Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise in the middle of a long, important and well-informed debate. I first felt it was getting to the heart of what this Bill really should be about with the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. He showed appropriate preparedness to accept responsibility for the state of childhood in the UK today, with many children being failed by expulsion, off-rolling and schools that in no way meet their needs, suppress their energy and enthusiasm and fail to value their talents.

We are so keen on league tables, but why are we not focusing every day on the fact that the UK is ranked lowest in Europe in children’s well-being? That reflects the poverty, poor housing and poor food that so many children are forced to survive—the kind of systemic obstacles the Minister referred to in her introduction. I am very keen to see the Government doing a lot more about that—see the two-child benefit cap—but I am also sad to say that it reflects the very structure, nature and direction of our schools.

The two parts of this Bill, sadly, are working against each other. Schools are damaging well-being, and that is not how it should be.

I stress that I am blaming not teachers—who are forced to turn their classrooms into exam factories and their corridors into battlegrounds, suppressing all the natural inclinations of young people—but the directions from the centre, from successive Governments in Westminster who have seized control from local authorities, removing local democratic control, and enforced their own ideas and those of commercially linked giant academy chains.

I will focus briefly on one school, Southchurch High School in Southend-on-Sea. It has just brought in so-called silent transitions, where being caught saying a word to a friend or exclaiming in anger during the changeover between lessons will result in a one-hour detention. One parent of a neurodivergent child shared how impossible it would be for his son to cope with the rule, reflecting points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Addington. Parents are horrified—500 people have signed a petition, and the local Labour council cabinet member has expressed concern—but schools are not under local democratic control, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, highlighted. All parents can do is vote with their feet by walking away with their children, as so many parents I have met have been forced to do.

The final part of my speech will be in the form of a list of issues to which we Greens expect to return in Committee, reflecting some of the issues raised by our honourable friends in the other place and adding a few more.

First, my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who cannot be here today, will deal with the grave concerns that many home-educating parents have about the Bill, drawing on her personal experience.

I will put a particular focus—building on work I did on the Domestic Abuse Bill when very new to this House—on extending to children in England the same protection from assault that children in Scotland and Wales have enjoyed, the so-called smacking ban that is surely long overdue.

Reflecting my membership of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Households in Temporary Accommodation, I will call for a duty on local authorities to notify their schools and GPs about the circumstances of children so placed.

We Greens may find common cause with the Liberal Democrats in an effort to extend free school lunches to all primary school children.

I will support a number of noble Lords who have already indicated plans to table an amendment to introduce a national programme to regularly measure and report on the mental health and well-being of children and young people in schools.

I will seek to establish a right to nature for children, something to help both their well-being and their education.

My final point is something new. Soon after I came into your Lordships’ House, I was horrified to learn that there was still Afro hair discrimination in our society and our schools. You would think it was illegal under the Equality Act, and it should be, but hair texture is not explicitly named as a protected characteristic. Pupils are still being told in school that their hair is “too big”. What does it do to a child to be so labelled? That is one example of the way in which echoes of the genocidal, ecocidal British Empire continue in the attitudes that too many young people encounter in our schools today. Getting free of that imperial past, and so many inherited Victorian-era ideas about how schools should be, is central to building a healthy future for our children.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Longfield (Lab)]

I support the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Armstrong. I appreciate having this opportunity to discuss in more detail family group decision-making. I welcome the measures in the Bill that seek to offer families the chance to build solutions together that can secure their children’s welfare and give them agency.

I am pleased that we are seeing support across the House for family group decision-making; that is a very positive start. My interest in supporting these amendments is about ensuring that the process is strong enough to drive and deliver the outcomes that we all want to see, so that children have better outcomes and more can safely stay with families. We have heard about that at length because of the evidence surrounding it.

I declare an interest as the executive chair of the Centre for Young Lives; I also share an office building with foundations of which my noble friend Lady Armstrong is a trustee. My experience with this, and my relationship with those organisations, goes back decades. Over that time, I have been convinced of the benefits of family group conferencing, having spoken to and worked with professionals, families and children who have gone through that process. When I first found out about it, I did not approach it as a professional who knew about that area of practice. Instead, I spoke to family members who found themselves in a situation that was spiralling out of control; they did not feel that they had any agency to provide support for family members. They had come across family group conferencing as something that their local authority had already been testing, and through it they found themselves at the centre of shaping an outcome that was much more favourable to them and their siblings.

With the amendments, we are looking at moving from a decision-making meeting that might fall foul of box-ticking tendencies, to a process that has strength and an understanding of the need for experienced leadership, trained co-ordinators and a wider network beyond the family. Some people might think that that is strange, but we all define our support networks very differently, and our wider networks can have a very strong impact on our life. As has been said, these amendments have a child-centric approach that has, as a default, the need to include children in the process.

My experience with families that have been through this, and indeed with others in the family, is that it has been transformational at a time when families often find themselves without any agency in a process that they feel is going only one way. If you have this as part of the recognised local authority system, it can be understood by families and by professionals. It is not just a whim of the director of children’s services at the time; it can be baked into the wider process of family support. It is of course so important to link this very closely with early intervention.

There are two things I wanted to say in addition. First, this will really strengthen that protection for children. This speaks to the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, talked about: most families whose children end up in care are actually in a position of adversity. The Leeds Relational Practice Centre estimates that 90% of children are in care because of family adversity. This speaks to supporting those families, and it is right to do so. Secondly, it is not a soft option. This is challenging work for everyone involved, and the bars are high.

Finally, I too have been speaking to directors of children’s services. Most are very enthusiastic about family group conferencing and completely enthusiastic about the ambitions and intent of the Bill. I have a list of those directors of children’s services, and of the 82% of local authorities who now have family group conferencing as part of what they do. Sometimes, that is done in a small way that can be built upon, but there is a long list of authorities with a huge track record of making this work and the evidence to show that it brings better outcomes for children and families.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I have attached my name to Amendment 14, already very ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer. I want to widen the political breadth of support for the family group decision-making process by strongly offering the Green Party’s support.

Amendment 14 differs from the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, which refers just to 16 and 17 year-olds. It is more expansive than the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, in that it stresses the need to make every effort to ascertain the child’s wishes and feelings and give due consideration to them.

However, it is worth noting that all the amendments in this group and the associated amendments reflect, as others have said, briefings from the Children’s Charities Coalition and the Family Rights Group, which are saying, as other noble Lords have said, that the Government are going in the right direction but the Bill needs to be strengthened and made clearer, which is what this amendment and others seek to do.

In backing this amendment, I am reflecting statements I have been making in your Lordships’ House and amendments I have been tabling and signing, going back a considerable distance to the Health and Social Care Act and the Mental Health Bill. They are about listening to children and ensuring they have agency.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred to the survey showing that almost three-quarters of children—some 73%—feel that they are not listened to by politicians. We know there is a mental health crisis, particularly among our young people. Psychologists tell us that, as is clear to us from a common-sense perspective, not having a sense of agency or feeling as if you have control or are being listened to is damaging to your mental health.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s report from 2023 raised concerns about the significant barriers to the meaningful engagement of children in decision-making in the UK, particularly the seldom heard and marginalised group of children we are speaking about here, who are likely to be involved in family group decision-making processes. We have to ensure that people are listened to and feel that they have agency. This amendment takes us in the right direction in a constructive way, and I hope we will hear from the Minister that we will at least be taking steps in this direction.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, it is a particular pleasure to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, and to have the former Children’s Commissioner in this House. This is a good Bill but, like all Bills, it could be better. I support Amendments 3, 13, 14 and 18.

In 1988, I wrote a report, having been chairman of the Cleveland child abuse inquiry. In my report, I said that children should be listened to. I also said that children were people and not objects of concern. I remember talking as recently as last year to a young person whom nobody had told what was happening to him. He had no idea until he was moved. This is very serious. It is not just that nobody took any notice of what I said; the fact is, everybody else has been saying it. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred to the voice of the child. The voice of the child is crucial at all stages of what happens to children.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 9th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendments ably introduced by my noble friend Lady Finlay.

They make laws slightly differently in Germany. When a law is made relating to something that affects children, for example, they sometimes insert something in their constitution. I note that in 2000, when the parental right to spank was rescinded in Germany, a new phrase was introduced into the German constitution:

“Children have a right to an upbringing free of violence. Corporal punishment, emotional harm and other humiliating measures are not permissible”.


That has happened, and similar steps have been taken in 75 countries to date where smacking is not permitted. Many of those countries are in Europe. Almost the whole of Europe forbids smacking. We stand out as an exception in the map of Europe where it is illustrated. Just as Germany, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark are not worse places as a result of the banning of smacking, the same will be the situation in the whole of the United Kingdom when England follows Wales, Scotland and, hopefully, Northern Ireland.

Section 58 of the Children Act 2004 is predicated by opposition to smacking, not by encouragement of smacking. As has already been said, it was banned in schools but has been allowed to continue in certain very restricted circumstances in homes. As early as 2007, the Crown Prosecution Service issued a report in which it was opposed to banning smacking altogether but observed that the defence was being used in inappropriate situations and in the wrong kinds of cases. There is absolutely no evidence that the banning of smacking would have any dramatic effect on parents who, like the parents in the countries that I have named, have simply been told, “You can’t smack your children anymore”. I believe that people are ready for that in this country.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, in an extremely powerful speech, gave several examples of cases in which the terrible violence that eventually was used against children probably started with the first smack. It is quite wrong that we should allow that sort of situation to develop.

I listened with great care—my synapses were operating in overdrive—while the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, was speaking. However, he is now a bit historical in this argument. I treat his points with respect, of course, but I prefer those that have been made by other noble Lords in this House. Between the noble Lord and the Royal College of Paediatrics, I prefer the royal college.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the case for Amendment 67 and the associated Amendment 505 has very powerfully been made. I add a couple of additional points that might perhaps inform the House and be useful. I note that more than 30 MPs in the other place supported a similar amendment and that there it was driven by the honourable Labour Member for Lowestoft and my honourable friend the Member for North Herefordshire. It is not that we are suddenly bringing this up in your Lordships’ House—there is strong support in the other place as well for government action here.

I moved an amendment along similar lines to end the defence of reasonable chastisement during the Domestic Abuse Bill. I was quite new to your Lordships’ House and learned along the way that many people had been working on this for decades longer than I had been. I heard from the then Conservative Government, “Oh, it’s not the time now; we’ve got to see what happens in Scotland and Wales”. I would very much like to think that we are not going to hear the same thing this evening, although I am not terribly optimistic.

Like others, I listened very closely to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson. I say a couple of things in direct response to the noble Lord. He cited Professor Larzelere, who would best be described as a “controversial” academic. I point noble Lords to an article responding to some of the work of Professor Larzelere in the journal Marriage & Family Review in 2017, “Researchers Deserve a Better Critique” by George W. Holden et al. The authors say that Professor Larzelere had profoundly misunderstood the description of positive parenting and was very misinformed about the whole academic field.

You could feel a visible sense of shock around the House when the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, suggested that smacking was harmless. That is a disturbing label to put when we know from the Royal College of Paediatrics that children who have experienced physical punishment are 2.6 times more likely to experience mental health issues. We know what a mental health crisis we have in our society. They are up to twice as likely to experience further forms of abuse, sometimes leading to the cases that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, presented to us so powerfully. The college makes a really important point that children who have experienced physical assault are more likely to believe that violence is accepted and encouraged in society. We want to protect the vulnerable children, but we are also addressing the question of what sort of society we are.

We have had a number of international comparisons, but I believe that Thailand is the most recent state to have banned physical abuse of children. I happen to know quite a bit about Thailand. I was technically a Thai civil servant in the 1990s when I was there as an Australian volunteer abroad. I follow Thai politics quite closely and know quite a lot about Thai society. This is a big step for Thailand to take. Thailand has had a great deal of political difficulties in recent years but has regarded protecting its children as so important that it has ensured that there is legal protection. It is interesting when you look at the government announcements around this that this is a need to support parents as well as to ensure the protection of children.

I have one final point to make and a question for the Minister. The NGO Article 39 sets out the historic background for the reasonable chastisement offence, which arises from a criminal case in 1860, R v Hopley, about a head teacher found guilty of the manslaughter of a 13 year-old child with learning difficulties. The head teacher had beaten the child with a stick for more than two hours. Looking at the judge’s words on which this whole “reasonable chastisement” is based, the judge said that a parent or schoolmaster

“may for the purpose of correcting what is evil in the child inflict moderate and reasonable corporal punishment”.

That is the origin of what has got us to where we are today and what we are trying to change with this amendment. It is a reflection of how out of date the current legal situation is.

Finally, my question to the Minister arises from the Article 39 briefing. We have all focused on parents, but the briefing says that the defence

“has also not been removed from part-time educational settings (including those operated by religious organisations), children’s health settings or supported accommodation for looked after children aged 16 and 17”.

Can the Minister—either now or I will understand if she wishes to write to me—set out whether that briefing is indeed correct and there is still that allowance of violence against children in other settings as well?

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Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

68: After Clause 4, insert the following new Clause—
“Duty on local authorities to provide family support services for children and familiesAfter section 19 of the Children Act 1989, insert—“19A Duty on local authorities to provide family support services for children and families(1) A local authority has a duty to provide, so far as is reasonably practical, family support services to all children and parents residing in their area. (2) Family support services provided by a local authority must—(a) be provided within the authority area,(b) seek to improve the health and educational outcomes of children in the relevant area, and(c) seek to reduce the number of children in their area who suffer ill treatment or neglect.(3) In this section, “family support services” refer to services which provide children and parents with—(a) advice, guidance or counselling,(b) social, cultural or recreational activities, or(c) accommodation while receiving services provided under subsections (3)(a) and (b).(4) In fulfilling its duty under subsection (1), a local authority must have regard to—(a) the availability of and demand for family support services in its area,(b) the availability of and demand for family support services in its area which are capable of meeting different needs, and(c) the location of family support services and the equality of access across the authority area.(5) A local authority must publish information about family support services—(a) on the authority’s website, and(b) in all public libraries in the local authority area.(6) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision relating to the provision of family support services by local authorities.(7) In this section—“children and parents” means—(a) a child under the age of 18;(b) a young person aged 18-25 who has a diagnosis of special educational needs;(c) the parents of a child or young person;(d) a person who has parental responsibility for a child or young person; or(e) a person who is pregnant.“local authority” means—(a) a county council in England;(b) a district council in England;(c) a London borough council;(d) the Common Council of the City of London (in their capacity as a local authority);(e) the Council of the Isles of Scilly;(f) a combined authority established under section 103 of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009;””Member’s explanatory statement
This new clause would introduce a requirement on local authorities to provide family support services for all children and parents in their area.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 68 and to speak to Amendment 171 in my name and to Amendment 169, to which I have attached my name. In the interests of time, I am going to constrain myself to those three amendments.

Amendment 68 introduces a new clause to require local authorities to provide family support services for all children and parents in their area. This very much follows on from what the Minister was saying on the previous group about the desire to provide support for parents. Unfortunately, that is not what has largely been happening. We have seen a massive increase in spending on crisis intervention services in the past decade. It is up 67%, and £4 in every £5 spent is going into late intervention. At the same time, the number of children in residential care has increased by 79%. Spending overall went up in that decade by 61%, but there was a 46% decline in early intervention services. That is what this amendment seeks to address.

We know that investment in early interventions will reduce the demand for high-cost, later interventions. More families can stay together in healthy ways, in stable and loving homes where children can grow up peacefully, and fewer young children will experience neglect, abuse and harm. This amendment is again, I am pleased to say, following the work of my honourable friend the Member for North Herefordshire. She and others made the case in the other place.

What I think lots of people are saying about this Bill, with lots of amendments, lots of attempts, is that there is a huge amount in it to deal with improving care for children who need to live with a foster family or in a residential home, and of course that is terribly important. But, to improve significantly the conditions of children in this country, we need to start far earlier, and that is what is lacking in this Bill. I am not particularly attached to the detailed drafting here, but certainly I would like to see some movement from the Government and the intention to make sure that the Bill covers earlier intervention.

Of course, the governing party has a proud record in this area with the Sure Start centres that were first established in 1997, and more than 3,500 of those children’s centres were developed. It has been crucial that they have supported families in a welcoming, non-stigmatising way. You do not have to be a problem or have a problem to visit; it is just something that is there to support you. The reality is, and I should perhaps declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, that at this moment we know how incredibly cash strapped local authorities are, and these services are too often seen as a “nice to have” or even a “we desperately want to keep it, but we just cannot find the money” service, and so they have disappeared.

I stress that this clause introduces a requirement for local authorities to provide sufficient family support services. I acknowledge that the only way that local authorities would be able to do this is if there was support funding from the centre. If we take, for example, the Welcome to Parenthood programme run by the children’s charity Barnardo’s, it is calculated that the benefits return £2.44 for every £1 spent. We could be saving significant amounts of money here.

I move now to Amendment 171, also in my name, which, again, was originally tabled by my honourable friend in the other place. This is to ensure that every school has a bereavement policy. I declare a personal interest here, as I was 23 years old when I was in a car crash in which my mother was killed. I was not a child, but I was a young adult and I know how utterly wrenching and destroying that experience was. Also, at university, I was in a small group of about 20 students, one of whom was killed in a car crash. I know what a shock it was to that group of students.

