Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Shawcross-Wolfson Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2026 Lords Chamber

I will of course listen to the Minister’s response, but if I do not hear a much more positive response to my amendments than in Committee, I am inclined to test the opinion of the House.

[Baroness Shawcross-Wolfson (Con)]

My Lords, I did not intend to speak but I too was greatly moved by the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and I have had the experience of trying to care for a child in intensive care while worrying about another child at home. It is not an experience I would wish on anyone. It led me to become a trustee of the Cosmic charity, which tries to help families going through these types of experiences at the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, said, charities do incredible work supporting families in the most difficult circumstances. I urge the Government to think about what work they could do to look at the amendment and to see what more could be done to support parents and children in this situation.

Switching lanes to a Treasury mindset, I also support my noble friend Lady Barran’s Amendments 99 and 101. I know that the Government are sincere in their efforts to give every child the best possible start in life. I also know that at the Treasury and across Whitehall there is a huge push on government efficiency. This strikes me as an area where our failure to invest properly and consider how we can prevent these tragedies occurring has a huge fiscal cost, as well as the enormous emotional cost that we have heard about today.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, as others have said, this has been an important debate on two issues that go to the heart of how we need to care for those in the most vulnerable and difficult circumstances, and we share the objective of ensuring that we do better in both situations.

Amendments 99 and 101 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, concern support for birth parents who have had a child removed from their care and the collection of national data on repeat removals, respectively. This Government recognise that supporting birth parents can have a significant impact on keeping children safely at home and that more can and should be done.

I think it will be a theme of several of the groups this afternoon—in fact, it has been previously—that in some ways it is inevitable that as legislators we turn to legislation to deal with examples of not good enough practice where we want to achieve change. That is understandable, and in many cases, it is the right thing to do. Equally in my experience, strong practice, good evidence and innovation, often based on local needs, are a more effective way to achieve change. We need to be aware that mandating removes flexibility from local authorities to respond to local needs and priorities, increases local authority burdens and risks diverting funding from other preventive services that are not mandated by the legislation.

Also, we do not currently have a robust enough evidence base to mandate specific interventions nationally. This would also restrict innovation and deter locally developed interventions—for example, in Lincolnshire, whose TIME programme works with mothers who have experienced or are at risk of repeat removals of children from their care. Wolverhampton has a dedicated team supporting parents who have had a previous removal, and Warwickshire has its return home programme. We are already supporting the expansion of these services through the families first partnership programme, which is embedding the whole-family focus that noble Lords have rightly called for across children’s social care. That programme is backed by £2.4 billion of ring-fenced funding for prevention in this spending review period. It has, for example, already supported Redbridge to expand its pre-birth and post-birth service to promote earlier intervention with parents at risk of removals.

Through the families first partnership programme and wider reforms, we want to ensure that children’s social care support does not automatically drop away from a parent if they have a child removed from their care. The aim has to be to embed whole-family working throughout the children’s social care system in order to prevent future removals and to support children in returning home from care safely. We have previously committed to updating our Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023: Statutory Guidance to set out explicitly our expectations that birth parents are offered support. The updated FFP programme guide will also explicitly reference how the programme’s funding can be used to provide this support and will give examples of best practice.

On data collection, while equally, I support the sentiment of Amendment 101, once again I do not agree that a mandated collection is the right course of action or that it would have the desired impact. Mandatory collection would significantly increase the burden on local authorities, take resource away from service delivery and necessitate a significant change from existing practice that would require detailed work to assess feasibility and proportionality. Our wider reform programme is improving data collection and local information sharing. This will have a more positive impact on targeting support at a local level than a national collection.

Amendment 90, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, concerns a report into the barriers faced by the parents of critically ill children. I echo the words of my noble friend Lord Katz when a related amendment was tabled on Report on the Employment Rights Bill. I thank the noble Baroness for bringing this matter to the attention of the House, and, importantly, I acknowledge the resilience and courage shown by Ceri and Frances Menai-Davis in founding the charity It’s Never You and supporting other parents who find themselves facing similar unimaginably challenging personal circumstances. Parents and children in such a situation deserve and need support, and I know that that is the call noble Lords are making today.

My honourable friend in the other place, the Minister for Children and Families, Josh MacAlister, met with Ceri and Frances on 7 January, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson and the honourable Member for North East Hertfordshire, Chris Hinchliff, to discuss the charity’s work and this amendment. Caring for a critically ill child can affect parents’ mental health in different ways, as we have heard. The Government are committed to delivering the 10-year health plan, which sets out ambitious plans to boost mental health support across the country. We will transform the mental health system so that people can access the right support at the right time.

Other changes in the plan which will support parents of critically ill children include actively involving carers—in this case, parents—in the care planning of those they care for, as well as improved identification and support of people in such a situation to better understand their responsibilities and to provide more targeted support. In addition to mental health impacts and support, the amendment raises financial and employment pressures. The Government can provide financial support through the carer’s allowance and universal credit to those providing unpaid care to a severely disabled child, and are spending record amounts, due to be around £4.5 billion this year, on the carer’s allowance.

We recognise the considerable sacrifice that parents in this situation must make, and the impact that that can have on their employment. Parents who are employees are currently entitled to emergency time off for dependants, unpaid parental leave and unpaid carer’s leave, all of which may help them to manage situations of serious childhood illness. We know that many employers will go beyond the statutory minimum to support their staff in such distressing situations, and it was good to hear an example.

