Free School Meals
Lord Storey Excerpts(5 days, 20 hours ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Government for this opportunity to understand the Statement on free school meal expansion rather better. I acknowledge that parents and children in receipt of universal credit will welcome the Government’s announcement, and many across the House will welcome a review of school food standards. However, I would be grateful if the Minister clarified a number of points about how this change will work in practice.
As the Minister knows, transitional protections established in 2018 ensured that pupils who were eligible for free school meals would keep them during the universal credit rollout. This nearly doubled free school meal eligibility, from 13.6% to 25.7%. The Department for Education has now announced that these protections will end in September 2026 with the introduction of the new policy. However, it is not clear how many children will be affected by this.
Dr Tammy Campbell, director for early years, inequalities and well-being at the Education Policy Institute, said:
“To the best of our knowledge, the Department for Education has not fully assessed the number of children who will cease to be eligible for FSM as a result of the conclusion of transitional protections”.
She added:
“It is possible that the extension of eligibility will largely serve to balance out the cessation of transitional protections, rather than making significant numbers of children newly eligible”.
Can the Minister confirm whether the department has done such an assessment and, if so, what are the figures that it revealed? If it has not done one, when will that happen?
Can the Minister clarify the position in relation to pupil premium funding, since eligibility for free school meals is currently the gateway to the pupil premium? The pupil premium, which was a significant achievement of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government, provides £1,480 per primary school pupil and over £1,000 per secondary school pupil. My understanding is that the Government initially said that the link between the two will be broken, but then said in a second announcement that the total amount will remain unchanged. Can the Minister confirm exactly the Government’s position, how that will work in practice and whether the Government are indeed committed to the full £3 billion or so of pupil premium funding continuing?
The Government’s announcement included other important figures relating to child poverty, including that this change will lift 100,000 children out of poverty. Again, I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm the timescale for that change. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has confirmed that, in the longer term, it believes the policy will lift 100,000 children out of poverty, but it cautioned that, due to the phasing out of the transitional measures which I mentioned earlier, the short-term costs and benefits are likely to be far more limited. Christine Farquharson, associate director of the IFS, said that we will
“not see anything like 100,000 children lifted out of poverty next year”.
How long does the Minister think it will take to reach the Government’s targets? How many children does she believe will be lifted out of poverty next year?
Finally, can the Minister confirm how this policy applies to holiday activities, food funding and home to school transport? Will schools and local authorities continue to receive pupil premium and home to school transport funding based on the existing free school meals threshold or the expanded criteria? I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, we very much welcome the Minister’s Statement. As we heard, over half a million more children will benefit from a free, nutritious meal every day. The Government have estimated that this will put £500 back into parents’ pockets. In the coalition, as we heard, we introduced a free meal for every key stage 1 pupil and prepared to extend this to key stage 2. This is excellent news for parents and their children.
As a primary school head teacher, I was always concerned that the number of pupils’ parents who did not take up the free school meal entitlement was quite alarming. Despite numerous personal letters to those parents, newsletters and all the rest, they still did not take up their entitlement. That is why auto-enrolment of free school meals at a national level ensures that every child gets the meal they are entitled to. Will the Government now follow the example of many successful local authorities and introduce auto-enrolment for meals, and if not, why not?
As we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, many vulnerable children spend many weeks each year not in school during the holidays. Will the Government take the opportunity to end holiday hunger and perhaps look at the feasibility of funding for meals during school holidays?
Children on free school meals, particularly those in more affluent areas, often feel embarrassed and stigmatised, and are sometimes bullied, because they are having free meals. Will the Minister assure the House that confidentiality will be maintained at all times for those who are entitled to a free meal?
I realise that the Statement was about free school lunches, but can the Minister update us on the number of children receiving breakfast and the timescale for rolling this out to more schools? The Minister is probably aware of the letter from a whole host of children’s charities about the problems of free breakfast for those children with special educational needs, which I have no doubt will come up during the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.
We on these Benches have been pushing hard for the provision of free school meals in schools; it was in our manifesto. It is a victory for thousands of passionate campaigners, and the Government have listened.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, when this Government came into office there were 900,000 more children living in poverty than there had been when the Labour Government left office in 2010. This was a stain on our country. It was a terrible way for those children to live, preventing them having what they needed day-to-day and limiting their opportunities for the future. That is why this Government have announced the biggest expansion of free school meal eligibility in England in a generation, because we can and we must end the scourge of child poverty.
That is why we will give every child whose family is in receipt of universal credit the entitlement to free school meals. That means not simply meals in mouths but, crucially, money back into the pockets of parents and families on an unprecedented scale. It means that 500,000 more children per year will be entitled to free school meals. In response to the noble Baroness’s question, it means that, over the course of this Parliament, 100,000 children will be lifted out of poverty.
I commend the approach of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, to asking questions to gain some confidence and elucidation from me—an approach very different from that of the shadow Education Secretary, who did not allow the facts to get in the way of her tweeting completely erroneous information about the Government’s proposals. I will respond to the specific questions raised by the noble Baroness.
First, we have been clear that transitional protections will now be extended to 2026, when all children whose families are in receipt of universal credit will be entitled to free school meals. At that point, we will bring to an end the transitional protections that were put in place to protect entitlement as universal credit rolled out.
