Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, do not worry about cross-party co-operation between the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and me. We hope to influence the Bill in some ways. I am delighted to welcome this early Bill and the priority that my Government have given to this issue. I also congratulate the noble Lords who made today’s maiden speeches. I want to raise two matters. One is about what is not in the Bill and one is about what is.

I agree with Coram’s brief that babies, infants and early years are missing from the Bill. I know it is not because there is not work being done on early years, but the Bill contains “Children’s Wellbeing” in its title so surely we need to address baby, infant and early years well-being. I declare an interest as a trustee of the charity Roots of Empathy UK, whose programmes are about reducing aggression, increasing sharing, caring and inclusion, and promoting resilience, well-being and positive mental health. Its work would be an appropriate matter for discussion during the passage of this Bill.

While I applaud free breakfasts to start the day, ensuring the school readiness of our youngest must include more—for example, speech and language development, particularly for those who need it. One in five children is faced with these challenges, and recent research says that children with speech and language challenges are being unfairly punished in our schools. The excellent work of organisations such as Speech and Language UK has informed the policy in this area for successive Governments, including my own, and during the passage of the Bill it would be good to explore the vital nature of this work and its importance to children’s well-being.

Now turning to what is in the Bill, I welcome the commitment to improve the children’s social care placement market and tackle the profiteering going on there, which the party opposite has allowed to happen for the past 14 years. Measures include establishing a financial oversight regime to increase transparency for care providers and their corporate owners. I welcome measures to enable the Secretary of State for Education to implement a cap on the profits of non-local authority providers of children’s social care, but I am concerned about the words,

“if other market intervention measures do not have the desired effect”.

We already know that the market does not work, so why would we wait?

I support the creation of regional care co-operatives, which may transform the commissioning landscape, but I hope it also means that social economy and charity solutions will be considered. I commend to my noble friend the Minister the Juno project in Liverpool, the Lighthouse Pedagogy Trust and Social AdVentures in Manchester in rethinking residential children’s services.

I have three final matters. I support improvements to the Bill to protect children from corporal punishment within the family. I have worked on that with other noble Lords across the House for the 27 years I have been here.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, on new faith schools, which should be subject to the 50% cap on faith-based selective admissions that currently applies only to faith academies. With the noble Baroness, I will also be asking why we have a daily act of worship.

The last matter is one that I know I will not be alone in raising: the Who is Losing Learning? Coalition found that, for every child formerly permanently excluded, 10 more are moved through informal and unregulated means. That amounts to more than 30,000 children, a conservative estimate, being shifted around the system with little or no oversight. Alarmingly, that lack of accountability means that in many cases no one, including the Department for Education, can say with certainty where these children are.

There are many challenges, and I look forward to working with my noble friend the Minister and other colleagues across the House.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, here we go in Committee and here we have had, probably, our first Second Reading speech from a colleague. I will not make a Second Reading speech; I will address this amendment, which I think is unnecessary. We have a perfectly sensible, comprehensive description of what this Bill seeks to do. We do not need another list in the Bill.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity that the purpose clause from my noble friend Lady Barran has given us to range far more freely than the tightly timed Second Reading allowed. I could only comment on what was in the Bill and pay scant attention to what I sensed was lacking. Part 1, and therefore the first half of the purpose clause, is where my sights are set in this Bill: improving the safety and well-being of children and improving the regulation of children’s homes, fostering agencies and other settings where looked-after children are accommodated. We heard from my noble friend about Professor Eileen Munro’s letter to the Times yesterday. She robustly supports the expansion of early help. It is in the provision of this where the Bill needs strengthening and greater specificity: for example, about the role of family hubs, which are not even mentioned.

A complex system of professionals and safeguarding arrangements is being restructured and key processes changed or removed, without it being clear what functions they are already performing or their place in the bigger picture. I was on the design group of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care—I mentioned that at Second Reading—and my most detailed offline discussions with the review team were on this restructuring, which I can see might be perceived to be finicky and potentially unnecessary. I am hearing concerns from directors of children’s services, and now from Professor Munro, that these reforms could weaken child protection, at a time when we are trying to batten down the hatches with, for example, the single unique identifier. As I will keep saying during Committee, I am concerned, as I was during the independent care review, that we are trying to do by process what we should be doing through relationships between professionals.

