Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
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Baroness Bousted (Lab)
If that was the case, let me apologise for saying that. They have got better at inclusion, and the noble Baroness is quite right to upbraid me on that.
However, it is really important that there is a power to direct schools to take pupils in order that they get an education. Secondly, we need a way of organising an admissions system which allows all children within the locality to have a viable education with a full, broad and balanced curriculum.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, some of the points the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, makes are important to consider. But let me remind the House that, over the years, Governments of various political persuasions have said how important it is that there is parental choice. They have encouraged parents to look at a school’s results, to read its prospectus, and to visit the school. Sometimes it is done by word of mouth. Sometimes those parents even look at how the children behave at the bus stop while they are waiting to go home of an evening.
I guarantee that nearly every single person sitting in this Chamber wanted the best possible school for their child. There were Members of different political parties who espoused strong views on this issue but, when it came to their own children, they often chose a school which was not in the local catchment area or was not the school the child was subscribed to go to. In some cases, they chose an independent or private school. The body politic has encouraged the notion of parental choice. We know that, as pupil numbers rise, this puts all sorts of pressures on schools and becomes very hard to deliver in all sorts of ways.
I am sorry to go on about Liverpool, but it is my home city and I learn lessons from it. I remember in the late 1960s and the 1970s, the then council decided to build two brand new state-of-the-art comprehensives: Paddington, in the inner city, and Netherley, in the north. They were built as 12-form entry schools. They had fantastic facilities: drama, you name it. The parents preferred the small secondary schools with three-form and four-form entry. Various Secretaries of State wrestled with this problem as the numbers dropped and dropped. I remember going to see Shirley Williams, then Secretary of State for Education, and saying, “Look, Paddington comprehensive is now only a two-form entry school. Why not make it into a tertiary college?” She said no, and I used to tease her about that decision. This is not an easy thing to do. We know that primary numbers are declining—the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, gave the figures. In Liverpool, we can already see that even so-called popular primary schools have spare capacity.
How do we sort this problem out? The answer is not to try to be the professor of admission numbers, chopping numbers off here and adding them there. Sadly, we have to do what we promised parents: we have to let them decide. The answer is not to say that we are going to make a particular school survive—as in the case of Paddington—by reducing the form entry, or, in some cases, closing a school so that children have to go to another particular school. That is not the answer at all.
I hate to say this—I never thought I would say this in my political career—but I think we have to let educational market forces take their course. If we believe in, and have promised parents, parental choice, we have to allow that. To say that we should cut the form entry—the PAN—of so-called popular schools is not the solution. Actually, there are academies that are not popular. Let us not think that all academy schools are going to gain from this. I know several academies—I will not name them—where numbers have dropped dramatically. Again, that is because of parental choice, and that is probably the right thing. So when it comes to this amendment, I will have to hold my nose but I think it is probably the right thing to do.
On Amendment 198, the noble Baroness, Lady Morris—as always—said what we on these Benches think. I say to my noble friend Lord Addington that I have never understood off-rolling. I can see children being taken off roll because their parents want to move or want to take them out of the school. I can see off-rolling when a pupil is permanently excluded from school. I can see off-rolling where a child has special educational needs which cannot be met at the school. But I cannot understand how schools were allowed to off-roll pupils for no particular reason at all. There are examples of where parents were given advice by schools which was not the right way to progress. I just think that off-rolling should not happen at all. In fact, I said to my noble friend Lord Addington, “Why do we need to review the practice? Isn’t the practice just not allowed, and we move on?” I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I just want to respond briefly to a couple of the remarks that were made about the amendments in my name. In relation to Amendment 198, I thank my noble friend Lord Nash for adding his name but also for making the case that we need more special schools and more alternative provision. I hope the Minister will have something to say on that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, said—I wrote it down—that we were giving schools reasons not to take a child. But the reason is the other children in the classroom. I was not trying to suggest that that is easy. I am just saying that there is one child who needs the right place, and we should do everything we can to make that happen, but there are 29 other children who also need to learn and to be able to study safely.
I turn to Amendment 199. The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, put it well when he said that it feels like we are punishing successful schools. That is the worry. Again, going back to the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, the new school that is improving is exactly the example that would be allowed to continue to grow. I think perhaps she misunderstood my remarks about that. In relation to a situation such as Camden, as she knows, first of all, my amendment would not apply. You would have to make an appropriate plan in exactly the way that she described, but we are talking about areas where you have schools performing at very different levels and it is the best schools that are forced to reduce their numbers. The noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, describes that as market forces gone to “ridiculous” levels. I just think it is about respecting parent choice, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, I support Amendment 203 in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran. Free schools have played an important role in raising educational standards over the last 15 years, with their benefits felt most strongly in communities that have needed them the most. As I set out during our discussions in Committee, last summer’s exam results underline their impact: free schools outperformed other non-selective state schools at GCSE and A-level, pushing up standards, particularly in areas of significant deprivation and low educational achievement. Giving school leaders the autonomy to innovate, whether through a longer school day and more stretching curriculum or developing closer links with business and universities, clearly has a measurable impact on school outcomes.
This success continues: only last week, 62 students—over a quarter of the year group—at the London Academy of Excellence, one of the earliest free schools to open, learned they had secured Oxbridge offers, surpassing the success of many of the country’s leading independent schools. This outstanding achievement makes it even more regrettable that, in December, the Government chose not to go ahead with a new sixth-form free school in Middlesbrough, backed by Eton and Star Academies, which aimed to deliver similar outcomes for its students. It was one of 26 proposed mainstream free schools that were cancelled after a long delay, to the dismay of the teachers, parents and communities that had championed their plans.
It is not just one free school or trust making a huge difference: research from the NFER shows pupils attending secondary free schools get better grades at GCSE, have lower absence rates and are more likely to take A-levels and to go to university. Will the Government publish the quantitative thresholds that were used to judge community need, demographic demand and the impact on existing schools that lay behind the recent cancellation of each of the 28 mainstream free school projects, and will they publish the assessment scores for each cancelled project? This would be extremely helpful information and a transparent way for the groups that put a lot of effort into these projects, and the parents, who obviously may not have been privy to conversations with the DfE, to understand the reasons for the decisions.
Free schools have provided a route for new ideas, energy and educational models to join the state system. Indeed, the Government themselves have acknowledged that
“the free schools programme has been crucial to meeting demographic need and pioneering new models that can raise standards”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/12/25; col. 45WS.]
Yet Clause 58 will mean fewer chances to innovate and less opportunity for the best-performing academies to expand and replicate their models. It is disappointing that the Government, despite some of their words, seem unwilling in practice to recognise the contributions free schools have made, and indeed could continue to make, to improving our education system—an achievement in which we should all take pride.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I wonder if the Minister in her reply could tell us this? Presumably, some of these schools are not going ahead not just because of the demographics but because the birth rate is falling in that area and, going back to our previous discussion, it would be stupid to build new schools if we are seeing the birth rate decline.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I shall make the case that Clause 58 should not stand part of the Bill, as set out in my Amendment 203. I am bringing this back because, in Committee, the Minister gave what I think is the most cursory response that I received over the course of the Bill. She said:
“The current system allows local authorities to propose new schools only as a last resort or in very limited circumstances. Local authorities hold the statutory responsibility to secure sufficient school places in their area, and it is right that we give them greater ability to fulfil that duty effectively. These changes will enable consideration of any local offer that meets the needs of children and families”.—[Official Report, 16/9/25; col. 2114.]
I then wrote to the Minister to ask how often local authorities had been unable to meet these duties effectively. The reply stated:
“The department does not collect data on how many times local authorities run a process to open a new school, but as you know, some regions have many more academy trusts operating in them than others; and under the high-quality trust framework, some trusts are considered much stronger than others in terms of governance, finances and educational expertise”.
So, once again, the Government have no firm evidence that there is a problem that needs solving.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, in my view, all the amendments in this group are important and worth seriously considering. I will deal first with Amendment 206. Of course, one person’s twaddle is most people’s reality.
The Curriculum and Assessment Review is an important step along the road to what the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, wants. It will actually strengthen the current citizenship curriculum. For the first time, it brings in citizenship at primary level as well. Now that we have the review, and the parts of it that have slightly altered civic and constitutional education, for example, I do not quite understand what the next stage is of populating that curriculum, particularly for citizenship and the points that the noble and right reverend Lord’s amendment makes, such as democracy, the rule of law, freedom, respect for every person and respect for the environment.
All that is important, but the most important thing, in my view, as well as having it on the curriculum, is the point that the noble Lord, Lord Norton, made. It is no good having a subject as important as citizenship unless you have quality teaching and staff who want to teach it, not just staff dragged in from the PE or the language department to do it. You need to have first-class materials to make that work.
On Amendment 208, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, I do not understand how a student in a school has relationship and sex education, yet a 16 year-old in a college does not. It just does not make sense. I am sure the Minister will be able to tell us that this should change, because it is hugely important. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, for tabling that amendment.
I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Sater and Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for their important amendment. In a sense, we have gone backwards, because we used to have an hour of sport and PE on the curriculum. It was one of the initiatives introduced by the Blair Government. For some reason, it got lost or diluted. I just do not understand why. When did it suddenly fall off the cliff edge, and who was waving the banner saying we should stop this? We still must have an hour of sport and PE on our school curriculum.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, for her amendments. I know some noble Lords will slightly wince at them but, with the exception of faith schools, what she is saying is happening in most of our secondary schools, and Ofsted is not reporting it. Most secondary schools that are non-faith schools are not carrying out a daily collective act of worship which is mainly Christian. It is just not happening. Maybe at some stage, whether we like it or not, we should face up to the reality of the situation.
My final question is to the Minister, on humanism. We have local SACREs, which decide what will be taught in schools in their locality. Could a SACRE minister say that humanism would be part of that religious education?
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I have one substantive amendment in this group, Amendment 220, which is also signed by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, asked why the guidance needs to be statutory. I think the answer is that the issues associated with children who are questioning their gender at a young age overlaps significantly with the safeguarding responsibilities of a school and therefore should be on a statutory footing.
As we discussed in Committee, the consultation on the draft guidance for schools for children questioning their gender identity closed in May 2024, and we are now approaching the two-year anniversary of this. I must say that it is laughable that the Government think they will respond in a matter of weeks to a consultation about whether to prevent under-16s from accessing harmful and addictive social media, but it takes nearly two years and we have no response from government on the gender questioning guidance, which was in draft and had been consulted on. The Government repeatedly say they need time to get it right; I just wondered whether the Minister could give us an indication of how much time, and how much time they think they will need to get the social media issue right. It feels like, if this is two years, that might be 10 years. The Government really need to get moving to publish the guidance to safeguard our children in these schools from this very contested and harmful ideology.
I thank my noble friend Lady Sater and her cosignatories for the extremely constructive Amendment 243C, delivered with exactly the same amount of energy as our noble friend Lord Moynihan. We read in the national press about potential cuts to funding for sport in schools. I wonder whether the Minister can reassure the House that that is not the case. Sport is—I reluctantly admit, as the least athletic person in your Lordships’ House—extremely important. As we have heard, sport builds not just physical fitness but teamwork, mental resilience and an ability to meet the two imposters of triumph and disaster on the field with equanimity. I hope the Minister will give this amendment the consideration it deserves.
My noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes made the case powerfully for bringing consistency to the provision of relationships and sex education and PSHE to pupils in FE colleges. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and I tussled over his amendment back in the Schools Bill in 2022, but he remains very persuasive on this subject. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Finally, I expressed our concerns about the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull, in Committee. I am afraid our position has not changed.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
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Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, for moving this amendment, and I associate myself with the excellent speeches made in support of it and the other amendments in the group. I also associate myself with the high praise for the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, for which I have the highest regard, and for the Benedict Blythe Foundation and the remarkable dedication of Helen Blythe. Her son Benedict was five years old when his milk allergy took his life. A plan was in place, but it was not followed.
My son was five years old when we first discovered that he had a severe nut allergy. We had no idea—there were no signs or indications. He suffered a severe anaphylactic shock and we did not know what was happening to him. His life was saved by our extraordinary good fortune that it took place on a cruise and immediate hospital-level treatment was available. I am profoundly struck that his life was saved by being in proximity to the crucial care that he needed.
For the most severe, like my son, auto-injectors are only a means of providing enough time to get necessary hospital treatment. At that time, if he had had such an attack in school, it is most likely that he would not have survived. Some 30% of children affected have their first reaction at school, the most frequent location outside the home setting. While progress has been made in some schools, as the Benedict Blythe Foundation research has shown, school preparedness for dealing with allergies is dangerously and tragically low, as evidenced by the fact that half of all schools have no spare auto-injectors. However, I stress that auto-injectors are not enough; it is strategy, training and other elements that will ensure that lives can be saved.
The amendment proposes a sensible and comprehensive approach to create the right capacity and capability in all schools. I hope the Minister will provide reassurance that the Government are committed to a mandatory and comprehensive allergy safety policy framework, as set out in the amendment, and either are open to accepting the amendment or can provide details of how these objectives can be achieved.
Lord Storey (LD)
Every child must be safeguarded and safe from harm when they attend school. I remember, 15 years ago, what were called EpiPens. I had never heard of them until a parent came into school and told me about her child who had a particular allergy. We stocked EpiPens—one in each classroom, clearly labelled—and we trained the staff. I remember the staff being fearful, so we stabbed a grapefruit in those days to train ourselves. We did that on our own initiative because we understood our duty of care, but children’s lives cannot depend on individual schools taking the initiative. This must be guaranteed by government policy.
The current system, I am sorry to say, is a postcode lottery. Some children are fortunate to attend schools that are honest about what they can guarantee. Others face confusion, inconsistency and danger. Children have learned from the age that they first enter school to bring their own food to school, to every meal, and to self-administer treatment, because the adults around them are untrained and unequipped.
Baroness Benjamin (LD)
My Lords, I support Amendment 215 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and Amendment 216 in the name of my noble friend Lord Addington, who has great experience in matters concerning children with special needs, so I fully support his amendment. I shall speak on Amendment 215 on behalf of my daughter, who is a secondary school teacher and has considerable experience regarding the issue of children using smartphones in schools. Noble Lords will not be surprised to hear that she is fully in favour of this amendment, like so many other teachers up and down the country. Her school has a phone ban and she tells me that it works really well, as it allows teachers to concentrate on lessons and not spend valuable time policing the use of smartphones during the school day.
It works also because it is a great discipline for children to resist the temptation to access their phones during school and lesson time. On the other hand, I have spoken to teachers at education conferences whose schools do not have a ban on smartphones, and they long for that change. They have told me that they spend a great deal of time preventing pupils using phones instead of concentrating on teaching. They express their frustration at how some children cause disruption and are offensive to teachers who tell them to put their phones away. Often, pupils are distracted or bullied and harassed on social media and messaging apps. Girls especially are very intimidated by boys sharing upskirt videos of them and making offensive sexual suggestions. These are some of the reasons why Amendment 215 is asking for a ban on the use of phones by children during school hours.
On arrival at school, pupils will simply be asked to leave their phones in a secure place until the end of the school day. In the event of an emergency at home, the school can be contacted and act on the situation appropriately. Pupils can be taken out of class and given back their phone to contact their home if necessary. Actually, I believe that if a child were to receive an upsetting emergency message on their phone in the class or playground, it could be very traumatic for them to deal with. My daughter told me of a case of one of her pupils whose father passed away unexpectedly. The school was contacted and the child was taken out of class and received pastoral care to help them deal with the distressing news and take in the devastating loss.
We know that the use of smartphones can be addictive and cause mental stress, depression, fear, anxiety and harm, which can be very difficult to deal with, especially in the school environment. Incidentally, this issue very much runs parallel with the current move to ban children under the age of 16 from accessing social media accounts, which I very much support. It was great to see that Spain announced today that it will bring in an under-16 ban, too. Hurrah!
I urge the Government to accept these amendments, give clarity and make a general policy across all schools, state and private, that phones are banned, except in the circumstance of children with special needs, as highlighted in my noble friend Lord Addington’s Amendment 216. Let us give our children some respite from social media, YouTube and messaging apps during school hours; let us get away from the distractions and harms they currently cause to our children and help those children concentrate on their special education. Because, as my mum always says, “Education is your passport to life”.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 216. The amendment to ban mobile phones in schools was introduced to safeguard children’s well-being, which is a principle that I wholeheartedly support. But it is therefore imperative that we consider all the ways that a mobile phone can be vital for a child’s well-being and security.
I was recently contacted by a mother of a diabetic child who relies on a mobile phone app to monitor her glucose level and manage insulin treatment. Without that device, her child would be at serious risk. For students who depend on assistive technology, whether for communication, medical monitoring or learning support, a mobile phone is not a distraction: it is a lifeline. We must ensure that, in our efforts to protect children from the harms of excessive screen time, we do not inadvertently endanger those who rely on these technologies to participate fully and safely in school life. This amendment provides the necessary clarity and protection for vulnerable students and I urge the House to support it.
Incidentally, I was contacted today by young carers who need access to a phone because of their caring roles. One young carer said, “I’m not going to go into school, then, because I’ll be too worried that something might happen to the person I am looking after”. So there are nuances to this issue and one of the ways of dealing with them is by supporting the amendment that was moved by my noble friend Lord Addington.
On the general issue, whether it is teachers, parents or grandparents, everybody has concerns about mobile phones in school. It is interesting to remember what the head of Ofsted said. He said that they had played a part in the ongoing scandal of poor school attendance,
“whether by chipping away at attention spans and eroding the necessary patience for learning, or by promoting disrespectful attitudes and behaviours”.
He also linked mobile phones in schools to the massive increase in permanent exclusions—which, in 2023-24, were up to a record 10,885 children and young people permanently excluded from school—and to the increase in the number of suspensions. I do not know whether they are a direct result of having mobile phones in schools, but clearly Ofsted’s chief inspector thinks that that is the case.
I think a ban will have to be agreed, but I hope that, when this comes back on ping-pong, the Government might clarify some of the ways that we deal with these exceptions, because there are issues as well. If, for example, a child or young person needs their mobile phone to monitor their glucose levels, how will that phone be handed in or given back? Will there be a register for that? It all needs to be thought through but, yes, we need to ban mobile phones in school.
Baroness Kidron (CB)
My Lords, I too added my name to Amendment 215 but, like my noble friend Lord Hampton, I have spoken on this issue quite a lot and anyone who would like to know my view can find it in Hansard—reams of it.
However, I want to ask the Minister a few questions about the Government’s current position. I was delighted to hear the Prime Minister declare that no one thinks you should have phones in schools and that schools are expected to be phone-free by default. I am particularly pleased because that is a shift in government messaging: in the last two debates on this issue, I was told that the guidance was sufficient as it is and that 90% of secondary schools already have policies in place that work.
I am delighted, but I want to understand what recycling the guidance is going to do to change the experience on the ground for children. Only 15% of children say that phones do not affect their lessons in some way. How will the new guidance help?
My second question is around Ofsted inspections. Ofsted inspects about a quarter of schools each year, so each school gets between three and four years between inspections. I would like to hear from the Minister because I am concerned that, if we pass this today and stick with the Government’s guidance, there are some schools that will not be inspected for another four years. We have a problem in the real world. We will have new guidance, but with a system that will be checked at some time in the future. I am worried that many things could happen in that gap.
Thirdly, I looked at the government website, where Ofsted’s national director of education wrote:
“If a school chooses not to follow the guidance, inspectors will continue to explore the impact of mobile phones on pupils’ behaviour, safety and wellbeing”.
Can the Minister state under what circumstances not having a bell-to-bell restriction would be appropriate, given what the national director of education has said?
Finally, I hope to give the noble Lord, Lord Addington, a little support. I have long advocated for a bell-to-bell restriction, for support for schools to store phones during the day, and for exemptions for children, carers and even for pedagogical reasons—teaching about phones—and for pupils who need assistive technology. But this has taken so long, and we cannot let the exemptions undermine the need to act. If this goes through tonight, will the Government come back with something that is sensitive to these exceptions but does not undermine the purpose of the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran? We cannot have an expectation of a phone-free school day, an inspection regime that means that, even if we arrive on this today, some schools will not have seen it in four years’ time, and a policy which the inspectors represent as a choice. This does not add up.
The reason most often given by Ministers against this policy is that it is worse at home. I beg the Government to give the kids a break and eight hours off. The Government are in loco parentis when children are at school. This would be a marvellous thing for the Government to do for parents.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, one year ago today, on 3 February 2025, 15 year-old Harvey Willgoose was tragically stabbed in the heart at All Saints Catholic High School in Sheffield. It happened in the school courtyard in the lunch break, and the perpetrator was Mohammed Umar Khan. An independent review has been commissioned by the school’s trust on what it calls “missed opportunities” and “too many red flags” about Mohammed Khan’s previous behaviour. Khan’s record showed around 130 incidents of concern relating to violence, anger issues and even carrying weapons, yet somehow teachers did not feel able to handle that. Allegedly—the trust is looking into this—some teachers said that they raised the alarm but were ignored or it was pushed away from them.
