Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Remnant Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 209, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, to which I have added my name. I declare my interest as a parliamentary ambassador for the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation.

In doing so, I will not see my youngest daughter this evening, who is severely allergic to peanuts, because of the rather unusual hours that our House sits. I hope I will see her tomorrow evening, Chief Whip permitting, as she will be off to school in the morning very early—and, like the rest of us, I need to sleep sometimes. No doubt she will use this opportunity to ask me to explain, not for the first time, what exactly it is that we do in the House of Lords and why so much of it is done after dark. I very much hope that tomorrow, I will be able to give her the best of all possible answers.

I will remind her that, a few months ago, on 16 September to be exact, rather late that night, along with many other noble Lords who I see sitting here in the Chamber this evening, I was adding my voice in support of an amendment designed to keep children safe—children like her, in fact, who have the misfortune to suffer anaphylactic shock if they come into contact with a small piece of peanut or some other food, as she has twice, frighteningly, done. Along with others, and with the excellent support of the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, Allergy UK, Anaphylaxis UK and the Benedict Blythe Foundation, I argued then that the Government should ensure that all schools have spare EpiPens available in case of such emergencies and that staff are trained in their use.

As the clock ticked towards midnight that night, my noble friend the Minister responded as follows:

“The measures to support children with allergies proposed in this amendment could be achieved without requiring primary legislation; we will consider how we might take them forward”.—[Official Report, 16/9/25; col. 2187.]


Tonight, I am hopeful that this is precisely what has happened, and that my noble friend the Minister will stand up and confirm that the Government will shortly be issuing statutory guidance setting out in detail how all schools will be required to properly protect children with allergies, and, in particular, that noble Lords will be assured that there will be statutory guidance requiring schools to have effective allergy policies in place, to have adrenaline devices such as auto-injectors available, and that staff will receive mandatory training on the use of adrenaline devices such as auto-injectors. In which case, I will be able to tell my daughter that these late nights can achieve remarkable things, and that it is precisely because of the way the House of Lords works that this has been achieved.

After all, we are talking about an amendment which has strong support across the House, led by the noble Baronesses, Lady Morgan and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg. It is supported by my noble friend Lady Kennedy, among others, who has professional expertise in the subject, and has been encouraged by those impressive charities. To give due credit, we are talking about a Government who listen to the evidence and act accordingly, assuming that I have understood correctly what my noble friend the Minister will announce shortly.

I would still prefer to see my daughter in the evenings more often, but I am happy not having been able to do so on 16 September last year and this evening if the House acts to protect children at school with allergies. She will be happy too, and, in due course, so will thousands of parents and their children at risk of anaphylaxis. What an honour it is to be a Member of this House which can change lives so effectively.

[Lord Remnant (Con)]

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group, and particularly Amendment 209, in the names of my noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes and other noble Lords who have added their names.

I have a granddaughter, now aged 10, who from birth has been allergic to dairy, eggs and nuts. Through a lengthy medically managed programme she has been able to reduce substantially her reaction to dairy and eggs, but remains extremely vulnerable to peanuts and sesame. She carries an EpiPen, although mercifully she has not yet had cause to use it. These allergies remain a constant concern to her and her parents. Yet I regard her as being one of the fortunate ones. She is conscientious and very aware of what she can and cannot eat, but the inherent risks are heightened away from home, whenever, say, she is at a friend’s house or in a restaurant. Most importantly, she attends a school which has adopted and follows the policies and procedures stipulated by Amendment 209.

I regard these as minimum standards to be followed by schools. They surely should be regarded as best practice. However, it appears that, despite allergy being the most chronic childhood condition in the UK, my granddaughter’s school is in the minority in specifying these protections and our legislation lags behind global comparators. This cannot be right. During term time, children spend most of their waking hours at school. Schools act in loco parentis, with all the legal duties of care that that entails, but current statutory medical guidance, as we have heard, is not specific to allergies. It is vague and open to interpretation. It has created a worrying gap in allergy safeguard provision. Even were this adapted specifically to address allergies, it would remain just guidance. Unless the Minister can assure us otherwise, it would not be mandatory and it is unlikely to be comprehensive, so it would not achieve the step change required. The adoption of Amendment 209, on the other hand, would go a long way towards filling this gap.

I am also fully supportive of Amendments 210, 212, 213 and 214 in the name, principally, of the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg. Amendments 210 and 212 in particular would ensure that external providers, including catering providers, follow a school’s allergy and anaphylaxis policy. If we are sensibly to mandate schools to have such a policy, for compliance with which they will be held responsible, we should give them the tools to enforce that policy.

Pension Schemes Bill

Lord Remnant Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 26th January 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, called on the support of reasonable people. I think of myself as a reasonable person, and I support her. I find the Government’s position on this totally inexplicable. I say in all honesty to my noble friend the Minister that the reasons given so far for these provisions do not in any way explain their position. It is inexplicable.

In my view, it is possible to make an argument that closed-end funds of this sort are more suitable than some other sorts of investments for pension investment because of the possibility of there being additional liquidity. That makes it even more inexplicable. A further problem is that pension funds could invest in an investment company that is not a closed-end fund but holds these investments. However, if it decided to float on the stock exchange, it could not do so because it would lose all the pension fund investments. So there is not logic at all to the Government’s position. There may be some logic, but we have yet to hear it.