Secondly, the Government will continue to spend £3 billion on pupil premium and disadvantage this year. In 2026, the total will remain the same, on the basis of the level of those who would have been entitled to free school meals. Over the longer term, we will take action to consider the most appropriate way to distribute the funding necessary to respond to disadvantage and support schools in a range of ways, so that they can use it to help ensure that all children can succeed, regardless of their disadvantage.
The holiday activity fund will also remain at existing levels. It will enable local authorities to have, as they already do, the flexibility and funding to ensure provision for children who need it.
The entitlement to home school transport will remain the same, based on the current eligibility criteria post 2026, so no children will lose their entitlement to extended home school transport.
The noble Lord, Lord Storey, talked about take-up. First, it is likely that the simplicity of now basing the entitlement on universal credit means that it will be much clearer to families, when they claim universal credit, that they are automatically entitled to free school meals. In addition, the Government are also improving the ability for not only local authorities but parents and families to check their eligibility more clearly than they have been able to until this point.
Lord Storey (LD)
If we find that that is not having the take-up that we hope for, will the Government look at auto-enrolment?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The Government are extending the entitlement to free school meals because we want children to benefit from them. We will keep under review the extent to which those free school meals and all the benefits that come with them are being taken up.
The noble Lord made a point about the stigma that some children and families feel. I know that many schools are—all schools should be—very careful about the way in which they identify which children are eligible for free school meals and which are not. We have moved some way from the terrible times when those children eligible for free school meals had to sit at separate tables and all the awful things that I know some people have experienced or certainly heard of. Schools will work hard to make sure that there is confidentiality and that that stigma is removed.
On the point about breakfast clubs, we have ensured that, from this April, there are 750 early adopter breakfast clubs across the country, having significantly increased the investment in those breakfast clubs to £30 million. As the noble Lord says, we will be able to consider this and the further rollout of breakfast clubs in more detail when we come to that part of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which will put the Government’s intention to ensure that all children in primary schools can benefit from breakfast clubs into legislation.
This considerable investment in our children is a significant sign of this Government’s commitment to tackling the scourge of child poverty. It is, as the Prime Minister says, a “down payment” on the Government’s child poverty strategy and it is symbolic of the difference that a Labour Government make.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Storey Excerpts(6 days, 20 hours ago)
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Lord Sentamu (CB)
My Lords, when I was a vicar in Tulse Hill in the early 1980s, five young women came to see me. Four had been abused by their fathers. The youngest was eight at the time it happened. Working with them, listening to them, finding help that would restore who they truly were was a very long journey, but I am glad to say that all of them have now taken on professions that I did not think were possible. One of them has had the courage to report her father, who is now doing a quite a long sentence. I come originally from Uganda. I never imagined that a father could abuse an eight year-old girl. I just thought in terms of culture that that was just outrageous, but I listened, and we had to find a way of helping them.
Most abuse of young children happens in the home by family or friends. We need to work hard to make the message quite clear. I am reminded of those wonderful words by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard; noble Lords have heard him speak about the Soham murders. He did an inquiry into the Soham murders. One of his wonderful phrases in that report, which has sustained me in my work dealing with people who have been abused, was that we will never succeed in preventing child sexual abuse, but we can make it very difficult for abusers to do it.
For me, mandatory reporting is an important reality. When I appeared before IICSA, I was asked a question, and I said mandatory reporting must happen, because the only way that we are going to make it difficult for those who want to carry out their heinous crimes is if they know that it will not remain hidden. As most of it is in the home—at least in my experience—we have got to find a message that can remind a perpetrator of that, even though they may be behind closed doors in an apparently loving home where people’s lives have been blighted. I support Amendment 66. I hope the Minister will say something that can capture the imagination of this nation. We must not look at just the big organisations, but at what happens in the home.
Lord Storey (LD)
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, for putting this amendment down. We can talk in parliamentary language, but it is when we hear the example that my noble friend Lady Benjamin told us about that we know the appalling effects that child abuse has on children and young people. They often carry that for the rest of their lives, and they carry it in silence. Somebody said, and I think it is absolutely right, that this is about changing the culture, where the responsibility is not to sort of pretend “I’m title-tattling” or “I’m not sure” or “It’s a friend of mine” or “I shouldn’t say this”; if you suspect that child abuse is happening, you have to do something about it.
Recently, we have heard about all the problems that the Church of England has faced, and we have heard various clergy say, “Well, I didn’t think it was that important”, or “I did do so and so”. If we had had this in law, those prominent clergy would have had a responsibility in law to speak out and those abuses over many decades of young people, not at school but in various holiday camps, I understand, would not have taken place.
We think that, by ticking the box on CRB checks, or now on the data-barring service, it is all sorted in schools. It is not. When we come to the schools part of the Bill and look at unregistered schools—particularly, I have to say, religious unregistered schools—it is worth noting that examples have come to light of children who have been abused in unregistered settings. Again, people will say, “I don’t think this has really happened; I’d better not blow the whistle on this”, but it is the case, and various Members of this House know that.
This is a very important amendment. I do not care which Bill it comes in, but we need to make sure that it passes into law.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, the noble Baronesses, Lady Grey-Thompson and Lady Walmsley, made a predictably powerful case for the mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse and highlighted its terrible scale, impact and extent. I do not disagree with them when they say that the system is currently failing the victims. My noble friend Lord Moynihan also gave very powerful examples from the world of sport.