It is important that we note that teachers should never be frightened to intervene for whatever reason by asserting adult authority. One problem we have to address is making sure that we do not in any way send a message that teachers cannot have the tools that they need to deal with challenging behaviour in schools. It is therefore important that suspension and permanent exclusions are part of the tools that reinforce and deter serious misconduct across schools, signal that certain behaviours have severe consequences and allow boundaries to exist and be reinforced. That is beneficial to all pupils as well as staff. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, that sometimes we forget those children who are sitting there and are victims of the misbehaving or violent child. It is for that reason that I have added my name to Amendment 217, which would require local authorities to undertake an assessment of the needs of any permanently excluded child. I am sure that one reason many head teachers are nervous about permanent exclusion is that they do not want that to be the end of the educational road for the child and they do not want the child to disappear. It is very important that we do not allow that to happen.
Amendment 218, which probes the Government’s willingness to introduce a presumption against the reinstatement of a child excluded for very serious matters, such as possession of a knife or other weapon, sexual assault or assault against a teacher, would be key in backing up teachers’ ability to be authoritative and feel safe when teaching. Pupils need to be relocated to an environment more suitable to their challenging behaviour and then they should be followed up because we do not want an argument to be used that permanently excluded, difficult, challenging children will end up in the wilderness with no possible options. These amendments cover that really well, and Amendment 217 aims to prevent that bleak outcome.
On Amendment 219, under which if pupils are excluded on two occasions it would not automatically be assumed that schools would have to take them back, I think that is important and I will be interested to hear what the Minister thinks about it, because it could prevent heightened risk to other staff or students. But I also think we should not presume that it is okay simply to move the problem to another mainstream school. It just feels lazy, like moving the deckchairs. More pupils are then put at risk in another school, but the problem is never tackled. They might actually need to be relocated to a more suitable environment.
I should say that, at one point, I taught for several years in a further education setting pupils from the age of 14 upwards who had been excluded from schools in the local area. They were, to say the least, challenging. Many of them had been violent in their classrooms, but many of them had literally just gone from pillar to post, pillar to post, with no particular regard to the issues they had. When they were actually in a special class—I am not saying it was special because I was teaching it—at least it meant that we could focus on the difficulties they had.
My final thought, having sat through a lot of the discussions, is that we need to be aware that the deterioration—and there has been a deterioration—of young people in schools does not come out of a vacuum. We have just heard the discussions and the tensions around mobile phones. We do have to think that sometimes our policies can make matters worse. In that instance, I think that the question that was asked earlier about how we are actually going to police and enforce any ban on mobile phones in schools was worth asking, because the teachers are going to have to police it. That could lead to a lot more tensions.
Also, to refer to an earlier amendment, suspensions and permanent exclusions rose sharply when schools reopened after the Covid lockdown period, with suspensions up by 21% and permanent exclusions up by 16%. Following on from the earlier amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Young, in relation to lockdowns, I think we should understand that that period really did damage young people and led to a decline in behaviour. We have to take some responsibility for that.
In general, I think that the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, are a really useful way for us to reconsider how we tackle this issue.
Lord Storey (LD)
Children have a right to learn, and teachers have a right to teach. Permanent exclusion is far more than a disciplinary measure; it is a pivotal moment that can shape a child’s future. Consider the 2023-24 academic year, when almost 10,900 children were permanently excluded in England, with nearly four in 10 due to persistent disruptive behaviour. Without careful support, these exclusions can set children on a path of disengagement, low attainment and tragically increased involvement with the criminal justice system.
We know that exclusions disproportionately affect the most vulnerable. Children eligible for free school meals or with special education needs are far more likely to be excluded, highlighting the urgent need for support that is tailored rather than one size fits all. All too often, excluded children simply fall out of the system, their potential left unrealised.
This amendment would require local authorities to carry out a formal needs assessment, ensuring that support is timely, targeted and responsive. Professionals will be able to identify barriers to learning, social or emotional challenges and offer suggestions for appropriate interventions, whether that be reintegration into another school, alternative provision or targeted mental health and well-being support. Whichever route this intervention follows, it is essential, as evidence shows that without such structured intervention excluded children face long-term education disadvantage and reduced life chances.
This is not mere bureaucracy; it is a practical, evidence-informed measure, designed to safeguard children and give them a chance to succeed. It aligns with the Government’s commitment to exclusion and equality of opportunity, recognising that every child has value, talent and potential. It is our collective responsibility to provide a safety net for those most at risk. I urge noble Lords to support this amendment, not as a mere procedural formality but as a moral and educational imperative. Let us ensure that no child is left behind simply because they have faced challenges in their schooling.
Lord Storey
“National tutoring guarantee(1) The Secretary of State must, within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, publish a report outlining the steps necessary to introduce a national tutoring guarantee.(2) A “national tutoring guarantee” means a statutory requirement on the Secretary of State to ensure access to small group academic tutoring for all disadvantaged children who require academic support.(3) A report published under this section must include an assessment of how best to deliver targeted academic support from qualified tutors to children—(a) from low-income backgrounds,(b) with low prior attainment,(c) with additional needs, or(d) who are young carers.(4) In preparing a report under this section, the Secretary of State must consult with—(a) headteachers,(b) teachers,(c) school leaders,(d) parents of children from low-income backgrounds,(e) children from low-income backgrounds, and(f) other individuals or organisations as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.(5) A report under this section must be laid before Parliament.(6) Within three months of a report under this section being laid before Parliament, the Secretary of State must take steps to begin implementation of the recommendations contained in the report.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires the Secretary of State to publish a report outlining the steps required to introduce a national tutoring guarantee, and to begin implementing its recommendations.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 222 in my name. This would require the Secretary of State to publish a report outlining the steps needed to introduce a national tutoring guarantee and to begin implementing its recommendations. I brought this recommendation forward because the Covid-19 pandemic exposed and worsened education inequalities. Many pupils, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, were left behind. Without targeted support, these gap risks become long term, limiting life chances and future opportunities.
High-quality tutoring has been shown to be one of the most effective ways to help pupils catch up. That is why the national tutoring programme has played such an important role since 2020. In the 2023-24 academic year alone, the programme delivered 1.5 million courses and reached approximately 1.7 million pupils across England. Around 45% of these pupils were eligible for free school meals and 28% had special educational needs. These figures show that the programme has successfully targeted some of the pupils who need it most. However, they also highlight that, despite this reach, the support remains temporary and unevenly guaranteed.
That is why a national tutoring guarantee is so important. My amendment would require the Secretary State to set out a clear plan for it and begin implementing it without delay. It would ensure that access to high-quality tutoring is equitable, consistent and based on evidence rather than dependent on local decisions or temporary funding. A national tutoring guarantee would mean that no child’s opportunity to catch up is determined by postcode or parental resources. It would demonstrate that the Government take seriously their responsibility to support pupils at risk of falling behind.
We know that gaps in learning can have lasting consequences that affect exam results, life chances and employment prospects, making this not merely an educational measure but a vital investment for our young people. For these reasons, I commend this amendment to the House and urge sending a clear message that every child deserves the opportunity to succeed, regardless of the circumstances that they face.
Lord Macpherson of Earl’s Court (CB)
My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendment 243E, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Layard. It is late, and I promise to be brief.
In Committee, a cross-party group of Peers spoke in support of an amendment that would have guaranteed a place on an apprenticeship to every 16 to 18 year-old who wanted it. Such a guarantee would have improved the supply of skills in this country at a time when they are needed more than ever, not least because of the Government’s success in curbing immigration. It would have enhanced growth and, more important still, improved the lives of young people who struggle with the academic education system.
Sadly, the Government were unable to support the amendment at that time. However, I was grateful to the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Blake of Leeds, for the positive spirit in which she responded. Since that debate, the noble Lord, Lord Layard, and I have had constructive meetings with DWP officials. We have therefore sought to soften the amendment to bring it into line with what Ministers and officials have said to us.
We are mindful that resources are finite, and the noble Lord, Lord Layard, and I have redrafted the original amendment to take this into account. All we are asking now is for the Government to endorse the principle that they will prioritise the provision of sufficient apprenticeships for qualified 16 to 18 year-olds as soon as resources permit. In effect, we are asking for the Government to sign up to the principle of a guarantee, not to its immediate delivery.
Unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Layard, is unable to be here today due to a long-standing engagement, but he has asked me to make three very short points. First, by the age of 18, one in three of our young people have ceased to receive any education or training. This proportion is much higher than in any comparable competitor country and is terrible for our productivity and the prospects of these young people.
Secondly, it is not these young people’s fault. Most of them would like to learn while earning, but the opportunities are just not there. Three times more people apply for apprenticeships than the number who obtain them. This is totally different from the university route, where nearly all applicants find a place.
Thirdly, the top priority in education policy should therefore be to ensure that there are enough apprenticeship places up to level 3 for all qualified applicants. That is what this amendment proposes. This is a hugely important issue that relates to one of the greatest problems facing our country. I hope that the Minister agrees that this should be put into law, but, if she cannot, can she at least make an oral commitment to this principle?
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, I rise very briefly to signal my support for Amendment 243E, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Layard. I added my name in Committee, and I am very sorry that, sadly, I missed the deadline for adding it on Report. The noble Lord, Lord Macpherson, set out very clearly the purpose of this amendment and I do not want to repeat that. I just think it is very telling indeed that three times as many people apply for apprenticeships than the numbers who obtain them, and that is just because the places are not available. Just think how different that is from the university route, where nearly all applicants find a place. For me, it is fundamentally an issue of equity and parity of treatment for all young people.
We have seen the number of under-19s starting apprenticeships fall by more than a third since the apprenticeship levy was introduced. This amendment, as has been said, has been very carefully recrafted by the noble Lords, Lord Layard and Lord Macpherson, into something which I hope very much goes with the grain of what the Government are trying to achieve. I therefore very much hope that we will hear something positive from the Minister on it.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I will speak to my other amendment in this group, Amendment 243B, but I will just add a few words on Amendment 243E, following on from my noble friend Lady Tyler’s comments. We are in danger of abandoning an entire generation of young people who do not follow the traditional university route. While apprenticeship places at levels 5 and 6 continue to expand, opportunities at levels 3 and 4 are shrinking. This surely is a cruel paradox. Young people who have university degrees will be able to access higher-level apprenticeships. Meanwhile, those who most need levels 3 and 4 to begin their careers—16 to 18 year-olds without prior qualifications—are left stranded. These young people are not lacking in ambition or ability. They simply seek a different path—one that is rooted in practical skills and real-world experience. Yet we are closing the doors in their faces at the very moment that they are ready to step through them.
We saw at first hand the transformative power of apprenticeships for young people who thrive outside traditional academic settings. This amendment would ensure that, as we develop apprenticeship policy, we do not forget the young people who need these opportunities the most. It is about fairness, opening pathways, and giving every young person, regardless of whether they go to a university, a genuine chance to build a meaningful future. I urge the House to support it.
On my Amendment 243B, we know that schools are not VAT-rated, and that sixth forms in schools are not VAT-rated. Then along came the academisation of our schools, and a very clever move was made by the noble Lord, Lord Gove—I hope I am not using his name in vain; he is not here—who saw a very quick way to enable sixth forms to become part of multi-academy trusts. So, guess what? The sixth forms that chose to go into a multi-academy trust were not VAT-rated. Those poor sixth forms who decided to stay on their own and not be swallowed up by a multi-academy trust are VAT-ed: they have to pay VAT. How unfair is that?
The average stand-alone sixth-form college turnover is around £15 million, and it spends 80% or more on staff, examination fees, food and depreciation, which does not attract VAT. So a 20% refund on what remains would save them about £500,000. But, of course, would it be unthinkable that the DfE would bring sixth-form colleges into Section 33: in other words, they would not be VAT-rated but would not be FE colleges? Imagine what that extra money would do to attract students and further the skills agenda that is so important to the Government. Perhaps the Minister will tell us clearly why these stand-alone sixth-form colleges cannot be treated in a fair and equitable way, like sixth forms in schools or sixth forms in multi-academy trusts.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, this has been a wide-ranging group and we thank all noble Lords who have made valuable contributions.
Amendment 222 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, is indeed well intentioned and highlights important issues, but we hold reservations that a national tutoring guarantee may risk diverting resources and overstretching teachers. It would be our preference for schools themselves to decide whether a tutoring programme works and then to identify the most suitable approach for their pupils. We thank the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for his approach, but we are not able to support him on this particular amendment.
On the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Mott, it is clear that more needs to be done to support children with a parent in prison. If we understood it correctly, the Minister previously suggested that the Government were undertaking an analysis between the Department for Education and the Ministry of Justice to address this issue. We would be most grateful if the Minister could update your Lordships’ House on what that work is which is being undertaken, and when actions will be evidenced to answer the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Mott.
Regarding Amendment 243 in the name of my noble kinswoman, the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, schools should absolutely be safe and resilient, and we seek assurance from the Minister that the Government have this covered.
We welcome Amendment 243A the name of my noble friend Lord Young of Acton. It is clear that we should not allow safeguarding procedures to be misused for individual political preferences and means. It is entirely correct that this is given the full weight of the law if it is not consistently applied by both teachers and heads. We thank my noble friend Lord Young for his commitment to this issue and urge the Government to stand united on it.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
My Lords, I think I win the prize tonight for the most wide-ranging set of amendments that could possibly come together in one group.
I turn first to Amendment 222, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. I appreciate the noble Lord’s arguments, which were also put forward in Committee. I thank him for raising them again. However, my view on this remains the same: schools are best placed to understand the needs of their pupils and should be able to choose from a range of options to best suit those needs, with tutoring being one option. Although the national tutoring programme has ended, schools can continue to provide tutoring through the use of funds such as pupil premium, which can be used to support the disadvantaged pupils identified in this proposed amendment. Guidance based on evidence gathered through the programme is available to support schools to deliver tutoring.
In addition, the noble Lord may be aware that on 26 January the Department for Education announced plans to co-create AI tutoring tools with teachers and leading tech companies. This programme will develop and robustly test our AI tutoring tools so they are safe and work for pupils, including the most disadvantaged, and school staff to complement high-quality, face-to-face teaching. We need to have confidence that schools are best able to go forward and use their resources appropriately.
On Amendment 241, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Mott, I fully appreciate the noble Lord’s concerns about the educational attainment of children with a parent in prison. We had a good discussion in Committee and we have committed to identifying and supporting all children affected by parental imprisonment. We welcome the intent of this amendment and assure the noble Lord that the Department for Education is working closely with the Ministry of Justice to determine how we can best identify all children affected, not just those of school age, sensitively and ensure that they get support to enable them to thrive.
I think that emphasis on sensitivity is crucial here. I stress what I have said before, which is that we must not make any assumptions in this area about the experience of individual young people and must make sure that their needs are met across the board. It is a complex picture and our approach is to make sure that we link to a consistent nationwide support offer. We are working through the details of exactly how we can do this. Sharing information and increasing awareness have to be fundamental measures that we look at in this. While I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment, I hope he recognises the seriousness with which we take this subject.
Amendment 243, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, would require new schools to be built to deliver net zero carbon in operation and to be resilient to climate change, and for action plans to be developed for all existing schools to reach net zero and to be resilient to the impacts of climate change. I can confirm that the Department for Education already requires all centrally funded school building projects to be net zero carbon in operation, designed to be climate resilient to a two-degree centigrade rise in average global temperatures and future proofed for a 4% rise, and to incorporate sustainable drainage systems and promote biodiversity. The DfE’s sustainability strategy introduced an expectation for all schools to develop a climate adaptation plan. This is supported by the Climate Ambassadors Network, which provides free expertise to schools.
The considerations set out in the amendment should be included in the setting’s climate action plan. As I say, guidance has been published, and I hope that schools are aware of the programme of support that is available to help them put the plans in place, with the sustainability leadership and climate action plans in education from the department. The requirement for a climate action plan has also been included in the recently updated estate management standards. This policy is designed to ensure that action is taken at a responsible body and/or setting level to ensure that children and young people are prepared for a changing future and that sustainability and climate resilience is built into the operation of the setting.
Turning to Amendment 243A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, I appreciate the intention behind this amendment: to prevent safeguarding procedures being misused for political purposes. The Government cannot support it, however. Safeguarding teams must be able to consider all relevant information to keep children safe, and restricting their ability to take account of political views would make that vital work harder. We recognise the difficulties that schools face when making decisions that require consideration of safeguarding and security risks alongside political impartiality and freedom of speech. However, we can all agree that the fact that my honourable friend Damien Egan MP was unable to visit a school in his constituency was a completely unacceptable situation, and I think it triggered, in part, the amendment. All Members of Parliament should be able to visit anywhere in their constituency without any fear of antisemitism or prejudice.
Ofsted has inspected the school in question and found no concerns, but it is also vital that we fully understand the circumstances of this case. That is why the Secretary of State has asked the trust to commission an independent investigation into what happened so that key lessons can be learned. The Secretary of State has also announced an independent national review to help ensure that all schools and colleges have the right systems, processes and support available to identify and respond effectively to antisemitism and related issues, as has been outlined. It is important that we do not pre-empt those reviews, and the DfE will of course continue to look at all schools and colleges across the board through the lens of the work they are doing.
On Amendment 243B, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, I am aware that the VAT status of all further education colleges is an area of continued interest for the sector. Colleges are unable to reclaim VAT incurred on their non-business activity, which includes providing free education. The Government operate VAT refund schemes for local authorities, including the schools they maintain, and for academies. These are variously designed to prevent local authorities needing to raise local taxes to pay for their VAT costs, and to support schools to leave local authority control by ensuring equal VAT treatment between schools and academies. Colleges do not meet the criteria for either scheme. In relation to business activity, colleges enjoy an exemption from VAT which means that they do not have to charge VAT to students but cannot recover it either. I stress that tax is a matter for the Chancellor, who takes decisions at fiscal events in the context of the broader public finances.
Amendment 243E stands in the name of my noble friend Lord Layard, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Macpherson, for laying out its content and for the work he does with my noble friend, who is regarded as a real champion in this area. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, for their comments. The amendment seeks to ensure that every eligible young person aged 16 to 18 in England who wishes to start an apprenticeship at level 3 or below has the opportunity to do so.
This amendment is in the context of an incredible drop-off in the number of people starting apprenticeships, and the unforgivable rise in the number of young people who are NEET across the whole of the country. I am delighted that my noble friend Lord Layard is such a champion of apprenticeships, and this Government share his ambition to support more of these opportunities for young people. For this reason, we are investing in young peoples’ futures and rebalancing apprenticeships back towards young people, who obviously have the most to gain from apprenticeships, regaining their confidence, against the backdrop of the fall in starts over the last decade.
Since we last spoke in Committee, we have announced our ambition to support 50,000 more young people into apprenticeships, backed by an additional £725 million of investment. We will expand foundation apprenticeships into sectors where young people are traditionally recruited, exploring occupations such as hospitality and retail. We are making £140 million available to pilot new approaches to better connect young people, especially those who are NEET, to local apprenticeship opportunities. From August, apprenticeship training will be completely free for SMEs who hire eligible young people aged 16 to 24.
We also continue to provide a range of financial support to encourage employers to offer apprenticeships to young people. We provide £1,000 to employers when they take on apprentices aged under 19, or eligible 19 to 24 year-olds. Employers receive additional payments of up to £2,000 for eligible foundation apprenticeships. Employers are not required to pay anything towards employees’ national insurance for all apprentices up to age 25.
However, we have to recognise that apprenticeships are jobs, first and foremost. We cannot compel an employer to hire—it must remain for employers to decide when they offer apprenticeships to meet their skills needs.
With those comments, I hope the noble Lord will be able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I put my name to the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for a very simple reason. An awful lot of what we have been discussing today, and in recent days in Committee, is about trying to make this Bill as child-centric and school-centric as possible. There is a common theme running through many of these amendments. Given the pace at which the world is changing and the challenges that parents, schools, teachers and children have, to allow each individual entity to try to navigate their way through these changes in a wonderfully sort or British laissez-faire way will be wholly unrealistic and will not produce good outcomes.
Whether or not one likes to compare this country to them, examples of countries that have very centralised approaches to identifying what is safe and what is not safe for children include the People’s Republic of China—which, I remind noble Lords, has the only parliamentary assembly larger than your Lordships’ House—and France, to which some hereditary Peers perhaps have some antipathy for ancestral reasons. In both cases, those countries take it upon themselves systematically to proactively try to identify what is safe and what is not safe.
As an example that I think I may have mentioned in Committee of what can go wrong, and is going wrong, one of the best known technologies in classrooms now is Google Classroom. Let us say that you are on Google Classroom, provided through the school, you are being asked to use that to do a project, and that project is something to do with geography. To complete your project, you naturally go to Google Maps, which is conveniently there on the screen as part of the cluster of products linked into Google Classroom. The minute you leave Google Classroom and go on to Google Maps, you as a child and you as a school lose every protection you previously had for your data. Everything suddenly becomes visible to Google, and the data becomes saleable. It is making money out of the schoolchildren who are using the apps linked to Google Classroom.