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Amendment 68B (to Amendment 68) not moved.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her comprehensive response to this group of amendments and everyone who contributed to what I think has been a very rich debate marked by a—I was going to say remarkable, but I think I am going to say astonishing—degree of consensus from all corners of the Committee. I am afraid I do not have time to run through all the contributions. I will just very briefly thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, for sharing their personal experiences.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 12th June 2025 Lords Chamber

I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, will remind your Lordships’ Committee that an extension of Staying Put to age 23, as proposed by the MacAlister report, was committed to by the previous Government in their response to MacAlister, though of course it was never actually introduced. I say to my noble friend the Minister: please do not allow this Bill to be a missed opportunity to provide support for care leavers by extending the Staying Put scheme to enable children in foster care to remain with their former foster carer beyond the age of 21. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Watson, having attached my name to all the amendments in this group that include extending Staying Put support for young people up to the age of 25. The noble Lord has already made the case very well, so I will not repeat all the stats and the recommendations that we had from the MacAlister report et cetera, but it is worth reflecting on how hard it is today for young people to be independent at the age of 21. The Office for National Statistics report last year showed that, across our society, the average age at which a child moves out of their family home is 24. Surely the state should also be providing the kind of care that children are getting in families.

I also have a genuine question that I have not been able to establish the answer to. These amendments and the Government’s plans cover both children in foster care and those in institutional arrangements. My understanding is that about 40% of 17 year-olds are staying in unregulated or independent accommodation, and it would appear that at the moment they are falling through the cracks and not being covered by either these amendments or what is happening here, so I would like to ask the Minister whether that is indeed the case and whether the Government have plans to act on that.

It is perhaps worth setting out the kind of story of what is happening now, which I doubt anyone in this Chamber would disagree is unacceptable. Last year the Big Issue reported on the case of a young man called Duncan, who was in care with a foster family that he had been with since age 11. He came home from college one day and found that all his bags had been packed up. It was a week after he turned 18. The foster carers were happy for him to stay, but social services simply said that was not an option and could not happen, and packed his bags up. Think about how utterly damaging that would be. Duncan was then put into supported accommodation. At 3 am the next morning, someone was knocking on his door looking for somebody else. There was drug dealing happening all around him. He had a bottle flung in his face by someone who was trying to throw it to someone else in that supported accommodation. That is what the state, as a corporate parent, is doing to a child at the age of 18. There are some places where some people are able to stay, but surely that should be the absolute standard provision. We need the parity in the Staying Close and Staying Put schemes, which is what these amendments would achieve.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to lend my support to the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, regarding extending the Staying Put scheme to the age of 25. My Amendment 130 does exactly the same thing but for some reason is in the next group. I will say a few words about it when we get to the next group, but I just want to underline my support. I think it is a very important issue.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 97 and 99 in the name of my noble friend Lord Farmer, who cannot be here today. His support for Amendment 99, and mine, is grounded in—

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Those are in the next group.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I apologise; I am just so keen.

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However, I urge noble Lords to be careful that we do not reduce the opportunity here by being too prescriptive. We must make sure that there is flexibility to take advantage of the very best that is available locally and let local determination set the bar and spread improvements on a much wider footing. Therefore, for the reasons I have outlined, I kindly ask for the amendment to be withdrawn.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Before the Minister sits down, I asked about the fact that, apparently, 40% of 17-year-olds turning 18 are in unregulated or independent accommodation. Could the noble Baroness perhaps write to me about that?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I apologise: I knew that I had missed the noble Baroness’s question. Yes, of course I will write on that important point.

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[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for my earlier early intervention. Noble Lords know how passionate I am about early intervention and it got the better of me.

Amendments 97 and 99 are in the name of my noble friend Lord Farmer, who cannot be here today. My support for my noble friend in his amendments is grounded in a desire, which I am sure all noble Lords share, to see high national standards of support, not just pockets of excellent practice in some local authorities. Having said that, the requirement in the Children and Social Work Act 2017 for local authorities to publish their own offer for care leavers, which this would amend, is an important one. But it needs to be built on. A higher standard at a national level would not prevent innovative and exemplary councils doing even better, but it would force any that were lagging behind to improve. I suspect that those who are dedicated to their local care leavers’ cause and are working hard on the ground would welcome high national standards, as those would help them argue successfully for the enhanced leadership and financial support required to lift their offering.

Another reason why the local offer is an important part of primary legislation is that it includes services relating to relationships—a primary need for children coming into care, while they are in care and when they exit. My noble friend Lord Farmer, the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and Lord Mackay, now sadly retired, tabled an amendment to the Children and Social Work Act 2017 that was eventually accepted by the Government, which included the important word “relationships”.

On Amendment 97, the Bill presents an important and timely opportunity to embed relationships more deeply into councils’ arrangements to support and assist care leavers in their transition to adulthood and independent living. We should do all we can to enable care leavers to maintain, strengthen and build family and social relationships. Family group decision-making provisions in the Bill need to be built on. Having gone to all the effort to bring together families and friends who are committed to a child potentially leaving their parents’ care, we cannot allow those relationships to fall through the cracks in their care pathway.

The Family Rights Group, which forged Māori-born family group conferencing into a British model over many years by working with families and children with relevant experience, has similarly refined the lifelong links model, which started as the family finding model in Orange County, California. Lifelong links ensure that children in care have a lasting support network of relatives and others who care about them. A trained co-ordinator works with the child or young person to identify and safely reconnect with important people in their lives, such as relatives they may have lost contact with, former foster carers, teachers or sports coaches. With family group decision-making becoming standard practice, many such people will, or should, have been involved in that process. Keeping these contacts going is a sensible and straightforward next step. The lifelong links approach has demonstrated significant benefits, including more positive and healthy connections in the child’s life and better mental health, instead of isolation and depression, or worse.

Knowing that they matter as an individual to people who are not the professionals paid to look after them gives a child a much better sense of identity. The practical wisdom and guidance that family and friends give often makes the care leaver far more emotionally stable, with a knock-on effect on their ability to hold down accommodation and training or education courses. This reduces the risk of homelessness and of a child trying to make their way without a goal or purpose. Without the motivation that positive relationships provide, it can be very hard to persevere. If you do not matter to anyone, it is easy to wonder what the point of bothering is.

The lifelong links model is currently available in over 40 local authorities across the UK, with 22 receiving Department for Education funding. Lifelong links is not named in this amendment, but, given all of the investment the Government have already made in evidence-building, it should be included in regulations and guidance as an offer to all children in care and care leavers.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I am going to be slightly unconventional and start with the last amendment in this group, Amendment 183A, in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester. I think it is so important that it does not get buried in this rather large and diverse group. This amendment seeks to deliver what was, in essence, in the right reverend Prelate’s Private Member’s Bill, which we debated a few months ago, and which I spoke in favour of. It sought to ensure that the universal credit regulations are amended so that care leavers turning 18 receive the same level of universal credit as anyone receives at the age of 25.

I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, who said that these are young people who have no access to the bank of mum and dad and no cushion. We are expecting them to live on a level of universal credit that is not reflective of what other people who have more support—not necessarily, but probably—live on. This is a modest measure. As I said at Second Reading, it is a humane, constructive and practical step. Although this should not be the reason for it, it is very clear that it would end up saving the state money by ensuring people have a little more support and do not fall a very long way through the cracks, as the statistics show they very often do.

At the Second Reading of that Bill, I spoke about the wonderful scheme in Wales that has been trialling universal basic income for care leaves, set at a quite decent level. One of the interesting things was that the only condition put on those care leavers was that they had to take one session of financial education. This is where I come back to Amendment 95, from the noble Baroness Tyler, to which I have attached my name. I have heard anecdotal reports—we have not had the written reports from the UBI trials yet—that one of the offers was that care leavers could take more financial education sessions, in acknowledgement that they had a significant amount of money available to them. Virtually every person in the scheme took the extra financial education. It might seem a bit specialised to have this in an amendment, but it is such an important factor.

I point to the fact that this is a broader issue. Care leavers are obviously people who particularly need financial education, but I note that, last year, the Financial Times Christmas appeal was to raise money to give British young people financial education. That is an indictment of the failure across the whole system to educate young people. It is very clear that care leavers are people who particularly need it, deserve to get it and can hugely benefit from it.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 17th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 117, in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Tyler and others. The decision on where a child is cared for in the system is crucial to the child’s life, so we should listen to children with care experience. As we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, it may affect their ability to keep contact with wider family and friends, and other factors were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Meston. It will make a difference even to their ability to keep in contact with a teacher who they might trust—that can be quite important in children’s lives. It can otherwise be very disruptive to their education if they are put a long way from where they previously went to school. As we know, children with care experience usually have less of a chance to get good educational qualifications than other children, and that has an effect on their whole-life chances.

As my noble friend says, it cannot be left to the Secretary of State under the title of “such other persons”. The category of those most directly affected by these regulations must be named in the Bill, and it is vital that children have the confidence that they will be heard. The slogan, “Nothing about us without us”, is very apt in this context.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Since we are forming a set for Amendment 117, I will stand up now, having attached my name to it, and will focus chiefly on that amendment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has stolen my starting line with her final line: nothing about us without us. I first used that phrase in a debate on rather similar amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill. I think that your Lordships’ House and the country are increasingly coming to realise that we have to listen to children far more.

In this context, I will cite an interesting case from the past week, where a 14 year-old who had been tricked by his parents into going to Ghana took his parents to court. The Court of Appeal ruled that he should have the right to come back to Britain, as he wanted to do. That is an interesting court case that shows how, generally, our legal system is starting to listen more and more to children. It is important that our legislation does so and that that is in the Bill.

This raises issues that I will come back to on a later group, but the basic point about the regional care co-operatives is that they will take decision-making further away from local authorities. People have been studying this, and the care review evidence group, for example, said that

“care will need to be taken that these structural reforms do not dilute local accountability mechanisms”.

Making sure that children are actually heard in the making of regulations is in some way a counterbalance to the risk that quite a lot of experts have identified in taking this approach.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 116A, 117A and 119ZA in my name. As we have heard, the proposals to create regional care co-operatives came from the independent review into children’s social care. In principle, we support them. However, we are aware that a number of regions are already using informal co-operation agreements, so I question whether we need more legislation to make this happen. Maybe the Minister can comment on this when she sums up. The Secretary of State is taking the power to direct areas to create one of three models of co-operation, but it is important that we understand how this will work in practice, because, presumably, if areas are not adopting this approach voluntarily, there would be significant barriers and potentially good reasons for doing so. Can the Minister clarify those few points when she closes?

The Local Government Association has stated its support for the narrower requirements of a regional care co-operative, as being used by the pathfinder areas —namely, on

“strategic planning and placements for children with more complex needs”.

However, the Bill states in proposed new Section 22J(3)(c) that regional care co-operatives will be responsible for commissioning

“the provision of accommodation for children being looked after by the local authority”.

There is a real worry about mission creep and confusion over responsibilities, which I have tried to address through my Amendment 119ZA, as has my noble friend Lady Cash through her Amendment 117B.

Will the Minister comment on the concern expressed by organisations such as Barnardo’s that this model will squeeze out some of the smaller providers, increasing even further the dependence on independent providers in the private sector, many of whom, as we know, have a combination of very high profitability and high debts?

Can the Minister confirm the start date for the pathfinders, and when there will be publicly available evidence from them, either via the evaluation or from any other data? Does the department have an idea that it can publicly share of the likely size of each of the areas? The two pilot sites, Greater Manchester and the south-east, are both very large, with about 3 million people within them. Is that the size the Government expect to be typical?

Amendment 116A would remove a power equivalent to a Henry VIII power from the Bill. Clause 10(2) defines strategic accommodation functions as

“(a) assessing current and future requirements for the accommodation of children being looked after by the local authority,


(b) developing and publishing strategies for meeting those requirements,


(c) commissioning the provision of accommodation for children being looked after by the local authority,


(d) recruiting prospective local authority foster parents and supporting local authority foster parents,


(e) developing, or facilitating the development of, new provision for the accommodation of children being looked after by the local authority, and


(f) any other functions relating to a local authority’s duties under section 22A, 22C or 22G that are specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State”.


New Section 22J(3)(f) gives the Secretary of State a power akin to a Henry VIII power to add to the above list of strategic accommodation functions by regulations. In justifying the power, the department goes on to say:

“The Department has sought to achieve the right balance between confining the scope of the delegated powers through primary provisions and leaving necessary matters of detail to regulations. This is the first time the Secretary of State has sought to bring local authorities together to collaborate in the delivery of their strategic accommodation functions. Regional co-operation arrangements (known as Regional Care Co-operatives) … are currently being tested via pathfinders … in two local authority regions. When the pathfinders are evaluated, the Secretary of State may need to prescribe additional functions. There may also be a need for additional functions to be specified in the future depending on the needs of a particular area and to keep pace with the changing children’s social care placements market. The power has been limited to one which enables additional functions to be added to the list in the future. It does not enable the Secretary of State to amend or remove any of the functions already listed in the clause and so it is not a Henry VIII power”.


My amendment is a probing amendment, as this feels like another example of the Government introducing legislation before they are quite ready. Why not wait until the pathfinders are evaluated to be clear what additional strategic functions might be needed? Maybe the Minister can inform the House if the department is aware of any gaps in the current strategic powers that have been identified in areas using this approach already. It would be good to understand whether the Government have in mind any particular powers that might be needed, or whether this is a belt and braces, “just in case” kind of power, without having anything particular in mind.

My Amendment 117A seeks to ensure that Ofsted inspects regional care co-operatives. It is obviously important that we have an independent assessment of their effectiveness and impact and whether they are achieving the Government’s goals—and, perhaps even more importantly, the needs of children. There may be other ways of achieving this and, if so, it would be helpful to understand what those are.

More specifically, my amendment aims to bring a spotlight on the use of unregistered provision. My understanding of the regional care co-operative approach is that it will anticipate and commission capacity in a more effective, and cost-effective, way. One outcome of this would be a drop in or complete removal of the use of unregistered provision, something I know local authorities are keen to see, as are noble many Lords across the House.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I have attached my name to Amendment 165, but as three noble Lords have already spoken to it, I will be brief. I declare my involvement with the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Households in Temporary Accommodation.

Here is one stat to feed into our debate. In the year to September 2024, 80 children who were in temporary accommodation died, and the figures from the National Child Mortality Database from 2019 to 2024 show that, for children who died, temporary accommodation was listed as a causal factor in their death in 74 cases. That obviously speaks to the GP issue.

Many noble Lords—I can see quite a few in this Chamber—take part in Learn with the Lords, the House of Lords education programme. We have many new Members of the House, so I want to take this chance to commend to all the newer Members who may not know about it what a great programme it is. One of the things we are doing is taking news about the House of Lords out around the country into schools, but it is also a chance to encounter and speak to teachers and head teachers, and share with them what we are doing here in your Lordships’ House and get their reaction.

I have not got permission, so I will not identify the person too clearly, but in the Midlands I was speaking to a head teacher at a school serving a very deprived area and I told her about this amendment, and she just went, “Yes!” Many people might think that surely the school will already know, but children and parents may feel that this is a cause of shame. There is no reason why they should, but none the less, the reality is that they may well feel it is a cause of shame, and go to great lengths to try to hide the fact. So it is important that the school, as well as the GP, be notified.

As we have had a huge outbreak of agreement, I shall briefly express my reservations about Amendment 119, about boarding school places. Joy Schaverien, the therapist, wrote a book, whose subtitle is The Psychological Trauma of the “Privileged” Child, reflecting on the impact of boarding schools on British society. Indeed, we might all reflect on their impact on our politics, but that is a subject for another day. She identified issues of abandonment, bereavement, captivity and disassociation associated with boarding schools.

I am sure that boarding schools today would say that things are different now from what it was like in the old days, but we are still talking about an institutional environment. That, by definition, is what a boarding school is. It is not a home environment. I would not say that there would never be a case where a boarding school might be an appropriate place for a child; there may be cases in which that is the best option available, given the overall circumstances. But I have trouble with the idea of offering it to all looked-after children at secondary age. I do not think that is the appropriate approach.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I add my support to Amendment 134B, in the name of my noble friend Lady Sanderson. As she said, it seeks to build on the Government’s commitment in Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive to look at options to reform the planning process to enable providers to more easily set up homes where they are most needed and to support the delivery of small children’s homes.

To pick up another issue that noble Lords across the Committee have raised on this group of amendments, I should add that that paper also noted that the lack of appropriate and affordable homes in the right places for children means that we are seeing a worrying trend in the rise of the use of unregistered provision.

The CMA’s 2022 report on the children’s home market outlined a number of issues with the current planning system and specifically recommended that the Government do what my noble friend suggests in her amendment, and consider

“whether the distinction, for the purposes of the planning regime, between small children’s homes and domestic dwelling houses should be removed”.

The CMA concluded that the easing of planning restrictions would lead to both an increase in number and a better geographical spread of children’s homes.

On the basis that the Government have accepted this recommendation and say that they are considering options, I look forward to hearing from the Minister how government thinking has developed, particularly in relation to further planning reforms in this area. Can she outline where, if not in this Bill, they may be intending to take their action?