Does the Minister agree with the Department for Education spokeswoman, also quoted in the Times, who said that Munro’s criticisms

“demonstrate a lack of understanding of the proposed reforms, which have been widely supported and rebalance the system away from crisis intervention and towards earlier help”?

In other words, does she think that this eminent professor has not grasped her Government’s plans? Can she name current directors of children’s services who are enthusiastic about this restructure?

Child protection is the business of everyone who is involved with families and children, hence my amendments later in the Bill for family hubs to be included in safe- guarding arrangements. Of course, not all local authorities have family hubs yet, but an audit of the family hubs network carried out for Nesta earlier this year found 973 family hub networks in 133 out of 151 upper-tier councils, so the vast majority now have family hubs.

I and other Members in this Committee, particularly the noble Baronesses, Lady Armstrong and Lady Longfield —whom I welcome somewhat belatedly, but no less warmly—have been urging all Governments to commit wholesale to family hub rollout across the country. Their propagation is unfinished business from both the founding of the welfare state and the full implementation of paragraph 9 of Schedule 2 to the Children Act 1989, as I have said many times before. Hence I support the proposed new clause from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, which would require local authorities to provide family support.

Health, education, social work and other arms of the state all have to pick up the pieces when families falter. The concept of family support needs presence in a community, so that parents in danger of splitting up have somewhere to turn; ex-partners going through a separation that is beginning to look messy can get early intervention in the form of mediation, after careful triage; and parents losing control of their teenagers can get support before they get drawn into gangs. The support that families need in myriad ways is co-ordinated and accessed through family hubs and their network of buildings and organisations, through a respectful, relational approach.

Of course, there is variability, and only 75 local authorities’ hub networks are funded. They are also tightly managed by the Department for Education’s family hubs and Start for Life programme. Since 2007, I have been working with Dr Callan to implement a hallmark of the family hubs network: its responsiveness to local needs. Many local authorities have a great track record in opening successful family hubs; they have told the family hubs network that they have had to slow down the rollout of services to older children, so that they could dot the i’s and cross the t’s required by the Start for Life programme.

I am a firm believer that family support has to start in maternity, and ideally earlier. That early intervention is far more easily achieved when local family support professionals have built relationships with parents, carers and children from the earliest days. I have amendments later in the Bill that would ensure that parents know where to get that help and support in their local area, by requiring local authorities to publish a Start for Life offer. That support should continue when a mother has, tragically, had a newborn, or often older children, removed from her care. Case files from the family courts show that history repeats itself and that judges can take as many as 14 or 15 children away from the same mother. Our care for the mother should not end when a child is safe, given the likelihood that the safety of future children will also have to be secured.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, I will not repeat my Second Reading speech. I draw attention to my interests on the register, particularly the fact that I am chair of a multi-academy trust.

Regarding subsection (1)(a) of this proposed new “Purpose” clause, the Long Title states that it is to make

“provision about the safeguarding and welfare of children”.

Nothing that we could do to further that endeavour could be greater than to restrict access to social media to those aged over 16. That is why I have tabled Amendment 177 to that effect. Despite what the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, for whom I have a huge amount of respect, said, this is so central to the overriding purpose of the Bill that I will take a few moments to elaborate.

I think we all know naturally that social media is very harmful to our children, but there is now an overwhelming body of evidence to support this. I recommend that anybody who has not done so reads the excellent book The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. We want our children to be brought up confident, able to engage in deep thought, reflective and able to concentrate, to exercise judgment, to see the other side’s point of view, to be compassionate et cetera. We also want them to get a good night’s sleep. Smartphones and social media set up exactly the opposite behaviours.

In the 2022 PISA assessment, our children were in the bottom 10 of 31 countries in areas such as curiosity, perseverance, emotional control, stress resistance or grit, empathy and co-operation. There is now a strong body of clinical evidence on the harm that excessive use of smartphones and social media is doing to our children’s brains and eyesight.

Adolescence is a period of life in which our sense of self undergoes a profound transition. As teenagers become more conscious of how others see them, they often experience increased self-consciousness and self-criticism. Social media and the algorithms attached to them serve only to amplify this.

We also know that the adolescent brain is particularly susceptible to addictive behaviour. Constant exposure to fast-paced, highly stimulating content can condition the brain to expect frequent, rapid rewards, making it harder to sustain focus and concentrate. Numerous studies have shown the causal link between screens and the use of social media and sleep and depression.