In my experience, this is one of the most difficult areas in which both to legislate and to implement legislation effectively. We know from a range of terrible cases, including, of course, the rape gang scandals of recent years, that even when a disclosure is made—whether by a child or when a professional makes the disclosure directly to the police or local authority—it is not always listened to. We also know from international research that mandatory reporting has led to enormous increases in recorded incidents. That may be an important contributor to the culture change that, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, rightly identified, is so badly needed; but there is still, of course, an enormous gap between recorded incidents and the prosecution of the offenders concerned.
I have a couple of concerns about the amendment. One is volunteers, who play an important role, and the amendment perhaps affecting their willingness to take on voluntary and unpaid activity. Perhaps most importantly, we should think through the issues where there are suspicions rather than disclosures. As we have heard, the majority of child sexual abuse happens within families. We need to think through how suspicion is handled in practice, and the implications of children being taken into care while allegations are made against a parent or step-parent, or a sibling or step-sibling. I am not saying that, where abuse has happened, that is not important to do, but we need—and the Government need—to think through very carefully the implications and the disruption and fracturing of important relationships in children’s lives.
I note that, through the Crime and Policing Bill, the Government plan to introduce mandatory reporting where there is a disclosure or where abuse has been observed. I have some sympathy with that as a starting point, but I hope very much that we can keep a lens on this terrible issue. My noble friend Lord Moynihan says that he has been working on this issue with the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, for over 20 years. I have the greatest respect for their tenacity and patience on such a difficult subject.
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 69B to 72, and I declare my interests as a governor of Coram and as a trustee of the Foundling Museum, both of which organisations do a huge amount of work with children involved in these amendments.
We do not realise how lucky we are with kinship care. The figures speak for themselves. When you compare the fact that we have 153,000 children being kept in kinship care with the numbers officially in the care system, which is approaching dangerously near 100,000, and the relatively small number of children who are fortunate enough to be adopted, we are incredibly lucky to have kinship care.
A lot of the history of kinship care as it has evolved and grown has been really about taking it for granted and assuming that is what families or extended families do—and, to a large extent, being inordinately grateful that they are there to take these children on and feeling that one probably needs to devote slightly less time and attention to helping those kinship carers do the best they possibly can by comparison with, let us say, children who are conventionally going through the care system. That is clearly a major imbalance.
A particular sentence jumped out at me from the briefing that the organisation Kinship provided in preparation for this stage:
“Given the long and troubling history of poor compliance with kinship statutory guidance, it is imperative that government does not simply take the approach that these matters can be attended to in guidance alone”—
tempting as that is.
With 153,000 currently in kinship care, we have in theory an enormous amount of data to identify where it is being done well and where it is being done less well. So I did a bit of interrogation of the artificial intelligence tool that we are provided with here, courtesy of Microsoft, and an example that jumps out several times when I interrogated it, as a local authority or city council that has best practice in this area, is the city of Portsmouth. I have no idea whether people knew that, or to what extent the department or the Bill team have looked in detail at what it is that Portsmouth is doing that is clearly shooting the lights out compared with a lot of other cities or local authorities. But it is possible to identify what is being done well now, to learn from that and to try to see the best way to put that either into legislation or into guidance so that we are not effectively reinventing the wheel. This is happening at such a large scale that there must be incredibly rich qualitative and quantitative data that we can learn from. I just hope that during the course of the Bill we can drill down, look at that in more detail, try to identify some of those elements of best practice and perhaps bring that back to the discussion on Report.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I will start using the mantra of the Minister: on a number of occasions she has said that it is about getting children and families the right support. I very much agree with that.
I will start by talking generally about the care system. I met a young man whose name is Tristan, and when he was a child he was put into care. When I was chatting to him I was genuinely shocked when he told me he had been in nine different care settings throughout the country. Imagine this child going from one care setting to another. I do not know the reasons why, but that happened. He was lucky enough to end the care placements by being fostered by parents in Liverpool, who eventually adopted him as their son. That was the happy outcome after all the trauma that went on before. He is now at Liverpool John Moores University, studying law.
School Teachers’ Review Body: Recommendations
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The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, on 22 May we were able to announce that this Government will fulfil the recommendations of the School Teachers’ Review Body and award a 4% pay increase to our teachers. Alongside that, we were able to announce an additional £615 million to fund that pay increase. That, alongside last year’s acceptance of the STRB’s recommendations, means that, while this Government have been in office, teachers have received a pay increase of nearly 10%. That is a fundamentally important contribution to retaining teachers in our classrooms and recruiting new teachers to be able to meet our 6,500 extra specialist teachers during this Parliament.
Noble Lords opposite, while asking legitimate questions, might like to reflect on the fact that, when we arrived in government, we found on the desks of the DfE the STRB’s recommendations from last year that their Government had run away from implementing. Since this Government have been in office, given the action we have taken not only on pay but on other provisions, we have seen an increase of 2,000 students starting teacher training. We estimate that the actions we have taken will ensure that an additional 2,500 teachers will be retained in the workforce over and above what would have happened had the previous Government continued their action towards teachers.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, on these Benches we welcome the Government’s acceptance in full of the School Teachers’ Review Body and the additional resources provided. However, there is a financial impact on schools having to implement the pay rises from their existing budgets. Given that half the schools are already considering staff cuts, and 45% of secondary head teachers are using pupil premium funding to fill budget gaps, can the Minister clarify the efficiencies the Government believe are still available to be found within existing school budgets?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord is right that we have inherited a situation where school budgets are stretched. That is why we have already made available an additional £2.3 billion for the core schools budget in the October 2024 Budget, of which £1 billion was for high needs. We have also made available, on top of that, £930 million to support schools with the cost of the national insurance contributions increase in March 2025. There is also, as I have already said, £615 million for the 2025 pay awards. That means that, while this Government have been in power, we have seen the core schools budget increase from £61.6 billion to £65.3 billion.