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, Amendment 131, in my name, appears in this group. I will not quite say that it is a pleasure to follow the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, but it was a terribly important contribution, and I can only very much agree with what she said. The issues that she has outlined—about children as young as seven, with two-thirds continuing still at six months—are hugely disturbing.

My amendment seeks to address a particular issue concerning children subject to deprivation of liberty orders and children in care in general. As I said to the Ministers when they very kindly had a briefing on the Bill, this arises from a campaign that I encountered in 2023, called Hope Instead of Handcuffs. This campaign came from a small group of people—a single operator of the provision of secure transport for children—who were calling for a ban on the automatic use of handcuffs. Yes, I did say the automatic use of handcuffs, which some privatised providers of secure transport were using on children who were subject to deprivation of liberty orders—or who, as it was described, were on the edges of care. They were being put in handcuffs to be transported. These are not children who have been accused of any crime; these are simply children—very vulnerable children, obviously—who have been subjected to something that I think any of us would find traumatic and disturbing.

This reflects testimony that was given in 2021 to the inquiry of the Joint Committee on Human Rights on protecting rights in care settings. Serenity Welfare testified that, as I have just said, many providers of secure transportation services for children who were on the edge of care were using handcuffs as standard. I quote from its testimony:

“The practice is unregulated and unmonitored, as there is no obligation on these providers to report any instances of handcuffing to the appropriate authority”.


As a result of that campaign in 2023, I and a number of other Members of both Houses wrote to the Government inquiring what was happening. The response we got was, “We will look into it”. To the best of my knowledge, none of this has progressed since then, so I particularly wanted to put down this probing amendment to draw attention to the issue.

I have not addressed just transport, because I want to know what is happening in other settings for these children as well, which is why I have included them in the amendment. This is perhaps a much more limited issue than the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, was outlining, but I look forward to hearing from the Minister that the Government are planning to do something about it if, as I have no reason to doubt, it is still continuing, and to stop it.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 126, in my name, is in this group. This amendment relates to a discreet issue for children who are under a High Court deprivation of liberty order but who are not also looked-after children under the Children Act. Approximately 96% of those children under a High Court deprivation of liberty order are also looked-after children under the Children Act, but then they end up at the High Court, as there is a shortage of Section 25 secure accommodation. Only in Section 25 accommodation under the Children Act can a looked-after child be restricted of their liberty—that currently means a secure children’s home—so they are also put under a High Court DoL so that the local authority can deprive them of their liberty in non-Section-25-type accommodation. It seems that by the move to the phrasing “relevant accommodation” the Bill will regularise in law their situation, which is that 96% of these young people are currently under that inherent jurisdiction deprivation of liberty order. However, there are currently 4% of children under a High Court deprivation of liberty order who are not also looked-after children under the Children Act.

I want to thank the President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane. I believe that it was his work that brought in the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory, when High Court DoLS—as we would call them—began to be used as a jurisdiction. It is due only to that work that we know that, within that group, we have this little group—the 4%—who are not also looked-after children. Even an amended Section 25 of the Children Act refers only to looked-after children having their liberty being restricted in what would now be known as “relevant accommodation”. They would still be left under the High Court jurisdiction, with fewer safeguards. The whole purpose of Clause 11 is to bring from the inherent jurisdiction these children under a statutory system of protection, safeguards and reviews.

This 4% of around 1,280 children last year are often children coming out of the mental health estate. They have been taken into hospital for their own protection and for treatment; then they are discharged but, for health reasons, their home is no longer suitable. In my view, they are not going to pass the threshold test under the Children Act 1989 to be a looked-after child, because the threshold test—philosophically and in practice—is about harm by the care or neglect of the adult who should be caring for them or the fact of their being out of control. Neither of those circumstances seem in most cases to apply to a young person who has gone into the mental health estate and then been discharged.

While I recognise the imperfections of the current drafting of Amendment 126—for instance, it might trigger other provisions of the Children Act if we deem these children to be looked after-children—I chose that mechanism to try to bring them under the safeguards that we will have for children under Section 25 who are looked-after children, and not leave them still to be under the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court. I hope that that serves to be a mechanism for the Minister to explain what the situation is for that small group of children.

I imagine it was envisaged by Sir Andrew McFarlane that he would get the data through the Nuffield work, so that we would come to Parliament, legislate and take this into statute law, out of the inherent jurisdiction. It seems to me, from Amendment 126, that unless we do something for this small group of children, he is going to have to continue needing Nuffield, because there will be a need for this type of deprivation of liberty order under the inherent jurisdiction for the group of children I have just outlined.

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[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I will clarify that in the letter.

On Amendment 131 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, on the important matter of the use of restraint on children in care and subject to deprivation of liberty orders, it is vital that children are safe and that restraint is used only where appropriate, including when they are moving between settings and services. We take these concerns very seriously. We will consider guidance on restraint in due course.

However, the question about children being handcuffed remains, and I will endeavour to get more detail about that and to come back to the noble Baroness. Providers, in conjunction with placing authorities, are under an obligation to use the minimum appropriate restriction to keep a child safe.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I may be a little too soon, but I wonder whether the Government are minded to ensure that there is, as my amendment would provide, some kind of reporting mechanism to keep track of things. There may be cases where that is necessary. Surely this is something there should be an annual report on so that we can see the direction of travel and whether there is a problem that needs to be tackled.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Noble Lords are very premature today. I was coming not quite to that but to something that I hope will be satisfactory in relation to that reporting mechanism.

Ofsted, as the independent regulator of children’s homes, manages incidents of restraint on a case-by-case basis under its inspection framework. The children’s homes regulations place a requirement on homes to record any incidents of restraint and on the registered person to inform Ofsted of any incident in relation to a child that they consider to be serious. We think that Ofsted inspectors are best placed to scrutinise individual incidents of restraint and the circumstances around them and to ensure that care providers are minimising its use. We are not clear that a yearly report to Parliament aggregating that data would add anything in this case, although it would create an additional burden and risk distraction from this important work. It would, in fact, probably be significantly less effective in safeguarding children and recording the incidents than the Ofsted approach currently being used.

Amendment 133 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, seeks to promote family and other social relationships for children subject to deprivation of liberty orders by publishing local authority plans to support children in that regard. As mentioned in respect of earlier amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, I reiterate the Government’s agreement that, wherever possible, it is vital for a child’s welfare to have positive family and social relationships. Given that the Children Act 1989 and the supporting guidance already seek to ensure that family and other relationships for looked-after children are promoted while keeping children safe, and that this forms part of Ofsted’s inspections of local authorities, I am not sure it is appropriate or necessary to increase the burden on local authorities by mandating them to publish that information. I recognise the points made by the noble Lord, or it may have been somebody else speaking on his behalf, about the effectiveness of the lifelong links programme. I think we referenced that previously, and I can see the enormous benefit that can come from it.

Amendment 134C tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, seeks to ensure the affirmative procedure for regulations made under Section 25 of the Children Act 1989. I agree with the noble Baroness that it is important to ensure that regulations on this matter are subject to the correct scrutiny. She referred to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s report in which this was raised. We are grateful to the committee for its scrutiny. We are carefully considering its recommendations and will respond in due course.

Amendment 506B in the name of my noble friend Lord Watson seeks to delay commencement of Clause 11 until regulations are made to ensure that non-means-tested legal aid is available in relation to applications to deprive a child of their liberty under Section 25 of the Children Act 1989. I assure my noble friend that where an application is made to deprive a child of their liberty as a result of any measure the Bill brings forward, those children will be eligible for state-funded legal aid representation using the same criteria that currently apply to all children subject to orders under Section 25. This means that children will be able to access legal aid without needing to satisfy means testing.

I hope that noble Lords think I have provided nearly all the detail requested in these amendments. On that basis, I commend the government amendments to the Committee and hope that noble Lords feel able not to press theirs.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 17th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 140, in my name, and I thank my noble friend Lord Storey for adding his. It would extend the scope of Clause 14 to cover independent providers of supported accommodation. This is a really important group of amendments: the whole area of financial oversight and profit caps is incredibly important, and I suspect we are not all going to have exactly the same views on it.

To put things into context, I welcome the raft of measures in the Bill to strengthen regulation and oversight of the care system, particularly the new provider oversight measures, Ofsted’s new power to fine providers of unregistered children’s homes, the financial oversight mechanism, and the profit cap. I firmly believe that these measures are welcome steps in the right direction in addressing some of the structural problems facing the care system and the sort of issues we have talked about so often in this Chamber: excessively high profit levels and rising care costs, at a time when local authorities are under huge financial pressure; the power imbalance between local authority commissioners and the largest private providers; the risk of sudden market exits due to high debt burdens from private equity-backed providers; and the growth in unregistered children’s homes, which we have already rightly focused on. That is a pretty toxic mix, and we really have to take the opportunity the Bill provides to do something about it.

That is the big picture, but turning briefly to my amendment, as we have already heard, in the last six years there has been a very significant rise in the number of children in care aged 16 and 17 who are living in supported accommodation. It is important to be clear what we mean by supported accommodation. It is for young people, 16 and 17 year-olds, who may have already started to make some sort of transition to more independent living but who still require a fair degree of support. Many supported accommodation settings, such as children’s homes and foster homes, are run by private companies, many of which are very large. Local authorities currently have no way of knowing the debt level being carried by these large private companies and whether there is any risk of the company or provider failing financially—which, of course, could have drastic implications for the children living in these settings. So, given the significant and growing number of children living in supported accommodation, it is important that the new financial oversight measures in Clause 14 are extended to independent providers of supported accommodation as well as providers of children’s homes and fostering agencies. My amendment would achieve this, and in so doing would provide a consistent approach across the different care settings and a safeguard for local authorities, so they can identify and mitigate the risk of providers suddenly closing multiple supported accommodation settings.

Finally, nine times out of 10, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and I agree on pretty much everything. We often support each other’s amendments and speak in the same debates, but I do not quite share her position on removing the profit motive altogether from children’s social care. Far more needs to be done to regulate it, but there is a place for the private sector in the children’s social care market; it just has to be properly regulated.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler—whether I agree with her or not. I note the phrase that she used, “toxic mix”.

I think there has been broad agreement around the Chamber, including on the Government Benches, that we have a huge problem. The Minister said on one of the earlier groups that the market has prevent local authorities meeting their duties. Here, I would stress the phrase “the market”. What I am postulating is that “the market” is not the appropriate way to ensure that we have the right care in the right places with the right services—and that is a statement of a Green Party philosophical position. We do not believe that profit should be made from any form of care.

In this case, that is also very clear from what people have been saying. The Minister also said on one of the earlier groups that the current market has driven us to this, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell, said that the market is clearly not working. So, yes, it is my ideological position, but I have an overwhelming argument here for saying that the market is just the wrong model for providing this sort of care for vulnerable young people and children.

My Amendment 174 proposes a new clause that would prohibit the delivery of children’s social care services by for-profit companies. It has two very simple provisions, the first being that any new institutions created under the Bill should be not for profit. It says that within five years of the Bill being passed, what is now for profit would be converted. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson, rightly said, this follows the model of what has already happened in Wales. I acknowledge that Wales is smaller than England, but none the less Wales has shown the way. It is worth looking at why Wales went that way.

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[Lord Nash (Con)]

Transparency is a good start. I think it is the case, and I know there are vastly different prices charged around the country, perhaps for different reasons, property prices or whatever; but I think transparency is key. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Addington: I think that trying to interfere in markets is generally dangerous and you generally have unintended consequences. Everybody knows that I am a career venture-capital private-equity guy, but I do know that these assets are completely out of favour.

There are a number of groups that have these assets and cannot sell them, and we are just going to run out of money, so I think the Government need to be very careful. I say that as somebody who is very concerned about this sector, and that is why I am here. I do not have any magic solutions, but I think that, if people are threatened with fines, who is going to want to run these homes? Individuals. It is something that needs to be thought about very carefully.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

The noble Lord has just essentially agreed with what I said, that some of these entities are financially unstable and uncertain. Would the noble Lord understand, at least, the argument that it is better to bring these back? These facilities are going to have to stay open: we need them. It is better to bring them back into non-profit hands in an orderly manner rather than, if one of these private equity companies goes down, having an immediate crisis. What do the Government do then?

[Lord Nash (Con)]

The care sector is slightly different, for the reasons people have mentioned. But what are we going to do—nationalise it for nothing? Are we going to become a communist country? Are we going to pay for it, and if so, where will that money come from? Anyway, even if you deal with the ownership issue—obviously, I do not agree with the idea of nationalisation—threatening people who operate them with fines just does not seem reasonable. That is why I support the amendments on limiting fines and not applying them to natural persons, as opposed to corporations.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 19th June 2025 Lords Chamber

I also support Amendment 194 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and others. It is very specific as to what makes healthy school food and drink. The committee that I chaired recommended that only water and milk be provided in schools, instead of a whole lot of fizzy drinks from machines. Amendment 194 also recommends a regular review of the standard, which I very much support. I beg to move Amendment 161.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. I attached my name to Amendment 161 on automatic enrolment for the Healthy Start scheme, as indeed did the noble Lord, Bethell—so if we are looking for broad, cross-party-political spectrums, this is one of those.

The noble Baroness has already set out the powerful case for this amendment—I will just add one thing. She spoke about the Government’s apparent lack of data in this area. In the other place, my honourable friends asked the Government a whole series of questions about this. The response was that the NHS Business Services Authority, which operates the scheme, does not hold any data on the number of people eligible. That is surely fixable, so it should surely be fixed.

I will focus on Amendment 175 in my name, which is kindly supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. It would insert a new clause to provide for

“holiday … and activity programmes for pupils in receipt of free school meals”.

This would be a lot of pupils. Before the Government’s recent changes, about one in four pupils were already eligible for free school meals. Those were extremely tight criteria; the Government have now opened them up a little. There is some debate about the number of children affected. None the less, these are children whom the Government have acknowledged, and most of whom the previous Government acknowledged, really need the support of hopefully healthy—I will get back to that—hot meals during term time.

However, what happens at weekends? There is a reason why #HolidayHunger has almost become a cliché. Those children come from families whose budgets are at the absolute edge anyway. Then, the holidays come, and they cannot be guaranteed to be fed.

This amendment would also ensure that there are activities and programmes relevant to those children during the school holidays. One thing we have seen in many of our areas, particularly some of our poorest areas, is that the availability of free activities during the school holidays has fallen and fallen. We have seen the privatisation of public spaces, the fencing-in of playing fields and the removal of public spaces that then become privatised and can be quite hostile to children. If you go out and you need access to a loo, you have to buy something, and that is just not available to people. So, this amendment would ensure that there is a meal and a holiday programme that supports those children and those families. It is tackling poverty and tackling some of the very acute issues of public health that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred to.

I note, declaring my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, that this would have to be funded from the centre. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred, I think, to difficulties with the free school breakfast programme and how some schools have had to pull out of it because they did not have the funding. Certainly, local government would really struggle to fund the proposal in this amendment, but I would argue to the Government that the relatively modest costs would be far outweighed by the benefits for public health of the inclusion of some of the poorest children in our communities, giving them a space that is constructive when otherwise they might be spending their time in potentially destructive ways.

I think it is worth noting that this is not just something that I have dreamed up. My honourable friend in the other place, Ellie Chowns, tabled a similar amendment. We have only to go to the Republic of Ireland, which quite recently announced a programme for the coming year that looks remarkably like this: activity programmes for two to four weeks aimed at the children at most risk of disadvantage and those with complex special educational needs. In Ireland, 58,000 pupils took part last year and they are expecting more next year, so this is something that a very broadly comparable society is already doing, acknowledging the need and acting on it.

Finally, there are a huge number of positive amendments in this group, and I am not going to speak to anything like all of them, but I particularly want to highlight Amendment 190, to which I would have attached my name had I got my act together, and Amendment 194, to which I would have attached my name if it were not already fully subscribed. Both are about the quality of school breakfasts and lunches, which is so crucial. I make one general point in this context. The Times Health Commission reported recently and it had a really interesting look at Japan and what a contrast Japan shows compared to us. In Japan, just 4% of adults are obese, compared to 26% here. In Japan, fewer than 2% of under-fives are overweight: they are essentially all at a healthy weight.

What we have is school systems. The Times journalists visited the school system and saw what school lunches are like at Kohoku primary school. The children were eating spiced baked fish and vegetables sprinkled with dried bonito and rice and they were ladling out the food themselves. A pupil got up at the start and explained why the sweetcorn in the rice had a beneficial nutritional advantage. The school is built around a giant kitchen with windows on every side, so pupils can see the chefs preparing the meal.