As announced by my noble friend Lord Katz at the Report stage of the Employment Rights Act, the Department for Business and Trade is working to launch a consultation on employment rights for parents and caregivers of seriously ill children. This will be the first government consultation specifically on the employment rights of these parents. This will consider whether a new leave entitlement in the workplace should be introduced, such as the proposal for Hugh’s law, campaigned for passionately and tirelessly by the charity It’s Never You.

On 11 December last year, my honourable friend the Minister for Employment Rights and Consumer Protection, Kate Dearden, announced that Hugh’s law will have its own chapter in the consultation. It will make sure that the voices of charities, healthcare professionals and families with a seriously ill child are heard, to ensure that any proposals put forward for consultation will reflect the needs of children and their parents. This recognises that more work needs to be done to understand the employment impact on parents of seriously ill children and the precise support that may be needed.

Lastly, in addition to this consultation, I am pleased to be able to tell the House that on the amendment before us calling for a report into barriers facing parents of critically ill children, the Government will take further action and commission a report on the mental health impact on the families of children with a terminal diagnosis. This will include a review of the available evidence and cost effectiveness. Ministers from the Department of Health and Social Care will meet with stakeholders, including Ceri and Frances, to discuss the scope of the report. We do not require a legislative duty to conduct this report, which could in fact slow down its progress, so we do not believe that this amendment is necessary. However, I hope that this commitment and other action being taken by the Government underscore the importance we are giving to this issue and to better supporting families in such difficult and tragic circumstances. I hope that noble Lords are reassured, and that the noble Baroness feels able to withdraw her amendment.

Universal Credit Bill

Baroness Shawcross-Wolfson Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading
Tuesday 22nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Shawcross-Wolfson (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, it is a huge honour to make my maiden speech here in your Lordships’ House, and I am grateful for all the warm wishes that I have received. I want to thank those who have helped me since my introduction, first and foremost Mr Ingram and the doorkeepers, who have been unfailingly kind, along with Black Rod and the rest of the staff of the House. I must also thank my supporters, the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and my noble friend Lady Jenkin. In different ways, they have both inspired me across the years.

Like all of us, I am the product of my family, and, like many of us, my family's story is one of immigration and integration. My father’s father, Hartley Shawcross, came from Lancashire stock. He was a barrister, an MP, Clement Attlee’s Attorney-General and Britain’s chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. In 1959, he was among the first life Peers to be introduced into your Lordships’ House and sat as a Cross-Bencher. My mother’s mother, Leah Katzeff, was born in Lithuania, but her parents, fearing persecution and poverty, emigrated to South Africa when she was an infant. The family who stayed behind were all murdered in Lithuania as the Nazis advanced in the summer of 1941.

My grandparents led vastly different lives. My childhood memories are of clotted cream in Cornwall and chopped liver in Camden. But they shared a love of this country, a commitment to liberty, and a belief in the rule of law. My English grandfather helped to try those ultimately responsible for the murder of my Lithuanian grandmother’s family. My Lithuanian grandmother spent the second half of her life here in England campaigning for human rights and ending her career as director of Justice, a charity my grandfather co-founded decades earlier. Their stories, and the stories of my parents, shaped my sense of purpose.

After starting a career in management consultancy, a desire to be more useful and, I confess, youthful optimism, led me into politics. My grandfather and father both started on the left of the political spectrum and moved right over their careers. I thought I would save myself the trouble and start squarely in the centre-right. After nearly 20 years in Westminster, I have worked with wonderful politicians and civil servants: too many to thank individually. I particularly thank George Osborne, who took a chance in 2007 that a spreadsheet-literate consultant might be useful on his team. George was a wonderful boss—such a good boss, in fact, that he introduced me to my husband, my noble kinsman Lord Wolfson of Aspley Guise. The career I began with George ultimately led me to No. 10 Downing Street, where I ran the Policy Unit for Rishi Sunak. It was the honour of a lifetime. Rishi believes in public service to his core, and I hope to follow the example he sets in public life: unstinting hard work, steadfast integrity and personal kindness.

If the first duty of government is defence of the realm and the second the rule of law, the third, I would argue, is to help the vulnerable. I was fortunate to spend time at the Department for Work and Pensions, most recently as a non-executive director, when the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, was Secretary of State. As our population ages and demand grows, this country has to grapple with how to run an effective, fair and sustainable healthcare and welfare system. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate on the universal credit Bill, and I offer two reflections today.

First, we must always live within our means, so every spending decision is a trade-off. Here, I must acknowledge the influence of the noble Lord, Lord Macpherson, and six years working at HM Treasury. Borrowing more is not a solution. I agree totally with the Chancellor when she said that there is nothing progressive about a Government who simply spend more and more each year on debt interest. Instead, we must choose. Reasonable people can and do disagree on what those choices should be, as we can see here today. This debate makes for better decisions, but trade- offs are unavoidable, and we cannot pretend otherwise.

Secondly, policy is always about people. The numbers must add up, but every pound taxed, every pound spent, every incentive created, every disincentive introduced, makes a difference to people’s lives. The Government’s job—and I really know from first-hand how difficult this is—is to see it all: the big-picture cost, the systemic incentives and the individuals at the heart of it.

Twenty years in politics—or perhaps it is just middle age—have tempered my youthful optimism but not my belief in progress. I know that there will be difficult decisions ahead, but I am greatly encouraged by the wisdom, determination and civility that I have witnessed in this Chamber. I will do my best to follow the example that you have all set, and I look forward to making whatever contribution I can to your Lordships’ House.