One has to understand the financial model that these very successful companies use. We cannot expect individual schools and the data-processing officers within schools, who will be teachers who probably have multiple other responsibilities, to be on top of all the changes taking place in the products being sold in a very alluring way to schools. The companies will often say that this is being done with the overt or tacit approval and backing of His Majesty’s Government, which may or may not be true. It is extraordinarily difficult for these schools to identify what is safe and not safe, and what is effective in terms of outcome and what is less effective, because there is no moderating body at the moment that is trying to make sense of this on behalf of these schools, which are being assailed on all sides by multiple pressures.
On the one hand, we have a Government who are implying that this is good and we need more of it. Simultaneously, there is all the debate we are having about the amount of time we are spending on screens and the way we are using screens possibly having very unfortunate side-effects. To have all of this going on at the same time without any clear guidance and sense of direction from His Majesty’s Government is distinctly unhelpful. All these amendments are simply asking the Government to take a lead, to provide in a totally apolitical way some clarity about what is safe and what is not safe, to put processes in place to ascribe responsibility to those bodies capable of doing this, to do it in a co-ordinated way and, above all, to remember that we are talking about are the short, medium, and long-term interests of children.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, it is a bit like the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, having the two doctors in the room and great passion. It reminds me a bit of this Chamber, actually: we can certainly go for it at times.
I normally shy away from edtech, but I thought, “No, come on, grow up, Storey, you need to look at this carefully”. I went into teacher mode, I am afraid. I have some general thoughts. All the amendments grapple with the tension between protecting children and preparing them for the digital world. We need to balance parental rights, children’s educational needs and teachers’ autonomy. Technology is neither inherently good nor bad, and implementation and context matter. Finally, there is the risk of one-size-fits-all solutions not accounting for diverse school context and pupils’ needs.
I turn first to Amendment 227:
“Register of software tools permitted in schools”.
There are positives, are there not? This would ensure minimum safety and privacy standards for educational software, protect children from inappropriate content or data harvesting, and address current inconsistencies in firewalls, as some schools overblock, preventing legitimate learning. What are the concerns? There is a risk of creating a bureaucratic bottleneck as innovation in edtech moves faster than government approval processes. It could stifle teachers’ ability to use emerging tools or respond to pedagogical needs. Whitelisting requirements could be too rigid. What about trial periods for new tools? And who decides what meets curriculum principles could become politically contentious.
Then I look at Amendments 234, 235 and 236 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. Their intent is to reduce screen time for young children, which is particularly important for early years development and the reception baseline. They address equity concerns that not all families might have reliable devices or internet access at home. Handwriting skills and motor development remain important, especially for young children. The amendments reduce the potential for cheating or AI assistance in assessments. They give parents agency over the child’s screen exposure. From head teacher experience, I say that some parents are deeply concerned about excessive screen time and lack of control.
The concerns are that reducing screen time might disadvantage students who are more comfortable with digital tools. It could also limit the development of general computer skills and risk making education feel out of step with modern skills. It could create additional administrative burdens for schools, as managing two parallel systems could be impractical for certain subjects beyond just computing, and might inadvertently stigmatise children whose parents opt out. So it is over to the Minister to unravel the pros and the cons and tell us what we should do.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I start by acknowledging, as I am sure others in the House felt while listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, her many years of battling—I am sure it feels like battling—on this important area. I hope I speak on behalf of all of us, and I think I do, in thanking her for her work in this field.
Every day we see more options to include edtech in our classrooms and different forms of technology and tools, and indeed in our homes for homework purposes. With that in mind, I express the support of these Benches for Amendments 238, 239 and 240 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. I hope very much that we will get a firm date for the publication of a code of practice on the efficacy of edtech and on the use of children’s data. That is ever more pressing in a week when the Government have promised to roll out AI tutoring in schools. Of course, they are doing so with the best of intentions, but it creates an imperative to ensure that such tutoring is effective not just in engagement, where the evidence is pretty good, but, crucially, in learning, where the evidence is much less so. Indeed, a recent international study showed that the use of AI tutors resulted in improved homework grades but worse exam results when compared to those children who followed traditional approaches, suggesting that, without great care, edtech tools can be adopted that do not translate into long-term memory and deep learning.
The message we have really heard in all the speeches tonight is the need for pace from the Government, and I am sure the Minister has heard that. The noble Lord, Lord Tarassenko, also made a powerful case for his Amendment 227 and the strength of using existing standards to try to accelerate things and come up with a plan as quickly as possible.
I have brought back the three amendments that I tabled in Committee. Amendment 234 would ensure that all public exams could be completed by hand, Amendment 235 would remove the use of devices from the reception baseline assessment, and Amendment 236 would give parents the right to opt out of device-based homework, with some limits to accommodate medical and other needs. These need to be seen in the context of an ever-growing use of devices, which includes not just the ability to complete homework but also, in the case of personal devices, the power to distract through social media in particular. Parents are clear that when children are expected to use a personal device for homework, that erodes their ability to make the case for a phone-free or device-free evening or weekend.
I understand that some schools have concerns about how this would work in practice, but I think the Overton window has shifted on this issue too in the less than six months since we last debated it. It seems like the Government are moving in the opposite direction with the introduction of AI tutors, but I hope the Minister will reassure the House that that is not the case. As one expert wrote recently:
“If exams go fully digital, handwriting instruction could quickly be marginalised, and note-taking by hand be swapped out for a digital device with AI aids by pragmatic teachers and tech-loving students”.
Similarly, he wrote:
“Homework already jumps to online apps with assistive supports and AI guidance. There is little thought or complaint about how our brain may respond differently to screen scrolling and that of the physical act of writing on the page”.
There is so much evidence about the importance of physical handwriting in learning, and we are concerned that the move to using ever more screen-based learning will impact on that.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Storey Excerpts(1 week, 2 days ago)
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Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Bird, is a warrior and passionate advocate for the unemployed and the poor.
I have a slightly different take on this. Yes, targets and strategies are important, but how often do we say that we will sort this issue out by establishing targets and strategies? Actually, what is important is doing something. It is no good just agreeing a target or strategy; it is about doing things, having policies and carrying out actions which make a real difference.
I am quite ashamed that we live in the fifth or sixth-richest country in the world, yet only the other day, the LGIU published information which said that, even with breakfast clubs and free school meals, teachers are increasingly feeding and clothing their pupils when they come to school. The fifth or sixth-richest country in the world and we are doing that. I am ashamed that there are a million young people not in a job, employment or training. That cannot be right in the fifth or sixth-richest country in the world. We need to take actions.
I congratulate the Government on doing away with the two-child benefit cap. That is an action which will make a huge difference. Some of the other policies that Governments quite rightly trot out, such as introducing breakfast clubs or doing this on clothing, are important but are not the big things that will make a difference to child poverty.
In the fifth or sixth-richest country in the world, it is also frightening to realise that 21% of adults live in poverty. So, it has to be—I hate using the word, but I will do it—a holistic approach. It is about making sure that people have jobs. If you have a well-paid, proper job, that helps your family and children. If you have a decent house, not with mould, damp or whatever it is, that helps your child, family and self-esteem. If you have decent schools, as the Bill is trying build on the work of the previous Government, that is life-changing as well.
So let us see actions: not more targets or strategy, but something happening.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their valuable contributions to this debate, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for his relentless focus on tackling poverty through the Big Issue and Big Issue Invest, investing in social enterprises, social purpose businesses and charities trying to end poverty and reduce inequality in the UK.
Your Lordships’ House is united in its determination to address child poverty and the range of complex issues that drive it. While we fully recognise the firm intent behind this amendment, His Majesty’s loyal Opposition retain a number of reservations, which we shared in Committee. We unequivocally hold a desire to reduce child poverty, but the issue is deeply complex. We have concerns that legally binding targets determined by central government risk overlooking the local and regional variances in the causality and the experiences of child poverty. As the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, highlighted in Committee, the pursuit of targets can often shift the focus on to particular statistics rather than people’s lived experiences. Central government must be able to adapt to ever developing needs and realities, in addition to enabling local authorities and organisations—which are often better placed to understand these esoteric local challenges—to act accordingly.
We will therefore welcome seeing the details of the Government’s child poverty strategy when it is published in the autumn, including new monitoring and evaluation arrangements to track progress, which, with the right strategy for delivery, should yield results. We once again thank the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for his dedication to this vital issue. While we cannot support the amendment directly, we strongly welcome the intentions behind it.
Lord Storey
“Action to promote the wellbeing of children in relation to harms-based access to social mediaIn section 11 of the Online Safety Act 2023 (children’s risk assessment duties), after subsection (6) insert—“(6A) Providers of regulated user-to-user services that are likely to be accessed by children, including such services as are designated by OFCOM as social media services for the purposes of this section, must submit as part of the children’s risk assessment a proposed minimum age of access to their service.(6B) The default and expected minimum age for access to a social media platform shall be 16 years.(6C) OFCOM must publish guidance defining the types of service to be treated as social media services for the purposes of subsection (6A).(6D) Providers of regulated user-to-user services that are likely to be accessed by children and social media services designated for the purposes of this section must keep the proposed minimum age of access under review and must re-evaluate it—(a) at such regular intervals as may be specified by OFCOM; and(b) where there is any substantial change to the service’s design, functionality, algorithms, business practices, or risk profile. (6E) Where the minimum age of access is set at 16 or below, providers must use a form of age assurance that is highly effective at correctly determining whether or not a particular user is of age to use the service.(6F) A provider may propose a minimum age of access above or below 16 where it—(a) can offer sufficient evidence that it meets Ofcom’s guidance concerning appropriate, risk-based minimum ages;(b) has due regard to relevant standards and principles of the UK General Data Protection Regulation;(c) has particular regard to the importance of protecting the rights and best interests of children, as recognised by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child;(d) has considered the potential impact of the service on the mental health and psychological wellbeing of children;(e) has investigated the extent to which the service’s design, functionalities, or features may encourage addictive or compulsive use; and(f) has considered and reviewed the use of algorithms for content recommendation, amplification, or targeted advertising.(6G) In assessing a proposed minimum age under this section, Ofcom must have regard to—(a) the children’s risk assessment submitted by the provider;(b) Ofcom’s existing risk and harms framework under this Act;(c) the potential impact of the service on the mental health and psychological wellbeing of children;(d) the extent to which the service’s design, functionalities, or features may encourage addictive or compulsive use; and(e) the use of algorithms for content recommendation, amplification, or targeted advertising.(6H) Ofcom must produce guidance setting out—(a) the evidential requirements for children’s risk assessments relating to minimum age determinations;(b) the criteria by which Ofcom will assess whether a service’s minimum age is appropriate; and(c) the intervals at which minimum age assessments must be reviewed.(6I) Where Ofcom determines, having regard to the matters in subsection (6G), that a proposed minimum age is insufficient to protect children from harm, it may require the provider to apply a higher minimum age of access, provided that the minimum age does not exceed 18 years.(6J) Ofcom will take enforcement action in relation to this section where—(a) the provider has failed to submit a suitable or sufficiently up-to-date children’s risk assessment;(b) the evidence submitted does not sufficiently justify the provider’s proposed minimum age;(c) the provider has failed to comply with a requirement imposed by OFCOM under subsection (6I); or(d) the provider has failed to introduce age assurance that is highly effective at correctly determining whether or not a particular user is of age to use the service.(6K) Where Ofcom considers that a failure to comply with a requirement under subsection (6I) presents an urgent and significant risk of harm to children, it may apply directly for a business disruption order under this Act.”” Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would take a harms-based approach to user-to-user regulation, meaning that children’s access to platforms would be based on the level of risk of harm attached to said platform.
Lord Storey (LD)
We on these Benches are strongly committed to safeguarding children and protecting them from the risks of the online world. As we recall, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, proposed an amendment that was a straightforward ban on social media. The Government are proposing a three-month big conversation, from which we will, perhaps, come together and agree a way forward.
On these Benches, however, we believe that it is not as simple as that. A blanket ban is not that easy. We think that some aspects of social media are very important for young people and very supportive of young people. Rather than a blanket ban, we would want to see the dangerous elements of social media banned.
Of course, the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Nash, was carried. It will come back at ping-pong. I hope that will be the opportunity—I promise to come to every meeting—for the parties to come together and agree a way forward. In the meantime, we on these Benches would like to test the opinion of the House on our Amendment 108.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group, particularly Amendment 117, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, and Amendment 119, which was so powerfully and scarily introduced by my noble friend Baroness Boycott.
These clauses came from a very real attempt by the Government to limit parents’ spending at a time when the cost of living is so high. I spoke at great length at Second Reading and in Committee about how important school uniforms are. I talked about a 14 year-old girl whom I taught and most of whose pregnancy was hidden by her blazer. It is important, particularly for girls, that changing shapes are hidden during school. It promotes equality and unity.
Amendment 117 is particularly good about sport. I remember the first time we were given a full kit with all our numbers on it in Dyson Perrins CofE high school’s under-15 rugby side. It made us feel unbeatable—until we got beaten. Having listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, we need to make sure that they are not going to poison us. Local businesses often sponsor kits for local football teams; it seems churlish and idiotic not to accept it.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I speak briefly in support of Amendment 114. Throughout my teaching career, I taught in the most deprived communities on Merseyside, and I always observed that the parents with the least were the ones who took the greatest pride in how their children were attired. I pay huge tribute to them.
I understand where the Government are coming from on this: uniforms cost a lot. However, as I said in Committee, this is not the way to do it. There are so many “ands”, “ifs” and “buts”. For example, a uniform in the school colours that consists of a kilt, a braided blazer and a jumper can cost a fortune compared to five items that are simply branded. It is quite difficult to know how to move forward, but the old way of doing it was probably better, whereby you could obtain a uniform grant, and many local authorities still do that.
We all share the same goal of making school uniforms affordable for every family, but good intentions without practical wisdom can lead us precisely where we do not wish to go. I fear that if we are faced with a three-item cap, this could happen. Let me speak plainly about what happens when policy meets the playground. The Schoolwear Association tells us that 85% of retailers believe schools will drop branded PE kits entirely to avoid breaching the cap. When that happens, families do not suddenly pay less; they pay more. They turn to Nike or Adidas, the commercial brands that cost nearly double what specialist school suppliers charge. An £11 school PE top becomes a £20 branded alternative.
It gets worse. Schools in the West Midlands are already dropping particular sports from the curriculum because the new guidance prevents them having school-specific sport kits for those activities. One school that was mentioned in the Times last week has adopted as its school kit “casual sportswear”. As I say, that is not really a school uniform, but it is very expensive to wear, and no doubt the branded sports kit as a school uniform—albeit three items—can be far more expensive than a five-item school uniform.
We risk pricing children out of sport entirely, not through expensive uniforms but through their absence. The child whose parents cannot afford the expensive commercial kit will become the one left on the sidelines. The very children we seek to protect become more visible in their disadvantage, not less.
We have learnt, sometimes painfully, that good legislation must be workable legislation. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, offers us a different approach, one that focuses on actual cost rather than arbitrary numbers. It gives schools clarity about what they can require families to spend, while allowing children the opportunity to be in branded clothing.
I am also in favour of the very important amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. My only observation is that many clothing items of course come from China, and it would be difficult to get the Chinese Government to stop child labour, never mind putting chemicals into items, but it is an issue that we as a society should certainly look towards.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, we have listened with interest to the valuable contributions during this debate, and we thank all noble Lords who have both spoken to and tabled amendments in this group.
Amendment 114, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, seeks to fulfil the Government’s commitment to lowering the cost of school uniforms, but by a monetary cap rather than a limit on branded items. The principle of focusing on the actual cost to families, rather than on the number of branded items, underlines His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition’s support for both this amendment and for Amendment 117 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton. Both these amendments seek to address the real issue at the centre of the Government’s concern: bringing down the cost of school uniforms.
It surely makes sense that items provided or loaned free of charge to a pupil should be excluded from the restriction on branded items, on the basis that this imposes no financial burden on families and gives schools greater flexibility, while acknowledging that they already try to help pupils where possible.
I turn to Amendment 118 from the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, which seeks to extend the VAT zero rating for certain items of pupils’ school uniform to the age of 16. As was noted in Committee, children’s clothing and footwear designed for children under 14 years of age already attracts a zero rate of VAT if they meet specific conditions. We would therefore be grateful to hear from the Minister how the Government intend to address the issue of raising the zero VAT threshold from 14 to 16, which would address noble Lords’ concerns.
Amendment 119, in the name of my noble kinswoman Lady Boycott, seeks to prohibit school uniform items which contain PFAS chemicals. Amendment 119A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, similarly requires the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the health implications of school uniforms. While existing guidance asks schools to consider sustainability and ethical supply chains, my noble kinswoman is entirely correct: we must also consider health concerns. We look forward to hearing from the Minister about what work the Government will commit to when undertaking these many important issues.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, new Section 434A(6)(b)(i) asks the local authority to consider
“that it would be in the child’s best interests to receive education by regular attendance at school”.
But no child attends school: they attend a school. They might attend the school where the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, works—fine—or they might go to the school depicted in episode 2 of “Adolescence”. That would have me hoicking my child out in a millisecond, and there are a lot of schools like that.
My noble friend’s Amendment 175ZD is therefore an important potential addition to the Bill. There should not be a presumption that any school is better than any home education, but that is where we are heading with this bit of the Bill. We are putting a duty on local authorities to judge and giving them the presumption that the child should be put into school. It is like buying IBM when I was young: it is the safe choice. If local authorities allow someone to be home educated, they are taking all the risks on themselves, but if they chuck the child into school, any school, there are no risks. So all the emphasis on how a local authority officer should behave is focused on pushing a child into school, whatever the circumstances.
That is a deep fault in the Bill, and Amendment 122 from the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, is the right solution to it. There should be some court oversight of the judgment of local authorities, otherwise there is a complete imbalance. We know how local authorities behave; they drive into the easy answers because that is life—I only have 70 years’ experience of it. Going for the safe answer is the natural, human thing to do, and you are asking a huge amount of a local authority to expect it to stand up against that. We must produce a countervailing force somewhere in the Bill. I would choose Amendment 122 from the amendments on offer, and I hope that the Government will see the wisdom of moving in that direction.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, we have come a long way on the issue of home education and safeguarding. I want to start by thanking the Minister for her comments at the beginning of this group. I was also taken with the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, who reminded us that education is compulsory, but schooling is not. We want all our learning and education, whether it is in school or at home, to be the best that can be provided. We want our schools to be safe and we want children who are home educated to be safe.
I remind the House of where we currently stand. Any parent can take their child out of school just like that: no notification or form-filling, they just take their child out. They take them to their home and apparently, hopefully, maybe or definitely home educate them—we do not know. There are some parents who are absolutely determined that their children get the best home education that they can give them. However, we also have situations at the other extreme, where, for example, unregistered fundamentalist religious schools have been closed down. They home educate children in small groups, because they are allowed to, and nobody knows what is going on in those schools. That cannot be and is not right.
You can have a home educator who brings people in to enthuse and inspire; you can have home educators who link up with other home educators and organise summer camps or particular field trips. That is wonderful. However, at the other end, you can have a home education system where an individual is brought in to teach the children who might, for example, be a paedophile, and we would never know, because there are no safeguarding requirements. That is not the way that our education system should work. Our children, whether they are at home or in school, should be safeguarded and properly taught. They should learn and be inspired, enthused et cetera.
I am of conscious of three amendments that are really important. I like the idea—although that is the wrong word—of Amendment 125 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. I want to see us move more and more to where home educators regard local authorities not as interferers but as people who can support and work with them. One of the things that we need to understand is why parents want to home educate, and, if they choose to go down that route, how we can support and help them. A pilot scheme, where we have a conversation with parents before they go down the route of home education, is not interfering, bullying or suggesting that they do not do it, but listening to the concerns.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I very much support my noble friend’s Amendment 157A. One of the fundamental things that can come out of this register is proper information for Parliament on what is happening in home education, and I very much hope that we will receive that.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I will speak to the two amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin. I hope I will be able to see the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, on YouTube. Was it a goose, did he say?
Our creative industries are hugely important to this country—we are world leaders—and children and young people play a huge part in their success. One of my ex-pupils, Josh Bolt, was a regular on “Last Tango in Halifax” and, sadly, “Benidorm”; I know that the schooling side worked for Josh.
We are so lucky to have in this House people who have real expertise in particular areas. Obviously, the noble Baroness brings it in relation to the performing arts sector, so we have to listen with great care to what she says. During the coalition, we promised a review— I think PACT was involved—and that decision in 2014 needs to be looked at again. If young people are acting or performing, we need to ensure that they are safeguarded and that their education is there. We also need to ensure that the system does not prohibit them making a valuable contribution, not least to their own career development. I hope the Minister will say some warm and wise words on those amendments.