I wanted to say that because I was reflecting on the Committee’s debate a couple of days ago, when we were talking about children’s social care and I had an amendment that said we should end for-profit provision in children’s social care. It struck me when I read Hansard afterwards that nobody had actually defended the idea of a market in private provision of social care. All the people speaking against my amendment said, “Oh, well, we are where we are now and it’s too difficult to change”. I think that when it comes to free school meals or school meals—on a later group I am going to say that there should be school meals for everybody—we have to say that this needs a giant leap of change. We cannot allow this to continue as it is now. We have to have the imagination to think, yes, we are in a bad place, but we can do significantly, massively better than this, not just try to have a little improvement.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

I shall be brief, because the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has set out comprehensively so much about the amendments that I support, Amendments 175 and 194. Amendment 175 echoes what the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said about the need for “holiday hunger” to be sorted out in this country. For a parent the summer holidays are a cliff edge in all sorts of directions. Not only are you deprived of the possible childcare while struggle with your two jobs, your mortgage and so on, but your children are also deprived of possibly the only decent meal that they might get in the day—and I shall qualify the word “decent” when I come back to it in a minute.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 23rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 193 in this group is also in my name. I say again how pleased I am that the Labour Government have broadened the eligibility for free school meals. However, much still needs to be done, particularly on the quality of the meals and the enforcement of the standards, which needed reviewing anyway—that was the subject of Amendment 190, debated last week—and to ensure that all eligible children get their meal. In recent years the whole issue of school meals has been left to flounder, despite their importance to children’s health, and I am pleased that the Government are now picking it up again.

Amendment 189 calls for an annual review, with the results to be laid before Parliament, of the barriers to all eligible children receiving their free school meal, and clarification of how many eligible children are missing out. The review must assess how many children are eligible, under whatever the current threshold is, and how many would be eligible if the threshold had been uprated since 2018. It must also assess how many would be eligible if the threshold were to be set at £20,000 per year after tax. Because of the inequalities that we know about, the review would have to cover regional and demographic disparities in take-up rates and the financial and educational impact on schools and local authorities, bearing in mind that a child on free school meals currently brings the pupil premium with him or her to the school for education purposes. That set of reviews would give us more information about how the system was working and would form a very useful underpinning for the development of policy in future.

Amendment 193 would ensure the auto-enrolment of all children eligible for free school meals and expand eligibility even further than the recent change to households whose income is less than £20,000 per year after tax. That would be yet another step in the right direction. I know that the Secretary of State, in making the recent announcement that all children in families on universal credit will be eligible for free school meals next year, claimed that this simpler system will make it easier for families to register. However, it is still not the same as auto-enrolment, and schools as well as families are losing out because they are losing the pupil premium that comes with FSM.

The evidence to the Food, Diet and Obesity Committee was clear that there are many children who would become eligible, under whatever threshold, who may not get their free school meal, such as it is, and that there are many children in poverty whose parents struggle to pay for a hot meal for their children. These parents or families, eligible but not registered for FSM, often send the child to school with a packed lunch of dubious nutritional value—we were given several examples—not because they do not care about their children’s health but because they cannot afford the price of a decent packed lunch or a hot meal. It is these unregistered families, and those just above the eligibility threshold, who suffer the most from regulations.

Free school meals, and breakfasts, are one of the most important levers that the Government have to ensure that, however poor the parents, however lacking their cooking facilities at home, whatever kind of food desert the family live in, the children can get two healthy meals every school day—if they also get a free breakfast—to ensure that they grow up strong and a healthy weight, with no rotting teeth and no wrong food preferences to take through life and make them susceptible to obesity. I hope the Government will agree with these amendments, and I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, Amendments 191 and 192 are in my name and are closely related to that already introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for offering her support to my amendments.

Amendment 191 is essentially a different way of getting to the same intention as Amendment 193. We are aiming to get auto-enrolment so that every child who is eligible for free school meals gets them, and surely that is something that the Government want to do. I have no particular opinion on whether Amendment 191 or Amendment 193 is the best way to do it; we can debate that after this point, although I would love to hear the Government say, “We want to do this and we’re going to do it, so you don’t have to worry about this on Report”.

The best stats on the previous form of free school meals, before the Government’s recent extension, showed that up to 250,000 children, or about 11% of those eligible for free school meals, missed out because it is an opt-in process. That is a point that my honourable friend Ellie Chowns in the other place has already highlighted, so I will not go through it in great detail. However, I will note that the Fix Our Food research programme showed that it is children from non-majority communities and lone-parent households who are more likely not to be registered for free school meals despite being eligible. Inequalities here multiply themselves time and again.

Reasons the charity give for this include parents struggling to fill out the complex forms, language barriers or that there may be a simple lack of awareness. There may also be stigma around free school meals. I hope the Committee will join me in saying there is no reason why there should be, but the practical reality is that we know there is. I also note that the Greater London Authority has put resources into auto-enrolment, showing that it is possible to make a difference, but around the rest of the country that is not available.

I come back to my point about stigma, because Amendment 192 would extend free school lunches to all primary schoolchildren in state-funded schools. I will quote a question that was put to me by a year 7 pupil from Lordswood Boys’ School in Birmingham this morning—and, no, I did not put him up to it; it was not prompted in any way. Some other questions identified me as a representative of the Government and I had to correct that misapprehension, but he simply said to me: “Why don’t we get free school meals?” That is something that shows a really high level of awareness. People feel the inequality and suffering that has come from the lack of those free school meals.

Amendment 192, which the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, has kindly backed, would not actually help that year 7 boy. This is me and the Green Party going for the moderate, middle-of-the-road option, because Green Party policy is free school meals for all school pupils, which would help that pupil in Birmingham. What we have here is simply an amendment for all primary school pupils, and part of the reason for that is the example from London of how positive it has been.

I note that an evaluation of this has been conducted already to see what has happened. There has been a lived-experience evaluation by the Child Poverty Action Group and an implementation evaluation as well. This policy, unsurprisingly, was really popular and had a very high level of take up—between 88% and 90% across three school terms. Among the positive outcomes, 84% of parents said it had improved the family budget. One-third of parents said that the policy meant they had less debt. Three in five parents said they were able to spend more money on food at home as a result. We talk so often in your Lordships’ House about our broken food system and how it is so difficult to get a healthy diet.

There are more positives. More than half of parents thought their child was trying new foods as a result of being exposed to them at school. This is the kind of thing we might not think about, but more than half of parents said that it saved them time in the morning that they had been forced to use making packed lunches. We all know that can make a real difference to families. More than one-third of parents thought their children were concentrating better in lessons as a result.

This is a moderate challenge to the Government to look at what has been achieved in London. We know the levels of inequality between London and the rest of the county. Let us break down that inequality and make it better, at least for our primary school pupils.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I was pleased to add my name to various amendments concerning free school meals. Much as I welcome the Bill’s provision for free breakfasts, there remains a strong case for complementing them with free school dinners. I will scrap half of my speech to save time.

This case was summarised well by the Food Foundation:

“School food has the power to enable not just better health and wellbeing, but improved attendance, better pupil outcomes and wider social benefits including reduced inequalities. Free School Meals can break down barriers to opportunity and level the playing field so that every child can have the best start in life”.


In a nutshell, children who have free school meals are healthier and happier and do better in school, as well as later in life.

The amendments would thus contribute to both parts of this Bill: children’s well-being and their ability to benefit from their education. I therefore warmly welcome the recent announcement of the extension of free school meals to all children in families on universal credit from next September, with transitional protection associated with the roll out of universal credit lasting until then.

I will ask one small question and, if it cannot be answered now, perhaps it can be answered in writing. I understand that, if someone is on universal credit at the start of the school year, they will retain entitlement for the whole of that school year, in recognition of the fluctuating circumstances of many on low incomes. Can my noble friend the Minister confirm that that is the case and also say whether someone whose parent comes on to universal credit during the school year will still be entitled? When we debated the Statement, my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti made an impassioned plea on human rights grounds that we might one day aspire to universal free school meals—an ambition that my noble friend the Minister noted.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 3rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I put my name to Amendment 202A in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Bennett. This is a fantastically important amendment, and I will be very distressed if the Government do not seize the moment as the knowledge comes into view about what these kinds of chemicals in cheap clothes provide and are putting into our children’s systems.

Jeremy Grantham, who many people may know, has been one of the main funders of climate change research across the world over the last 40 years and indeed was one of the funders behind the LSE and Nick Stern report. I met him about three weeks ago and he said he is no longer providing climate change funding, largely because he thinks it is a more or less foregone conclusion that things are not going well. He has turned his entire industry and scientific might behind looking at PFAS and the chemicals that are in not just our clothing but our soils.

Let us look specifically at clothing around the world. American Airlines has recently been sued because it produced very cheap uniforms for its stewards and stewardesses. They have started to develop incredible ranges of different skin illnesses and internal illnesses. As the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, found, research in Denmark has shown that prenatal contact to cheaply made fabrics with PFAS in them has led to reductions in IQ among children. France is banning all school uniforms containing PFAS from next year.

Interestingly, Fidra, a big company that works on and looks at the environmental impact of chemicals, says that people want these chemicals in clothing because it is very easy to wash, it dries almost immediately and you never need to iron it. But interestingly, it discovered that people treat these clothes in exactly the same way as they treat something of better quality. Every time you wash it—it is not just when you put it on your skin—bits come off in the washing machine. They are now in circulation: they are in breast milk, placenta and our plants. Our plants are looking at 25% reduction in whole fertility within the next 10 years.

Some of the work that Jeremy Grantham is doing is looking at male fertility. Some people may say we have too many people in the world, but this is probably not the way we want to do it—crashing male fertility and all sorts of things. These are dangerous.

As everybody knows, I have worked on ultra-processed foods. One of the interesting things about these chemicals is that a single one of them on their own may not be dangerous, but they are if you mix them up. That is the whole point of chemistry. That is why we went into chemistry labs for our GCSEs and had fun making things explode. They change.

Those chemicals go into these fabrics. They can be manufactured at immense volume and cheapness. As I say, it is not just the school uniforms but the stuff kids are buying when they can buy 20 garments for 20 quid through a company such as Shein. These are dangerous. We can stop this.

I completely support all the amendments in this group. Yes, I want school uniforms because they are fair, and I want them to be cheap, but I do not want them to be dangerous to our children. Please can the Government start doing something about it? Europe is ahead of us. Other countries are ahead of us. We can do this.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baronesses, Lady Boycott and Lady Parminter. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, just made an extremely powerful case for Amendment 202A, to which I attached my name. In the interests of time, I shall mostly focus on the two amendments that appear in my name in this group, which are Amendments 202B and 484.

Amendment 202B is essentially an expansion of the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. She focused on the health impacts of PFAS; I am focusing on the broader issues of the health of school uniforms. This amendment

“seeks to allow the Secretary of State to regulate school uniforms, given the human and environmental health risks they represent”.

That is not written in the amendment, which is written broadly to have a review within a year, but I say that in the explanatory statement and that I am particularly thinking about

“artificial fibres and chemical constituents”

—so it includes PFAS, but is much broader than that.

This is actually a narrower version of an amendment I tabled to the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill that was debated on 11 December. I included a great deal of evidence in that that I do not have time to include today, but I said then that these products, chemicals, plastics and other substances are accumulating in our bodies day by day. That picks up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott: we have a cocktail effect of bodies being bombarded from our clothing, our environments and our food. We are talking about young people, who are going to live for decades, accumulating more and more PFAS and more and more plastics in their bodies.

This is particularly important when we think about school uniforms, because we are forcing pupils to wear them. This is the state mandating that our children wear clothing which is highly likely to be doing them harm. Think about how it will go from the clothing into people’s bodies: for a blazer, a pupil is running for the school bus or running around in the playground. Smaller children touch their clothing and then they put their hand in their mouth, or they touch something else. They will be ingesting whatever is in their clothing.

It is literally week by week now that we get more medical and research reports on the impacts, but just this week microplastic particles have been found in human semen and female reproductive fluids. There is great concern about the potential impacts on fertility, as has already been referred to. There are microplastics in samples of human penises, and this may have a role in erectile dysfunction. There is a study out just this morning from the Netherlands. Every person in the Netherlands—and there is no reason to think that we are any different—has multiple types of PFAS in their blood, and virtually all of them are above healthy limits. We do not have a detailed explanation of exactly what impact this cocktail has, but we apply the precautionary principle to the environment, so surely we should apply it to the health of our young people and the clothing we are putting them in.

As has already been referred to, France is moving towards a ban on most PFAS imports and manufacture, and by 2030 will ban all PFAS-treated textiles. I note that, in the debate on the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, who is not currently in his place, got quite concerned about what had made his shirt non-iron. I had to go away and look this up: it is formaldehyde. Europe has stepped up and has stronger regulations on formaldehyde exposure in products than we do.

In 2019, the National Trust recognised that the artificial fibre fleeces it supplied to its staff and put in its shops shed an estimated 1.7 grammes of microfibres every time they were washed. It was also concerned that, when people walked through its wonderful, beautiful, natural environments with them, they were shedding plastics everywhere. This is, of course, an environmental health issue as well as a human health issue, but in the context of this Bill, the human health issue for children and young people is overwhelming.

Shifting topics slightly, my second amendment in this group, Amendment 484, is about school hair requirements. It says:

“Pupils must not be denied opportunities to take part in classes, or any other school activities, by reason of their hair style or cut, unless for reasons of health and safety”.


The origins for it go back to a couple of events I have been to with the World Afro Day campaign group. To quote Michelle de Leon, the founder of that group, the bias against Afro hair has become ingrained in some parts of the education system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The point I was making was that it relates to all clothes and is considering the risks from PFAS used in textiles, but I will be happy to provide further information about how that work is being carried out. In the interim, our statutory guidance is already clear that it is important that schools consider sustainability and ethical supply chains, as well as engaging with parents and pupils when tendering for uniform contracts. I know that many high street retailers already offer school uniforms without PFAS treatments for many of the reasons that noble Lords have outlined today. Furthermore, UK product safety laws require all consumer products to be safe, and manufacturers must ensure the safety of products before they are placed on the market. We already have robust systems in place to identify the impact of chemicals under the UK registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—UK REACH—and to regulate them effectively.

On Amendment 484 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, discrimination has no place in our schools or, in fact, in society. Our guidance is clear that in setting uniform and appearance policies, including on hair, we expect schools to meet their existing obligations under equalities law not to discriminate unlawfully. Guidance also already exists for schools on preventing hair discrimination, published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The noble Baroness had a lengthy list of cases. I do not know the details of all those, but I think it is reasonable for schools to develop and implement behaviour policies, to uphold school rules and to use sanctions that are fair and proportionate, and that could well also relate to uniform and expected appearance within schools.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Would the Minister care to address my point about the fact that we have great concern about pupils not in school, yet we are excluding them for this reason? It is reducing the amount of education that pupils are getting.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I do not think the main reason why pupils are being excluded from school is because of issues to do with their hair, but I do think it is right for schools to have the ability to set the criteria and the constraints within which they expect their pupils to behave. While not being across all the individual cases that the noble Baroness outlined, I can imagine circumstances in which it would be justifiable to take action against students who perhaps persistently fail to comply with the rules that have been set by a school, including about their appearance. We have had a wide-ranging debate, and I hope I have responded to all the points raised.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I am optimistic for a hat trick from the Minister. Clause 50 is one of the clauses that leave me most worried about the Bill because it risks directly damaging the education that children receive. Again, that is obviously not what Ministers intend, but it appears to ignore the impact on the school performance of sponsored academies—to be clear, not every single sponsored academy, but I know that the Minister will agree that, overall, the evidence shows a really important impact on the lives of children in those schools.

To be clear, I do not think that anyone on my Benches thinks that autonomy is a magic bullet to solve the problems of any school, whether or not it is failing. The key is how that autonomy is used. Some MATs have used their autonomy to focus on developing really great and deep expertise in turning around struggling schools, supporting staff and transforming outcomes for pupils. Others have focused on developing great curricula. There are lots of other examples; of course, there are also examples of professional generosity in the maintained sector, too.

There are now 2,796 sponsored academies in England —more than 23% of our secondary schools. As we have heard from a number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Sewell earlier, trusts have led to extraordinary turnarounds in some of the most difficult schools in our country; I pay tribute to everyone involved in that critical work. However, Clause 50 changes that. No longer will a failing maintained school automatically join a strong MAT. In her Written Ministerial Statement, published yesterday, the Secretary of State wrote:

“Subject to the passage of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, structural intervention through issuing of academy orders will continue to be the default approach for schools in special measures, because no child should be left in a school that does not have the capacity to improve”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/9/25; col. 29WS.]


I am genuinely confused by that because I do not feel that that is what the Bill says, as it removes the section in the Academies Act 2010 that facilitated this intervention. I hope that the Minister can explain that and reassure me.

The Government have argued that we should intervene earlier in schools that are struggling. Nobody would disagree with that; we were already doing that in the department when I was in office. Of course, if that works, it is the best outcome for children.

The other argument that the Government have put forward is that directive academy orders are too slow. I think that, if the Minister has time to dig into the detail, she will agree with me that the ones that are slow are really complicated. They may need significant financial help, which the department is struggling to find down the back of any education-shaped sofa; that might be in relation to capital or to revenue. There may be very complex governance issues, or—as in one case that I can remember, which was very slow—there may be crippling PFI contracts in place.

However, even that does not stop immediate help being put in. The Minister will be familiar with a number of cases where that has happened, often with trusts taking significant risk and commitment of resources without any guarantee that they will end up being the sponsor for the school. They do it because it is the right thing to do.

