Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Nash Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the Knowledge Schools Trust, a multi-academy trust that I co-founded, which now has nine schools in it.

When I tabled this amendment in Committee, there was some confusion as to whether the cap on the number of branded items of school uniform proposed in the Bill applied to extracurricular activities. Are mandatory branded items for an activity that is not itself mandatory, such as being in a school sports team, outwith the cap or included in it, even if they have been lent or donated to the school free of charge? The noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, believed that they were outwith the cap—and therefore Amendment 117, which would exempt items loaned or gifted to a school, would be unnecessary.

The Department for Education has now published draft statutory guidance on how schools should interpret the uniform clauses in the Bill, making it clear that branded items that are mandatory for extracurricular activities, even if they are provided to children free of charge, are included in the cap. It says:

“All loaned or gifted branded items will be captured within the limit if they are required to be worn. However, schools can continue to lend, give out or make available for sale additional branded items, as long as wearing those items is optional”.


That could not be clearer: if a school insists that children playing for a school team are required to wear a branded item so that their fellow team members can distinguish them from members of the opposing team, for instance, those items are included in the cap, which I remind noble Lords is three items for primary schools and four for secondary schools, including a school tie. That includes items loaned or gifted to the school.

At this point, I acknowledge that the Government have allowed some exceptions to this rule. When I spoke in Committee, I pointed out that the cap would make it impossible for schools to maintain a Combined Cadet Force, even though the uniform for those troops is provided free of charge by the Ministry of Defence.

The draft DfE guidance says:

“The uniform items for scouts or cadet forces are not captured by the limit”.


I am grateful to the Minister for that concession, but why not extend the exemption to all items lent or gifted to a school, given that they will not cost parents or carers anything? I understand why the Government want to reduce the financial burden on parents and carers by limiting the number of items of school uniform they are required to buy—although, in truth, I think that schools can be trusted to manage that themselves, and do manage it themselves, with due regard for the needs of low-income families.

For some reason, the Government believe that this is an area in which state intervention is required, but what possible reason do they have for including loaned or donated items in the cap? The only explanation I can think of is that it is a residue of the hostility to school uniforms that used to be fashionable among the left-wing intelligentsia in the 1960s and 1970s. I thought that this hostility was a thing of the past and that the argument for school uniforms had been comprehensively won. In case the Minister is unfamiliar with this argument, I refer her to the current DfE guidance, published on her department’s website, which eloquently makes the case for school uniforms:

“We strongly encourage schools to have a uniform, as it can play a key role in … promoting the ethos of a school … providing a sense of belonging and identity … setting an appropriate tone for education. By creating a common identity among all pupils regardless of background, a uniform can … act as a social leveller … reduce bullying and peer pressure to wear the latest fashions or other expensive clothes”.


All those arguments apply as much to branded items for team sports and other extra-curricular activities as they do to branded items of school uniform. I hope the Minister will recognise the wisdom of her own department on this matter and, if she does not trust schools to manage these issues fairly themselves, at least remove lent and gifted items from the cap.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 114 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, and my noble friend Lord Young’s Amendment 117. It is clearly a better solution to have a monetary limit than a number—that just seems obvious. As for gifted items, I could not agree more with my noble friend. Are we really saying that if I manage to secure for my multi-academy trust some free gifted strip from a football club, I have to say to those people, as a charity, “I’m sorry, I know I’m a charity, but the Government have passed a law which requires me to say no, I can’t take your benefit in kind. I’m sorry”? It is potty, because I am clearly going to have at least three other items apart from a tie. It is clearly daft, and I very much look forward to the noble Baroness’s explanation as to why they are so insistent on this point.

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 117 in the name of my noble friend Lord Young of Acton, to which I have added my name. Although it may seem a small point, it matters. The draft guidance perfectly illustrates the consequences of poor policy-making: the cart was put before the horse and an announcement was made about reducing the number of branded items but without the clarity about the policy goal that should have informed the drafting of the legislation.

I will not repeat the examples given by others, but it is unfortunate that the draft guidance is so unequivocal. It is the kind of Kafkaesque rule that brings officialdom into ill repute, and it probably will not save parents a single penny. I add that if the policy goal is narrowly to save all parents money on school uniforms, this could be better achieved through Amendment 114, which would give schools more flexibility and avoid the problem that Amendment 117 is intended to address—although I believe that an automatic inflation adjustment should be incorporated to avoid the messiness of an annual review.

If this limit is enacted, will the Minister ensure that two particular impacts are fully evaluated. First, what is the social impact on children? In demonising branded clothing, the Government have lost sight of part of the value of uniforms. Uniforms are not only about badging and encouraging identification with an institution but about having all children wear clothing that is genuinely identical in quality and cut, not just broadly similar in appearance. We all know how sensitive the young are to status markers, such as having the right—usually expensive—trainers, even when the differences are all but invisible to the adult eye. Fewer school-branded items may mean more pressure on children to have the highest-status version of the unbranded items, which will inevitably bear hardest on the poorest children, so this should be evaluated.

The evaluation should also consider whether parents spend less money not only on school uniforms but on children’s clothing overall. If the change reduces spend on branded items but leads to poorer families being pressured into spending more rather than less overall on children’s clothes, it should be counted as a failure. I hope the Minister can reassure me on those points.