There will be productivity challenges for schools and the Government have been clear that, as with other parts of the public sector, we will look to support schools in finding 1% of efficiencies to contribute to the ability to pay the pay award. That is alongside considerable funding support; considerable additional funding, on top of the efficiencies, to fund the pay award; and work that the department is doing with schools to help them find those efficiencies. That is a responsible way to balance the need for teachers—who are the most important in-school determinant of children’s success—in our classrooms with our responsibility to the taxpayer to ensure that public money is spent as effectively as possible.
Social Mobility: Sutton Trust Opportunity Index
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
Funding is important, which is why the Government will consider the national funding formula and ensure that it focuses on the right places and addresses need in the way the right reverend Prelate outlined. But it is also important that we take action—across schools, for young people through training, and in the early years, when children need to have the best start in life. We have already started taking that action.
Lord Storey (LD)
I thank the Sutton Trust for this piece of work. It is worrying that, of the 20 constituencies with the highest ranking for opportunity, all are in London. Among the top 50, all but eight are in London. The lowest, of course, are in the north, including Newcastle, followed by Liverpool. We have had levelling up—whatever happened to that? My concern is that, often, government works in silos, but issues such as this have to be across silos. Is there a case for a Minister having responsibility for getting hold of this issue and making a real difference?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The whole Government are responsible for ensuring that young people’s opportunity is not determined by where they come from or other factors of their background. That is why the Government have an opportunity mission, as I outlined in my initial Answer; it is owned across government, and all parts of government are expected to make a contribution to ensure that young people get the best start in life, that they can achieve and thrive in school, and that they are then able to gain the skills necessary to succeed further on in their lives.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
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Lord Meston (CB)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 36 and 40 and respectfully agree with almost everything that has been said so far.
Amendment 40 concerns cases which cross local authority borders, which can present practical problems and sometimes jurisdictional problems. Families, both parents and children, move around and do not conveniently live together at the same time in the same local authority area. Sometimes, as has been suggested, they move to avoid attention, and there needs to be clarification of how and by whom these situations are to be dealt with.
Amendment 36 seems to be more fundamental. There are, of course, existing established arrangements focusing on children in need. Since at least the Children Act 1989, these can involve child protection conferences and child protection plans, which identify risks and assign responsibilities and expectations. It is perhaps not surprising that there are now operational concerns about the new clauses—in particular, whether they will unnecessarily duplicate or even disrupt workable and working existing arrangements.
In particular, we need to know whether the new teams provided for in these clauses will require the introduction of new personnel in a way that will deprive the family of the continuity and familiarity established by the original social work team. It takes time for a social worker to build a relationship with a child and family, and that should not be jeopardised. Changes bewilder the children and frustrate the parents. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, referred to consistency and ownership. Those are not just clichés, they are important and should, wherever possible, be preserved.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, we have not got any amendments in this group, but I will make a few observations. First, it is really important we get this right and we have the opportunity to do so between Committee and Report.
I have personal experience of multi-agency working in terms of child protection—not a great deal, but a few cases. The thing that nobody has mentioned is that, when a member of staff has left the job or moved to another authority, the whole process grinds to a halt; the new person who is busy looking at the case files is not able to benefit from the knowledge that has been gained. It is often very disruptive.
Often in Committee, somebody will get up and make a point that you have never really thought about. When the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, had finished, I thought, “Absolutely right”. But I had not thought about the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, and he is absolutely right: in terms of police involvement, there can be a real conflict. It just proved to me, yet again, the importance of sharing these ideas so that we get a result which is actually workable.
It is interesting that the Children’s Commissioner suggests a
“threshold for assessment and support”
to bring greater consistency. This also picks up on the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, raised about resources—that it is important that we get the resources absolutely right.
I was interested in the point about sharing practice with those practitioners—that they do not come with their own particular viewpoint but have that training and expertise to share and listen. Cross-border working can be very difficult indeed and can sometimes cause real issues as well, but, if we listen to each other, we can get this right.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, as we start on these amendments relating to the operational delivery of multi-agency child protection teams, I will just respond to a few general points before I go into the details of the points that have been made and the amendments.
First, on the point the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, made both today and on Tuesday, it is not true that there is no support for these arrangements among local authority children’s services and organisations concerned about child protection and keeping children safe. There is plenty of support. Nor has this idea somehow or other fallen out of the sky. In fact, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, gave us a good explanation of the history of this. Of course, last autumn this Government published Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive, which included the provisions that are in this legislation. So there has been plenty of time, and in fact the department has taken the opportunity to talk to a broad range of professionals and others about how we will ensure that all the provisions in the Bill work properly.