My Amendment 445B aims to address the Government’s concern about delays while still keeping the urgency that is necessary to address the weaknesses in a particular school. It says that, if

“no suitable sponsor is available, the Secretary of State must, within 14 days, publish a plan to secure appropriate governance and leadership of the school and to secure its rapid improvement”.

This would bring about the clarity and transparency that will be crucial in retaining the confidence of parents, pupils and staff. I think that that aligns with the Secretary of State’s Statement yesterday but, if it does not, I hope that the Minister can explain where the gap is.

My Amendment 446A aims to address a problem that is likely to emerge as a result of the Government’s approach—namely, an increase in the number of judicial reviews of academy orders. Schools will want to understand why they are not being given more support or more time to turn around. However valid any individual case might be, the outcome will be a slowing down and reduction in the use of academy orders, leaving pupils in failing schools for longer.

My Amendment 446B aims to reintroduce the automatic academisation of maintained schools that have received from Ofsted a significant improvement judgment, or whatever the latest language is—however the department and the chief inspector judge that to be framed—and where the RISE teams believe that a school is “significantly underperforming”.

The Bill fails to address another problem: the schools that, under the previous Ofsted framework, were repeatedly graded as requiring improvement, some as many as seven times or more. None of us in this Committee would want our child to attend or work in a school that is so stuck in a rut of underperformance. I know that the decision to intervene in the so-called 2RI+ schools—to use the secret language of school intervention—was not universally welcomed, including by my noble friend Lady Spielman, and she and I debated this many times in her previous role. The aim was to send a strong signal about the priority we put on addressing underperformance in a timely and effective way. Sadly, the Secretary of State reversed this approach very early on in her tenure.

I ask the Minister to reconsider whether this clause should stand part of the Bill, particularly given the Secretary of State’s comments yesterday. Where is the evidence that the department’s proposed approach will be more effective? Children in failing schools need urgent action, as the Secretary of State herself has said. Sometimes the leadership of that school does not want to become part of a trust, but, ultimately, we need to be clear that the interest of the pupils must always come first. I beg to move the amendment in my name.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 447 and 447ZB, which appear in my name. I must begin by apologising to the Committee and the Minister for failing to introduce my amendments in the group before the break. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for picking up the slack. My only explanation is that it has been a long 24 hours.

This Bill, as currently drafted, sits in an awkward position. On the long-term disastrous policy of academisation—too often forced academisation and rarely resisted successfully by local and school communities —the Bill makes half a U-turn. It ends the presumption that all new schools must be an academy and removes the duty to force schools into multi-academy trusts. As the National Education Union has said, this a welcome shift in policy. But this is not a full U-turn but a half U-turn. It leaves far too many schools stuck, pointed awkwardly at 90 degrees across the flow of history, like a vehicle on a traffic island with fast-moving lorries approaching from both directions.

The Bill does not provide the option for schools and their communities that are unhappy in their current situation to leave multi-academy trusts and join the local authority system or other groups that are better suited to their needs. Making that provision would provide the chance of escape and allow schools to get out of the iron grip of dangerous and failed ideology into the empowered position of local choice and decision-making—the kind of devolution that the Government say they are in favour of.

This is an area of policy that the Green Party, as on so many others, has been leading ever since it resisted from the start the disastrous push to free schools and academies that has fragmented our systems and seen enormous sums flowing into fat cat executive pay—something we may come to in the next group—and big supply profits hoovered up by multinational companies on the contractor bandwagon. These two amendments take two possible approaches to dealing with this and starting to untangle the mess.

Currently, schools in multi-academy trusts lack separate legal entities. Leaving it to the MAT board to decide which powers, if any, it chooses to delegate to each academy is a profoundly unequal relationship. Amendment 447 does not seek to directly prescribe how to get out of this undeniably complex situation; rather, it would create a new clause in the Bill directing the Secretary of State to set out, within 12 months of the Act passing, a report with proposals for converting academy chains, individual academies and free schools into maintained schools under local authority control.

--- Later in debate ---

Clause 50 is about empowering the Secretary of State to act in the best interests of children. Far from leading to the weakening of school improvement, it will accelerate it. For that reason, and because of the assurances I have provided, I hope that noble Lords will feel able to withdraw or not move their amendments.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I am taking some encouragement from the Minister’s remarks. I wrote down and underlined that the Government have no immediate plans. That is interesting, because it is a statement of a possibility for the future. We all know how hard it is to get parliamentary time to get Bills through Parliament—the Government will certainly attest to that. I ask the Minister to consider future-proofing. Would it not be a good idea to provide the potential here, without the necessity to activate it, and set up some mechanism for the possibility of getting the kind of diversity that she says she is looking for?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I also said that the proposals run contrary to our policy. I would not want the noble Baroness to run away with anything that is unlikely to happen—so no.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I really want to challenge the assumption of some of the amendments in this group that what we need is more dedicated mental health practices and provision in schools. One of the problems is that there is too much emphasis on mental illness and mental health in education at the moment. That awareness is taking up too much time in school life, is over-preoccupying young people and is becoming a real problem.

If you look at what is going on in schools at the moment, there are indeed endless numbers of staff, volunteers and organisations with responsibility for emotional well-being: mental health leads, support teams, emotional literacy support and assistance, mental health first aiders, counsellors, and well-being officers. If you go into any school, the walls are covered in information about mental illness, mental health and so on; it is everywhere you go. Yet despite this booming, school-based mental health industrial complex, almost, the well-being of pupils continues to deteriorate—or that is what we are told.

Mental health problems and diagnoses are rising at the same time as all the awareness initiatives are taking place. Something is going wrong and that at least needs some investigation, but these amendments just assume that we should carry on doing the same and more of the same. Along with the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, I think that real, critical thinking needs to be done around some of the awareness campaigns.

I want to challenge the idea that schools are the vehicle for tackling the undoubted spiralling crisis of unhappiness among young people. It is also important that we untangle that from the crisis of CAMHS. There is actually a serious problem in NHS mental health support for children, and I would like that to be taken on. That is very different from the kind of discussion we are having here about schools, which is that mental distress becomes such a focus of all the discussions in schools.

I tend to agree—for possibly the only time—with Tony Blair on this. He said,

“you’ve got to be careful of encouraging people to think they’ve got some sort of condition other than simply confronting the challenges of life”.

That is true. Starting with children, we are encouraging the young to internalise the narrative of medicalised and pathologised explanations and the psychological vocabulary of adopting an identity of mental fragility, and that is not doing them any good. That can then create an increasing cohort of young people and parents demanding official diagnosis, more intervention and more support at school.

Dr Alastair Santhouse, a neuropsychiatrist at the Maudsley, argues this in his new book, No More Normal: Mental Health in an Age of Over-Diagnosis. He says that it has become crucial to reassess what constitutes mental illness, so that we can decide who needs to be treated with limited resources and who can be helped in other ways. He is talking about the NHS, and he warns that the NHS has buckled under a tsunami of referrals for some conditions. He also says that other state services such as schools are straining to the point of dysfunction in dealing with this issue, and I tend to agree with him.

I admire the passionate intervention by the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, calling for measurement and evidence, but one of the problems is that I am not entirely sure we know what we are measuring. There is no clear definition of well-being to measure. The psychiatric profession is making the point that the definitions of what constitutes mental illness are now contended—there are arguments about them. What are you measuring? This woolliness of definitions is becoming a problem in schools.

The counsellor Lucy Beney, in her excellent recent pamphlet, worries that this means that mental illness in schools is leading to a kind of diagnostic inflation itself, as pupils compare notes on what they have got and go to different professionals to ask what they have got and so on. It can create a sort of social or cultural contagion, enticing the young to see all the ups and downs of life through the prism of mental health, which can be demoralising and counterproductive. There is no doubt that too many children and young people are not thriving mentally and emotionally in the UK today, and I would like to have that discussion, but I do not think that well-being and mental health is necessarily the way to do it. Schools are definitely not the places to solve it.

A lot of the well-being initiatives, counselling and therapeutic interventions encourage young people to look at life through the subjective filter of their own feelings and anxieties. That, in turn, is likely to lead to inward-looking, self-absorbed children. The role of education in schools is to introduce new generations to the wonders of the millennia, of knowledge outside their experience, which takes them outside themselves. That is what schools are for. That is what teachers are good at. It is not just about gaining credentials. In fact, I hate the credentialing aspect of it. But if you get into a brilliant novel, the law of physics, the history of our world or evolution, you forget your troubles. If you are constantly talking to the counsellor about your troubles, yourself and endlessly thinking of your own well-being, it is boring, demoralising and stunting. It is enough to make anybody depressed, including the young. It is important that schools do not get completely obsessed with this issue. I fear that they have, and it has made matters worse.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, first, I want to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that the World Health Organization has a clear definition of well-being:

“Well-being is a positive state experienced by individuals in society … Well-being encompasses quality of life and the ability of people and societies to contribute to the world with a sense of meaning and purpose.”


So this is not about self-focus; it is clear that it is about people being in a position to contribute. The WHO goes on to say that a society’s well-being can be

“determined by the extent to which it is resilient, builds capacity for action, and is prepared to transcend challenges”.

Perhaps most of us can agree that that is something society needs to do much better.

I am afraid that I disagree entirely with the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman. The noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, said that the Dutch score particularly highly, along with Denmark, in the recent PISA figures on children’s well-being, and we score astonishingly badly. I was looking at a publication from a few years ago, The Dutch Way in Education. The publisher of that notes how the Dutch system measures not only academic achievement but also the well-being and involvement of students. I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, that I have raised the study he referred to a number of times. I would like to raise it tonight, but in the interests of the Committee making progress, I will not. Every time we are told how much progress our schools have made, saying, “Look at the exam results”, I say, look at the state of well-being of our pupils. I say particularly to the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, that if we measure only the exam results, that is what we are going to judge our schools on. That is what we have been doing, and it is what has got us into this position.

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

Ofsted, where I was chief inspector, took personal development, including children’s well-being, very seriously; it was one of the judgments there. I have never suggested, nor would ever suggest, that academic outcomes were the only thing that mattered for children.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

In responding to the noble Baroness, I can speak as a former school governor, and I have my own opinions of Ofsted. I want to put it on record that the Green Party wishes to abolish Ofsted, so that is where I am coming from.

It is important that we speak in support of Amendment 502YG about allergies. I also went to an event with the Benedict Blythe Foundation where I learned about this crucial issue, and the work of that foundation absolutely needs to be acknowledged.

There are two amendments in this group that have not yet been introduced. The first is Amendment 502B in my name, kindly backed by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, and the noble Baroness, Lady Willis. I am also going to speak to Amendment 502Y, which was tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, and backed by the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Boycott. The noble Baroness, Lady Willis, apologises greatly that she is unable to introduce her own amendment. Like me, the noble Baroness had a train to catch and, while I have now given up on mine, she had to catch hers, so she has departed.

Both amendments focus on the importance of nature in the physical spaces in and around school buildings, and to promote active-based learning and teaching in the school curriculum. It is important to say that far too often that is seen as a “nice to have”—an additional something for schools that have the resources to get money from parents to plant trees, make nice gardens and so on. It is a great pity that the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, is not here because this is something that she has literally written the book on. I am sure that many noble Lords already know that the title of her book is Good Nature: The New Science of How Nature Improves Our Health.

I shall highlight the difference between the two amendments. My Amendment 502B says:

“The Secretary of State shall have a duty to promote school pupils’ access to nature”,


and says there should be one hour of access to nature each week for every pupil. This is something on which there is bountiful evidence. The amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, is much more limited but still important: it would require a review to be conducted on the benefits of nature-based learning to children’s health and well-being.

I have vast amounts of notes here that noble Lords will be pleased to know I am not going to read out, but it is worth focusing on just one study from 2015 that the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, highlights, focusing on 3,000 primary-aged children in four standard urban schools in Barcelona. The test scores of children who were looking out of the window at green space were better than those of the children who did not have that view of green space. We are not talking here about forest schools; they were normal inner-city schools. The addition of trees and green infrastructure in the playground has real impact on exam results. More than that, there is significant evidence about improvements in anti-social behaviour, levels of mental health and teenage anxiety, and even reduced truancy, something that noble Lords and the Government are very concerned about.

The second part of the noble Baroness’s amendment is about nature-based skills. In other parts of the economy, in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, we are focusing on the need to look after green spaces in our communities. Who is going to do the work of looking after that? It is crucial that we have the training.

The noble Baroness, Lady Willis, has given me a great deal more information and I feel guilty that I am not going to pass it on, but in the interests of time I am going to sit down now and urge noble Lords to read the noble Baroness’s book.

[Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 502YG. I declare my interest as the chief officer of the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, the UK’s food allergy charity.

Regrettably, we have an education system completely unprepared for the growing numbers of food-allergic children in the UK, with safeguarding standards varying widely from school to school. Recent incidents underscore the urgent need for thorough staff training and well implemented allergen management policies. Food allergy-related deaths, which for the most part are preventable, while uncommon, tragically occur in school.

A few months ago, as the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, noted, the inquest into the death of Benedict Blythe, who was aged just five, concluded. Today, as we discuss this amendment, I know that Benedict is in our hearts and our minds, as is his mother, Helen. She is the driver behind Amendment 502YG, which would be a critical addition to the Bill.

There are of course excellent examples of food allergy management in some of our schools. However, with two children in every classroom having a food allergy, and one in five allergic reactions to food occurring in school, too many schools lack policies for effective allergy management and staff are inadequately trained. There is also a lack of understanding around allergy in our schools. That all impacts on children’s attendance and puts them at risk.

At the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, we regularly hear from parents about schools that ignore their requests for reasonable adjustments or, worse still, are dismissive about a child’s allergy. These persistent challenges are faced by thousands of allergy families across the country, and they reinforce that allergies should be treated with the same seriousness and attention as other medical conditions in school settings. That is why, at the Natasha foundation, we launched Allergy School, which offers free practical resources to help teachers create inclusive and safe environments for children with food allergies.

However, charities and foundations cannot deliver change alone. The Government need to do more to help schools and early years settings be better equipped to manage food allergies, from improved staff training to safer food management practices. This amendment would achieve that. It would ensure that all schools had proper staff training; effective policies in place; data—I emphasise that for the sake of the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell—on allergic reactions, which is woefully lacking; and spare AAIs, or adrenaline auto-injectors.

There are very few chronic conditions that can take a child from perfectly fine to unconscious in 30 minutes, but food allergy anaphylaxis is one of them. Who can disagree with life-saving medication being on site and quickly and easily accessible to save a child’s life? I look forward to my noble friend the Minister’s reply.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

As it is late, I shall just register my support for Amendments 465 and 471. I agree that a large number of young people and their parents do not adhere to a religious faith. It is clearly valuable and important for them to learn about the central faiths that influence our culture, but they are also entitled to have access to moral and ethical frameworks which do not depend on a religious faith so that they may arrive at their own moral compass. These amendments would enable that positive development.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I offer Green support for all three of these amendments, but in the interests of time I shall make two brief remarks about Amendments 463 and 465.

On Amendment 463, I agree with all the contributions made thus far, but with a focus particularly on the relationship and sex education part of it. I think that it is also important that we focus on the PSHE element of that. This is education about the financial sector and managing personal finances, something that it is generally agreed there is a real shortage of. This is education about physical and mental health—and I cross-reference the earlier amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, about the importance of physical literacy in particular. It is also about rights and responsibilities. We have to note that, with votes at 16 now being government policy and coming in this direction, it is surely important that we provide education about voting and our political system to young people in our further education system.

When I say that we need that kind of education, people sometimes say that that is an argument against votes at 16. I think that 16 year-olds are as well informed about our political system as 60 year-olds, and they all need more information and more education. Educating 16 and 17 year-olds will also provide information that will disseminate out into the general community through their family, friends and colleagues in the workplace.

On Amendment 465, I want to respond directly to the noble Lord, Lord Weir, who, I think, suggested that there was something odd about the idea that the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, had previously brought two Private Members’ Bills—I have spoken in support of both—and that their subject was now being put forward as an amendment to a government Bill. There is a very well-trodden path for—

[Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)]

No, I did not. In case there is any misunderstanding, I was simply pointing out that this was, in effect, a transposition. I did not suggest that it was some sort of irregular route or that there was something wrong with it. I pointed out that, if it were to become part of the Bill, it would not have gone through the same level of consultation as the rest of the Bill. However, I did not suggest that this was an oddly trodden path—in case there was any misunderstanding on that.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank the noble Lord for that clarification. Of course, what he just said applies to any amendment that your Lordships’ House inserts into a government Bill.

The argument for Amendment 465 has already been powerfully made, but we are talking about a law that dates back to 1944. This is a 20th-century arrangement for the 21st century, which, as others have said, simply does not fit our society any more. A poll in 2024 said that 70% of school leaders wanted to get rid of the current legal arrangement.

On alternative moral, spiritual and cultural development, we hear from all sides of your Lordships’ House regular lamenting about how much cultural education we have lost from our current system and how little space there is to fit into the curriculum things such as cultural activities and cultural learning. This provision would be one way to create a little more space for something that is pretty well universally agreed as being essential.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I will very briefly say a few words about this group.