[Lord Remnant (Con)]

My Lords, I very much support the amendments in this group, tabled variously in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Altmann and Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted. They all seek to ensure that closed-ended funds, in the form of UK-listed investment companies, are not disqualified from being eligible to invest in the private market assets targeted by the Bill, alongside open-ended funds. I say this not only as a private investor in both types of funds but as one who has sat on and chaired boards responsible for managing both types of investment.

They each have their relative advantages and disadvantages, which I will not enumerate here, but it is in fact investment companies that, over the long term, tend to have lower fees and better performance records, to the advantage of their investors. It seems perverse to exclude them from the Bill, seemingly solely on the grounds that they have listed status, when the nature of their underlying investments is identical to those held by open-ended vehicles. Indeed, investment trusts are particularly suited to the type of investments envisaged by this Bill and the Mansion House Accord—namely, assets that are essentially illiquid. Investment companies hold well over £100 billion-worth in private assets, and unlisted infrastructure and renewables have been among the fastest growing segments in recent years.

As the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, indicated, it is this ability more effectively to offer liquidity in illiquid assets that particularly distinguishes closed-ended vehicles from their open-ended cousins. It is in times of stress, whether within the investment vehicle itself or more broadly due to general economic or financial conditions, that some of the more unfortunate investment failings occur. They tend to relate to liquidity or lack thereof, they have happened in the recent past and they have occurred in open-ended structures.

Noble Lords will need little reminding of the demise of the Woodford Equity Income Fund. Suffice to say that, in two years, it lost two-thirds of its value; it became increasingly and disproportionately reliant on unlisted investments, which could not be sold to meet investor redemptions; and it was suspended in June 2019, leaving investors unable to access their money.

Noble Lords may be less familiar with the travails afflicting open-ended property funds. Property is an asset class specifically targeted by the Mansion House Accord. The writing was on the wall for them ever since they suspended in the depths of the Covid crisis. That triggered funds in the sector to begin to close down, given the evident problems with liquidity that resulted in a fundamental mismatch in the demands of investors against the liquidity of the underlying asset. These investors are mainly not faceless institutions but retail investors—the same individuals who save for their pensions. The only way in which the managers of the fund can mitigate these liquidity issues is by holding substantial cash holdings, which cuts across its investment objectives and dilutes returns. Once an announcement to close is announced, properties are likely to be sold at fire sale prices into difficult markets, and investors may have no access to their money for well over 12 months.

Institutions running open-ended funds attempted to address these liquidity problems by establishing the long-term asset funds referred to earlier, but their structure is still such that they cannot solve the problem but only rather crudely mitigate it through having more restricted dealing windows than the daily dealing offered by more traditional open-ended funds. They have been authorised by the FCA only since 2023 and are unproven. They are described by one prominent investment platform as high-risk investments recommended for experienced investors who have already accessed the more traditional investment options, yet they qualify under this Bill to the exclusion of investment companies which have proved their worth for over 150 years. I do not understand the rationale for this.

--- Later in debate ---

That was last November; we have had more since then. There is a real problem with private equity, and my noble friend’s conclusion was that the Government are playing with fire. By effectively endorsing private equity as a suitable investment for pension funds, they will be on the hook when the whole thing collectively or individually goes wrong. People will point and say, “The Government said, in an Act of Parliament, that investing in this private equity was a good thing to do, and it’s all gone south. It’s their fault”. I do not always agree with my noble friend Lord Sikka, but he said the next crash will come from equity. We have a serious issue here. Why are the Government adopting the line of effectively endorsing this particular investment when it is, at best, questionable?

[Lord Remnant (Con)]

My Lords, I will comment briefly on the amendments in this group, tabled by several noble Lords, relating to the suitability of private markets and a potential cap on the allocation of funds to those markets. Equity and debt markets often now tend to be positively correlated; in other words, they move in the same direction. That was not normally the case in the past, when negative correlation brought better balance to a portfolio and to its risk and reward characteristics. So-called alternative investments—of which private markets form a part—that fall outside the traditional investments of stocks, bonds and cash can offer a sensible diversification.

The Mansion House Accord refers to the higher potential net returns that can arise from investment in private markets, but that comes with higher risks, less liquidity and, typically, less regulation. Given the disadvantages of the open-ended nature of the vehicle that would deliver such investments, to which I referred on an earlier group—and given that private markets, however defined, should be part only of a portfolio’s allocation to the alternatives class—I would certainly be in favour, as a matter of principle and practice, of a cap not exceeding the 10% mooted by my noble friends Lady Coffey and Lady McIntosh of Pickering. I cannot envisage any well-run, prudently managed and appropriately diversified pension fund wishing to exceed such a percentage in normal circumstances.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, briefly, it is not appropriate for legislation to tell the trustees of pension funds, in any case, that they can make investments in some types of structure but not in others. It should be entirely up to the trustees, in exercising their fiduciary duties, to determine what investments they make and the structures through which they make them to deliver a maximum level of risk that they are happy to accept.

The Government will succeed in realising their target of increasing pension fund investment in UK infrastructure by adopting fiscal and economic policies that encourage growth. We will then see a natural return to the much higher levels of UK equity investment by pension funds that used to obtain many years ago. If the Government require, nevertheless, some potential or possible mandation, it is right that there should be a cap. But, as my noble friend Lord Remnant said, it is inconceivable that any pension fund manager would be likely to invest more than 10%—I would say considerably less than that—in asset classes traditionally defined as alternative assets.