A recent UCL study corroborated the link between social media and eating disorders and found that young people with eating disorders are more likely to be shown harmful content by social media algorithms. Samaritans research has shown that young people frequently see self-harm and suicide content across all social media sites, some of which display particularly graphic and triggering content, and almost three-quarters of teenage girls think that social media creates more pressure for them to look a certain way. Nearly one in five people arrested for terrorism-related offences in the past year was a child under 18. The Metropolitan Police has attributed this rise to social media, saying:

“You have the combination of the overt social media and then closed messaging apps”.


Social media has significantly expanded the reach of criminal drug networks, particularly among teenagers and young adults. Numerous studies in the UK have shown that gangs view social media platforms as essential tools for drug trafficking and gang recruitment. Parentkind tells us that more than 90% of parents think that social media is harmful to children and that more than 80% of parents feel that the age limit of 13 for signing up is too low. Australia has raised the limit to 16, Ireland is considering doing so and the EU is now considering similar measures. Bill Gates has described what Australia is doing as “a smart thing”, and we know that many people who work in the tech industry severely restrict their children’s use of social media and smartphones and often send their children to very screen-light schools.

Teaching unions have strongly pointed out the dangers of social media. The president of ASCL has said:

“It leaves a trail of harm—safeguarding concerns, fractured friendships, bullying, anxiety, and the spread of extremist ideologies. And increasingly, it is being weaponised against schools and teachers, with disgruntled parents using it as a platform to target staff”.


The general secretary of the NEU has said:

“We have to view the online world, social media and mobile phones in the same prism as we view the tobacco companies. These are harmful to our young people and they need regulating”.


The general secretary of NASUWT has described mobile phones as “lethal weapons”. Why should we let the consequences of this fall on our hard-working teachers, who have enough to do as it is?

The movement in support of the thinking behind my amendment is growing rapidly. We now have Health Professionals for Safer Screens, Smartphone Free Childhood, the Safe Screens campaign, the Unplugged Coalition and many other organisations.

Speaking to subsection (1)(b) of the proposed new clause and turning to improving

“the regulation of children’s homes, fostering agencies and other settings”,

I will sound just one note of caution. I am totally in favour of cutting out the cowboys, but the Government should exercise their powers to restrict profits and impose unlimited financial penalties with caution. Residential settings for children and other groups are very out of favour in the private equity space, and further restrictions on their financial flexibility can only reduce capacity. The public sector has no money, as we all know, so in order to increase capacity, private sector professional operators must be encouraged.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

This is a Second Reading speech, but it is very interesting. Does the noble Lord accept that the charitable sector and social enterprises probably have quite an important role to play in the delivery of residential care for children and that flexibility will help with the finances of that because they are not in the business of making excess profits?

[Lord Nash (Con)]

There are many in the charity sector that are professional, but there are many others. I do not think we disagree about this.

Turning to other settings, I am an adviser to the Royal National Children’s SpringBoard Foundation, which works with more than 200 independent and state boarding schools across the country to support care-experienced and vulnerable children into often fully funded school bursary places. A significant proportion of the almost 300 children supported since 2021 are either with foster carers or in kinship care arrangements. Those in kinship care arrangements have achieved a 100% stability rate, which means that they have not needed to change carers, and those in foster care a 98% stability rate. Independent research by the University of Nottingham shows that they are four times more likely to achieve good GCSEs when compared with a matched control group, and 75% of them are going to university versus just 13% of care-experienced young people nationally. RNCSF is working hard to expand this provision, and I would be grateful if the Government could consider meeting its representatives to discuss how they can help it to do this further. Perhaps the Minister could indicate that she or one of her colleagues is prepared to meet them. They are good people.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 17th June 2025 Lords Chamber

I am happy to argue about whether five years is exactly the right time period. I am not wedded to any of the detail in the amendment, but I ask noble Lords to listen to the children.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, in many ways the test of the Government’s success in reforming public services will be whether we can crack the tough nut of children’s social care. It has been quite clear from the debates on the last three groups that this is a major challenge. I declare my interests as the founding chair of Social Enterprise UK, and I am on the social economy APPG. I am an associate of Social Business International and, for the past 10 years or so, I have been working with leaders of social enterprises that provide public services.