On Amendment 463, the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, may have taken up the baton from somebody else, but she did it pretty well—nobody has disagreed with her. It seems agreed that she is on very solid ground. The amendment is about useful information that people should have. I hope that the Government are at least friendly to the amendment.

On the two amendments tabled by my noble friend, I very much doubt that one assembly a week will change anybody’s religious views either way. Not making one point of view compulsory will probably not change religious views either way. The similarity in the values of religions—the fact that we should be nice to people seems to be common across the board—is something that we can probably convey elsewhere; it does not have to be put forward in this way. I do not think that it will make much difference. It would certainly bring it in line with a bigger chunk of the population. If people want spiritual activity somewhere else, it would be available.

I turn to the final amendment in the group. I hope that my noble friend will not hit me too much when I say that the provision should already be there. Any education about religion must include the contrary arguments, so I think this is really belt and braces. I am not getting snarled at by my noble friend, so I think I am not too far off in saying that. I hope that the Minister can confirm that Amendment 471 should be covered, at least partially, in all current religious education.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 18th September 2025 Lords Chamber

When it comes to some of the other amendments, I fully acknowledge the desire to think about parents in particular—I am one myself—and their belief systems. All I will say is that the belief systems of some parents are not entirely compatible with what one might wish or expect to find within our society. Some parents’ belief systems are wonderful, but there are some that most of us would find slightly bizarre or extreme. For a parent to feel that they have the right to impose on their child a belief system that many of us might feel was slightly unfair on the child is to go down a dangerous course, because, ultimately, the decisions of parents are heavily subjective, which is understandable. As parents we feel a sense of responsibility and ownership for children, but I feel that we have to balance that with trying to ensure that our belief systems and the way in which we choose to live our lives does not inadvertently put our child in a position where their experience of trying to interact and integrate with other members of society becomes particularly difficult and, occasionally, unfortunate.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this rich and terribly important debate, having attached my name to Amendments 469 and 470, which are also signed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. They have broad cross-party support, and we have heard much more support from all corners of the Committee.

It is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Russell, even though he pre-empted—

Noble Lords: The noble Lord, Lord Russell.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

The noble Lord, Lord Russell. There we are—promotions are good. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Russell, even though he pre-empted one of my lines: imagine having on the front of every Bill a statement that says, “This complies with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child”—what a step forward that would be.

I want to return to the comments made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, about listening to children—indeed, this is where the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, started us: nothing about us without us. The noble and learned Baroness referred to how important it is to listen to children. She said that children have really good ideas and a clear psyche. It is important that we follow Article 12 of the UN convention and ensure that we follow the right of children to be listened to and taken seriously. That is crucial for children’s mental health and well-being. The sense of agency really is important; a lack of that sense of agency is a problem across the whole of our society, but particularly for our children.

Turning that round, children have really good ideas. We are facing a polycrisis: we are exceeding our planetary boundaries and we are damaging our health with the state of our world. Children have ideas, with very clear sight of how to tackle those things—fresh ideas that we would all benefit from listening to.

On the specifics of the rights impact assessment proposed by Amendment 469, I will take us back to 2010. I declare an interest here that I was on the board of the Fawcett Society. In 2010, it took a judicial review over the lack of a gender impact assessment on the Budget that year. In the classic way of these cases, the Fawcett Society lost the judicial review but it won from the Government an acknowledgement that there should have been a gender impact assessment on various aspects of the Budget. Creating this right would force Governments to think harder to do the proper impact assessments that the noble Lord, Lord Russell, referred to. This could have real impact. It is not a panacea; it will not suddenly fix everything if we put it in the Bill, but it is an important step in ensuring that questions are carefully examined, not just brushed aside.

We have already heard from a former Children’s Commissioner, but I note that, in the last few days, the current Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, carried out a national census of school leaders and found that schools are being left to plug more and more gaps. Children are not getting the right to the services that they should have and schools are trying to fill in the gaps. I refer to that because I suspect there might be quite a few people out there listening to our debate who think that Britain is a good, developed and successful country and that we must therefore be meeting all our obligations under the convention on children’s rights. But of course we are not, demonstrably.

Our very respected Joint Committee on Human Rights, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who is not currently in his place, is starting an inquiry into the human rights of children in the social care system in England, having identified that there is a problem. I will cross-reference our recent debates on the Mental Health Bill—an attempt to deal with the needs of some of the most vulnerable people in our society. We have improved the law there, but there was broad agreement that we have not got the resources to deliver the improvement in the law. Ensuring that we are signed up to this convention is crucial.

I will briefly cross-reference an earlier amendment of mine which called for a place efficiency duty for local authorities. One of the less noted elements of the UN convention is Article 31.1, which states that:

“States Parties recognize the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts”.


An academic article in the Human Rights Law Review of June 2025 by Dr Naomi Lott sets out how we could deliver on that. This takes a global perspective, but it is still highly relevant to the UK.

My final point is a large one and takes a global perspective, thinking about where the world is today—this is particularly relevant in the light of a certain ongoing state visit. As the noble Lord, Lord Banner, says, signing up to the UN convention was done by the Thatcher Government. The principle of respecting human rights and the rule of law has been embedded in British society over decades. However, on a global scale, human rights and the rule of law are under threat like never before. Previously leading countries in defending human rights, to at least a degree, are now stepping out and expressing opposition to them. We often heard from the previous Government, and we hear from the current Government, a desire to be world-leading. Wales and Scotland have been world-leading here. It is time for England and Westminster to step up to the plate.

This matters terribly for practical reasons of human rights and the rule of law and impact assessments and all those things within the UK, but it also matters on a global scale if we are to be leaders and say that human rights and the rule of the law apply to all citizens. The noble Lord, Lord Meston, referred to the right of a child’s identity. As he was speaking, I was thinking of the Ukrainian children kidnapped into Russia and being denied their identity. We cannot stand up for this unless we stand up for ourselves on our own soil. This is a globally important debate, as well as crucial for the children of England.

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

My Lords, I oppose Amendments 469 and 470. I recognise that they are proposed with the very best of intentions and at first blush sound wonderful, yet it is blindingly obvious that they would be likely to do more harm than good in practice. They embody a fundamental misconception that children have no real rights in the UK except to the extent that they are specified in supranational charters and conventions. This is simply not the case. We have a long and generally positive history of acknowledging and protecting human rights, including those of children, and recognising the ways in which children need to be treated differently from adults. We do an enormous amount to give children a voice.

I will turn to the negatives. First, the amendments would create a vast and costly administrative burden for very little additional value. The amendments specify that children’s rights impact assessments would have to be published for every single ministerial decision, including operational decisions. Scotland and Wales have been repeatedly cited as models to follow, yet it is genuinely hard to find ways in which children in Scotland and Wales are doing better than children in England and easy to find ways in which they are doing worse. I am afraid that the educational comparative studies, on record for all to see, show very big gaps. The impact of lockdowns was no less harsh for children in Wales and Scotland. All countries have experienced a spike in persistent absence post-lockdown. Whereas the latest persistent absence figure in England is 23%, when I looked it up a couple of months ago, in Wales it was 31% and in Scotland it was 37%. I may have got those two the wrong way around but one is 31% and one is 37%. It is not obvious that those two nations provide a clear example of why we should adopt this approach.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

I quickly respond to a point that the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, made. The wording in my amendment is not my wording; it is already in the convention. I am not trying to incorporate it into our law, because it is already incorporated. That ship has sailed, really. All I am doing is pointing out its relevance to a Bill that I perceive as seeking to restrict parental choice in various ways. To pick up on one point that the noble Lord, Lord Russell, made, I entirely respect what he said about the importance of being aware that parents may make wrong choices. The assumption built into this provision of the convention is that they are entitled to make what they consider to be good choices. Otherwise, you would take away all rights of parents altogether, if you make the assumption that they are not. On children’s rights in respect of schools, it is their parents who have chosen to send them there. That was the parental choice.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, responding to the noble Baroness about vaccination, I think it is important that we put facts on the record. She suggested that vaccination of children was primarily to protect other age groups—

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

She said flu vaccination.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Yes, flu vaccination—I have just been looking at the Health Security Agency website about the vaccination of children against flu, and it says:

“Flu can be an extremely unpleasant illness in children, with those under the age of 5 being more likely to be hospitalised due to flu than any other age group. Vaccinating children helps protect them in the first instance, so that they can stay in school”.


I think it is important, given the debate around vaccination, that that is put on the record.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I have a probing amendment in this group, which came about because it struck me that we need to be prepared to think of the unthinkable. Sadly, there have been some tragedies in different schools in different places. There have been bus crashes and knifings. We know that defibrillators on sports fields have saved lives by having a programme that was rolled out. We know that autoinjectors of adrenaline, which are now in schools as a spare autoinjector, have been saving lives.

However, I am not sure that children really know how to cope with some of the life-threatening emergencies that can occur before emergency services arrive: particularly, how to manage if a child seems to be bleeding out from a severe injury—there are some very simple measures that can be taken—how to manage choking if someone is choking on a bolus of food in the dining room, and how to manage a chemical attack. I should say that my own grandsons attended the school—one is still at the school—where there was a chemical attack on a pupil in the street that hit the news. I was very struck many years ago when those same grandchildren were much younger and at nursery, where they were taught a very simple rhyme to shout if there was a fire: “Fire, fire. Do not hide. Run outside”. It was terribly simple. We chanted it in the home with them. It was an important lesson, because things can be incredibly dangerous and can happen very fast.

The purpose of my amendment is to probe the extent to which we are taking seriously some of the unthinkable things that could happen to our schoolchildren and making sure that they are prepared for responding in a way that does not further endanger them when there is serious danger in front of them. It is a probing amendment—I know that it is not well drafted—but I felt that when we are going through such enormously complicated legislation, putting so much onus on schools, we have to think about the unthinkable.

[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.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 19th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I am grateful for the amendments in this group. We are continuing, as the Bill makes progress, to strengthen the offer that is made to care leavers. In the previous group, we discussed matters that, assuming they are voted on in a little while, will improve conditions and improve what local authorities have to publish.

My Amendment 95, which I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, for signing, would simply extend that to make sure that care leavers have a clear understanding of what their local authority is willing to offer and what it is not, particularly given that so many care leavers at age 18 or 19 end up leaving. Some, I am delighted to say, go to university and end up in a different town in perhaps a different part of the country entirely; others, for whatever reason, may decide it is appropriate to move and perhaps go back to be closer to friends from former times.

It is therefore not just the people who are already in a particular local authority who need to really know what the care leaver offer is; it is young people who might be considering moving to that area. As became clear in discussion of my own Bill a few months ago, that is often where people fall through the gap: they move for good and solid reason from one part of the country to another, and in that new part of the country they find that the services they expected are not there because that local authority either chooses not to provide them to anybody or, as is sometimes the case, chooses to provide them only to young people who have been in its care through the previous years.

I hope that we can get some support for Amendment 95. Understanding procedure—I am slowly learning this place, after about six years in—I know we probably will not get to a vote on this tonight, so maybe the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and I can agree between now and Wednesday whether this matter should be put to a Division or not.

[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.

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[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, I tabled this amendment in Committee. I also pay tribute to Siobhain McDonagh for having pursued this for many years and the way in which she has worked with different parts of government to try to work through the issues. It was always really about the children and not about the problems that government has in doing this. I will now make a very lengthy peroration and simply say thank you.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, I supported and spoke to a similar amendment in Committee. Again, I will not be very long.

I want to celebrate this great example of when campaigning works. I pay tribute to Justlife, which worked alongside the Shared Health Foundation for the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Households in Temporary Accommodation. I want to stress the importance of this, and will not apologise for repeating what are such horrific figures. From 2023 to 2025, 80 children died while in temporary accommodation; that was 3% of total child deaths. From 2019 to 2024, temporary accommodation was cited as a factor in the deaths of 74 children.

Having said that, I want to stress, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Young, was hinting at, that it is crucial that this comes into effect as soon as possible. We could potentially save a life if GP surgeries and schools know the situation that children are in. Much more broadly, we need to get to a situation where we do not have children in temporary accommodation for the long periods of time they are now. Please let this be done as soon as possible.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

I give heartfelt thanks to the Minister from these Benches for moving this amendment. I have not dared count the number of amendments my noble friend has tabled, but this is a magnificent example of a Minister and a Government listening.

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[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I too support these amendments. The debate in Committee threw a light on the working of the deprivation of liberty jurisdiction, which, one could not help noting, was not altogether familiar to many.

Typically, these orders are made when parents cannot provide good enough care and the child concerned needs protection from outside pressures and their own risk-taking behaviour. Before they come to court, the local authority, the guardian and the court have to do their best to provide placement in appropriate settings and to enable the child to maintain significant relationships, both of which are easier said than done. Problems that follow the initial order can include unstable placement and repeated changes of placement. These are not easy to manage. I have read of a child saying that it was pointless to try to build up any relationship in the setting in which she was placed because she knew that she would be moved again or the staff would leave. That is a very unhappy state of affairs.

There can be review hearings by the court, but they are not always satisfactory in my experience. Therefore, sensibly, Amendment 54 would require review by the director of children’s services to ensure proper monitoring and adherence to the objectives of the original authorisation to deprive liberty. Therefore, among this package before us, I strongly support this amendment, which would also comply with the child’s right to regular reviews in accordance with Article 25 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will briefly focus on Amendment 53, on the right to education. I want to bring in the voice of one child who spoke to the Children’s Commissioner in her report on this issue. Talking about the lack of education they were receiving, this child said:

“I don’t think it’s fair that they’re making us miss out on our education because they don’t know where to put us”.


That child understands the situation they are in, and it is just unacceptable. All but two of the children whom the Children’s Commissioner spoke to said they were receiving less education when subjected to deprivation of liberty than they received in their otherwise often very chaotic circumstances. We have to make sure that these children continue with an education.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, this is a very important and sensitive area of law, and valid issues and concerns are raised in the amendments spoken to so ably by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. I also pay tribute, as she did, to the work of the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory in this area. I know the Government have been working hard to see what can be done and to give various assurances. I hope the Minister can provide further assurances today so that we can all be satisfied that they are taking this issue very seriously and have a clear plan to tackle it.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 19th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to support Amendment 77, to which I have added my name. I take this opportunity to thank my noble friend the Minister for the helpful meeting that I and stakeholders had with her to discuss the other issue I raised alongside this in Committee.

As my noble friend has said, I and other noble Lords have been pressing for many years the case of children who have not claimed the citizenship status to which they are entitled, including the high fees that can act as a barrier. Indeed, we have earned the label of “terriers” on the subject. I am delighted to welcome my noble friend Lord Moraes to the noble band of terriers. Like him, I speak as a patron of the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens.

This amendment, so ably introduced by my noble friend, would help to ensure that these children’s citizenship rights are not overlooked by local authorities in their role as corporate parents. As he emphasised, this concerns a statutory entitlement to citizenship and is not a matter of immigration or discretion: all too often, the Government have conflated the two in the past. The consequence of this right not being given effect has been spelled out by the High Court, which noted that children who identify as British but who have effectively been deprived of citizenship can

“feel alienated, excluded, isolated, second-best, insecure and not fully assimilated into the culture and social fabric of the UK”.

I also echo my noble friend’s welcome for the consideration the Government are giving to how better to support these children in establishing their right to citizenship. The White Paper, Restoring Control Over the Immigration System, stated that in the “near term” the Government will ensure that

“children who have been fully in the UK for some time, turn 18 and discover that they do not have status, are fully supported and able to regularise their status and settle. This will also include a clear pathway for those children in care and care leavers”.

This amendment, which also relates to some children born in this country, will make it less likely that children in this situation will turn 18 without having claimed their right to citizenship. So there is a good case for the Government accepting it. Given that the White Paper commitment was made last May, and related to the “near term”, what have the Government done to realise it?

These are important issues for children’s citizenship rights and well-being, so acceptance of this amendment would strengthen the Bill as it relates to some of the most marginalised children in our country.

[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.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 21st January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 90 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, seeks to require the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the barriers preventing parents of critically ill children being by their bedside.

I have been working with Ceri and Frances Menai-Davis for around a year. After their son Hugh passed away, they could have stepped back. Instead, they made a conscious decision to stand up and try to change the lives of other families. They are in the south-west Gallery today, as they have been for previous debates. They have turned the most devastating personal loss into a determination to make sure that other parents are not left to face the same failures that they experienced.

When Hugh died in 2021, Ceri and Frances left the hospital at 11.30 pm. When the doors closed behind them, Hugh was still in there, and suddenly they were out of the system. They stood outside with their bags, trying to work out how they could carry on. They had a three year-old child at home whom they had not seen for three weeks. There was no transport, which they did not expect, and they took an hour and a half taxi ride home in silence while the driver chatted about football and the weather, unaware that their world had just collapsed.

When they walked through their front door, everything was still there: toys, unfinished drawings and the remains of Hugh’s birthday cake still in the kitchen. The pain was unbearable. They woke the next morning and sat in silence. Then, Hugh’s younger brother, Raife, woke up, who they had not seen in three weeks, and said, “Where’s Hughie?” There was no guidance and no support, and they had to do what no other parent should ever have to do: look online.

