups of pupils, depending on how they were used. If you get any group of teachers, parents, adults or indeed pupils together at any time and ask what should go into the curriculum, there are always very lively and creative discussions about priorities, what should matter, and so on and so forth.

The point I am making is that, even at the best of times, the curriculum is something that is a source of dispute. It can be liberating, transformative and inspiring, but it can be—and we all know this to be true—overly ideological, propagandist, politicised and used as a device for social engineering. As I said at Second Reading, I worry when Professor Becky Francis says that her curriculum review will look at what is taught through a “social justice lens”, with an emphasis on inclusivity. I am afraid I think of some of the more divisive aspects of identity politics and some of the arguments that have been had over critical race theory in schools, decolonisation and so on. It fills me with dread.

This Government have already had to pick up the pieces of curriculum mis-steps in relation to RSHE, as parents across the UK have become shocked to discover that their children were covering highly sexualised and age-inappropriate content and that some schools were affirming children in their chosen gender identities, a form of social transitioning now broadly discredited. I commend the Government for tackling that and taking it on: the point I am making is that all of that was inspired by centralised curriculum diktats. I therefore think we have to consider what the centralised curriculum diktat for all schools will be after the curriculum review.

Professor Francis has apparently said that the review will look at the alleged problem that the curriculum is too heavy. My problem is that we are now being asked to vote on legislation in a “curriculum lite” way, with the curriculum absent, despite a hugely significant mandate that all schools must follow this curriculum.

We are told that the curriculum review will address barriers to attainment, but so far the hints we have been given into the review look to be blaming exams and a curriculum that is overly academic for creating too much stress and anxiety for pupils—something that I completely disagree with. This hints at a new assessment regime that will be less stressful, and I am afraid that that fuels genuine concerns among educators that the curriculum review might amount to a recipe for lower academic standards. As we have seen in both Scotland and Wales, which have completely upended their curriculum in recent years, attainment has plummeted, sometimes below the OECD average.

I have not yet decided whether the Bill’s Clause 47 is totally wrong-headed and should be dropped, although I thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, made a very good case that was worth considering. I am sold on the idea of a common entitlement for all children, and I am not opposed in principle to a national curriculum for all. But the Government should not be rigid and there should be more flexibility. Amendment 444 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, would allow for that, so I am very interested in that.

However, none of this is the point of my amendment. This Bill says that all schools follow a national curriculum but will not tell us what is in it before we are being asked to rubber-stamp it. It reminds me of one FE student I taught. He was a bit of a cheeky chap. He missed a deadline for his GCSE and he said out loud in the class: “Can’t you just pass me, miss? I’ll show you the essay when I’ve written it later”. I thought that was a bit of a cheek, and I am afraid the same cheek is being displayed by the Government. I urge them to get their essay in on time, or at least to allow us to not have to vote until we have seen the essay.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, for that. It has made me think, and I will come back to some of the points she made.

In the 1970s, we did not have a national curriculum and schools could teach whatever they liked. There was only one subject they had to teach, and that was RE. Along came the William Tyndale School in London, which decided that its curriculum was going to be progressively radical and its teaching methods very child-centric. Relationships at the school broke down completely between staff and children, and the Government of the day had to step in. Then came along a Mr Ken Clarke—the noble Lord, Lord Clarke—with his national curriculum, which said that we as a society have a duty to spell out what we expect our school children to learn. The national curriculum was born. But it is not a national curriculum, because it is not taught in Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales, and, as we know, it is not taught in over half of our schools, because they can choose what they want to teach.

These amendments make us question what we should teach. Do we think we should teach financial education in school? I think we should, but why should it be left to an individual school to decide that? Should we not, as a society, decide that? I firmly believe that water safety should be taught in schools, but it is not down to me; it is down to individual academies to make that decision. Should we insist that every primary school pupil should have swimming lessons and be able to swim 25 metres before they leave primary school? I think that is really important—I wonder how many other people think that is important. But it is not down to us; it is down to individual academies.

I welcome the curriculum review. I did not put down an amendment saying that water safety should be included because I am not carrying out the curriculum review, but the organisation I am a patron of has written and given evidence as to why that should be the case, as I think a number of people have for financial education. We wait to see what the review suggests.

I believe that one of the strengths of academies has been that they have built flexibility into the curriculum of their choice. I am just making the case—it will not be for me to decide—that there could be an opportunity for all schools to have some flexibility when deciding their curriculums.

I will end by discussing what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said. She is right, but each individual academy that is deciding its own curriculum does not come to us and ask whether we agree with it. They just get on with it—they are just allowed to do it. Maybe the noble Baroness is right that there should be a political decision about what is taught in our national curriculum. That is a very interesting thought, and I will leave the Committee with it.