Baroness Barran (Con)
The Minister always says warm and wise words—well, some of the time.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, we on these Benches support the very important amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. It would be very easy to say, “You chose to be home-educated, so you go with the fees and everything involved”, but we are talking about children and young people here. We are talking about their future and, whether they are home-educated or taught in a school, they deserve the best possible opportunities.
We started today’s sitting on Report with the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Bird, about targets and about children in poverty, basically, and not all children who are home-educated are from posh, middle-class situations. Many of them are from deprived communities, from working-class communities, and they need support in two ways. One is that they need help in terms of access to exam centres and doing their exams and, secondly, they need some finance. If we really want to start this new dawn of partnership with local authorities and home educators working together, what a wonderful way to start that off by making a real positive gesture. The Government talk all the time, quite rightly, about how important it is to give all children and young people opportunities. They talk about developing skills. Well, if they do not have the opportunities because they do not have the money or cannot access an exam, they are just wasted.
My final point is that I have often thought that, if all those children who are home-educated suddenly went back to school en bloc, it would cost the state hundreds of millions of pounds. So, come on: for a few pence the Government could actually make a real gesture to these families, and that would be the start of a new relationship, a new dawn.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, His Majesty’s loyal Opposition are of the view that the government amendments seem entirely reasonable, and we therefore support them. While we understand the intentions behind the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Wei, we cannot support them. These issues were addressed in Committee by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and I will not repeat those arguments on Report.
Similarly with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, we believe that local authorities simply do not have the capacity right now to be committing new funding, however small. So, while we understand the noble Lord’s intentions, we cannot support his amendment, but we welcome the opportunity to hear the response from the Government on the critical issues highlighted by all noble Lords thus far.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I do not read this amendment in the same way as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, does, but I will come to that. I start with renewed thanks to the Minister for the time that she and her officials have given to me and thanks to the right reverend Prelate for tabling this amendment.
This Bill exemplifies how we are setting clear expectations of the standards that we should set for people who choose to educate their children outside the school system. We should not be ashamed of that. This is an honourable and right thing to do. My main answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, is that, if they are not achieving home education, they are in trouble. There must be home education which is up to the standard we think it should be. If not, it will be in contravention of this Bill.
However, that does not appear to be the problem, at least with the Haredi communities that I have been in correspondence with. We have principles—and they have principles—about how children should be educated. The Prime Minister and others in government have made much of their respect and care for our Jewish communities. It would not be consistent with those statements to tip hundreds of families within the Haredi community into conflict with the state and courts without doing our best to reconcile their views on education and ours.
However, tipping them into conflict is what this Bill in its raw form does, as the Government’s own impact statement accepts. The Haredi community, for all the differences between its ancient traditions and our secular ways, is entirely worthy of our care and respect. It is law-abiding. It makes a positive contribution to our economy. Its children lead productive and fulfilling lives. There is clearly a lot of good going on.
We should therefore step back from the punitive approach that this Bill allows for and enter a process of building a mutual understanding. What does Haredi education achieve in practice? What exactly are their religious red lines? What aspects of Haredi education do we want to see improved? What is the best way of getting that? We have clearly put the Haredi community, or substantial parts of it, in a state of fear. The Government are pushing through this Bill unamended, asking the Haredi community to trust in the department’s good will to devise regulations it will be able to work with. This surely is the time for a clear statement from the Minister that the Government are committed to reaching an outcome that allows both sets of principles to be observed.
I understood from the officials we met that yeshivas to be regulated as IEIs under this Bill are not to be expected to provide the whole of a child’s education. This is most welcome and a cornerstone of eventual agreement. Yeshivas provide religious education; their children’s general education is provided through the elective home education system and should be held to the same standards as we are holding all elective home education to. I hope the Minister will be able to confirm that understanding.
Discussion will throw up some areas of fundamental agreement, such as safeguarding, where the focus will be on getting the mechanisms right, and other areas of deep disagreement. We should be determined to resolve those disagreements. My limited experience of listening to the Haredi community and my long experience of listening to the DfE gives me a lot of confidence that we will see a positive outcome for both parties. We should set a reasonable timescale for this process. A couple of years, as discussed with officials at our most recent meeting, will be a period long enough not to cramp discussion and short enough for it to be clear that those discussions must reach a conclusion. We should involve all the main strands of Haredi thought. The DfE has been here before in successfully setting up an elective home education working group in an environment of strong and diverse opinions. Such a working group would build confidence within the Haredi community that it was heard and understood. A Minister should be involved, as some of the questions to be resolved clearly require the application of ministerial judgment.
We should understand the depth of our misunderstandings. We find it hard, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, illustrated, to believe that children will have the energy and focus for a good general education if the school day is full of religious studies. But as the right reverend Prelate said, they do not return home to their devices, computer games and all the other things that distract our children; they lead a much more focused life—they clearly do. If you look at the outcomes, the people they grow up to be, they clearly do absorb, very effectively, a good, broad general education. If we express our wishes in terms of the results we desire, not in terms of structures created for other purposes, I believe that we will build mutual understanding and trust. We should listen to the Haredi community’s exposition of its principles and explore how those principles can be upheld, at the same time as we uphold ours. I very much hope that the Minister will, in her reply, commit her Government to such a course.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, faith schools play an important part in our country’s education and are to be valued, but as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, rightly said, we also believe that all children should have access to a broad and balanced curriculum. If we accommodate changes for one religious faith group, that should be available to any faith group or religious group that wants the same. We have, as a country, probably created one of the most successful multicultural, multifaith communities in the world. We should cherish that, but we should also be aware of the dangers that potentially lie ahead.
Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)
My Lords, I have a quick question for the Minister on Amendment 184, which she described towards the end of her speech. I agree with the purpose of this and most of the details, but I am not quite sure what is meant by “excluded material” or “special procedure material”. Is that anything to do with data protection? If it is an unregistered school, would the inspector be able to go in and seize, copy or have access to a register or pupil progress file without having to go and get a warrant? If they gain access and then have to go and get a warrant before they can see the register or the pupil progress information, they are not going to be able to do their job effectively—but that hangs on what is meant by “special procedure material” and “excluded material”. Does that include things such as school registers?
Lord Storey (LD)
Again, the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, has taken the words out of my mouth. This is an issue that I have felt strongly about for a number of years. I know from talking to Ofsted that one of the barriers has always been getting the evidence. I presume that the Minister has had detailed discussions with Ofsted and that, as a result, this wording fulfils what needs to be done. I hope the Minister will confirm that.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for listening to the concerns that we raised on this side, both in the other place and in your Lordships’ House, about the scope of Clause 40. We feel that it is much improved and are grateful to the Government for listening.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
Perhaps I could come back to my noble friend Lady Morris on the details of that particular question; I am sorry that I cannot respond to it now.
I welcome the welcome provided to the Government’s amendments in this group. I also reassure the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that we have had extensive discussions with Ofsted about the provisions we are proposing here to make sure they enable Ofsted to do what this Bill is strengthening its ability to do.
Lord Storey (LD)
When the Minister gets back to her noble friend, could she also copy us in with that information? It would be quite useful to understand as well.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I will, as I think is normal when I write to noble Lords about issues that have come up in the debates, copy in anybody that fancies it and probably place a copy in the Library as well for good measure.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Storey Excerpts(2 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)
With respect, everyone else has had an opportunity to speak, but no one from my party has, and I want to make some remarks. The House should draw a level of unity from the fact that, although a variety of solutions are provided by these amendments, common threads run between them: a common acceptance of the level of crisis that our young people face, and a common desire, I think, to provide greater levels of protection for our young people.
On the competing and well-argued cases for the amendments, I am more persuaded by Amendment 94A from the noble Lord, Lord Nash, which I believe is cleaner, clearer and bolder. Nevertheless, whichever amendment we settle on, I agree with others that the one thing we cannot afford to do as a House tonight is to prevaricate. I cannot put myself in the mind of the Government. Therefore, I cannot determine whether the proposed consultation is a sincere attempt to engage seriously with this issue or, as was suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, a cynical device to get past the problems internally in the Commons.
There are clear problems with the consultation. First, it does not produce any guaranteed outcome. A lot of us are concerned that, over a prolonged period of time, the muscle of the big tech companies will adjust that to water down whatever comes forward. Secondly, it does not produce swift results. We do not know a timeframe that ultimately will lead to implementation. The longer we delay, the more harm is caused to children. Where possible, we should always be reluctant to ban and restrict but, when we look at the protection of children, we have to make an exception to that. The case for action now is overwhelming.
During the passage of the Online Safety Bill, one of the most moving and significant meetings that I attended was one hosted by the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, where she brought in families of children who had died as a result of various online harms. There was a common thread for a lot of those families: they had become victims because of social media. Whether that was issues around self-harm, suicide, sexploitation, bullying or a range of other things, a major danger is out there.
I acknowledge that the gathering mental health tsunami among our young people did not start with social media, but it has been exacerbated by it, and we need to take action against it. Even below that level, we are faced with, as I have seen it put, a “zombification” of our young generation. No one is suggesting in this debate that any solution that we produce will entirely be a panacea or 100% watertight and effective in its nature. But, if we took that approach to its logical conclusion, as indicated by the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, we would simply have no restrictions on young people on any subject or harm. So we need to grasp the nettle.
In conclusion, there is a stark choice before us tonight. We can either embrace the clarion call of the overwhelming majority of parents on this issue and take bold and decisive action to protect our young people, or we can kick the can down the road and neglect our duty to those young people. I hope the House chooses the former tonight.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group. I will speak to my Amendments 108 and 110A, and briefly to Amendment 91 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, and the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Nash. I start by thanking the hundreds of thousands of mums, dads, grandparents, single parents, teachers, et cetera, who have kick-started this campaign. While politicians have not been able to get action, they have swung into action.
If noble Lords talk to any MP of any party in this Parliament, they will tell you that they receive hundreds of thousands of emails and letters. I was talking to our digital lead MP, Victoria Collins, and she told me that, in the last three days alone, she has received 1,500 pieces of paper about this. Why? It is because parents do not trust us to do anything. Of course, with the Online Safety Act, they were promised that we would see a new world, but when they look around they see that nothing has changed. Frighteningly, when I asked the Minister a few weeks ago how many companies have been fined or prosecuted for what they have put online, he did not know the answer. That does not fill us with confidence.
Creating a safer future for our children and grandchildren is at a critical crossroads. Our parents, teachers, experts and even young people themselves are calling for action. I hear from real teenagers talking about their experiences online. One teenager said:
“I look at my younger brother and I’m so worried about how much he seems addicted to screens, we have to do something”.
Another said:
“Help, I just can’t stop”.
When doctors discovered that smoking kills, and when research showed that seatbelts saved lives, we acted. Today presents an opportunity to take a similar life-saving action.
It is clear that everyone here is strongly committed to this end goal—to safeguarding children and protecting them from the risks of the online world. Parents and children are both telling us that they feel powerless in the face of platforms designed to maximise engagement at any cost. We see the evidence mounting in our schools, with rising rates of anxiety and depression among young people. Consultations that kick the can down the road are not enough when we face a public health crisis.
So the question before us is not whether or not we must act but how effectively and how quickly we can act. One approach, that of the the noble Lord, Lord Nash, is a blanket ban on social media for under-16s, as well as on many other areas of the internet. I fully support the intent of this approach. Again, we are all here in the name of children’s well-being and the decisive action that is needed. But, as we have heard, we have heard from over 42 charities and experts, including the Molly Rose Foundation, the NSPCC, the Internet Watch Foundation, the Centre for Protecting Women Online, and 5rights, and they all have major concerns about this approach. These are the experts—I am not an expert, noble Lords are not the experts, but they are and they deal with this every day, and yet they have concerns about this approach.
We can look to Australia and see why. When Australia banned social media for young people, it took an approach similar to that of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, creating a specific list of prohibited platforms. What was the result? Within 24 hours of TikTok’s ban, the company launched a new platform under a different name, one not on the banned list. More fundamentally, this list-based approach ignores the broader digital landscape: the harms presented in online gaming, which the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, does nothing about; AI-generated content; and countless other platforms that fall outside these narrow definitions.
Lord Storey (LD)
We must ensure that children are protected online and send a message to the Government that now is the time for action, not consultation. As Liberal Democrats, we know that children come before politics. We must work together for their safety and future.
I turn briefly to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Nash. I praise and thank the noble Lord for taking this initiative. He deserves a lot of thanks from this House. He has worked tirelessly to get a solution. I was concerned when he said that we had rushed out a counter-amendment. We have not rushed out a counter-amendment at all. Children’s charities came to us and expressed their concerns, and we wanted to ensure that we listened to what they said. We have tried to incorporate that in the amendment. We tried to work with the noble Lord, Lord Nash, to achieve an amendment that we could both support.
At the end of the day, as I said on my previous amendment, it is children who are important. We are not interested in playing yah-boo politics or trying to score points. We will support Lord Nash’s amendment because we understand, as the right reverend Prelate rightly noted, that something has to come back to this House on which we, as a House, can then work together.
I turn briefly to Amendment 110A.
Lord Storey (LD)
This amendment is in my name. We are on to Front-Bench speakers and I have spoken for only 10 minutes.
In Amendment 110A, we propose raising the age for processing personal data in the case of social networking services from 13 to 16. This amendment covers platforms where users create profiles, interact and share content. It would exclude educational platforms used in schools and universities for educational purposes, as well as health services such as NHS Digital platforms and crisis helplines that process data and provide care and support.
Raising the age is vital to the well-being of children in this country, who must navigate an increasingly digitalised world. Social networking services often use personal data for the purposes of delivering personalised content, such as targeted advertising and curated recommendations. Such things have been condemned by Ofsted, as they can have a substantial negative impact on children. Algorithm-driven content can keep children scrolling for hours, disrupting sleep patterns, physical activity and face-to-face social development. Targeted advertising can exploit children’s vulnerabilities, promoting an unrealistic body image and exposing them to age-inappropriate products, as highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Cass. Recommendation algorithms can create echo chambers that amplify harmful content. Children can be exposed to content such as extreme dieting advice and self-harm material at a developmental stage when they are particularly impressionable and cannot critically evaluate what they are being shown. This amendment is therefore key to children’s well-being.
The years between 13 and 16 represent a critical window of opportunity where children can be susceptible to the design features that social media platforms employ to maximise engagement. By allowing platforms to harvest and exploit the personal data of 13 year-olds, we are essentially permitting commercial entities to conduct behavioural manipulation on children at their most vulnerable. The mental health crisis among young people, with rising rates of anxiety, depression and eating disorders, cannot be divorced from the datafication of childhood and the attention economy that profits from it. My amendment is simple: the age for processing personal data in the case of social networking services should be raised, so as to provide children with three additional years of protection from commercial data exploitation during a critical period of their development.
Finally—
Lord Storey (LD)
I was going to speak to the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, but certain Members are heckling me. I will just say how important this amendment is and that I hope the House will support it.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, a good speech is a short speech.
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, I have spent most of this debate rewriting my speech. I have tried hard to listen to what noble Lords have said. We have three options before us tonight: the Government option of a consultation; the Liberal Democrat option; and the option from my noble friend, Lord Nash, as it relates to social media.
Briefly, before I talk about the three options, I would like to say to my noble friend Lady Penn that, rather than being a warm-up act, she gave us a master class in how to present an amendment. She made a well-argued, practical case for her amendment, underlining the importance of shifting norms for very young children at the earliest possible stage and calling urgently for firm action, and timing on that action, from the Government. Like others, we look forward to the Minister’s reply.
To return to the group of amendments that deal with social media use, we have before us, as we have heard, an opportunity to end the harm that our children and grandchildren are experiencing as a result of the hours that they spend on there. I was going to talk about the merits of my noble friend Lord Nash’s amendment, but I think others have done that extremely ably.
I will therefore turn to the key differences between my noble friend’s amendment and that tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, on behalf of the Liberal Democrats. Between the fiercely critical comments by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, about Ofcom struggling and critically undermining implementation and wider failures, and the comparison made by the noble Lord, Lord Russell, of Ofcom being to the tech companies as “Dixon of Dock Green” is to “Crocodile Dundee”, I think those noble Lords have done my job for me. The key element in the Liberal Democrat amendment is that we would give powers to Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner to decide which apps are safe or not safe. Whether it is my noble friend Lady Harding, who may be in a slightly different place in this debate than I am, or many other noble Lords around the House, they have noted that Ofcom is struggling with the powers that it was given in the Online Safety Act. The noble Baroness, Lady Berger, put it extremely well. Do your Lordships want to give to a struggling organisation one of the most complicated jobs before us? I would suggest that we do not. It should of course advise the Children’s Commissioner and the Government, but it should not be responsible.
The second reason it should not be responsible is one of democracy. We have too many recent examples, of which your Lordships will be aware, where we have delegated incredibly important powers to unelected and relatively unaccountable officials, however competent they might be, and we should not do that again. Our democracy depends on our colleagues at the other end being given the chance to decide, and Parliament deciding, what is or is not appropriate for our children, taking advice from every expert that they can draw on, many of whom we have heard from this evening.
Thirdly—I was finding it hard to wait to the end to get to this point—the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, should be not mentioned anywhere near this endless reference to a “blunt, blanket ban”. I was so grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, as I was about to read out proposed new subsection (5) of Amendment 94A from my noble friend and the noble Baroness. This would not be a blanket ban, and it is, if I may say so, irresponsible of noble Lords who kept asserting that and referring to it as such, even once my noble friend had clarified that it was not the case. Crucially, proposed new subsection (2)(b) would also give our Government time to learn both from some of the scientific work that is going on and from the Australian approach. Amendment 94B would add neither in terms of flexibility or future-proofing but would dilute democratic accountability, which we do at our peril.
Turning to the Government, I would say that now is the time for leadership on this issue. The proposed consultation and approach set out in yesterday’s Statement, with a government amendment at Third Reading, does not feel like leadership. We have heard tonight that we do not need another national conversation. The nation has spoken very clearly about its level of concern, and parents and children will not thank us for further delay. The Government argue that views are divided, and we have heard tonight that the children’s charities are split and bereaved parents are split. If we wait for consensus on this issue, the one thing I am confident of is that not a single one of us will still be in your Lordships’ House. As Martin Luther King wisely said,
“a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus”.
The Government need to get moulding, and fast, because we owe it to our children to act now to protect their childhood.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Storey Excerpts(2 weeks, 4 days ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, I am very grateful that these amendments have been proposed. They may not go as far as my Private Member’s Bill did a few months ago in terms of seeking a better financial deal for care leavers, but Amendment 40 takes us some considerable way towards that. At least it will make local authorities be honest about what they are and are not doing. My only regret is that it will not completely get rid of the postcode lottery that besets so many young care leavers, particularly if they move from one authority to another. But I am grateful for the amendments the Government have tabled, and I hope that they will be swiftly passed.
Lord Storey (LD)
I thank my noble friend Lady Tyler for all the work she has done on this important topic. It shows the real power and strength of this House that, by talking to each other, listening and supporting, we can bring about real change, so I thank the Government for putting down these amendments. As my noble friend rightly said, there are so many young people living independently by themselves, and the most important thing is that they have an understanding of how finances work. I do not like the term “financial literacy”, but it is important. The national curriculum is going to bring that in for every young person, but for these young people it is even more important. So, I thank the Minister for getting to a place where we can all support and get behind this important issue.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, I welcome the amendments that the Government have tabled to Clause 8. I think they will meet the aims of our Amendment 35, so I look forward to hearing from the Minister about the additional support that the Government will offer to care leavers.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate. Having signed his amendment in Committee, I did not manage to catch up on Report, and I encourage him to think about putting it to a vote if necessary when it gets to that stage.
I support all the amendments in this group, but will speak to Amendment 59, which is about continuing the Staying Put arrangements to the age of 25. As the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, said, I have signed this amendment, along with the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, who is not currently in his place, and the noble Lord, Lord Watson. You could say that that is the broadest possible range of political support imaginable for this amendment.
I spoke extensively on a similar amendment in Committee, so I will not go into it at great length here. I cross-reference the horrific tale I told in Committee about Duncan, who was dragged with no notice at all out of his fostering arrangements and dumped into wildly unsuitable accommodation. That is the kind of thing that is happening to young people now. If we are to think of the state as a statutory parent, as it is to children in care, surely we should expect the same kinds of things from it that we expect from other parents, such as the societal expectation that parents will often have their children at home until age 25 or later. That is a reality that the state should be making provision for.
To pick up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, even this amendment would not finally cover the financial issues here. The Fostering Network notes that three-quarters of foster carers who continue caring after 18 end up financially worse off. The idea that housing benefit or wages—we know how low wages are for young people—might be able to top that up does not reflect the reality of our society.
I was discussing this morning the intrusion of private equity into the fostering system. A quarter of all places in fostering are now provided by private equity-based companies, which are making massive profits. There is a commodification of fostering. We would really like to think about how we can address that issue more broadly and whether there are ways to ensure that massive profits are not being made from this important additional provision that the state should be providing.