Ceri tried to access mental health support, but no one could help. The GP was unaware of their situation and just offered sleeping pills. Charities said that there was a 12-week wait. Ceri has been very clear with me that he simply would not have survived 12 weeks without immediate support. By chance, he was introduced to a trauma clinic, and it literally saved his life. The GP and the community team never called; the family were literally on their own.

This experience is not rare. Research consistently shows that between 30% and 50% of parents of critically ill children meet the diagnostic threshold for PTSD, with symptoms beginning at, or shortly after, diagnosis, not years later. Studies show that mothers of seriously ill children face around a 50% increased risk of early death, driven by prolonged stress, cardiovascular strain and mental health deterioration. Fathers face significantly elevated risks, including higher rates of depression, substance misuse and suicide, yet are even less likely to be able to access support. Siblings—the forgotten children; the children not in the hospital bed—are often the most overlooked of all. Research indicates that they are up to three times more likely to experience long-term emotional or behavioural difficulties, including anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress symptoms.

Despite these known risks, the NHS does not wrap its arms around these families. Instead, families are signposted to charities—charities that are themselves underfunded, overstretched and increasingly unable to fill the gaps left by statutory services. There is no consistent proactive pathway where a family is treated as a unit when a child receives a serious or terminal diagnosis. This stands in stark contrast to the support available for families with babies with a terminal diagnosis.

The amendment does not seek to assign blame for what has happened in the past. It does not mandate immediate spending or prescribe a single solution. What it asks for is something far more basic and overdue: it asks the Government to undertake a systematic review of how parents, siblings and families are supported when a child is critically ill or dies: from diagnosis, through treatment and, when it happens, into bereavement.

The amendment mentions

“preventing parents … from being by their children’s bedsides”,

but that does not have to be solely a physical presence. All too often, this means parents being mentally and emotionally available and present for their child. It seeks to ask why support is reactive rather than proactive; why mental health screening is not routine and moved into the community, with GPs and community nurses providing a unified effort to support these parents; why siblings remain invisible; and why families so often fall into the gaps between services. This is about understanding what works, where best practice already exists and how we can ensure that families are not abandoned at the point when they need support the most.

Just over two months ago, Ceri walked from the hospital where Hugh passed away to Downing Street, where he placed Hugh’s shoes on the steps of No. 10 —over 105 kilometres in two days. He carried a 20-kilogram rucksack on his back to signify the weight Hugh was when he died. He did this to signify the weight that parents carry when their child is diagnosed with a serious illness: a weight that most of us will never know or, thankfully, experience.

The amendment is about recognising that a child’s well-being cannot be separated from the well-being of their family. It is about making sure that no parent ever again has to walk out of hospital into the darkest moments of their lives and find that the system they relied on has simply disappeared. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak extremely briefly, having signed the amendment so powerfully introduced and presented by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. I did so after having met Ceri and Frances. I saw that the amendment did not have a second name attached to it and thought that there needed to be a demonstration that there is broader support there. I have no doubt that many noble Lords will have been moved by what we have just heard and would absolutely agree that action is urgently needed. We need to assess the situation and come up with a plan to deal with it, so other families are not put in this situation. Happily, this is relatively rare, but some 3,000 families a year are placed in this situation and they must be supported. I hope that we will hear some positive words from the Minister.

Briefly, Amendment 99 has not yet been introduced, but it seeks to address another tragic situation, where, again and again, children are born and taken away, usually from the same mother. I spoke extensively on that in Committee, so I will not repeat it now.

This is an important group of amendments. I hope we can see some positive direction forward and a further demonstration in your Lordships’ House that campaigning, often by people who have suffered so much, can make a difference and improvements in our society.

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[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have absolutely no desire to stifle debate, but I ask anyone who wishes still to speak to be very mindful of the number of votes we are expecting at the end of this group. We also have very important dinner break business scheduled for tonight. Please be brief and to the point so we can move on with this important debate.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I have two original points to make that have not been covered at all. We should bring ourselves back to the fact that there is an enormous amount of agreement around this Chamber. I think everyone will say we feel enormous sympathy for the families, some of whom are here today, who have lost family as a result of contact with social media. We all accept that we want 16 year-olds on the day of their birthday to be able to stride out into the world confident, capable, ready to step into adulthood. Most of us want to rein in the overwhelmingly powerful digital companies which have been allowed to run wild across the world by political decisions made by adults. I particularly commend the right reverend Prelate for naming the spectre in the room—Donald Trump and his tech bro friends. He is a spectre here and is now recorded in Hansard.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, that we have very broad agreement that the Online Safety Act has been a total failure and Ofcom is not delivering what it should be doing. Those are the points of agreement. Where my conclusions drive me is that I would back Amendment 91 from the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, with some caveats, which I will get back to, but it is not my intention to vote for any of the ban amendments before us today. I have a great deal of sympathy with the Lib Dems’ brave effort to find a way through a middle road and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, almost swayed me that we should make a gesture. The case I put, argument one, is that your Lordships’ House is not the right place: we are not the right people to be making this decision. Many of us have joined since the depths of Covid, but those who were here then will remember when the House went largely remote and lots of people who had never used a computer before were suddenly on Zoom. We met their grandkids: “There you are, Granny. You are off mute now”.

I invite your Lordships to look at the people around you. We are extraordinarily unrepresentative of the country in many ways, but particularly in terms of age. This is where I draw on the argument made by the noble Lord, Lord Russell, but come to a different conclusion. I was also in the learning centre and spoke to some of the same pupils. They overwhelmingly said, “We do not want a ban”. My argument is that we must stop doing politics to young people. We must give young people agency and a sense of control. We have bequeathed to them a disastrous, damaging world; failing to give them a say in this is absolutely the wrong way forward.

On that point, I have a serious proposal for the Minister. In the consultation, are the Government prepared to include a people’s assembly that represents young people from around the country? Rather than just asking young people to tick a box in a survey—we all know what happens with “yes” or “no” votes—this would give them the chance to deliberate on how they think we can control the future and improve their situation.

My second point is important and has not been said before. In this debate we have heard a huge amount of scapegoating of social media. Social media is a mirror: it reflects the misogyny, violence, racism and fake news that runs across and through our society, it does not create it. If we could wave a magic wand and get young people off social media, they would still be affected by the dreadful levels of poverty and the schools that operate as exam factories, putting them under tremendous pressure and subjecting them to unbearable discipline. They would still have parents who are struggling to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. They would still encounter all the misogyny and racism in our society. When we are debating and voting on this, we must understand that social media is a mirror; it is not creating where we are now.

[Lord Tarassenko (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly about the lack of scientific evidence for Amendment 94A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash. No one disputes that rates of suicide, depression, anxiety and self-harm have increased among teenagers in the last decade. However, the question before us is whether a social media ban for under-16s would decrease those rates.

I know that this has been raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, but I still believe that evidence from randomised controlled trials is important, even in this context. There have been no randomised controlled trials of social media bans or restrictions for healthy under-18s. The lack of experimental evidence in adolescent populations may be because it is difficult to experimentally manipulate social media use in such an age group. There was one RCT of 220 adolescents and young adults aged 17 to 25 with pre-existing emotional distress, who were asked to reduce their social media use to one hour a day for three weeks. However, the sample participants selected were all experiencing at least two of four symptoms of depression and anxiety, and should therefore be classified as a clinical sample, not a representative sample of the general population.

There is an RCT of adolescent participants from which we can learn, even though it has not started. It is funded by the Wellcome Trust and it will take place in Bradford and feature adolescents between the ages of 13 and 16. The intervention will not be a ban, but will involve a smartphone app that, importantly, limits the use of social media apps using a co-produced combination of a daily budget of one hour per day and a night-time curfew between 9 pm and 7 am.

The co-production of the trial is very important. We need to hear the voice of young people when designing these interventions. They themselves are very concerned by the negative impacts of social media. Perhaps not surprisingly, the feedback from the teenagers in Bradford schools was that they would be against a ban, but they would be willing to accept significant time limits on their use of social media.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 28th January 2026 Lords Chamber

Just the other day, I received a letter from the Work and Pensions Secretary which, with reference to the baseline report, refers to the development of milestones. Could the Minister say more about this or, if not, perhaps report back to the House at Third Reading? A clear commitment to non-statutory targets and milestones at least would do much to strengthen the strategy’s credibility with stakeholders.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the powerful and important speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and the equally important speech from the noble Lord, Lord Bird. I signed the similar amendment in Committee, but I left a space on this one in the hope against hope that a party less likely than mine would have signed up to it and that a broader spread of support might have been shown—but that did not happen.

On the point the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, made about a yardstick, I was thinking—perhaps because I have been out campaigning on the doorstep this morning—about an additional argument that was not made in Committee or here: this would be of help to voters. A Government starts out and sets targets; then, as you get to the end of the Parliament and the next election, voters would have a clear sense of whether they had met their targets and done what they intended to achieve. It would also put great pressure on all parties competing in the next election to say, if they are elected to be the Government, what their child poverty reduction target will be. That would be useful, clear and obvious to voters.

We must acknowledge where we are now. We have already heard about child poverty, but must refer to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s analysis of the OBR figures, which says that the headline poverty rate between 2026 and 2029 will stay essentially the same. The poorest are getting poorer. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, referred to the addition of deep poverty to this amendment: 6.8 million people across these islands are in deep poverty, the highest level on record. It has hardened—a technical term that I have just learned —as the average person in poverty is now 29% below the poverty line; that was 23% in the mid-1990s.

One of the obvious things that would address this target and make a big difference would be the abolition the overall benefit cap. I applaud the Government’s action on the two-child cap, but removing the overall benefit cap would immediately lift 300,000 children out of poverty. We would be able to see progress towards a positive target.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, I will reflect on Scotland, as it shows the impact that targets have. With the Scottish child payment, the lowest rate of child poverty on these islands is in Scotland. It is still not great, and should be much better, but Scotland’s 23% compares with 31% in England and Wales, and 24% in Northern Ireland. Setting targets focuses minds and enables voters to make judgments.

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[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

I very much support all the amendments around trying to make uniforms more affordable, but I want to speak about a health time bomb that we are sitting on, much in the way that we spoke about smoking some years ago, or ultra-processed food. It is the whole question about PFAS in our systems: in everything we eat and touch, but in particular, in this case, in school uniforms. Uniforms that are made from fabrics that contain PFAS constantly contact your skin and the results and the emerging evidence are now incontrovertible. I also support Amendment 119A from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, about the health, generally, of uniforms.

Forever chemicals, as they are commonly referred to, are a group of over 10,000 chemicals that exist over many products. We call them “forever chemicals” partly because they are so widespread and partly because, so far, they do not appear to break down. They are relatively new, so we do not know whether they are going to break down in 100 years. Right now, though, they are not breaking down. The quickest way for any of us here to find out whether we have them in our system is to get the test, give a drop of blood and find out what is in your body.

Serious evidence is emerging. Yesterday morning I signed an NDA with Netflix in order to watch its newest documentary on the question of forever chemicals. In particular, this was around children, babies and fertility, but it obviously stretched to the wider implications for all of us, and in particular our children, because they have grown up in the plastic era. There is now evidence from Denmark to suggest that prenatal exposure is associated with reduced IQ scores in seven year-old children, and in Germany, there is new research showing that PFAS is significantly associated with reduced tetanus, rubella and diphtheria immunity. So it has effects all over the place. We must remember that these chemicals have been put into systems: not just our food and what we touch, or what we make things out of. There has been no FSA approval and there has been no FDA approval—it has just happened. All these chemicals are made by oil companies; plastic is a product of oil. Saudi Aramco is now the largest producer of plastic in the world, and production is growing as I speak.

Kids are thought to be particularly vulnerable; they have been found to have higher concentrations of PFAS in their blood than adults. One route of exposure is through the skin, and this brings me to the subject of school uniforms. They are often used in clothes to provide what they call “extra qualities”. So, if you get clothing that is “stain resistant” or “easy iron”—which, of course, is very tempting to someone on a time budget—these qualities in fact last for very little time. As you wash the clothes, they disappear, and then those chemicals end up in our watercourses. They are non-essential. There is no cost implication whatever to using them, apart from a gimmicky bit of advertising. I do not feel that the Minister really addressed this in Committee. Among other things, she said that

“the UK product safety laws require all consumer products to be safe, and manufacturers must ensure the safety of products before they are placed on the market”.—[Official Report, 3/7/25; col. 907.]

Turning this around, could the Minister update the House on whether the Government believe that the now overwhelming body of evidence that is emerging that PFAS is causing detrimental health outcomes is incorrect? Do the Government believe that the approach of our close neighbours, such as France and most of Europe, which have banned the use of over 10,000 substances, is in vain? At present, neither our product safety laws nor UK REACH is preventing harmful products being placed on the market. They are not working to protect children or adults.

In the summer, the Minister in Committee said there was work

“across government to help assess levels of PFAS occurring in the environment, their sources and potential risks, to inform policy and regulatory approaches”.—[Official Report, 3/7/25; col. 906.]

That was quite a long time ago. What work is being done, or are we just acknowledging a problem and not doing anything?

I appreciate that this is largely the responsibility of Defra, but it seems that our current approach is waiting for this disaster to happen. Would it not be more prudent to take steps at least to make schools and parents aware of this growing risk? An example of this is in Jersey—I appreciate that it is not part of the UK, but I happen to have been born there—where people are being treated with bloodletting, essentially leeching without leeches, because firefighting foam got into the watercourses and drinking water and filled them with PFAS. The state has taken some steps to reduce that, but, even then, our response was glacial.

I was disappointed that the revised environmental improvement plan, which was published before Christmas, said almost nothing about PFAS, but that the Government were

“investigating whether to restrict other PFAS in fire-fighting foams”.

I do not understand why we need to expend resources investigating what should be incredibly obvious. There was nothing about PFAS from other sources, and, unironically, the following paragraph said that we were a leader on chemical management. That is hard to believe. If this is the only work that the Government have done since Committee, I put it to the House that it is inadequate.

However, we have a chance here to make some small progress. This amendment would ban the use of PFAS in school uniforms. Subsection (2) of the proposed new clause would set the limit for residual PFAS and textiles to

“no more than 50 mg”.

This would not allow producers to use a small amount of PFAS, because it is so prevalent in the water systems and in all our systems that you cannot—as was confirmed in the Netflix documentary that I watched last night—get the level back to zero. Noble Lords should find this fact alone really disturbing and I hope that it serves as an impetus. Our close neighbours in France and Denmark have banned the use of PFAS in all clothes, not just kids’ clothes. Indeed, in France’s case, it is banned much more widely, and there is an expectation that an EU ban will come quite soon.

While my amendment has been drafted within the confines of the Bill that we are debating, I urge the Minister to encourage her colleagues to match the EU’s approach, which is following the OECD’s definition of over 10,000 substances as PFAS and banning their use, rather than inventing our own definition and a new list. I accept that there is much about PFAS that we do not know for certain, but, as I say, I watched a Netflix documentary on this last night and, without a doubt, there is hard and fast evidence linking chemicals in our blood to declining birth rates, falling sperm counts and all sorts of other very complex medical situations.

I therefore ask for two things in the near term. First, can we change the statutory guidance that schools follow around considering

“sustainability and ethical supply chains, as well as engaging with parents and pupils when tendering for uniform contracts”.—[Official Report, 3/7/25; col. 907.]

Could something more specific be added to that guidance, so that the school uniform providers that are invited to tender must provide details of whether their garments contain PFAS? We are not saying “Remove it”: just put it on the label. Can a recommendation that schools aim to source school uniforms without PFAS possibly be included? If this is not possible, and they go ahead and contract a supplier whose uniform items contain PFAS, can those suppliers be required to label items so that schools and parents can make an informed decision? That is not going to cost us more money, and it is not just about saying that everything must be made of cotton. Cotton is obviously better, but cotton gets given stain-removal qualities and so on, which can also be bad. But this would put the responsibility fair and square on the producer.

Secondly, can the Government, at the very least, urgently consult on a wholesale ban of PFAS? If we do not, we risk becoming the dumping ground in Europe for all the school uniforms and other garments that the European Union is going to start rejecting and is starting to reject from now. That would be a very bad place to be.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, who has powerfully made the case for Amendment 119. She referred to the Netflix documentary that we have not yet seen. I am going to go back a little further to a review article that came out in January last year, titled Effects of Early-life PFAS Exposure on Child Neurodevelopment: A Review of the Evidence and Research Gaps. It looked at 35 studies, most of which were in the previous five years. It found subtle but potentially very significant impacts of low-level exposure on population-wide neurodevelopment. What does that actually mean? It means reduced cognitive development and language development in infants and increased behavioural issues such as hyperactivity in childhood.

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[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a big change in the education service. I welcome the Government bringing this amendment, because it was not there in Committee and I think it is a response to speeches made on both sides of the House, so I want to put on record my thanks to the Minister and her team for working in between Committee and Report to give us something. It deserves a longer debate than it will get at this time of the night, so it is a shame that it has arrived so late.