The provisions in Clause 3 particularly relate to the duty to protect children with respect to the legislative arrangements on child protection. The experience of child protection is that too often, this most difficult and crucial area of children’s social work has been carried out by social workers who are perhaps less experienced and not necessarily experts in child protection. They have had to do it without the full story of the children they are trying to protect, because of the lack of the strongest possible input from a range of different agencies to create that full story about the child and their needs, in order to ensure that they are protected properly.
On one of the concerns expressed by Professor Munro, as I emphasised on Tuesday, these provisions do not downgrade the quality or nature of social workers who will be working on child protection. They will increase the likelihood that the most experienced social workers will be working in the most difficult area. We are clear that a fully qualified social worker will be responsible within the multi-agency child protection team. Equally, in family help, where the worker is dealing with a child about which there are child protection concerns, that will also be a fully qualified social worker.
On the detail of this and how we got here in the first place, as many noble Lords have said, both today and in other debates on the Bill, nothing is more important than keeping children safe. Ineffective multi-agency working is a key factor where child protection activity fails, and, despite existing legislation, day-to-day operations can be inconsistent and ineffective. In its review, the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel found that inexperienced practitioners, ineffective multi-agency working and poor information-sharing within and between agencies results in missed opportunities to protect children. As I said, this is a situation I am sure all of us are keen to improve.
Often, several practitioners have information about a child and their family but the lack of joint working means that vital opportunities are missed to protect children from serious harm—for example, the GP treating a parent for their substance misuse, the school that notices a child arriving unwashed and unfed, and the police involved in call-outs for domestic abuse. But no one has the whole picture of the day-to-day life of the child. Early results from the 10 local area pathfinders for Families First—a programme that, as we discussed on Tuesday, is embedding family help, multi-agency child protection and family group decision-making in a single integrated system—demonstrate better management of complex issues, reducing crisis points and enabling quicker, effective interventions where children need protection.
I hear again the calls for publishing the first part of the pathfinders evaluation, which I wholly understand. I hope, even if it is slightly later than spring, that it will be available—I know it will be available for the development of these teams. But we are not even waiting for that. We are using already the experiences of those who are going through the pathfinders to help support practice in other local authority areas, through webinars and through the opportunity to share not just good practice but the challenges they are finding. The fact that some pathfinders are finding some things difficult is precisely the point of having a pathfinder: so that you can work out what works, where you might need to change things, how you are going to operationalise it and what additional support might be needed.
Lord Storey (LD)
I have a few observations to make, although this is not my natural area of expertise.
On Amendment 1, I said it was important that, when we propose to make a change and we run a pilot, that pilot is the lodestone of future developments. First, I am concerned about the comments made by Professor Munro. Secondly, I am slightly concerned by what the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, said—that directors had frequently spoken to her. Perhaps she can tell us if that was one director or five directors? Was it a professional association? That is important to know. She cannot influence important discussions by saying, “Well, the directors have said”—we need to know who they are and how many there are. I could equally quote directors who have spoken to me and who have different opinions. We have to be very careful about that. The noble Baroness can talk to me afterwards, if she likes.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am more than happy to clarify for the benefit of the Committee. I have spoken personally to three directors of children’s services and one deputy director, and I have encouraged some of my colleagues to talk to their local director of children’s services. I stress that I was surprised at their response. I did not ring up and ask them to tell me about all the problems with the Bill; I rang up and explained that I would be responding on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition. I always prefer to talk to someone who is directly affected before I give my views, which may or may not be on message. It was an unprompted response. It is for them to decide if they wish to speak privately to Ministers, rather than for me to say at the Dispatch Box who they are. If the noble Lord has spoken to others who say something different, I am sure it is helpful for the Minister to hear that too.
Lord Storey (LD)
Actually, I have spoken to only one director and I would not wish to comment on what they said, because it would perhaps give the wrong impression.
The noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, rightly said that our child protection procedures are the envy of the world. She is right to say that, but it does not mean that we are complacent about the fact that we have good child protection procedures. You have to constantly look at any policies or systems and change and improve them. I am always impressed that children are at the heart of everything we do. When we had the Question on media literacy, and I rather cheekily asked what the Government’s number one priority was, the Minister rightly said that it was child protection. That is symptomatic of how we as a House react. We cannot stand still but, when we make detailed changes, we have to be sure that they are right. We should pilot them, perhaps learn from the pilot, and then use that to change and adapt, and we have to make the resources available.
I am particularly concerned about qualifications—they are the hallmark of safety. You would not want a plumber without any plumbing qualifications to come to your house, nor would you want an electrician without qualifications to look at the wiring. So it is in child safety, where we must make sure that the people around the table are qualified to give judgments and opinions to protect children.
As somebody who has said that he is not an expert by any means in this area, I hope that, when the Minister replies, she might simply spell out for me why she wants to make those changes and why she has not taken the advice of somebody who clearly is an expert and knows what they are talking about, and who has—probably through frustration—had to write a letter to the Times.
Baroness Longfield (Lab)
Perhaps I might add a few thoughts from my experience. As Children’s Commissioner for six years, I found that the greatest level of responsibility was around children in care, and I looked in detail at the experience of children in care throughout that time. One of the things that was absolutely clear to me was that the ability of local authorities to focus on early intervention diminished hugely during that period. The amount that was spent on early intervention halved during that period, while the amount that was spent on crisis doubled. You do not need to be a great mathematician to realise that the more you spend on crisis, the less you will have for early intervention.