Lord Storey (LD)
I very much look forward to the Minister’s reply on this group of amendments. There are 80,000 children in care—12,000 more than a decade ago—all of whom have different needs and requirements, mature at different ages and experience different feelings. I do not think you can put an arbitrary date on when somebody has to leave. Nationally, young people increasingly stay with their family into their 30s and get all the support that a family gives them. A friend of mine and his wife, the Kellys, foster regularly. They had two foster boys; one came to the age to move on and just said, “I am not going—I am staying”. Malcolm, being the sort of person he is, said “Okay”. That child needed that. He needed that support from the family. I hope the Government will consider this carefully.
On the amendment from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, I do not understand what the problem is. Why can this information not be available? It seems to me good, solid practice for society generally and for people in care and care leavers. I do not understand why we cannot say yes. Will it cost more money? Do we think local authorities do not have the expertise to do this? I would be interested to know why the Minister thinks it cannot be agreed.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, we have had a good debate on this group. I have a great deal of sympathy with the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and would be interested to know whether the Minister knows what the cost of this funding would be if it were extended in the way that the noble Lord’s review suggests. One could absolutely imagine a situation where proper funding for foster carers of young people in receipt of Staying Put support might relieve pressures elsewhere in the system.
I also look forward to the Minister’s response on Amendment 59, which, as we heard, would extend Staying Put support up to the age of 25. We agree with the principle underlying Amendment 95 that local areas should constantly be learning from one another about the best support for care leavers, but we are not convinced that it would be achieved by this approach.
I turn briefly to my modest Amendments 41 and 42. I reread the Minister’s argument in Committee that these amendments were not really necessary—a familiar term—as every care leaver should have a pathway plan that would cover accommodation, health and several other important aspects of their life. As she said, the pathway plan covers accommodation, yet the Government have chosen to put the publication of the local offer in relation to accommodation in the Bill, if I have understood correctly, so I am not quite clear about the resistance to minimum commitments in relation to healthcare. To be absolutely clear, my Amendment 41 would create a statutory duty for the health service to set out arrangements for those leaving care so they can be given additional considerations that they deserve as they enter adulthood. The Minister knows very well that children in care tend, through no fault of their own, to have much more complex health needs than those not in care. A lot of the specialist care available to children stops at 18. Taking the time to make sure they understand what support is available to them as adults is surely the minimum we might ask for.
That links to Amendment 42, which would make it explicit that care leavers under 25 need additional support from their GP. The noble Baroness will remember from Committee that the suggestion is that there should be an extended initial appointment offered to those young people as they transition from specialist support to universal systems. They do not have parents to support them through that and, as we all know, their needs are extended. It seems a tiny request that might make a great difference.
Lord Sentamu (CB)
My Lords, I feel a strong need to speak on Amendment 61, this wonderful amendment, on
“Amending the sufficiency duty to prevent children being moved far away from home”.
Especially where a child has been put under a deprivation of liberty order, if you then move them a long way away, it means that parents or even foster carers have quite a difficulty in keeping in touch with the child. So the sufficiency duty on local authorities should be amended from requiring them to take
“steps that secure, so far as reasonably practicable”
to requiring them to take
“all reasonable steps to secure”,
which is a far better phrase that gives some assurance.
As somebody who fostered children and was in touch with other foster carers, I know that children were put a long way away when, under the expression of the Children Act 1989, steps had been taken that were “reasonably practicable”. But, actually, you could scratch under the surface and see the pressure in an area such as Tulse Hill near Brixton, where I was a vicar and where a lot of children were placed in care. The council had a big job to do, and your Lordships and I know that it was extremely busy. It is easy to say, “Yes, I’ve taken reasonable steps and done what is practicable”, whereas “all reasonable steps” should be taken, and you need to catalogue them in case somebody asks questions.
I suggest to the Committee that Amendment 61 would remove a lot of anxiety from parents whose children find themselves deprived of their liberty. Moving them a long way away is almost suggesting that parents will, or maybe will not, find a way of going to where these children have been placed. In the place where I ministered for 13 years, they were always living in a time of financial crisis. Buses were needed, taking a long time, to get to where these children had been put, which was such a huge burden.
I hope the Minister will see that this amendment would actually help our children. They are not someone else’s children; they are our children. As that wonderful African proverb says, it takes a whole village to raise and educate a child. They are ours; would we be happy if they were placed such a long way from home? That would be quite a burden, and I congratulate the noble Baroness for tabling this amendment.
Lord Storey (LD)
I will speak on Amendment 71 in my name. I am grateful to the Minister for her movement on this issue. In her letter to me of 7 October 2025, which was some time ago, she said:
“When used effectively, non-school alternative provision offers tailored support that meets individual needs and helps re-engage children in education, supporting future regular attendance in school. However, in some areas, inadequate oversight is putting already vulnerable children’s safety and the quality of their education at risk. Too often, children whose needs could be met in school are instead placed in unsafe, low-quality settings with no clear plan for returning to mainstream education”.
I do not understand why anything in our society is unregistered—whether a school, a care home or alternative provision. We should not allow that to happen, because we put the lives of people at risk.
Let us understand what alternative provision means. It means that a child or young person who has been permanently expelled or removed from school becomes the responsibility of the local authority. The local authority has to make provision for them. However, in many cases, schools have their own units on site, which is the best model by far. Where that provision is not available, local authorities have to find providers.
Remember that these children and young people are the most vulnerable. They often have special educational needs, are from difficult circumstances or suffer trauma or mental health problems. The Minister realises the issue and has come forward with some suggestions of how we might develop this. I am genuinely grateful for that. I hope that this will be another way that we can deal with this issue.
I will raise a number of issues with the Minister on which I hope she might be prepared either to write to me or to respond in her reply. Unregistered provision cannot be inspected by Ofsted, but we use the same criteria for registered provision that we use with maintained schools, academies and independent schools. This is a very different situation. These pupils require flexible timetables, smaller groups, therapeutic approaches, outreach work, incremental attendance and a curriculum that prioritises core skills, well-being and preparation. Often, inspections of alternative provision already highlight that applying mainstream criteria to alternative providers creates inconsistent judgments, perverse incentives and misunderstandings about what meaningful progress looks like for these pupils. Without adaptation, the strengthened regulatory framework in the Bill may unintentionally constrain innovation, reduce placement availability, push provision back into semi-regulated spaces or penalise alternative providers for not behaving like mainstream schools.
I am sure that the Government and the Minister want to get to grips with this issue, and I hope that their proposals actually deliver what we all want.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, this group of amendments focuses again on children in the care system. As we have heard expertly and eloquently expressed across the House, the focus on relationships is so important for those children, as is allowing them to sustain relationships with siblings and families where it is safe to do so, and not being moved too far from their home and network wherever possible. Obviously, this is most sensitive where siblings do not live together, either because they are not all in care or because they are in different care placements.
Lord Storey
“Adoption and special guardianship support fund review(1) Within one month of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must conduct a review of the level of funding available per child from the adoption and special guardianship support fund.(2) The review must produce recommendations regarding any steps necessary to increase the funds available per child.(3) The review must be laid before both Houses of Parliament.”
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, the adoption and special guardianship support fund was established in 2015 to provide therapeutic support to families caring for children through adoption and guardianship. Since its inception, the fund has supported over 4,000 families and played a transformative role in so many families’ lives, offering interventions that have helped children manage emotions, process early trauma and build trusting relationships, while equipping parents and guardians with the tools they need to care effectively. In fact, over the past 12 months, the Home for Good charity talked to a large number of families who had used the fund: 67% accessed therapy, such as counselling, play therapy and family therapy; 34% accessed therapeutic parenting support or training; and 33% accessed specialist assessments.
I am grateful to Minister MacAlister for his letter following a meeting with a number of us, in which he said:
“Many children who become adopted or are in kinship care have faced difficulties in early life that mean that they cannot live with their birth parents. These experiences place them at greater risk of mental health challenges, often made more complex by increased SEND prevalence compared to their peers. I am clear that government has a responsibility to these children which I am determined to meet it both now and in the future”.
He also said:
“The Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund has helped children and their families access a wide range of interventions, including play therapy and therapeutic parenting courses”.
Imagine the dismay among those parents that this element of the fund has been reduced.
In Committee, I gave the example of a family living close to me that had adopted two children at a very young age who were absolutely traumatised. Counselling, paid for by the support fund, has created a huge change in those children. Because the fund has been cut, they are not able to continue with that provision.
Interestingly, that has been mirrored by a number of comments from other families talking about the support, who have said: “The support we had so far dramatically helped. Any loss of it would be devastating”; “My child is sick. She needed the help so she grows up feeling accepted and cared for and not angry and let down”; “Both our boys have additional needs. It scares us that we might lose the help they desperately need”; “The recent reduction of the adoption support fund has been a shock and has led to huge stress for the families who rely on it’; “The new financial limits imposed are a major concern. We are already stretched to our limits financially”; and, from a professional, “It is hard, when told by professionals that your child needs more support, and then you realise you cannot access what they recommend”.
My amendment is simple: that element of the fund should be restored, so that parents who adopted and fostered children can get that resource, which those children so desperately need. I beg to move.
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, in speaking to these amendments, I declare that I am a co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Adoption and Permanence, alongside Rachael Maskell, the MP for York. In 2019, the APPG carried out an inquiry into the fund. I will simply read its recommendation 6, which is headed “Continuity”:
“The department should ensure a continuity of therapeutic support by removing the current annual application requirement, enabling agencies and authorities to apply for support that orients around the needs of children and their families”—
not necessarily the budgeting needs of the department in question.
I know, from carrying out that inquiry and subsequent work that I have been involved in—I am a governor of Coram, the children’s charity, which has a large say in adoption—that the experience of families that have been fortunate enough to access the support given by the fund is that it is literally transformative, albeit in many cases, when the therapeutic support is accessed, there is already a situation within the family where adoption breakdown is potentially a reality. Unfortunately, over the past couple of years, there has been an increase in the level of adoption breakdown. If one looks at the amount of effort, time and emotional expense involved in going through an adoption, one will find it difficult to imagine having, in the end, to admit that it has not worked but has failed—which is devastating both for the adoptive family and for the child or the children. This fund genuinely does make a difference. One of the achievements of His Majesty’s occasionally loyal Opposition when they were in government was getting it on to the statute book.
One of the problems with it is that continuity of support is fundamental; this is not the sort of support that responds well to being stop-start. Unfortunately, because the flow of funding has not been consistent and because, for whatever reason—perhaps through negotiations with the Treasury—the department has been unable to be assured enough of the funding, that makes it extraordinarily difficult for the department to say to the families that are currently getting or wish to get support that it will be available.
It makes the livelihoods of those practitioners providing this therapeutic support very difficult. This support is highly specialised because, in many cases, these children have been, and are, subject to really quite severe trauma. To be able to give the level of care required at the rate required, those professionals need consistency of funding from the Government, to enable them to stay in business and to be able to engage with a family on the basis that they will be able to provide sufficient support, over whatever time required for it to be effective, and to really make a difference. For those reasons, I hope that the Government will look at this carefully.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
As I reply to this group of amendments, I assure noble Lords that I will try not to drench anybody during the course of my response—although I have now decided to set myself an ambition of juggling three bottles of water by the time we get to the end of Report.
Important issues are covered in this group. Amendments 46 and 47 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, concern funding for the adoption and special guardianship support fund and provide a further opportunity to debate these important issues. Around 3,000 children are adopted each year and more than 3,800 enter special guardianship. I salute all those who welcome these vulnerable, often traumatised children into their homes and hope that the centenary celebrations noble Lords have alluded to, taking place here this evening, enable a celebration of that contribution and, rightly, as we have heard in this debate, a challenge about how we can do our best to support those who undertake adoption and special guardianship in future.
Almost 57,000 children have received adoption and special guardianship support since 2015, and many of them more than once. Since April 2025, we have approved applications for nearly 16,000 children. However, it is important to remember that this is not the only source of funding. The Families First Partnership programme will total £2.4 billion over the next three years. That funding is available to both adoptive and kinship families and to the services that support them. We have already confirmed that adoption and special guardianship funding will be continued for 2026-27. Further details will be shared in due course through the usual funding announcements.
As several noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Watson, have made clear, we need to think longer term about the future of adoption support, as we promised to Parliament in September that we would—and perhaps even more so as we celebrate the centenary of adoption. We will shortly set out plans to engage widely on this with the aim of understanding how best to support children and young people to thrive in their new families and get the support they need in the most effective way.
I turn to Amendment 100, tabled in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and thank her for raising this important issue again. I would have to look back at the record, but I have a considerable amount of sympathy on this, which I hope I shared in Committee. Foster carers offer crucial support to some of the most vulnerable children in our society. They provide love, stability and compassion to children and young people when they need it most. They therefore need to have the ability and the responsibility to make the decisions that they think are suitable for children.
The Government are prioritising fostering. Through the fostering recruitment and retention programme, we have been supporting over 60% of local authorities across England in 10 regional clusters to recruit and support foster carers. We know that we need to build on this to further accelerate foster-care recruitment and retention and we will soon publish a comprehensive set of measures to achieve this with regional care co-operatives and fostering hubs at the heart of these plans.
In relation to the issue specifically covered by this amendment, which seeks to ensure that foster carers have, by default, delegated authority on day-to-day issues, except where an alternative decision-maker is listed on the child’s placement plan, our guidance already sets out that foster carers should be able to make day-to-day decisions about the children in their care. I accept that too often we hear that this does not happen in practice, meaning that children in care miss out on normal childhood experiences and feel as if they are treated differently from their peers. I agree with the spirit of this amendment, but it is not necessary to include this in this Bill. Local authorities should already delegate all day-to-day decisions, and we have clear guidance that sets this out. We will nevertheless be taking further action on this issue as the noble Baroness pushes us to do.
Our upcoming fostering publications will set out our plans for ensuring that foster carers can feel confident in making day-to-day decisions for the children in their care. Our publications will also set out plans to reform the fostering national minimum standards. These will also reflect our position on day-to-day decision-making and how fostering services can support carers to make these decisions. Any changes to the national minimum standards, including those concerning decision-making for foster carers, would benefit from a period of consultation with relevant stakeholders. I accept the noble Baroness’s point that it is important that we make progress in this area.
Given that commitment and our plans on the longer-term provision of adoption support, I hope that I have addressed the concerns of noble Lords and that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, feels able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful that the Minister agrees with the spirit of this amendment. She highlights that some parents have made up the difference and found the money themselves to carry on with this. I find it perverse that, for children with all sorts of problems who need therapeutic counselling, it is suddenly going to stop because the money is not there. Some parents have made up the difference, but those who cannot afford it are not able to do so. Those who come from a poor background and do not have the money are probably the ones who most need it. Those who have got the money can dip their hand in their pocket and pay the difference. That cannot be right in 21st-century UK. For those reasons, I wish to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Storey
“Restoration of funding to the adoption and special guardianship support fundWithin one month of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must increase the funding available per child per year under the adoption and special guardianship support fund to a level equal to or greater than the funding available per child under the fund in March 2025.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would reverse the cut to the adoption and special guardianship support fund.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I am sure that the Minister will want to carry out the wishes of the House and ensure that those parents—all parents—have the support that they need. In the spirit of co-operation, I will not move the amendment.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
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Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, as I have many times before on this subject, joining the terrier pack yet again. It is a great pity that that pack still needs to form; all the other occasions were under the previous Government and we were hoping that we might be able to disband and head on to other things.
I join the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, in welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, and thank him for tabling this amendment, to which I attached my name very late in the day. I just caught up with this Bill along the tracks.
The noble Baroness and the noble Lord have both made the case overwhelmingly for Amendment 77, so I will not go over the same ground as they did. I will just highlight again the campaigning work of Citizens UK in particular, which has focused on the incredible difficulty of the cost of more than £1,200 for a citizenship application and the fact that so many people are unaware that it is necessary.
I will make one additional point. We have seen in the Windrush scandal that the British state failed to meet its responsibilities and failed to do the right thing by British citizens. With the reality of Brexit, many children with European links and European families but with the right to British citizenship risk being trapped in the coming years unless their situation is sorted out before they turn 18. Let us not create another Windrush scandal for those Brexit and indeed other children.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I will talk briefly to Amendments 75 and 76. These amendments are very important, and it is a great pity that we are discussing them at the end of the day. I always think of the saying that
“words without actions are the assassins of idealism”
and I wonder if these are not too general. I do not know what “alert” means. I can be alert to something and do nothing about it, where I actually want something to happen. It says “have due regard to”; I can have due regard to the fact that it is raining and choose not to put my umbrella up or not to warn other people that it is raining. I want something more definite. I think the spirit—dare I say that to an Anglican bishop?—is there in the amendment and I very much understand what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester is saying in this amendment.
I also like that the right reverend Prelate mentioned silos and silo working. I suggest that he talks to those noble Lords who served on the then Children and Families Bill during the coalition period. We came up with education, health and care plans, but the health service was not interested at all. It wanted to work entirely in its own silo, and every attempt to get them to work across failed completely. I do not know what to say further; I am not being very helpful here, I am afraid. It is important to listen to children’s voices and to do things. There must be good practice up and down the country, and we need to know about that. Perhaps the Minister’s department knows about good practices where children’s voices are being heard and something then happens.
From my professional experience, I remember one group of young children in a care home who formed a care children’s council and met each month. Somebody from the education department came along and listened to what they said. They had to report back to the councillors and then come up with an action plan and go back to the school council. That actually brought some results. Not least, it gave the young children the confidence to stand up and speak, and to challenge why things were not being done. These amendments are important, but we need to spend more time pinpointing what we need to do.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, while His Majesty’s loyal Opposition agree that these amendments are sensibly drafted and—as was highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Storey—that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester clearly has the best interests of looked-after children in mind in wanting to see stronger duties placed on local authorities to acknowledge, assess and act to reduce the disadvantages they undoubtedly face, we do not believe that Amendments 75 and 76 are entirely necessary given the measures already contained in the Bill.
Amendment 75 would require relevant authorities to have due regard to the need to minimise the disadvantages faced by looked-after children, in addition to the measures already stipulated in the Bill. While we understand that this is absolutely the right thing to do, the Bill contains provisions similar to that aim. Authorities will be required to be alert to matters that adversely affect, or might adversely affect, looked-after children and then to assess what services are available to them. The requirement to be alert and then to assess available steps represents an intention that action be taken to aid children. We believe that this achieves the same aim as that of the amendment from the right reverend Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed.
Amendment 76 builds on the previous amendment by then placing a duty on relevant authorities to act on policies or practices which may be having an adverse impact. Again, in our opinion, this overlaps with the duties already set out in the Bill. Authorities will be required to assess their services in Clause 21(1)(b), while subsections 1(c) and 1(d) create provisions through which authorities must seek to provide opportunities that enhance well-being and future prospects. Amendment 76 appears, in essence, to seek to ensure that authorities enact policies and practices that are in the children’s best interests. This duty is already prescribed to authorities under the Children Act 1989 and is already legislated for.
Amendment 96, also in the names of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, would include care experience in equality impact assessments. We welcome the intention behind the amendment but, with all due respect, are not convinced by the impact it will have.
The Government already review outcomes for children in need, which includes looked-after children and, as such, we are mindful of adding additional administrative workloads to public bodies. It would very much be our preference not to add bureaucratic layers to public bodies if we are uncertain that they will result in positive outcomes.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
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Lord Sentamu (CB)
My Lords, anecdotal evidence often does not help, but Margaret and I adopted a brother and sister because their mother had died of cancer. The boy was eight and his sister was three. They came to live with us. After quite a considerable period of time, we consulted their family in Uganda, who were very happy that we could adopt these children. The social workers who were working with us, particularly a lady called Ruth, were supportive of that arrangement.
We then had to meet the local council—Lambeth. That meeting was very harrowing. The people from the council did not understand where we were coming from and asked, “Why is a family living in Britain wishing to adopt Ugandan children?”, to which I answered, “But I am Ugandan. We have been in touch with the family. They know what has gone on and about the years of trying to help these children integrate into our family”. It was not a very easy meeting. With the family meetings that are being suggested, are the Government confident that those involved will do a lot of homework before the meeting takes place? Eventually we had to go to the family court, where the judge took a decision purely in favour of the children and where they wanted to be placed, and continued to be responsible for ensuring that this happened.
If a child has been put into care away from their family and the intention is to reunite them, I suggest that it is not always very easy to assess the interests of a child. Those who have been with the child, particularly the social worker who has been working with the family over a considerable period of time, have greater knowledge. They should be brought into the picture much earlier than what happened with us.
I know it is anecdotal but, reading the original clause of the Bill—I am glad the Minister has tabled an amendment that may improve it—I feel that the amendments tabled to it, particularly Amendments 1 to 4, may go some way towards allaying my fears and concerns. I ask noble Lords to forgive me for being personal about this matter, but I have lived with these children. Thank God they have now gone on to do wonderful things and take responsibility for their own lives, but there was a harrowing meeting. I hope others will not find that these family meetings knock the spirit out of those who are wanting to do the best for children who have had a very troublesome childhood.