I want to seek one reassurance. It must get the prize for the longest amendment because it is pages long. But it also gets the prize for the longest amendment that does not say very much. That is basically the first question I want to ask. Will the Minister give assurance that we will have opportunity to discuss the detail of this? It is a big change, and some of the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, need to be addressed. Secondly, and this is the most important thing for me, could the Minister give an assurance that she will endeavour to make the inspection such that schools do not feel they have been inspected twice, and that it is an inspection of the MAT ownership or governance and not the schools themselves?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak chiefly to Amendment 196A in my name and to Amendment 197 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, to which I also attached my name. Given the hour, I am going to restrain myself on a lot of things. It is a great pity that we are doing this important business at this hour. The Minister, in introducing this group, talked about the need to improve the accountability of multi-academy trusts, which has not kept pace with the growth of MATs. We have heard agreement on that from right across the House. With that in mind, I am going to start with Amendment 197, which we have not yet heard the formal introduction of. I will not go through it in detail, but it looks at the remuneration of chief executives of multi-academy trusts. It includes the provision, under parliamentary scrutiny, to impose limits on that pay.

It might be a difficult job, but I think I am about to shock the House at 11.23 pm. A few days ago, the website Education Uncovered produced some figures on the pay of CEOs of multi-academy trusts—not the biggest ones but the group of the next biggest ones, ranked from 11 to 25 on the number of pupils. A £220,000 salary is becoming standard for these multi-academy trust CEOs—and you can add a pension of about £50,000. This is significantly more than the Prime Minister is paid. We have a fat-cat pay problem right across our society, but here we are talking about public funds allocated for children’s education going to fat-cat pay.

I said that the Education Uncovered figure was for 2025. For the largest trusts, I had to go back to a Schools Week investigation from last March looking at some of the highest pay, and a year ago the CEO’s pay at one of the multi-academy trusts had crossed the £500,000 a year threshold, while three more were on more than £300,000 a year. Unsurprisingly, the National Governance Association told Schools Week that benchmarking seemed to be leading to inflationary pressure—something some noble Lords here who know quite a bit about the financial sector have seen happening. It really is obscene that this is happening in our schools.

The Education Uncovered study shows that the larger trusts are spending more per pupil on these highly paid staff and less per pupil on pupils in the classroom than are smaller trusts and, particularly in England, local authorities and local authority schools. This is a huge problem of accountability, and I commend the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on bringing forward this amendment and seeking to deal with it. I cannot think of a reason why the Government would not think this a good idea.

I come now—very briefly, given the hour—to my Amendment 196. This follows attempts that I made in Committee, with the assistance of the National Education Union, to create something that would allow schools to get out of this mess when they are just fed up with it. It would allow parents fed up with multi-academy trusts that are not working—we have seen a lot of examples recently of multi-academy trusts imposing on local school communities disciplinary rules that have caused a great deal of upset, concern and fear for the well-being of pupils—a way to get schools out of this system that is not working for them.

In Committee, I brought forward the idea of an academy reversal order. It is very complex, given that schools in multi-academy trusts no longer have their own legal entity, but I made an attempt at doing that. I also attempted to say that it was a duty of the Secretary of State to produce an order like that.

Now, on Report, with Amendment 196A I am calling for the Government to create a duty for them to produce a report on the demand for, desirability of and mechanisms for the conversion of academy-run schools to maintained schools, within two years of the Act calling for a report. That would not direct anything to happen, but it asks for a direction to the Government to think again, in a Bill that already acknowledges that there are huge problems with the academy trust model, ends the presumption that all new schools must be academies and removes the duty to force schools into multi-academy trusts. We are clearly heading in that direction. Let us get ahead of the game and prepare for a future where we put schools back under local democratic control.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, regarding the amendments by my noble friend Lord Storey, research has shown no correlation between the pay of the CEOs of multi-academy trusts and the schools they have responsibility for. I hope the Minister can say whether there will be a mechanism to look at the pay of some of these highly paid officials and what responsibilities they have. There could be cases where people have responsibility for eight to 10 schools but get paid more than people with responsibility for higher numbers. That does not seem fair or right. I know it is late, but I thought it important that I raise this point on behalf of my noble friend.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I will make a few comments on this group of amendments. On Amendment 230, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, I have great sympathy with what he says, and I hope that it may be an issue that the Minister will address when the SEND reform plans are presented in due course.

I understand the intention behind Amendment 198 and have a lot of sympathy with it. I can think of lots of schools that have been put in quite difficult positions and lots of children who have not had a good deal having being allocated to a particular school. The problem here—something that was not addressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran—is that, on the whole, schools are not queuing up to take the most challenging children. They might want to do their best by them and believe that that is their job, but, with the accountability mechanisms the way they are, it tilts the balance away from schools taking children who offer particular challenges.

If you put in legislation a whole set of reasons to say no to a given child, that does not make the child or the family feel very good, and you would have to work hard to make sure that it was for a valid reason and not an invalid reason. My approach would sooner be that you put support in and make the SEND system work. I am an optimist. I do not think we have to give protection to some schools from taking challenging children. I think we have got it in us to adjust the policy framework, go in there and help them succeed. That would be serving every child and not discriminating against them.

My main comments relate to Amendment 199. We semi-rehearsed this in Committee, so I will not go over that again. I would never support a situation where a school that was unlikely to succeed had more children allocated to it at the expense of a school that was doing well. If that was the only decision, I would probably end up supporting the amendment, but it is much more complicated than that.

There is a bit of a conundrum at the heart of this, and it goes to what the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, said. I agree with parental choice but I do not agree with the market in schools, and there is a difference between the two. Parental choice is right and good and desirable, and we should write the law to facilitate it whenever we can. In a market, however, you do not intervene; you let things fail. They wither away on the vine, and that takes time, and then they fail and then close, and that leaves a gap. Look at the high streets in some of our small towns and cities—we cannot have that for schools. We cannot have a schools policy that has in it an acceptance that some schools will wither on the vine and fail. It is not good for the children who are there. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, when she was a Minister, and her colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, would have gone into such schools to intervene and try to make them improve. That is why I have never used the term “market” in relation to schools: parental choice yes, but market, no. Somehow, that is at the core of my concerns about this amendment.

There are two issues. If it was about not wanting to go to the surplus places, I would agree with the noble Baroness. If there are more children, let us try to put them in the schools that are flourishing. But if it is a situation where the number of students on a roll in a given geographical area is falling, something has to happen. If you can merge them together, that is great, but you can get the difficult situation where you have to do something else. That is where I would manage parental choice and whatever market there is. I worry that if we say that their numbers cannot fall but their numbers can fall, all we do is make it more difficult for every school to thrive and succeed.

A school that is just turning that corner, as the noble Baroness on the Opposition Front Bench described, that has been taken over by a good academy, got itself a new head and perhaps has a new housing estate nearby is on its way. It would fall under this because it does not have a good Ofsted inspection or anything like that.

If we look at Camden, 96% to 100% of schools are good or outstanding. I do not know, but I suspect that Camden is going to have falling rolls at some point because it is a London borough. This would give protection to every school in Camden because none of them is failing. Most of them are maintained schools, not academies, but it does not matter as they are all doing a good job. This clause would not work there. The way that schools would read this is that there is now a law that if it has had a good inspection in the last three years, it is protected. If you tried to enact proposed new subsection (5D)(a) and (b), there would be an almighty row because schools would have been given protection by this clause.

I would sooner play to our optimism. Where schools really cannot succeed, let them go and manage a good education for the pupils, but in cases of falling rolls we have to do everything we can to plan appropriately across a geographical area to make sure that we give every school the best possible chance of doing well.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and largely to agree, although I would go somewhat further and say that I think we have reached the situation of a market in schools in which very crude judgments are being applied by Ofsted, and schools are being pushed to game the system. That is why I signed Amendment 230 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and why the Green group will oppose Amendment 199 should it come to a vote.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, was charitable when he said that there is a strong suspicion that off-rolling is going on. I am afraid I have no doubt that off-rolling is going on because up and down England, particularly in some of the most deprived communities, I have spoken to parents, often parents from very disadvantaged backgrounds themselves, who have said, “I’m trying to home-school my child now because the head teacher said they thought that was the best thing that could happen”. That was not home schooling by choice. That was usually pupils with special educational needs that the school just did not want to deal with. I have some sympathy with head teachers. Having been a school governor, I know how much pressure head teachers are under to keep up with the results. The problem is that we have created a competitive system where schools compete against each other instead of working together to create the best result for every pupil.

Amendment 230 is very modest. It simply calls for a review. I can tell my anecdotal stories, but I cannot say how big the problem is. I have seen it in many places, and I am sure that it is quite widespread. I do not believe the noble Lord intends to put this to a vote, but surely we can ask the Government to look at this anyway. As other noble Lords have said, it is something we should know about because this is one way in which we are failing some of our most disadvantaged pupils. Amendment 199, if it were to be passed, just furthers that sense of competition, which is the last thing we need in our schooling system.

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 198 and will touch on Amendment 230 from the noble Lord, Lord Addington. Listening to noble Lords around the House, I find it surprising that they consistently believe that inspection, for which I was responsible for seven years, does not place a heavy emphasis on inclusion. Certainly throughout my time it did. The current framework has increased that focus almost to the point of giving up on looking at education, for which one learning walk and the results are about the extent of the coverage. Inclusion is and has long been taken extraordinarily seriously.

There are two issues that I want to touch on. The first is that however much we might want to believe that every child’s special needs can be coped with, there are times when those special needs consist of problems that inflict real harm on other children. The most awful parental complaints that came across my desk were about children who had been seriously assaulted and harmed, on occasion raped, by another child who had been admitted by a school either conscientiously trying to include a child for whom the local authority was desperate to find a place or that had been directed to take a child. That is agonising to learn about. We have to acknowledge that the interests of other children need to be considered when placing the most difficult children. That is important for children most of all but, of course, it is important for staff as well. If people are trying to work outside their capacity, schools tend to deteriorate, and that is not good for anybody.

Linked to that, I want to make a point about off-rolling, which has been touched on. In my time we put more of an emphasis on looking for signs and pursuing that—inquiring into it—where we found it. One of the things we discovered is that it is extraordinarily hard to characterise definitively whether an individual case is a case of off-rolling. There is typically quite a long history, a deterioration of the relationship between the child and the school. It is not a clean and tidy yes or no. Getting to a point where you could definitively say what the extent was would be extremely labour-intensive. The issue, in my view, is not a lack of regulation to prevent this—inspection is perfectly capable of disincentivising it—but we have to acknowledge that it needs a lot of resource that simply does not exist in Ofsted or anywhere else to dig into individual cases and establish the extent and the remedies.

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[Lord Norton of Louth (Con)]

My Lords, I reinforce what has just been said and endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said. He and I have made common cause on this for some time.

I shall be extremely brief, because I want to make just one point. It is not so much about the substance of the amendment but why, as has just been said, it is essential that we take citizenship teaching seriously in this country. It is crucial because, at the moment, there is a problem with public trust in government and in Parliament. It is slow and declining and, unless we do something about it, we are going to be in real trouble. We need to invest resources into the teaching of citizenship. That means making sure that schools take it seriously and have the incentive to do so. It is no good just saying it is in the curriculum. Schools have to realise, “We have to teach this, we’ve got the incentive to do it and we have the resources”. It cannot just be left to any teacher on a wet Wednesday afternoon to teach citizenship. It is crucial and has to be taken seriously. I regard this amendment as absolutely key to British democracy.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Norton, except that I do not believe that we can put all the pressure on schools, which have so many other pressures on them.

[Lord Norton of Louth (Con)]

I totally agree. I should have said that I regard this as necessary but not sufficient.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Schools have faced so many other pressures with exams, results and Ofsted judgments, that saying “And you’ve got to shove citizenship in here, but you’re not really going to get rewarded for it” is not going to work. The direction has to come from the centre.

It is interesting that this group of amendments has been so rich and apparently so varied. Actually, what it does is talk about education that prepares students for life, not just for exams or jobs but to be citizens, members of communities, neighbours and possibly parents, and it prepares them to have healthy bodies while they are doing that. That is the only point I will make on the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, who made her point powerfully. Physical education has been totally downgraded, and that has to stop and be reversed.

In responding, I have to start with the suggestion from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that respect for the environment was “twaddle”. I looked it up in the dictionary. Among the definitions were “trivial” and “foolish”. I am assuming that the noble Baroness understands that she had to breathe to be able to deliver that speech. That relies on plants, algae and cyanobacteria to generate the oxygen to allow her to breathe. So that label is obviously incorrect. I will leave that there.

I turn to Amendment 220, which the proposer, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, has not yet introduced. Schools do need practical and lawful guidance, but forcing the Government to bring that guidance in on the day that the Bill becomes an Act will inhibit schools’ ability. The guidance was always intended to be non-statutory, including when it was first published in draft by the previous Government. I acknowledge that we have not yet heard from the noble Baroness, but I do not think that, in Committee, we heard any explanation of why the guidance needs to be statutory.

I will speak very briefly on the two amendments that I actually signed. Amendment 208 has been very ably spoken to by others; I am just going to make one additional point. This is about providing relationship and sex education to persons of 16 and 17 in education. Your Lordships’ House chose to call for a ban on social media for under-16s. We do not know where that will end up, but, if the ban comes in and, assuming it works, young people at 16 start accessing a whole range of previously banned material, surely, they will need the help of education and support to be able to work through, process, understand and think about that. So we should think about how those two things fit together.

The other thing is that the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, knows that I have backed her Private Member’s Bill at least twice previously. She introduced it very clearly. The one thing I will add is that, in terms of education for life, we ask schools to create more space in school time in particular for cultural and social education, but where are they going to find the time? That assembly time could be a really useful time and, if that is preparing people for life—developing cultural interests, developing artistic interests, developing a love of the theatre or a love of music, all things that help people prepare for a rich and satisfying life—that is what we need our schools to be doing much more of.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I shall very briefly add my support to Amendment 243C and, in doing so, declare my interest as a member of the board of the London Marathon Foundation. As we have heard, schools play a crucial role in the formation of lifelong activity habits, but they need to be properly supported, both to provide more opportunities within school and to ensure that what they offer meets the needs of the various interests of young people and children, to make sure that they fully engage with physical education. A national strategy would give schools the structure they need to guarantee consistently high-quality physical education, as well as help them build partnerships with community sports organisations, creating pathways that link school-based activity with accessible opportunities outside school.

In its recent submission to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee’s inquiry into community and school sport, London Marathon stressed the pressing need for national and local government, schools, governing bodies and charitable and commercial organisations to align behind tangible shared objectives to get children and young people active and, most importantly, keep them active. By mandating the publication of a national strategy for physical education and sports in schools, this amendment will be an important step to delivering just that.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

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

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

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

[Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)]

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly in support of Amendment 233, as I was not able to speak on it in Committee. I am supportive of the other amendments in this group too.

The Labour Party manifesto stated that

“nothing says more about the state of a nation than the wellbeing of its children”,

which is music to the ears of many of us. But if we are to know what the state of our nation is through the lens of children’s well-being, we need to measure that well-being nationally, comprehensively and regularly.

Many of us warmly welcomed the idea of a children’s well-being Bill but, when it emerged, were a bit disappointed that it did not have that much to say about children’s well-being explicitly. This amendment would help to put well-being explicitly at the heart of the Bill, with implications for both the main parts. I hope the Government will now look favourably on this modified version of the amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly. I strongly support Amendment 233, as I did in Committee, as well as the other amendments in this group. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, who reflected what many of us have been saying: the children’s well-being Bill has been short on well-being. Earlier—much earlier, yesterday now—we were talking about sport, culture, PSHE and citizenship education. But we need to see what does and does not work if we are going to deliver some of the changes that are clearly so urgently needed.

I will refer to one survey: the National Parent Survey 2025, conducted by Parentkind, which found that unhappiness among children doubles between primary and secondary school. The parents said that the chief reason that their children were unhappy was that they were finding lessons uninteresting: the figure was 42%, which really is telling.

I return to the Children’s Society’s Good Childhood Report 2025, already referred to, which of course was reporting on the opposite. One of its recommendations was:

“Introduce a national wellbeing measurement programme”.


It is just such an obvious thing for the Government to do.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, on these Benches, as is true across the House, of course we want our children to have the highest standards of mental health and well-being, and the data to support this, but, as in Committee, we do not support the specifics of these amendments.

On Amendment 233 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, presented this morning by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, we felt that the Minister’s response in Committee was a constructive way forward and substantially addressed the goals of the amendment, albeit perhaps not in the way that the signatories would prefer or advise. My reading of the Minister’s remarks was that the Government did commit to providing non-statutory guidance, including a standard set of questions and additional tools and resources to support implementation.

As in Committee, I am sympathetic to the gap in provision that Amendment 237 from the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, seeks to address: in particular, the postcode lottery that she highlighted in her remarks this morning. I also recognise that it expressly prescribes the provision of qualified practitioners and implicitly prescribes that any interventions have a sound evidence base. As my noble friend Lady Spielman pointed out in Committee, too many interventions have been used in schools in relation to both mental health and well-being, which Amendment 242 from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, addresses, which have been shown subsequently to have caused more harm than good. That is clearly something we need to avoid.

I return to the point I made in Committee and that we have heard fervently debated on Report, including today: the single most powerful thing this Government can do to restore the mental health, well-being and sense of belonging of our children would be to keep smartphones out of school and prevent access to social media for the under-16s. Teachers, parents and their children will not thank this Government for being slow to act.