Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Lord Freyberg and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 209 goes to the heart of what families rightly expect schools to do: keep children safe. This is not a novel or radical proposal. It responds to a long-standing and well-evidenced failure of the current system. For too long we have relied on guidance and good will, yet allergy safety in schools remains inconsistent and, in some cases, dangerously inadequate. This amendment matters because it moves us from aspiration to assurance.

Children continue to experience severe allergic reactions at school. Some have died. Families live with the daily fear that a simple mistake—a contaminated surface, a misunderstanding, a delayed response—could be fatal. The tragic death of Benedict Blythe exposed not a single error but a systemic lack of preparedness. His family’s determination to prevent another such tragedy deserves our respect—and action. I also recognise the work of the National Allergy Strategy Group and its member organisations. Its position paper, produced with the Benedict Blythe Foundation, sets out in calm, forensic detail why voluntary guidance has failed.

Schools are under huge pressures, as we have heard, and without a statutory framework, allergy safety too often slips through the cracks. I understand that the Minister met the group yesterday, as we have heard, which is welcome, and I hope she will update the House on the outcome of that discussion and any assurances given.

I became involved in this issue for a simple reason: a neighbour’s child is afraid to eat in his own school canteen because of his allergy. When a child cannot safely eat at school, something is plainly wrong. That quiet daily anxiety is shared by thousands of families. Amendment 209 is proportionate and practical. Without legislation, we cannot guarantee consistent protection for all our children.

The four amendments in my name are probing. I seek reassurance on how the framework will work in practice. Amendment 210 addresses a well-known gap: external catering providers. Compliance with allergen labelling law does not in itself create a safe school environment. Unless a school’s allergy policy clearly applies to caterers and is reflected contractually, responsibility becomes blurred and children are put at risk. There must be no opportunity for third parties to argue that the school’s policy does not apply to them.

Amendment 212 extends that principle to other external providers. Schools, as we know, are busy places and well-meaning third parties can inadvertently introduce serious risk if they are not bound by the same policy. I have heard of a case where a third-party supplier brought a box of sweets into school as a gift, entirely unaware of the danger this posed.

Finally, Amendments 213 and 214 raise a practical question about costs and responsibility. Who should fund adrenaline auto-injectors, and how should supply and replacement be organised? An approach that relies on individual schools risks duplication, inconsistency and waste, particularly where children already receive these devices from the NHS. The same question arises in relation to training to use them. If the provisions in Amendment 209 become mandatory, responsibility for funding and facilitating proper training must be equally clear.

We have done this before. As the noble Baroness has said, the Government funded defibrillators in all schools, because the case was compelling and the cost proportionate. The same logic applies here. I hope the Minister will address these points directly, but, if the drafting of Amendment 209 is not quite right, I urge the Government to bring forward their own amendments at Third Reading. What matters is not ownership but outcome. We must not miss this opportunity to put allergy safety in schools on a statutory footing and prevent further, avoidable tragedies. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly, having attached my name to Amendment 209, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, so powerfully introduced. I express my strongest possible support for Amendment 209 and commend the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, for making important points in his amendments.

I will tell a little tale of how I got involved in this. Like most people involved in politics, I have encountered around the country parents who say that they are worried about allergies and their child at school. In my case, I was walking down a corridor of this House, past the dining rooms, and the Benedict Blythe Foundation was holding an event to highlight the issue. I was almost literally dragged in to meet Helen Blythe, who has such a tale of horror but a powerful voice to say that she does not want this to happen to any other parent’s child. That is a demonstration of where we have got to today: campaigning works and people can make a difference through their actions. I particularly want to record that.