Lord Storey (LD)
I look forward to the Minister’s response on this issue, which is important. It is important that families understand exactly what is happening. I think the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, used the phrase “kept in the dark”. On far too many occasions people do not know what is going on, and I think that can lead, sadly, to mistrust and concern. Throughout the process, the opportunity to feed back, understand and talk is hugely important. If models have been tried and have been successful, we should be learning from them and rolling them out as carefully as possible.
Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, used a term that we always forget and which is hugely important: the voice of the child. Far too often the voice of the child is not heard, but what they have to say is hugely important at all stages.
Lord Storey
“(2B) Regulations made by the Secretary of State under subsection (2A)(b) must secure that persons who—(a) have functions relating to the provision of childcare or education (or both), and(b) are the proprietor of two or more early years providers registered in England on the Early Years Register,are designated childcare or education agencies for the purposes of this section.(2C) Persons designated by virtue of subsection (2B) must—(a) participate in arrangements made under this section, including by securing appropriate representation at operational and strategic multi-agency safeguarding meetings;(b) have regard to any reasonable request of the safeguarding partners to take part in local safeguarding activities, including briefings, training, learning events and audits;(c) ensure that any safeguarding training provided in-house is consistent with the guidance and procedures of the relevant safeguarding partners.(2D) The Secretary of State may by regulations provide that compliance with duties imposed under subsection (2C) is a condition of—(a) registration on the Early Years Register;(b) the receipt by the person of funding from a local authority in respect of early education and childcare entitlements.(2E) In this section “early years provider” and “Early Years Register” have the same meaning as in Part 3 of the Childcare Act 2006.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment ensures that large nursery and early-years groups must actively participate in the arrangements, including local briefings and training, and allows this to be enforced through registration and funding conditions. It responds to the Government’s acknowledgement that further measures may be needed to ensure childcare providers engage fully with local safeguarding partnerships.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, these amendments, in my name and supported by my noble friend Lord Mohammed, all refer to early years safeguarding in general, and particularly in large nurseries and early years group settings that are regulated.
When a child goes to nursery, we all expect them to be safeguarded and looked after. However, two MPs have recently faced horrific situations in their constituencies where constituents have come to them saying their child was not properly looked after in the nursery. In Cheadle, a child who was lying on a mattress rolled over and sadly died. You can imagine the absolute horror, upset and devastation that those families must have faced.
These amendments make suggestions about how we might provide added safeguards, particularly to nurseries that are in groups or part of a chain. I thank the Ministers for being prepared to meet me, listen and understand. I not only met the Minister here; I also met Minister Bailey last week. She was very supportive, as you would expect. I pay tribute to them, and I thank them for their understanding and response.
Amendment 7 would require large nurseries and early years groups to actively participate in the arrangements, including local briefings and training, and would enforce this through registration and funding conditions. Amendment 8 in my name would ensure that any large nursery or early years group that operates in more than one registered setting is automatically brought within the arrangement as a designated agency.
Amendment 9 would insert a new clause requiring the Secretary of State to make regulations enabling Ofsted to inspect and report at the level of large early years groups or nursery chains, so that safeguarding problems that span multiple settings can be identified and addressed at group level.
Finally, Amendment 10 would require the statutory framework to be revised so that large nursery groups must ensure that the safeguarding leads and staff are trained and engaged with local safeguarding arrangements across all their settings.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
On group 3, particularly Amendments 7 and 8 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, let me be clear that I fully recognise the vital importance of ensuring that every education setting and childcare provider is fully embedded in local safeguarding arrangements. We are acutely aware of the appalling incidences of abuse that have occurred within certain nursery chains, and no one in this Chamber underestimates the gravity of those failures.
While I cannot comment on the specifics of ongoing reviews, I know that our thoughts will remain firmly with the children and families affected. I extend my thanks to the commitment of the honourable Members Munira Wilson, Tom Morrison and Tulip Siddiq, who have been powerful champions for the families and children affected. Their contribution underscores the importance of the reforms the Bill takes forward. It is precisely because we take this so seriously that we must avoid the temptation to duplicate duties unnecessarily, or to legislate in ways that create complexity rather than strengthen safeguarding practice.
I emphasise that the system already places clear multi-agency safeguarding duties on all registered early years settings through existing regulations. Clause 2 reinforces and clarifies these obligations by placing a duty on safeguarding partners to include education and childcare settings in their arrangements, and ensures that providers continue to take part in safeguarding activities. In short, the settings in scope of Amendments 7 and 8 are already captured by the legal framework and measures in this clause. Adding an extra layer of statutory designation risks creating legislative duplication with no clear operational benefit.
In addition, robust accountability is already in place, including through independent inspection and statutory guidance under the Children Act 2004. This ensures that relevant agencies participate fully in safeguarding arrangements and are supported to do so. Additional legislative compliance conditions, such as linking participation to funding or registration, are unnecessary. The existing framework, combined with the enhancements delivered through Clause 2, gives safeguarding partners the tools they need to secure meaningful and consistent co-operation across the sector.
I turn to Amendments 9 and 10, also tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. As he set out, the overarching aim of these amendments is important, and it is already recognised by the Government. Amendment 9 seeks to make specific provision for Ofsted inspection and reporting on nursery chains. Amendment 10 requires the statutory framework to be revised so that nursery groups must ensure that their safeguarding leads and staff are trained in, and engaged with, local safeguarding arrangements across all their settings. I hope I can reassure noble Lords that we are committed to reviewing nursery chain regulation, to improve market oversight and the quality and safety of early years education and childcare.
This commitment was first made in the Government’s recent Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life strategy. It was reconfirmed in the Statement that the Secretary of State made in the House of Commons in response to Operation Lanark, and I am happy to reconfirm it today in response to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Storey.
On Amendment 9, I appreciate the concern of noble Lords regarding Ofsted inspection of early years groups and chains so that safeguarding problems that span multiple settings can be identified and addressed at group level. Although Ofsted can already take action against settings that are linked by the same registered person, we are in complete agreement that we need further consideration of bespoke powers for the regulation of nursery chains to better safeguard the youngest and most vulnerable children. To that end, we have committed to working with Ofsted to review the regulation of early years chains. We expect this will very likely lead to recommendations relating to inspecting and reporting on chains. However, careful consideration is needed to ensure that we get this right before we make legislative change.
On Amendment 10, again, I appreciate the concern of noble Lords regarding safeguarding training in early years settings. In September 2025, we introduced new safeguarding training requirements within the Early Years Foundation Stage statutory framework. All early years staff must be trained in line with these, and designated safeguarding leads must know their local child protection procedures and how to liaise with local statutory children’s services agencies and local safeguarding partners. Any new requirements which would need to be considered at a chain level will form part of the previously mentioned nursery chain regulation review; they will be in scope of that review.
Given that, I hope that I have addressed the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Storey. He is right—particularly in the light of some of the devastating events that he referenced—to have brought these issues to the notice of this House. I hope that, given my reassurances, he feels able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her fulsome response. Like her, I have concerns—it is almost the opposite position to that of my noble friend Lord Addington—about large nursery chains, nursery businesses and large groups of nurseries run by a business where often decisions are made away from that individual nursery.
I should say that I was a head teacher and had a nursery of 100 places. If there was any issue, I was always on hand to deal with it and support my staff. I am wondering whether, if you have a nursery business of several dozen nurseries, you can have that immediate impact of change that might be required.
I add that after hearing about the parents in these two tragic cases, you feel helpless, and you want to do something. I pay tribute to them for, while grieving for their child, coming forward with ideas to improve the safeguarding arrangements. It is amazing that they can think of other children, having faced the loss of their own child.
I am very grateful to the Minister. She recognises the problem of those large chains and that we should work with, or talk to, Ofsted about how we can bring forward some recommendations in the future. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Spielman (Con)
My Lords, I will speak only very briefly. I express my most sincere thanks to the Minister for Amendment 21, concerning an information standard. It directly reflects an amendment that I proposed in Committee, which, in turn, drew on the work of Professor Sir Anthony Finkelstein in his capacity as adviser to the social care review steering group. I am delighted to see that provision and glad that the Government are taking the opportunity to introduce that power.
I express my support for the amendments proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, above all else that concerning the explicit use of the NHS number. Information sharing is hard. In the thematic and joint inspections we carried out at Ofsted—the joint targeted area inspections and the area SEND inspections—time and again information sharing came up as a theme. Whether we like it or not, data protection legislation has not made it easier to do that, so everything the Government can do to make it as straightforward and uncomplicated as possible in the situations where it is needed is deeply welcome. Therefore, I support the amendments, and Amendment 23 in particular.
Lord Storey (LD)
I will speak to the amendments in reverse order. We very much support having a single unique identifier. Unless the pilot of using the NHS number causes some unforeseen problems—we hope that that would not happen—we believe that it makes absolute sense to use the NHS number to link health and education. It is also important for children’s safeguarding: we need to know where they are, what is happening to them and when they change schools. It rightly brings added responsibility to schools, headteachers and governors.
We also believe that Amendment 19 is important. When there is a multi-agency approach, it is important that information and understanding are shared between different teams when cases are passed between them. This amendment rightly highlights the problem and comes up with a way forward.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
We are cooking with gas today. We are all fresh—at this point.
Throughout the passage of the Bill, there has been strong interest in provisions to improve information sharing for the purposes of safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children. I agree with the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and others that information sharing is a necessary but not sufficient determinant of whether we have an effective practice. As others have identified, it is enormously important and has too often been lacking in cases where children have come to harm. It must be a basis for action.
The call for improved information sharing includes the long-requested introduction of a consistent identifier for children which mirrors provision for adults introduced as far back as 2015. As we have heard, there is broad support for these measures, with concerns focused on ensuring that they can be implemented successfully, appropriately and as soon as possible. The government amendments in this group aim to provide further clarity.
Amendment 19, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, seeks to require safeguarding partners to establish practical multi-agency arrangements for initial information sharing before Section 47 thresholds can be determined. As the amendment suggests, clear information sharing processes are crucial. However, as I have previously suggested, that needs to be followed by action, which is why safeguarding partners must already publish their multi agency arrangements, including how they identify and respond to children’s needs. Therefore, the requirements set out in the amendment would duplicate existing requirements. Local leaders must retain flexibility to establish effective systems for their context, including how information flows between services.
I hope I can reassure the noble Baroness that it is neither our intention nor our belief that the legislation as currently drafted implies a one-way flow only—it does not. It determines precisely the sort of flows of information, backwards and forwards, that the noble Baroness rightly identified as fundamental to this being a success.
In addition to the existing requirements to publish multi-agency arrangements, prior to commencement we will consult on and publish statutory guidance, including a template data-sharing agreement, to help partners agree information flows and ensure timely and consistent information sharing within and across agencies. I hope that that provides the assurance that the noble Baroness was looking for.
I support the sentiment behind Amendment 23, also from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran: to broaden the consistent identifier regulation-making powers to ensure scrutiny of how the consistent identifier operates and which number is used. Government Amendment 21, introducing an information standard, and government Amendment 26, introducing a code of practice, also support the effective operation of the consistent identifier but are more focused.
As I already set out in Committee, we are piloting the NHS number only. We want to be assured of the benefits and information governance before naming a consistent identifier in legislation.
Lord Storey
“National child neglect strategy(1) The Secretary of State must prepare and publish a national child neglect strategy for the purposes of protecting children from neglect.(2) In preparing a national child neglect strategy the Secretary of State must consider—(a) groups of children that may be disproportionately affected by neglect;(b) the role that socio-economic disadvantage has on levels of neglect;(c) measures to equip local authority early intervention services and other relevant professionals to identify and respond to child neglect;(d) the definition of child neglect, to ensure it is fit for purpose;(e) the promotion of public awareness of child neglect.(3) The Secretary of State must consult with local authorities and other relevant stakeholders, including children, in the preparation of the national child neglect strategy.” Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires the Secretary of State to prepare a national neglect strategy to better understand and address the causes and impacts of child neglect, providing greater protection for children when delivering early intervention support for families.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I am moving this amendment on behalf of my noble friend Lady Tyler of Enfield. Her flight was delayed by 24 hours, so I am afraid noble Lords have got me instead. In moving Amendment 28 I will speak also to Amendment 97.
For far too long, child neglect has been absent from the conversation about supporting families and reducing the number of children in care. The consequences of neglect are devastating. It can impact on a child’s physical and mental health, hinder their development and disrupt their ability to form secure relationships. With a shift towards a greater focus on multi-agency family support across local authorities through the Families First initiative, now is the opportune time to take a strategic approach to tackling child neglect. NSPCC data over the past five years has consistently shown neglect to be the number one reason for people contacting its helpline.
Professionals continue to speak of a lack of national focus on tackling neglect, which has left many children without the right support. Resources and early help services —which have been at an all-time low while economic pressures have been at an all-time high—are receiving a welcome boost through measures in the Bill. But the new focus on support must go hand in hand with a greater focus on tackling neglect.
Persistently high levels of neglect, and those circumstances remaining unnoticed or unaddressed, reflect reduced early health services for families and uncertainty among the public about when services need to be involved in a child’s life. They are also impacted by rising child poverty levels. As they take steps to address embedded issues in children’s social care and implement their new child poverty strategy, the Government have a rare opportunity to ensure that neglect is a fundamental part of the discussion.
It is also important to note that many parents living in poverty make astonishing sacrifices to ensure that their children are not adversely impacted by material hardship. We must be clear that not all children living in poverty experience neglect, and neither does neglect happen only in families experiencing poverty; it is present in affluent households, too. However, emerging evidence does draw out links between poverty and all forms of harm.
Such a national strategy would make a real and tangible difference to the lives of children. Neglect often overlaps substantially with other forms of child maltreatment and can be present in other forms of abuse that are taking place. The Government must therefore wake up to the profoundly urgent crisis of child neglect and commit to a national child neglect strategy that gives children and families in England vital support before irreversible harm is done.
That is why early help is so crucial. Children need early, effective and holistic support to address these vulnerabilities, recover from harm and achieve positive outcomes. I was pleased to hear the Minister recognise in Committee that neglect is an enormously difficult and important area of work for children’s social care, and probably one where professionals and others need even more support to be able to identify it and take mitigating action.
The Government clearly agree that equipping professionals to identify concerns about neglect early, enabling parents to reach out for support in a non-stigmatising way, and ensuring that there are available resources to respond effectively to neglect, are vital to reducing the devastating impact that neglect can have on children.
While we are optimistic that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will address some of these urgent concerns through measures such as the new multi-agency child protection teams, stronger information-sharing duties and consistent child identifiers, the reality is that, without the local services and expertise in place, neglect will continue to lack the national and local attention it so urgently needs. That is why a national child neglect strategy is essential.
Finally, the Minister noted in her response to the earlier version of this amendment in Committee:
“Protection from all forms of abuse, including neglect, is a key priority for the Government”.—[Official Report, 9/6/25; col. 1122.]
Neglect is often the earliest sign of child maltreatment. If the Government are serious about prioritising protection against all forms of harm and supporting families as early as possible, preventing and tackling neglect through a dedicated strategy must be a central plank of their response. I beg to move.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, I return to the issue of the defence of reasonable punishment. My Amendment 97 asks the Government to look carefully at the report from Wales, following three years of implementation of their legislation. In response to my amendment in Committee, the Government repeated the statement that they were waiting for evidence from Wales. My amendment seeks only to make sure that this happens; it does not force the Government to take a decision but asks them to inform Parliament of their assessment of the Welsh findings and the implications for England.
I am grateful to the Minister for having met me after the Committee stage of the Bill. The evidence has increased that physical punishment harms children’s health and well-being and does not improve behaviour. That includes nearly 70 studies reviewed in the Lancet and evidence from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. No positive outcomes have been shown and there is a higher risk of later physical abuse, with clear links to behavioural problems and mental health difficulties.
This amendment is supported by 24 leading organisations in child health and child protection, social care and human rights. While we delay, children continue to be inappropriately physically punished. Contacts to the NSPCC adult and child helplines have shown an increase, not decrease, in concerns over physical punishment in recent years. Polling has shown that those with professional safeguarding responsibilities overwhelmingly support the approach taken in Wales and Scotland. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child committee has repeatedly recommended that the UK repeal the defence of reasonable punishment when a child has had physical abuse.
The Wales report shows that the legislative changes are progressing well. The Minister for Children and Social Care, Dawn Bowden MS, described the review as evidence that the law is working and making significant progress in protecting children’s rights. The report concludes that Wales has made a clear rights-based shift away from physical punishment. There is strong interagency collaboration and a focus on prevention and education. Most referrals come from professionals, indicating that the system in Wales operates through normal safeguarding channels. Therefore, many professionals reported no increase in workload as the law aligns with their duties, finding that the law has clarified and strengthened their ability to protect children and have better conversations with parents. It has helped educate and support parents in managing behaviours differently.
There is no evidence that such legislation interferes with children in loving, supportive families, nor that any trusted stakeholders are disproportionately affected by removing the defence of reasonable punishment when they make decisions. Wales’s highly successful out- of-court parenting support scheme has had 365 individuals referred by the police between 2022 and 2024; 265 reported positive outcomes in increased parental confidence for children’s behaviour. Fewer than five cases were considered by the Crown Prosecution Service, and there have been zero convictions.
Some 95% of parents and 91% of the public know that physical chastisement is illegal in Wales. Such changes provide children with equal protection from assault. Aggressive physical chastisement leads the child to becoming more aggressive themselves over time and developing poorer quality parent-child relationships in later life, as well as showing emotional and behavioural difficulties in school and a variety of negative health and development consequences. Importantly, there is no evidence that physical punishment relates to any positive developmental outcome.
As we see in this group of amendments, the Government are investing in schemes to protect children at risk of abuse and to prevent them falling through the cracks in services. All these investments must be evaluated. The evidence from three years’ evaluation in Wales should not be ignored. We do not accept hitting adults—that is assault. Yet at the moment, hitting children in England in the name of discipline is viewed as acceptable, even though the relative force between the hand that hits and the small body of a child involves a greater risk of causing physical as well as emotional damage.
The three-year report is now before us. The amendment simply asks the Government to fulfil their promise to review the implications of these findings for children in England in order to provide equal protection from assault.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
I do not think that that was an intervention on my speech, but there is a huge difference between a small tap and beating a child; that is the point. A small tap should not be illegal; beating a child is illegal.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, when the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, started her contribution, she said that we should look at the evidence from Wales, and I thought, fair enough. That is what the Government are going to do, are they not? But then, towards the end of her contribution, she said that we should look at the evidence from Wales but not emulate it. That evidence suggests that we take this course of action. We are all getting hung up and concerned about the harmful effects of social media and of mobile phones. What about the harmful effects of smacking? It is hard to believe that 40 years ago, we still had corporal punishment in schools; they probably debated it in this Chamber. Children were caned or slippered. A few noble Lords probably got up and said that this was not a good idea. We can imagine the contributions, at the time, from the likes of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, about that suggestion. I am sorry—I must not do that.
We have had a debate, and the work and experiments in Wales have been mentioned several times. But the most important people in all this are the children, are they not? What about them? Children who experience physical punishment are up to 2.6 times more likely to develop mental health problems, and up to 2.3 times more likely to go on to experience harm through more serious forms of physical abuse. This is the most worrying thing to me.
In 2023-24, over 700 children—we are probably talking about young children—contacted Childline to complain about, worry about or cry about physical abuse. What do we do? We go chatting on about all sorts of other things. I am disappointed that we are not having a Division on this: I would like to know how people feel. I am sure that the majority of Labour Members are absolutely on the side of doing away with corporal punishment. Some have been noticeably quiet, and I understand why; that is perhaps a cruel dig. I also accept, however, that we want to look at what has gone on in Wales and use that as the basis for coming to a conclusion. I am sure that those Members are genuine about this and are not using it as an opportunity to delay the matter beyond the general election. If they are still in office—and they could well be—could they please bring this forward immediately after the general election, and let us have a vote on it? This is a corporal punishment issue that is just as important as it was 40 years ago.
Lord Storey (LD)
I thank the Minister for her response, and I wish to withdraw the amendment.
Preschool Children: Digital Technology
Lord Storey Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for our useful and informative meeting, from which we have already taken further action. She is right about, and we particularly discussed in that meeting, the concerns of parents for the advice that they receive. I outlined in my initial Answer some of the action that we are taking to provide more clarity for early years providers, but we are also working to provide parents with clear, specific advice on early years screen time and home learning. In advance of specific early years screen time guidance for parents, we have streamlined content on the Best Start in Life website, an issue that she raised with us, to ensure that relevant home learning content appears in search results for screen time. We are exploring options to prioritise search results, ensuring that the most relevant home learning page appears first to further strengthen discoverability. Any new specific guidance for parents on early years and screen time will also be signposted clearly on the website. I look forward to the opportunity, when the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill returns to this House for Report in January, to continue this conversation and provide further information about action that the Government are taking.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, this is an important question and the Minister’s replies have been very helpful. With regard to the safeguarding side of nurseries, the Minister will be aware of the tragic occurrences of two nursery children in my colleagues’ constituencies of Cheadle and Twickenham. I know she has engaged with those two MPs. What progress is being made to support children, particularly in those nurseries that are part of a group of nurseries?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord raises an important point, and of course we have had other very distressing cases that have taken place recently in nurseries. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State made a Statement about action that the Government are taking. Specifically on this issue, we will be appointing an expert panel to inform the development of guidance for the early years sector on CCTV and digital devices within safeguarding. That guidance will set out best practice, technical information and clear expectations about how those devices are used, along with the use of CCTV. I would be happy to send the noble Lord further information about the action that we have taken post that particular case.