At the heart of Josh MacAlister’s review and recommendations, which were incredibly and extensively consulted on with people at all levels, from expert practitioners to leaders of children’s services and care-experienced people themselves, was that we had to move and reset the system towards early intervention, and do so boldly in a timely manner, because it was unsustainable for the public purse to do anything other. As important, if not more important, is that more children were being left without support.
Everyone needs to be alert at any time to the consequences of any move towards increasing harm for children. What we now know and have known for some time is that more children are coming to harm now because they are not getting that support early, so it is absolutely essential that there is an urgency about that. As I said on Tuesday, those directors of children’s services that I speak to want to see that change urgently and are very much in line with the proposals that are being put forward. There will always be things that directors of children’s services will want to amend locally and test out—that is absolutely right—but what they want to know is that there is a framework nationally for them to work within and clear guidance. So, it is so important that this is here. That is not to say that those individuals will not have their own expertise in delivering.
When there are experts involved in delivering these expert practitioner roles, they are actually going to use their judgment all the time. It is not going to be about process; it has to be about children and about those families. Anyone who is just following a process because the process is there is not the expert practitioner in that role that we have the ambition for. They are going to be looking at children’s lives and responding to individuals, but at the heart of it, we have to move boldly forwards, to—
Assistive Technology
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness raises a specific point, although her broader point about the need for earlier assessment is one that the Government wholly recognise. We are, for example, providing further training for those in early years settings to be able identify needs earlier. As she says, we need to get better at the specifics around how we identify a need for assistive technology. That is part of the reason for training teachers, for example. I will take back her point about how we ensure that that happens as early as possible.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, the present system is time-consuming, as the pupil often has to wait quite a long time, and it is costly. Would it not be sensible to use the expertise of qualified SENCOs in schools to speed up the process?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord is right that SENCOs play an important role in identifying a need for assistive technology. That is why SENCOs receive specific training on how to use assistive technology. From this September, as part of initial teacher training, all teachers will receive training on the use of assistive technology. In that way, I hope that more teachers will understand the benefits for children and that the equipment will be used in schools not just more quickly but more effectively.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
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Lord Storey (LD)
Nobody has spoken from these Benches because we did not expect to be talking in generalities. We welcome this very important Bill. As I listened to some important contributions, I found that those people who spoke about a particular issue, were short in their comments and stuck to the point made an incredibly valuable contribution. The more I listened, the more I thought that maybe there is a case for having a purpose clause where you set out where you are going. This is a large Bill, and the amendment paper is bigger than the Bill itself. That does not happen often.
The last Bill was the famous Schools Bill from the previous Conservative Government. Had they had a purpose clause in that Schools Bill, maybe it would not have been abandoned in the way it was. Maybe they would have thought that they were going to be hijacked by the academy lobby, with the few minor changes that were suggested in that Bill, and the purpose would have been thought through. Had it not been abandoned, we would have already sorted and carried through many of the issues that we have grappled with over the past couple of years, such as unregistered schools, hundreds of thousands of children missing, home education et cetera.
I was particularly taken by the comments about music from the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet. I remind her that we have to thank a Conservative Government and Secretary of State, the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who introduced the national curriculum, because before the national curriculum, schools could do whatever they liked. The only subject they had to teach was religious education. By having a national curriculum, we said nationally that we wanted our children to learn these subjects. My view now is that we should have a national curriculum, but that the national curriculum must leave space to do other things as well, and I think that is a common view. Going back to the contribution by the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, in which she talked about music, it is about not only the national curriculum but the dreaded EBacc, which has seen the number of people studying music in schools plummet as a result of its attack on creative education.
I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, on her speech. It was spot on, and it made me think quite clearly. I think that Part 1 is going to make a huge difference to children and families. Some of the amendments to Part 1, whether on kinship carers or whatever, will be life-changing if they are agreed.
On Part 2, we are clearly going to be divided. I have nothing particularly against academies. I am involved with an academy. I think we want to take the best of what academies do and make it available for all schools, perhaps in a reformed way, but I also want to do away with the excesses that academies seek. Academies should not be deciding—I am doing what I should not be doing. I am doing a general debate. Stop it. I want to look at particular issues.
The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, started quite rightly. Governments of all political persuasions, when there is a problem that they do not know how to solve, often get an expert. They drag an expert in and say, “We want you to look at this problem”. Nine times out of 10, they do not follow through on the recommendations, or they just take part of the recommendations. With safeguarding, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, is absolutely right that Eileen Munro, an expert in her field, put forward some important recommendations, and they were quite rightly being piloted. We should learn from that piloting whether that is the way we should go. The Government must show what the evaluations of those pilots have shown. That is not a shameful thing. It is a sensible thing to do. If the evaluations show that, yes, this is great, let us do it. If they show that there are problems, perhaps we need to modify what we are doing. I hope the Government will think along those lines.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Nash, that I remember being very proud of serving on the Children and Families Act 2014 Committee. I think everyone on that committee felt that we had done a good job. It was one of those Bills that you actually enjoyed being involved with. At the end, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, organised a sort of celebration where we all got certificates and awards for various contributions we had made to the Bill.