The case has been powerfully made, and the noble Baroness, Lady Cotes, said that there may be further technical solutions to injector pens. We do not need to argue about that. It is about the idea that every school has these instruments, whatever they are, guaranteed to be in date because the law says they have to be, and has teachers and other staff confidently trained to be able to use them in a moment of crisis. That should be absolutely basic. There should never be any question that, when something goes wrong, people are asking, “What do we do?”, “Who knows?”, “Where do we find it?”, “Is the cupboard locked?” We all know that those kinds of things can happen, unless the rules are set down in black and white in legislation. That is why I very much hope we will hear positively from the Minister that the Government are prepared to put this in the Bill, whatever the fine detail, because a child’s life is so important.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Freyberg and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Report stage
Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, to speak in strong support of Amendment 87D in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. It seeks to address a clear gap in our planning framework: the ease with which valued community buildings can be demolished under permitted development rights.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, for reminding us in Committee that, since 2017, it has not been possible to demolish a pub under permitted development rights and that, since 2020, the same protection has rightly been extended to theatres, live music venues and concert halls. But every other community building—from sports halls to scout huts, youth clubs, village halls, arts centres, community hubs, social clubs, rehearsal rooms, day centres and faith spaces—can legally be demolished through permitted development under class B, in Part 11 of the general permitted development order, usually via only a prior approval notice to the council. In other words, a community can spend months achieving an asset of community value status, believing it has secured protection, yet the owner can still flatten the building with no full planning process, and the opportunity to save it is lost for ever.

The Minister suggested in response to the noble Baroness in Committee that local authorities can already protect such assets by issuing Article 4 directions. Although that may sound reassuring, in practice it is neither adequate nor realistic. Article 4 powers are slow, complex and discretionary. They require public consultation, ministerial approval and significant resources that many councils simply do not have. They are rarely used pre-emptively, and too often they are invoked after buildings have already been lost.

This amendment would provide a far simpler and fairer solution: an automatic national safeguard for assets that communities have already demonstrated to be of real social value. These are not sentimental relics but the social infrastructure of everyday life: the places where children learn to play sport, where community choirs rehearse, where food banks and lunch clubs operate and where amateur dramatic societies, after-school classes and local support groups meet. Once demolished, these spaces are almost never replaced.

As has been referenced, the London Nightlife Taskforce, which offers strategic advice to the mayor and will publish a major action plan later this year, has already underlined the urgency of this issue. Its early findings show that demolition and redevelopment continue to erode London’s community and cultural infrastructure, despite existing local powers. The task force, supported by the Night Time Industries Association, the Music Venue Trust and UKHospitality, is calling for stronger statutory safeguards to prevent the loss of spaces that sustain local life and creativity. Although its recommendations are directed at London, the same challenge exists nationwide. Communities in Manchester, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow and countless smaller towns face the same slow erosion of shared civic space, too often replaced by development that contributes little to social cohesion.

If we accept that pubs, theatres and music venues deserve protection from demolition, surely the same logic must apply to any building formally recognised by its community as an asset of value. This modest reform would give communities a genuine say before their most valued spaces disappeared.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, who is one of the House’s great champions of the arts and cultural life. Briefly, I will express the Green group’s support for Amendment 87D in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. This would ensure that assets of community value cannot be demolished. It is worth going back to where the assets of community value started, in 2011. Creating that category of buildings and structures was so hard fought for, and it could, in effect, be lost under permitted development rights. The noble Baroness has identified a really important issue, and I hope the House will back that.

I rise chiefly to speak against government Amendment 64. We have already heard some important points. Both the noble Lords, Lord Lansley and Lord Fuller, pointed out just how late this is coming in the process and how we have not had the chance to have proper scrutiny. The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, is right about a considerable change in tone, but I would go further and say that it is a considerable change in the direction of the entire law, and that should surely not be done this late in the process.

More than that—like other noble Lords, I am sure— I have received a pleas from the Better Planning Coalition, the National Trust and the Wildlife Trusts to reject this government amendment. If we look at the situation and the arguments they make, absolutely rightly, we see that this amendment embeds into the law a concerning narrative about development at any cost. It does not acknowledge, and it pushes aside, the fact that economic activity and human life are dependent on the environment —the economy is a complete subset of the environment.

The core purpose of planning policy is supposed to be to ensure that developments do not happen in the wrong place or destroy nature gratuitously or without adequate consideration. It really feels, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, said, that this would open up decisions to politics. Well, this is purely politics: it seems to have been put in to drive headlines that say that the Government are taking a hard line with councils that oppose new housing.