Post-16 Education and Skills Strategy
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Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Government for this White Paper, which is an incredibly important and wide-ranging document. It is essential that we build the skills pipeline to turn around the current stagnation in productivity and economic growth. But we also know, on all sides of the House, that this is a tough problem to crack. I read somewhere—I did not double check the data—that there have been 41 attempts to address this issue since the Labour Government were elected in 1997. As with all major reform, the challenge will lie in effective implementation. Delivering the scale of change envisaged in the White Paper will depend on clear accountability and long-term stability of decision-making. I am sure it is an issue that we will come back to in this House in the years ahead.
We are pleased to see that there are elements in the White Paper that build on the work of the previous Government. We are pleased to see a date confirmed for the introduction of the lifelong learning entitlement. We hope very much that this will build a pipeline of skills at levels 4 and 5, which we know are significantly lacking in the economy. It is not clear how this change will be incentivised. It would be helpful to hear from the Minister how the Government intend to create a pull from employers and how they will manage the financial risks to higher education institutions that, understandably, might be nervous about moving from a three-year degree model to a more modular approach.
As the Minister knows, there is a huge marketing task to be done. The pilots that we ran when in government significantly lacked demand—that is a polite way of describing it—so making people aware of these opportunities will be very important. It is also important that the Government can reassure the House that level 4 and level 5 qualifications will retain rigour and labour market currency, and not simply represent partial completion of degree programmes.
We are pleased to see the continuation of the technical excellence colleges, which build on the institutes of technology that we founded, which received significant public funds. We wish them every success. But there is limited clarity on how the network of excellent institutes of technology will be utilised within the new framework. Can the Minister confirm their role in delivering the higher technical education ambitions within the White Paper?
I spent a lot of time at the Dispatch Box arguing with Peers all around the House about the streamlining of level 3 qualifications, so I wish the Minister good luck with that. Can she clarify the sequencing of the ending of funding for BTECs and advanced general certificates and the start of the new V-levels? How confident is she that there will be the workforce to deliver this, given the significant pay gap between staff working in FE and teachers in our schools?
The vocational levels sound promising, but the timeline looks very tight. Can the Minister clarify what will happen if there is a delay? That is obviously important. The other day, the Secretary of State said in the other place that funding would be kept in place for “most existing qualifications”, as opposed to all existing qualifications, until V-levels are brought in. Can the Minister confirm whether T-levels will be extended into areas such as sports science, performing arts, catering and hospitality, and hair and beauty, where there is strong learner and employer demand?
The White Paper rightly commits to simplifying what is currently a confusing qualifications landscape. In that spirit, can the Minister confirm that, as V-levels are introduced, proprietary titles such as BTEC, City & Guilds, and Cambridge Technicals will cease, giving clarity to young people, parents and employers?
There are a number of areas where we have concerns, and perhaps that is just a question of clarification. The Government appear to have scaled back the promotion and rollout of higher technical qualifications designed to meet employer-set standards. Can the Minister clarify the current commitment to the HTQ model? Can she also clarify the details on the ability of colleges to self-certify their HTQs? Previously, IfATE signed off on the quality of courses, with significant input from employers. Without external verification, surely there is a risk that, in future, levy funds are spent on what could be, in some cases, low-quality courses. It feels like we have seen this in the university sector, particularly franchise providers, where there is not enough oversight of qualifications or standards. Similarly, can the Minister clarify the timeline for addressing the quality issues with some degrees? Our concern is that fees are going up before quality is addressed.
Turning to the introduction of a Progress 8-type measure in higher education, will the Minister outline how this will be constructed, given the different curricula in each institution? For pupils who did not pass English and maths GCSE while at secondary school, we of course welcome the additional investment to support them but are concerned that there will be a risk that some children are deemed to be unable to pass these important qualifications. Have the Government estimated how many pupils they expect will never complete their maths and English GCSE?
The White Paper is fairly silent on incentives for employers to invest more. The noble Baroness knows very well about the significant drops in employer investment in these areas. It is also silent on plans for boosting apprenticeships at levels 2 and 3, which are obviously very important, and further plans for simplifying the funding of further education. Finally, is the noble Baroness able to confirm that the employer contribution to the growth and skills levy will stay at 2%, or are there plans to increase it?
The White Paper has a very brief section on measuring impact which is mainly, if I may say, about counting outputs. How will progress and impact be measured in a really transparent way, maybe through employer engagement, learner outcomes or gains regionally in terms of skills? To say it another way, can the Minister say whether her every dream was fulfilled in this White Paper? If every measure knocked it out of the park, what would be the impact on productivity in this country?
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, we on these Benches welcome the Statement. We share many of the concerns that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, raised, and she quite skilfully teased those out with the questions she asked. Looking at the Statement, my immediate thought is that there is a lot of rhetoric in it, but there needs to be less rhetoric and more detail about some of the proposals. The biggest issue we face, which is not addressed, is the cultural shift in this country. Parents regard it as a successful education, quite honestly, and I have said this before, if the child or young person gets the required number of GCSEs, goes into the sixth form and goes to university. Schools lap up the number of students who go into the sixth form because they get extra funding for it, yet we know that half the pupils in our secondary schools are not academic, and we have this academic curriculum.
The other thing that surprises me in the Statement, which I think is crucial, is that young people need guidance. They need advice. They need help. They need support. I am surprised that there is no mention of careers education or careers guidance in the Statement —at this point, I declare an interest as a patron of Career Connect. It rightly says that
“our young people risk being left behind.”
That is absolutely right, because currently we have about one million NEETs in this country—not in education, employment or training. It talks about
“local businesses becoming more productive … and bustle returning to the high street”,
which begs the question of how we are going to do that. That is not just by quality training; there are number of other issues. Of course, the hike in national insurance did not help businesses, to be honest, and it certainly did not help high streets either.
The Statement talks about
“a muddle of confusing pathways”,
yet in some respects makes the muddle even more confusing, replacing BTECs with V-levels and cutting funding for the international baccalaureate programme in state schools. We welcome V-levels bringing flexibility, but we would rather see the phasing out of BTECs by 2027, both running in parallel during the transition so that outcomes can be compared. We know that BTECs work, because 200,000 students took them last year and 99% of universities accept them. One in five workers hold them. We need the Government to be more supportive here and look at funding streams. Why can sixth forms claim VAT, yet further education colleges cannot, for example? We support V-levels, but only if the transition from BTECs is based on evidence and if sufficient funding is provided to truly deliver a world-class vocational education.
Briefly, I am pleased about the section on universities. On the last Statement, the Minister gave us an assurance that the Government would face up to the funding crisis in universities, and they have been true to their word, but it is a bit disappointing that more money could have been available for universities had they not slapped on the levy for overseas students. That could have been an income stream that benefited the university sector.
I turn to the international baccalaureate. It sets the global benchmark for education. It is trusted by universities, employers and educators around the world as a mark of academic excellence, and thousands of British families choose to send their children to schools offering the IB diploma. What assessment has the Minister made of the impact of this cut to students’ ability to study under an internationally recognised programme?
We welcome the Government’s ambition to create a joined-up, strategic approach to education. However, the glaring omission of lifelong learning cannot be ignored. Learning does not end at 21. What steps are the Government taking to provide pathways for essential professions and deal with shortages in social work, nursing and engineering? It is important to all of us—we all have a real stake in this, the present Government and the previous Government—that we get this right and that it works. I hope that the mantra of two decades ago, “education, education, education”, is replaced by “skills, skills, skills”.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, in the relatively short time left for me before we get on to other questions, I will endeavour to respond to as many of the points raised as possible. Just to reiterate, this White Paper outlines the Government’s plans to deliver a joined-up skills system that targets skills gaps and leaves no place or person behind, a specialist and prestigious FE sector with high-quality study pathways into work and a world-leading higher education sector that drives innovation and growth and delivers high quality and good value for students. It is the blueprint for delivering the Prime Minister’s bold new target for two-thirds of young people to participate in higher-level learning—academic, technical or apprenticeships—by age 25.
On the first point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, about higher technical qualifications, we will work with the Office for Students to develop new HTQ awarding powers for providers and we are reforming the process for designating higher technical qualifications to make them meet a wider range of employer and local needs. I am glad that she recognised the development of technical excellence colleges as an important way of raising standards in further education. We are outlining plans for a further 19, following the 10 construction techs, in a range of other industrial strategy areas, and techs, of course, will enable us to raise standards by developing advanced equipment, specialised staff and new curricula, all alongside industry. We will learn and build on the model of institutes of technology, although I note that they have not been as successful in developing levels 4 and 5 as I suspect noble Lords opposite wanted them to be.
On the development of V-levels, this Government have taken the decision to maintain that important vocational route for young people—a route that would have disappeared under the previous Government’s plans. In doing that, we will build on what works in current vocational qualifications but we will also make sure that these new qualifications are linked to what employers need to see in those areas, guided by national standards.
On defunding, as we said last year when we carried out the qualifications review, we believe that where there are large courses in the same area as T-levels, students will gain more by following a T-level course. But we are going back from the defunding proposals of the previous Government, even some of those in the qualifications review last year, and we will maintain funding for all large qualifications in non-T-level routes, and for medium-sized and small qualifications in T-level routes, up to the point at which V-levels are available, ensuring that the transition is as smooth as possible. In developing V-levels, we will engage with colleges, employers and, of course, awarding bodies.
On the English and maths qualification, it remains incredibly important that young people achieve that grade 4 in English and maths, and that is why we have both increased funding and been clear in our guidance that that should continue to happen in further education colleges. But there is no point in somebody keeping on taking an examination when they have not yet been able to gain the foundation necessary to succeed in that. That is why we will introduce new opportunities through level 1 qualifications for those foundations to be built on, so as to achieve success for young people rather than failure. We will invest in the further education workforce, as we already have done, and we will provide £800 million extra next year for the further education sector.
Yes, we will consider areas where we can expand T-levels.
I will probably get the opportunity to say more about higher education quality later, but we are clear that where there is bad value for public money, we will, alongside the OfS, ensure that it goes out of the system.
There is mention, by the way, of level 2 and 3 apprenticeships, not least in the £1 billion of investment that this Government have put into sector skills packages.
The noble Lord, Lord Storey, suggested that the Statement was rhetorical. Yes, elements of it were, but I am sure that he has also looked at the considerable amount of detail in the White Paper, and I am sure we will have many more opportunities to get into more detail on that.
Fundamentally, as the noble Lord says, what the White Paper does is to improve the status of our technical and vocational qualification routes, for young people and for older people, to ensure that we bring about a fundamental renewal of the skills system as part of our national renewal. This White Paper is a turning point, and I look forward to working through how we deliver this fundamental change, how we measure it and how this therefore leads to an improved skills system, improved opportunities for people throughout their lives, and improved growth for our economy.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Storey Excerpts(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, I inferred from what the noble Baroness said that she thinks I do not believe children should have vaccines. I do. In fact, there is an active element in me that considers that we should prosecute parents who do not give their children the MMR vaccine because of the potential outcomes. I am not saying that is a policy I would adopt overnight, but it is worrying that so many children do not have the MMR. But on a broader point, I hear what the noble Baroness said, and of course that is what will be written in the HSA and in PHE, but I can assure her that I am aware that this is a primary element of trying to reduce the transmission of flu. I have no doubt that, if children get flu, it can be serious. It can be serious for any individual. That was one of the driving forces and why it is aimed in particular at children in primary schools. It is widely available and is significantly designed to reduce the transmission to adults.
Lord Storey (LD)
This has been an important debate on these amendments. I want to start by saying that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, is not able to be present. Her husband is not at all well. She added her name to Amendments 469 and 470. I am going to keep my comments brief. The noble Lord, Lord Russell, is right: I can almost see Baroness Massey on my shoulders. When I first arrived here, although she was of a different party, she immediately collared me, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and gave me a briefing on children’s rights. That was the first time I met Doreen Massey. At some stage, when we come to our senses on this, her importance on this issue will come to mind.
I also wanted to mention the point made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, about the importance of the child being heard. For far too long, we had the old adage that children should be seen and not heard. Sadly, that filters through the whole of society in all sorts of ways. It is not just parents and public bodies. I remember my wife being heartbroken when a black boy in her secondary school was fostered by white parents. At the time it was quite rightly thought to be the case that culturally it is better if foster parents have the same heritage as the child. The boy, who was 12 or 13, was adamant that he wanted to stay with his white foster parents. Nobody listened to that boy. Nobody in the local authority, in the school or in social services listened to that boy. If we say we want to hear the voice of the child, it is a nice phrase to use, but we have to make it work in practice and it has to filter through the whole of what we do.
On the convention on human rights, I just do not understand this, and I would like a detailed letter from the Minister. It is 12 years since my noble friend Lady Walmsley and Baroness Massey talked to me about this. Why can we not follow Wales and Scotland? Let us do an impact assessment. Do we just not want to do it? Well, then let us have the honesty to say that. Or, if we do want to do it, what are the reasons why we cannot? I would like to know. Perhaps the Minister, when she replies, could tell us.
I do not have anything else to add to what has been a wide-ranging discussion. This issue is crucial, of course. The clue is in the Bill’s title, is it not? If we are talking about the children’s well-being Bill, everything that we and the Government do in legislation should look at the impact on children. That is an eminently sensible move. So, I hope Government will support Amendments 469 and 470, either now or if they are brought back on Report.
I was tempted to, as we sometimes say, respond to the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman. I am afraid I just do not agree with her comments, but perhaps now is not the time to do that. Perhaps we can have a private conversation on some of the things that, to be honest, got me quite angsty.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, and other noble Lords who proposed the amendments in this group. This is a very technical area, and we have heard much expert opinion from my noble friend Lord Banner, the noble Lord, Lord Carter, the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and, crucially in our opinion, the former Chief Inspector of Education my noble friend Lady Spielman, and my noble friend Lady Coffey.
It is important to flag that, although His Majesty’s loyal Opposition completely understand the spirit of noble Lords’ amendments, we are not in a position to support them. The UK has already signed and ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, in 1990 and 1991 respectively, and it came into force in January 1992. As such, the UK is already bound by international law to implement the agreement, and our progress is being monitored by the Committee on the Rights of the Child. But several of the recommendations in the last report from the committee, including on child rights assessments and education, are ones we did not support when we were in government and still do not support in opposition.
Amendment 469 would bring an additional child rights assessment into all legislation, as recommended by the committee in its 2023 report. We simply do not believe that this is required; in fact, instead of enhancing a child’s education, it would further slow our ability to legislate and implement effectively.
The wider recommendations in the report are also not proposals with which we concur, including, for example, the recommendation to end academic selection and testing measures to reduce levels of stress on pupils. This has the potential to do real harm, particularly to disadvantaged pupils.
We believe that the huge opportunity before us is not to layer on new statutory duties or reporting mechanisms. To the contrary, it is to ensure that the education system we strive for is one that builds on the successes of the past 20 years, aided by noble Lords on all Benches of your Lordships’ House. An education that offers each and every child the opportunity to realise their full potential—that should be the endgame.
Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)
My Lords, I would like to add one very specific but pertinent comment to the debate at this point. Obviously, we are not going redesign the whole of apprenticeships here on the Floor of the House, but I strongly support the emphasis that the noble Lord, Lord Layard, has placed on 16 to 18 year-olds, and bring to your Lordships’ attention a very strange anomaly in the way we approach this.
When a young person fails to get an apprenticeship and remains in full-time education of some sort, this is paid for automatically as part of the open-ended commitment to pay for classroom-based education, even if it is also vocational or technical education, until somebody is 18 or 19. But apprenticeships for 16 to 18 year-olds have to come out of the levy—of which there is going to be very little money left next year, by the way, but that is a whole other discussion.
At the very least, in the short term, the Government could commit to moving the funding for apprenticeships for 16 to 18 year-olds into a different budget, into the perfectly correct national commitment to fund young people’s education and training until the age of 18.
Lord Storey (LD)
Briefly, I want to reinforce what has been said. What is unspent of the apprenticeship levy gets returned to the Treasury, not to be spent on education or apprenticeships, which is bizarre. It is a double whammy, because businesses, seeing that their money has not been spent and is likely to go back to the Treasury, suddenly start putting staff on high-level courses, equivalent—
Baroness Barran (Con)
This is risky, because I am doing this from memory. I appreciate that in earlier years, significant amounts of money were returned to the Treasury, but in the last year we were in government, it was £11 million—so basically absolutely everything was spent. I say that in relation to my noble friend Lord Deben’s remarks, and I hope the noble Lord, Lord Storey, will put that in context.
Lord Storey (LD)
The noble Baroness is right—the amount that was not spent or did not go to the Treasury was coming down.
Baroness Barran (Con)
No. To be clear, of the many millions of pounds that were raised through the apprenticeship levy, the amount that was not spent on apprenticeships and was returned to the Treasury was £11 million in the last year that we were in government, as I remember it.
Lord Storey (LD)
The point I was also going to make was that companies and businesses that had not spent the levy and did not want to see it returned to the Treasury were using it not for level 3 apprenticeships but for high-level master’s-type apprenticeships. That surely cannot be the right thing to do; it is not in the spirit of apprenticeships.
I was quite shocked that, in my city of Liverpool, Liverpool City Council, which had an apprenticeship scheme over a two-year period, returned £1 million of money to the Treasury. That money could easily have been spent on level 3 apprenticeships. The noble Lord, Lord Layard, gave us all the statistics at the beginning. We need to ensure that there is money for level 3 apprenticeships, because the original hope of apprenticeships was that they would go to the young people who desperately needed to have this opportunity.
Baroness Spielman (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 502YM. I will echo some of the comments made by my noble friend Lord Jackson in relation to his amendment. I believe that my amendment complements the comprehensive final-stage procedure he outlined neatly.
Anyone who works in education knows how problematic dealing with complaints is becoming. Of course it is right that public bodies should have a complaints procedure, as is required by law. Of course dissatisfied parents should be able to complain to or about a school, and schools failing in their responsibilities should rectify their errors and omissions promptly. But the current system is complex and, in the main, giving satisfaction to no one.
I remind noble Lords that complaining to government is, typically, a fourth-line action after a series of stages. The first stage is attempting to resolve the issue with the staff member most directly involved, such as a classroom teacher; the second is escalating the issue or making a complaint to the head teacher or another school leader; the third is making a complaint to school governors; and the fourth is escalating a complaint to the local authority or the academy trust.
Yet the number of complaints to government has grown enormously in recent years, although there is not much evidence of a corresponding deterioration in the service offered by schools to children and parents. It seems likely that it is at least partly down to a higher propensity to be dissatisfied in a more fractious world. Furthermore, the use of AI enables parents to generate extremely lengthy complaints, which are time consuming to read, investigate and respond to. Safeguarding will often be invoked to ensure that a complaint is prioritised.
The various provisions in law relating to the consideration of complaints by national education bodies generally require that local routes have been exhausted. The expectation was that escalation to national bodies was a last resort for when serious concerns are ignored or mishandled by those more directly responsible. But, sadly, we see today an increasing willingness to escalate even relatively minor issues if the school’s response is anything other than doing exactly what the parent wants. When more serious concerns arise, such as those pointed out by my noble friend Lord Jackson, the sheer volume can mean that those more serious concerns are drowned out by the volume of very minor complaints.
Furthermore, the patchwork of law and regulation often means that any complaint must be considered in all the places to which it is sent. Each of the government organisations has a different purpose and will apply a different filter to determine whether it needs to act, but all of them must take the time to read and understand what are often long and complex documents, and often must check with the school to establish the facts. This is a huge burden on schools as well as being a wasteful model for government to operate, and it does not appear to be making parents any more satisfied. We need to reset the system and return to the expectation that the vast majority of complaints are considered and closed at local level.
My amendment therefore proposes that a single government complaints system is established, which can triage and direct complaints to the most appropriate body or reply to the complainant to say that there is no further action to be taken. There would need to be discussion about where this should be located. If it was desirable for such decisions to be made by those with substantial school experience, it might be located in Ofsted; otherwise, it might be a DfE team. Either way, the complaints and action taken should be recorded in a single database, accessible to all bodies with regulatory functions, including inspection, so as to minimise duplication, with all the burdens that that imposes.