However, on reflection, I wish we had piloted some of the key recommendations. Education, health and care plans are, quite frankly, in an appalling mess. Maybe we should have piloted those proposals to see whether they worked and got an evaluation. We would have then known the correct way to go. We should never have got rid of school action and school action plus. We should have kept general special needs in schools. That has gone, at the expense of education, health and care plans.
I end by assuring the Government that we will be constructive in everything we do, and we will support amendments, wherever they come across the Chamber, if we think they will actually enhance opportunities for families and young people.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords, not only those who have contributed today but those who have already contributed to the discussions on this important Bill at Second Reading. In fact, people enjoyed Second Reading so much that they decided they would have another go today.
The noble Lord, Lord Agnew, accused me of wanting to dismiss any amendments. That is wholly wrong; I want to get on to discuss the detail of those amendments in this Committee, as is the function of this stage. On this occasion, I fear that Amendment 1 not only is unnecessary but has been tabled to delay our detailed consideration of the significant legislation before us.
First, from a legal perspective, the proposed new clause would not have meaningful, practical effect. Secondly, on the point that many noble Lords have referred to about being clear about the purpose, intent and the outcome of this Bill, Ministers in the other place and at the Bill’s Second Reading in this place have been clear about the purpose of this critical legislation. I will use this as an opportunity to remind the Committee of what the Bill will achieve. This is a landmark Bill that will reform both children’s social care and education to ensure that, for all our children, background does not mean destiny and that at every stage of life, young people are supported to achieve and thrive.
As is already outlined in the Bill’s policy summary notes, the Bill has seven key ambitions. Its Explanatory Notes set out what each measure in the Bill aims to achieve and how it will do so. There will rightly be ample time in Committee to discuss these in the detail they deserve, and to listen to concerns and issues that have been raised by noble Lords and others. I hope to provide assurance on those or, where necessary, change them.
An ambition running through the whole Bill is to make up for lost time—14 years in fact—when action could have been taken to strengthen child safeguarding, to ensure that no young person slips out of sight of the agencies designed to advance their education and opportunities, and to set a minimum, a floor but no ceiling, on the standards we expect in every school across our country to enable every child to achieve and thrive.
In Part 1, the Government aim to keep families together and children safe, to support children with care experience to achieve and thrive, and to fix and support the care placement market. Importantly, the Bill will help more families to thrive together, while keeping children safe from harm and supporting them to succeed. Through the introduction of a duty on local authorities to offer a family group decision-making meeting—which I hope we will come on to discuss shortly—we are prioritising helping families and tackling problems before they become crises. This model builds on what we know works well.
Keeping children safe is a key purpose of the Bill. That is why, after years of inaction under the previous Government, we are legislating to stop children falling through the cracks and to ensure they are not out of sight of those who can keep them safe. As we will come on to discuss today and later in Committee, this is why we are legislating to introduce a single unique identifier, registers of children not in school, and new duties around information sharing. The Bill will also allow for more effective intervention when children are at the greatest risk of harm.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
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Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, on these Benches we very much believe that there should be an independent and suitably trained person; that is really important to us. We also appreciate that if this amendment were agreed—I do not know the timescale of training people up—there might have to be some transitional arrangements. It slightly jars with me that the party adjacent to me does not necessarily believe that teachers should be fully qualified—you can have unqualified teachers—but on this issue it wants a suitably trained person. In any situation where young people are involved, it is important that the person who is training or teaching is qualified and has the right skills.
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, I support this amendment. Clearly, the family decision-making groups are extremely important, and we are discovering them rather late in the day. I could have said this on any of the other amendments involving family groups, but this one particularly caught my eye because of the emphasis on an evidence-based approach. The Scottish Government have had this for nearly 10 years, which gives us a tremendous opportunity to learn from the successes and failures they have experienced over that time. How much contact has the Minister had with her Scottish colleagues to learn from the best and the worst, and what has she taken from that to put into this Bill?
Schools: Mobile Phones
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord raises an interesting point about those who argue that autonomy for head teachers is important—which the Government support. By the way, I dispute his interpretation of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which we will have plenty of opportunity to discuss in more detail over the coming weeks. It is precisely those who make that charge who now want to remove that autonomy by saying that legislation is the only way to make progress.
Lord Storey (LD)
I agree with what the Minister has said. One of the problems with mobile phones is to do with children’s mental health and well-being—and, of course, bullying. Mobile phones are often used to bully pupils. Does the Minister agree that it is important that governing bodies of schools, on which parents are represented, understand the issues and are able to discuss them and come to some conclusions?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord makes an important point. I am sure that both the policies that schools are developing and have developed on mobile phone use, and the policies that they are required to have in place around bullying, for example, will benefit from well-informed governors, and input from parents and others on governing bodies, to make sure that they are effective and respond to some of the challenges that the use of mobile phone technology has brought.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
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Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I start by congratulating my noble friend Lord Mohammed of Tinsley and the noble Lord, Lord Biggar, on their maiden speeches. I also of course welcome them to the House. Today is an important day and this is an important opportunity to make the lives and well-being of our children and young people, and their families, so much better. I have listened to all 77 speeches, which give me great hope that this opportunity will not be missed by your Lordships.