Such a system should reduce the wear and tear on parents themselves—pursuing complaints is very damaging to parents in their relationships with schools—as well as the wear and tear on schools from protracted and inconclusive complaints processes. In short, this is a pragmatic amendment that would benefit almost everyone.
Lord Storey (LD)
I understand where these amendments are coming from. Personally, I have not formed a complete view about this. I understand what the noble Baroness is saying and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply, because there is an issue here and this is about how we handle that issue.
Education has become a successful business for the lawyers, to be quite honest. Dare I say, you only have to look at special educational needs, which lawyers and solicitors have made a lot of money out of. I declare an interest as my daughter is a solicitor. One also sees solicitors involved in school admission procedures. In some cases, that is a natural route to take, and I wonder about complaints—never mind the bureaucracy involved—if lawyers get involved in that side as well.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, where did it all go wrong? I can look back to those halcyon days where, in primary schools, there were two lessons of PE a week timetabled, and PE covered a whole range of activities, from gym work to games and swimming—children regularly left school being able to swim 20 metres —and after-school sports competitions. In secondary schools, sport was thriving. As we have heard, that was beneficial for the well-being of children and young people and important for their health, with regards to obesity, and for teamwork, working together and understanding each other.
This is not something that can be laid just at the hands of the present Government. In fact, the present Government, in a former iteration, did a great deal of work on sport. People will think that I am a member of his fan club, but the Blair Government brought in some of the most radical proposals on sport that this country has ever seen. Whether it was a mixture of Covid, the recession or whatever, it all suddenly—
Baroness Bousted (Lab)
I am sorry, but I have to interject here to say that the narrowing of the curriculum and the teacher supply crisis was a direct result of austerity, teacher pay falling by 12% in real terms and chronic underfunding of schools, all of which were initiated during the coalition and continued until 2024.
Children absolutely deserve a rich and balanced curriculum, but that becomes much more difficult if they are not being taught by teachers qualified in the subject area but by unqualified teachers. The teacher supply crisis started and became acute during the previous Government. When we have this debate, we cannot ignore the practical consequences of chronic underfunding, chronic undermining of the profession and, from the start of the coalition, a policy of attacking teachers and leaders as being responsible for falling school standards.
There was also a deliberate narrowing of the curriculum through the EBacc to a range of academic subjects, which has meant a precipitous decline in arts and drama and a shorting of the experience that children get in physical education.
I am sorry, but I must put all that on the record. My friend the noble Lord is rightly asking these questions but he is coming up with a different set of conclusions.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, before the noble Lord continues, I do not recognise, luckily, the dystopian view that he has given. The primary school that both my children were at and the school where I now teach are full for before-school, lunchtime and after-school activities. I put on record in this Chamber that my daughter’s girls team won the under-15 Hackney cup.
Lord Storey (LD)
I am grateful for those comments, believe it or not. I could well have made the noble Lord’s speech, to be honest, and I might have gone on to say some of those things. In some of my other contributions in this House, I have, for example, decried the Government’s stance on the EBacc, which has created problems for the creative industries, as well as for sport and physical education. The noble Lord, Lord Gove, who is not in his place, spoke yesterday, and I referred to the cataclysmic changes that his time as Secretary of State brought about. I was slightly annoyed that he referred to a reasonable request for a national guarantee on tutoring as a sort of publicity stunt by the Lib Dems. That was my reaction to that, as those noble Lords who were present know. I accept everything the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, said.
Politicians—not in this Chamber, of course—sometimes forget what happened beforehand. The country was on its knees because of the recession—it really was; you could see that—and the Government had to step forward and take some difficult decisions. But those difficult decisions did not have to see the dismantling of services that both the noble Lord and I think are really important. As the head teacher of a primary school for 23 years, I recognise what the noble Lords is saying, but it is not in every school.
However, we were talking about PE, so let me move on to one example of PE which I know a great deal about: swimming. I declare an interest as a patron of the Royal Life Saving Society. Swimming is important to us as a nation—we are an island. I do not have the figures to hand, other than the sad figure that somewhere in the region of 250 people drown every year and some 40 of them are children between primary age and 17, and those figures are rising. Why are drownings happening? It is because fewer and fewer schools have the resources to swim. How many schools have a swimming pool they can go to? I remember in those halcyon days in my borough, primary schools would have a small learner pool that you could walk to in every area. We could take even top infants to the learner pool to learn how to swim. Every child had a term and a half of swimming and 98% of children left school being able to swim 20 meters. That does not happen now, for the very reasons that we have heard.
I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. I thought his speech was absolutely spot on. If we are serious about the importance of sport, everything he said I could not agree with.
Lord Storey (LD)
Did I say agree? I am still recovering from the interventions. To be clear, I agree with everything that the noble Lord said and would support all four amendments. I thank noble Lords for introducing them.
Children and young people get so much from sport and physical education. It is not just about their well- being; believe it or not, it helps them in their other studies. One of the local head teachers in my area used to start the school day not by doing numeracy or literacy but a creative activity—either sport, drama, dance or something like that—because it got people energised and helped with their learning. Sport is important not just for the mind and body but for the well-being and development of the child as a whole.
I thank noble Lords who put down those amendments. I speak for my party when I say we very much support them.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, my noble friend has covered what happens in school, but that is just one area of activity. If it is done properly, school is merely part of a greater continuum that goes out into the community. The school sports partnerships were going to save the breakdown in the traditional links between small clubs, grass-roots sports and school, but they were not there for long enough for us to know whether they would. Many of us in both bits of the coalition Government thought that it was one of the weirdest things possible that they were kept going until the Olympics and then cancelled afterwards when we might have got some benefit. I got a small nod from the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan—a bigger one now—which says, “That’s exactly what we thought at the time”.
We also knew from that and from looking at studies that a big sporting event is great for tourism and volunteering but does not make any difference to grass-roots sport unless you back it up with something—with your inspiration. Schools have to work with the grass roots. In the amendments, we have the start of that structure, which we can go forward with. It is not just in this Bill or with this department. If we are going to lose lots of playing fields in the planning Bill, it does not matter what you do because you will not be playing anywhere else—probably not even at schools. We have to have something that goes forward. These amendments start to look slightly broader.
Lord Wei (Con)
My Lords, my Amendment 502YQ is mainly to probe the Government’s intention in relation to their own use of data regarding this Bill. This amendment addresses an issue that has surfaced repeatedly in our many debates: the scope of data collection about children in education. We have heard a lot today about the role of technology providers, but I want to turn the focus to how we are collecting data within the education system in government.
My amendment would ensure that personal data may be collected, retained or processed only where it is strictly necessary to protect a child from significant harm, as defined in Section 31 of the Children Act 1989. Why is this needed? The Bill as drafted gives wide latitude to local authorities and the Secretary of State to demand data on children not in school—an area that I really care about—as well as potentially on others. In particular, the data demanded of children not in school—we have already heard about the amount of data that is already collected on children in school—is off the scale. We are told that this is for safeguarding, but safeguarding has a very specific meaning in law. It is not a licence for limitless information gathering; it is a duty to act when a child is suffering or likely to suffer significant harm.
Clause 31, for instance, invites local authorities to gather information far beyond what is necessary. Names, addresses and dates of birth are sufficient to identify a child and discharge oversight duties. However, the Bill’s wording allows for much more, including details of parental and children’s beliefs, educational philosophy, supplementary providers and even protected characteristics. This, to me, is mission creep, not proportionate oversight. As the department has itself acknowledged in past consultations, the bare minimum of data suffices to track children and ensure that no one falls through the net. To demand more because it might be helpful is not lawful data processing. Data protection law is clear: collection must be limited to what is necessary for the purpose. Helpful is not enough.
The risks of excessive data collection are not theoretical. Families have already seen sensitive information stored indefinitely, cross-referenced with other records and sometimes shared with agencies in ways that they did not consent to or even know about. One military family with whom I have interacted recounted how their local authority repeatedly contacted the father’s workplace about his children, despite clear instructions not to do so. Another home-educating mother described how, after deregistering a child with special needs, she was followed in public after being wrongly referred to social services. These are not safeguards; they are intrusions to undermine trust.
We must also remember that not all parents in the system are confident or well resourced. Some are vulnerable, fleeing domestic abuse or suffering with SEND bureaucracy. For them, intrusive data demands feel less like protection and more like surveillance. If the state is perceived as hostile, families may retreat from engagement altogether, making genuine safeguarding harder, not easier. That is why my amendment would tie permissible data collection to the Section 31 threshold of “significant harm”, which is already the bedrock of child protection law. It is the line that our courts have drawn between parental primacy and state intervention. Aligning data powers with that line ensures consistency, legality and proportionality.
Proposed new subsection (2) in my amendment would ensure proportionality by limiting data to what was essential for the specific risk identified. If the concern is neglect then collect information relating to neglect; if the concern is radicalisation, focus on that. Do not use safeguarding as a pretext for wide-ranging dossiers on families’ private lives. Proposed new subsection (3) would close off another danger: profiling. We should not be gathering data to build long-term behavioural profiles of children or to monitor families against vague benchmarks of compliance. That is not safeguarding; it is social engineering by stealth. Proposed new subsection (4) would require the Secretary of State to publish clear guidance within six months, so that local authorities, schools and parents know the limits of permissible data collection. That guidance should provide clarity, consistency and accountability.
Some might worry that the amendments would tie the hand of professionals. On the contrary, they would free them to focus on what matters. Instead of drowning in forms and files and data, they could concentrate on children at genuine risk. Excessive data is not neutral; it diverts time, money and attention from where it is most needed.
International law supports this approach. In MM v the UK in 2012 the European Court of Human Rights held that the retention of excessive personal data without clear necessity breached Article 8, while in Ali v the UK in 2015 the court stressed that decisions must be informed by accurate, relevant and proportionate information. We cannot claim compliance with Article 8 if we allow the indefinite harvesting of families’ and children’s private details “just in case”.
The amendment is not only for home educators, though their experience has highlighted this problem in the Bill. It would protect every family in the education system. It would ensure that schools are not turned into data collection points for the state and that local authorities are not saddled with the impossible burden of storing, processing and protecting sensitive information that they do not always need. Above all, it would protect children from being profiled, stigmatised, or surveyed in ways that bear no relation to genuine safeguarding.
In passing the Bill, we must not create a database state by accident. We must legislate with care, remembering that data is not neutral—it is power. It is the new oil, in fact. Used well, it can protect; used badly, it can harm. Amendment 502YQ would ensure that that power was exercised with clear limits, tied to the statutory threshold of significant harm. That is fair, proportionate and faithful to the principles of our child protection law. I commend it to the House.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, Covid was certainly the rocket fuel for the growth of educational technology in our schools, which is now accepted as part of the school learning landscape. The UK’s education tech sector is the largest in Europe, spending, as we already heard, an estimated £900 million a year. However, there are real concerns that these amendments seek to address, which is why we will be supporting Amendments 493, 494, 502K, 502YH and 502YI.
The edtech sector is exempt from the Online Safety Act, and adherence to GDPR is inconsistent, to say the least. Large multiuse platforms such as Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams can enhance teaching and school management, but the absence of clear statutory standards leaves children’s education and school cybersecurity often at risk. We surely need a regulated framework to safeguard children’s rights, protect the data and prevent the commercial exploitation of children. We sleepwalked into the development of social media. Now that we see the harm that has been caused, we rush to try to do something about it. There is a strong case for developing a regulated framework to safeguard children’s rights and support schools in making informed and sustainable choices.
I want to respond to what I thought was a very thoughtful contribution by the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman. It made me think that six years ago I had a Private Member’s Bill on essay mills and contract cheating. That is now all for naught, because there are other ways of cheating, and AI helps that considerably.
I had an intern who one day said to me, “Lord Storey, here’s a speech for you”. I said, “Ooh, let me have a look”. I read the speech and thought, “Wow, this is great. I’ll use this”. He told me that it was AI generated. “Really?”, I said. I wondered whether in five or 10 years your Lordships’ House might be a very different place for speeches. Might we all succumb to using not our own thoughts and experiences but AI to generate speeches? Would anybody know in five or 10 years’ time, when the technology will be absolutely spot on?
I want to deal briefly with the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. Amendment 502YU concerns reception baseline assessments. The Minister will recall that I raised this in an Oral Question. There is something a little perverse about the youngest children—five year-olds—doing their assessments on a screen. I have a degree of sympathy for the noble Baroness’s amendment, and I hope the Minister can shed some light on it.
Regarding the other two amendments, I know that SEND exceptions are mentioned, but as my noble friend Lord Addington said in his hugely important contribution, it is not either/or. We have to think through these amendments carefully, as there are other issues, not just special educational needs, that we need to be aware of. We do not want to agree something that creates problems for the future.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, this is yet another important group of amendments, which seeks to bring, frankly, some common-sense principles to the use of edtech, children’s data and screens. Amendments 493 and 494, in the name of my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond, seek to introduce what would in effect be quality standards for the use of edtech in schools. There are existing standards and guidance for schools in relation to hardware and data, but I was unable to find any specifically in relation to edtech, so it feels as though my noble friend has identified a real gap.
Similarly, Amendment 502K, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, would introduce a code of practice on the efficacy of edtech. I suggest that, in all these amendments, we need to be very clear that any standards or principles focus not just on some of the data and related safety issues that we have talked about; we must make sure that they are absolutely based on the latest research in cognitive science and the best understanding of pedagogy, so that they deliver learning. We need them to be safe—that is necessary but not sufficient—and effective.
Last year, a thorough report by the Education Select Committee on the impacts of screen time on educational well-being found that the proliferation of edtech platforms made their overall benefit hard to quantify. It pointed out that only 7% of edtech providers had conducted randomised controlled trials on their products. The report noted that there are more than half a million apps claiming to be educational but, as yet, no quality standards for assessing educational content. The report judged as poor the evidence base for assessing which, if any, of these apps are most effective.
Amendment 493 includes a requirement for transparency in relation to the use of training data, AI and third-party use of data. It shares the spirit of Amendment 502YI, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, which would introduce a code of practice in relation to the processing of data in connection with the provision of education to children—an area where the introduction of AI could expand how children’s data is shared and used. Understanding how our children’s data is used is extremely important, as we have heard from noble Lords across the Committee, but it is important that we can use it. One of the biggest data sources that could move the needle on, for example, AI marking systems for formative assessment, is held in our national exam scripts. We need to be very intentional about the areas that we focus on.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lord, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and to share in her concern about the need to prepare pupils in this age of shocks where we literally do not know what is around the corner. I have often spoken in your Lordships’ House about the need for first aid education in schools. This amendment is broader than that.
We need education that prepares people for life and not just for exams. I note that recently some basic questions about first aid have been introduced into the driving licence test, which shows that there is some recognition by the Government of the need to act in this space.
I shall speak chiefly to my Amendments 502YB and 502YK and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for her support for them. Amendment 502YB, which would require a review of climate adaptation in schools, very much fits with the noble Baroness’s Amendment 502P, but her amendment is focused largely on the physical fabric of schools while mine is focused to a large degree on how schools behave and are arranged. It is more of a behavioural kind of question.
I note that the UK Health Security Agency has published updated guidance about heat for schools and early years settings. That guidance allows schools to relax uniform policy in the heat. It suggests that students should wear loose, light-coloured clothing and sun hats with wide brims, stay in the shade as much as possible, and wear sunscreen with high sun protection factors, et cetera. It also says that teachers should encourage students to take off their blazers and jumpers. But all that is in terms of encouragement and suggestions.
I put it to the Minister and the Government more broadly that we are in a situation now, particularly when we have so many schools with an unreasoning and almost religious attachment to rigid uniform policies, where there should be rules that say that schools must act to keep pupils safe. I note that the National Education Union suggests that 26 degrees should be set as an appropriate point at which to identify additional measures—so let us make some rules about taking action to protect our children.
On the broader point about climate resilience, the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, referred to a London study; I shall refer to a London programme that may have followed from that, Climate Resilient Schools. In 2022-23, the Mayor of London funded measures in 100 schools to make them more resilient, but when we look at the website, we can see that that programme has now ended. Surely, we need an ongoing programme to make our schools more climate resilient.
I come now to Amendment 502YK, about the prevention of the transmission of respiratory and other diseases in classrooms and schools generally. I was looking at Amendment 502YH in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, which would introduce a new clause headed:
“Statutory standards of filtering and monitoring systems deployed in schools”.
I thought, “Oh, this might be similar”, but, no, that is an amendment about computer or digital viruses. We have just had a very long debate focusing on those digital safety issues, but, somehow, even despite the Covid pandemic, we have rather less focus on biological virus risks—mine is the only amendment that does that.
You might call this the Covid amendment, and certainly I speak in the context where it is very clear that Covid is not over; a new variant, Stratus, is spreading fast and raising levels of concern. That means that Covid is still spreading and that more and more people are not just becoming ill in the short term but, as we know, getting long Covid. The pulmonologist, Binita Kane, has recently started an NHS long Covid clinic and notes that there has been a refusal to acknowledge the problem of long Covid, and the continuing problem. If we look at the history of the world’s medical treatment of so-called chronic fatigue syndrome, or myalgic encephalomyelitis, we see that there has been a refusal to acknowledge the issue of broader post-viral syndromes and the fact that people get ill for a long time.
There was a study out at the end of last year whose headline said that after two years 70% of the children who had shown the symptoms of long Covid were no longer displaying them. That means, of course, that 30% of the children who had been diagnosed a couple of years ago with long Covid still have it, and it is still affecting their lives. That is something that we cannot ignore about Covid—but, of course, this is not just a Covid amendment. Just because we have had a Covid pandemic, that will not have any impact on the continuing acute risks of a flu pandemic, something that the world has known much of in the past.
Ventilation and air filtration are also good for pupil concentration. It is good for general health to have fresh air in the classroom, and we need to be able to look after the health of pupils. I have a direct question for the Minister—I shall understand if she wants to write to me on it later. In 2021, England spent £25 million on providing all state-funded schools and colleges with a portable CO2 monitor for every two classrooms. There was further funding in November 2022 for the remaining 50% of classrooms. The recommendation is that CO2 levels should be kept below 800 parts per million, with indoor air at 600 to 800 parts per million being a relatively good level of ventilation. Can the Minister tell me now or in the future how many of those monitors are still in use and what kind of results they are showing?
Lord Storey (LD)
The hour is late, so I will be very brief. I make three observations. First, we react to situations; we do not prepare for them. Secondly, we then set up a particular programme or campaign but we do not embed it; we do it until people have lost interest or media attention has moved on to something else; thirdly, schools or parents often come up with something, following a particular event occurring in a school and it starting a campaign—it is a pity that this is not shared.
It is not quite the same, but I think of the example of EpiPens and defibrillators in schools. In Liverpool, a poor boy aged 11 had a cardiac arrest in the swimming pool and tragically died. His family and immediate friends started a campaign, the Oliver King Foundation, to get defibrillators into every school in Merseyside, and that happened. All these amendments are certainly worth consideration.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, this is a diverse group of amendments.
Amendment 502M, tabled by my noble friends Lord Young of Acton and Lord Brady of Altrincham, is on the duty to keep schools open in person during civil emergencies. I think that we can all agree on the importance of this principle. We saw vividly during Covid that schools are crucial centres of learning but also places of community, which form an important part of the foundation of childhood. I support the principle behind the amendment that schools should remain open and that closure should be considered only ever in the most extreme circumstances. I am slightly less clear, looking at the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, whether the Children’s Commissioner is the right person to advise the Government, but it will be interesting to hear what the Minister has to say on that.
Amendment 502P, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and my noble friend Lord Gascoigne, on the creation of a safe and resilient schools plan, rightly highlights the importance of ensuring that our school buildings are resilient to climate change and responsible when it comes to emissions—maybe a building cannot be responsible but those building it can be. The previous Government set out in our Sustainability and Climate Change: A Strategy for the Education and Children’s Services Systems in 2023 a commitment for all new school buildings to be net-zero in operation, designed for a 2 degree rise in average global temperatures and future-proofed for a 4 degree rise. I am slightly confused by the noble Baroness’s amendment because I assume that the Government will continue with those objectives. If that has changed, can the Minister clarify?
Future buildings are a huge challenge, not just in funding but in the capacity in the building industry to deliver—although maybe the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, is working her magic in construction and green skills.
Amendment 502YA, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, is on civil preparedness training for pupils. Again, I am not convinced that there is a need for this amendment. There is already guidance and online training materials about how to respond to terrorist and other major incidents and I am not sure that we need more than that. Schools are pretty well equipped already.
Finally, Amendment 502YB, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, is on the review of climate adaptation in schools. It is not helpful to focus on just one aspect of school buildings, as opposed to many other aspects, including the safety and security of the construction materials that they are built with. We should trust local authorities and school trusts to fulfil their safety, suitability and climate resilience responsibilities.
The noble Baroness then went on, I think, to suggest—maybe I am being harsh at this late hour—that the Government should be more directive towards schools on relaxing school uniform. The idea that the Secretary of State will not only count how many ties we have in school but now instruct schools whether to loosen them is just going too far.