The Bill gives us the opportunity to put right important issues that affect children and families in all sorts of different circumstances. In our schools, it gives us the opportunity to build on the successes already achieved, tackle new problems that have arisen and ensure that all children get the best possible schooling. Of course, we all want the best education for our children and to see them thrive at school. We want our schools to be places of learning where children learn, discover and play, and where we ignite the joy of learning. We want children and young people, whatever their background and circumstances, to want to come to school, to learn and to discover.
The Bill builds on the successes that have been achieved but also deals with the new-found issues that are holding our children back. Let me start with well-being. Only yesterday, the Global Flourishing Study on well-being was reported. The study, which questioned more than 200,000 people from 22 countries, found that the UK came third from bottom for well-being.
The mental health of young people impacts on not only their learning but, of course, their well-being. We must not forget the profound effect that Covid had on children, in particular the lack of socialising with other children. One in five children has a mental health condition and 500 children a day are referred to mental health services. We on these Benches require a qualified and fully funded mental health practitioner in every school. For schools with fewer than 100 pupils, it makes sense for a group of schools to share that mental health practitioner. In opposition, the Government said they wanted to bring a mental health worker to every school, but this is part of the responsibility of the Department of Health. It was a manifesto commitment, but as yet there is no Bill laying this out. Perhaps the Minister will tell us when this commitment will be honoured.
Our commitment would help not only the pupil but the school as a whole and, of course, take pressure from the NHS. Academies started by the Blair Government were seen as a way of tackling low educational achievement in disadvantaged communities. They had more resources, curriculum flexibility and autonomy from the state system. The coalition Government started on their academisation programme with a single-minded—some might say ruthless—determination. Now, over 80% of our schools are either stand-alone or part of a multi- academy trust. It is right that the current Government do not change this model but allow all schools to thrive and grow—but not at the expense of each other.
It must be right that all schools are inspected in the same way and all teachers’ pay is equitable. Our school system should ensure that all teachers are fully qualified or working towards a teaching qualification. With the right safeguards in place, this should not prevent individuals coming into schools to add to the teaching experience, whether it is helping with reading or whether it is somebody with a particular interest, knowledge or expertise sharing that with the pupils. It happens in maintained schools as well. We should also remember that teaching assistants at NVQ levels 3 and 4 can teach in the classroom.
There should be a national curriculum that all schools in England follow, which makes it clear what children should learn but which equally allows time and space for an individual school to pursue areas of expertise and interest. I hope that the curriculum review will understand this sensible approach.
Talking of sensible approaches brings me to the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who reminded us that university technical colleges have a specialised curriculum that makes them unique and successful. They will not have the time to follow a full national curriculum. It makes sense to allow them to have that flexibility. At a time when we need to be providing the skills to grow the economy, we need more university technical colleges. We do not want to see them struggle with the difficulties that they might face with a straitjacketing national curriculum.
Let me frame my next remarks with some statistics: 1.49 million children are persistently absent from school; 171,000 are severely absent from school; 117,700 are in elective home education; and 350,000 are missing entirely from the school system—as we have heard, we do not even know where many of them are. Finally, there were 83,920 incidents of children missing in care in 2024.
As a society, we must always put the safety and well-being of our children at the forefront of everything we do. That is why it is right to ensure that there is a legal framework in which home education is carried out. Currently, any parent can decide to home educate without informing anybody and without any registration or checks. The majority of home educators do a magnificent job in teaching their children at home, and many local authorities have a commendable and constructive working relationship with home educators. We want a framework that is supportive, not bureaucratic, and that ensures that home education is worthy of its name and keeps children in a safe environment. There must never, ever be another Sara Sharif tragedy.
As I said, many local authorities have an excellent relationship with home educators, with some carrying out groundbreaking initiatives. To encourage that relationship, why not pay the exam fees for children who are being home educated? After all, by being home educated, they are saving the state millions of pounds annually.
All schools must be registered and inspected. It cannot be right that some schools with strict religious fundamental practices, after being closed by Ofsted, reopen in the guise of home education. Equally, it beggars belief that children and young people—often the most vulnerable in our communities, including those with special educational needs—are placed in unregistered schools after they are excluded from school. Why are we allowing local authorities to do that? It is because the unregistered schools are cheaper than the registered schools. We need to do something about it. Having said that, some unregistered alternative providers do an excellent job, but, because of their size, they are not able to meet Ofsted requirements. In Committee, let us see whether there is a possible solution to that problem.
We want children to be nourished at school. That is why we brought in the very successful free lunchtime meals for all children at key stage 1. Independent research showed that it helped children, particularly from low-income families, and that it improved well-being, learning and attendance. We would extend that provision to special schools and key stage 2 pupils. We are not opposed to breakfast provision, but it does not reach all pupils, particularly those in rural areas. Breakfast club funding for primary schools will be £30 million, increasing the number of schools with free breakfast from 2,700 to 3,450—but that is out of a total of 16,700 primary state schools in England.
Time does not permit me to talk about a number of important issues. I would have liked to talk about the national tutoring guarantee, Traveller children, refugee children, extending human rights protections, outsourced children’s care, summer-born children, school uniforms, bullying and so on.
Noble Lords will have received dozens of briefings from organisations, charities and individuals, all showing a thirst to improve the well-being of our children and their families, as well as a genuine desire to improve education and schooling. Because I am an optimist, I know that during our seven days in Committee we will deal with amendments on many of those issues and I am sure that the Government will be prepared to listen and consider, and that we will improve on what is already a very good starting point.