I might have preferred to have made this speech in the earlier debate, at the beginning of the afternoon, but I am afraid I could not make it here in time for its opening. However, this is an appropriate group because we are talking essentially about procurement and finance.

As the noble Lord said earlier, I think it was in the previous debate, the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, led by Josh MacAlister, described how the current system leads to unacceptable, poor outcomes for children and rising costs—private equity was referred to by the noble Baroness. It found that care packages are dictated by the market, not by children’s needs. Excessive profiteering has minimised resources and created public disgust. His central recommendation was for government to launch a reform programme, a radical reset to fix the broken care market, which has failed our most vulnerable children.

While I absolutely welcome the Government’s spending review commitments to fund family help, capital for residential care and fostering and other reforms linked to the MacAlister review, I feel that you cannot throw money at children’s social care and expect things to get better unless we actually also change. I want to see commissioners lever the well-evidenced voluntary sector, social enterprise and other forms of care to have a diverse marketplace in children’s social care.

At Second Reading I mentioned the wonderful Juno community interest company in Liverpool, Social AdVentures in Manchester and the Lighthouse Pedagogy Trust in London. All are boosting the life chances of our most vulnerable young people, and all exist for public service and benefit. They are efficient, entrepreneurial, transparent and accountable. They are sustainable and plough their profits into their social mission, often providing preventive and complementary services.

These organisations win tenders in open procurement processes yet are exceptions in a system that incentivises what you might call “social washing”—let me explain. Commissioners plan and design services to meet local needs and must consider social value when choosing providers, a concept brought into law by the social value Act, which I was very pleased indeed to help get on to the statute book, along with other noble Lords.

Scoring bids for social value means that public bodies consider and try to measure public and community benefits alongside value for money when they procure services we depend on, but in practice the system can be gamed or the process inadvertently rigged. Bidders promise outputs that they will never attain and do not achieve, and are barely held accountable.

Many commissioners know that social enterprises, co-operatives, mutuals, leisure trusts, employee-owned businesses, charities and trading charities deliver high-quality public services that meet community needs, and many have long wanted them to take a bigger role in public services. This chimes with the public’s view too.

The recent Procurement Act gave commissioners new tools and flexibilities and came into force in February this year after Cabinet Office Minister Georgia Gould introduced the national procurement policy and the social value procurement notice, which referenced the role of these kinds of organisations and the idea of codesigning with communities. There is no point in having the best regulation—which I am very proud of—if we do not use it and the opportunities it gives us. Commissioners can collaborate with social enterprise providers, charities and other businesses. Procurement regulations should be an enabler, not a barrier.

What in the Bill will allow this real change to take place? Do we need to strengthen the Bill in some ways to allow these redesigns to happen? In the earlier debate, I was very struck by the question of planning and so on—because of course it is the whole system that needs to be thought of. Might my noble friend the Minister organise a round table where we could address the new role of procurement to bring about the change we need in this particular marketplace before we reach Report?

[Baroness O’Neill of Bexley (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to support my noble friend Lady Sanderson of Welton on Amendment 134A. Noble Lords will not be surprised to know I shall be championing local authorities around the cost of children’s homes.

I want to give noble Lords a bit of a reality check, and to do so I am going to reference two examples. The first is about supported living for care leavers aged 21 to 25. They are nearly adults, need very little support and are very nearly independent. A semi-detached house is created that can take up to five young people with very little supervision. The cost for one young person in that provision is actually £500 per week. That is nearly as much as any landlord would get to rent out that property for a month: £2,000 a month. If you have got five young people in there, that is one hell of a profit margin. You can see why people go down that route and why we are having to grapple with the costs.

The second case is about a property that had been sought and used as secure accommodation with 24/7 support. It was another council that placed it in our borough. It was worth it getting the property and having 24/7 support for secure accommodation. Obviously, it had made the decision that either it could not afford to get that accommodation through normal routes or that this was good value. We first knew about it when we read police reports saying this young person, who is in 24/7 secure accommodation with two people, had gone missing. I was jumping up and down saying, “We’ve got a young child gone missing”. But it was not our child—we did not even know this young person was in our borough. That is expensive accommodation.

Earlier on, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said that you would know if people were placed in your borough—but you do not. I am sure the Minister will have something to say about that. In addition to the knowledge that this young person is placed in your borough, the cost of 24/7 care and accommodation for one person in your borough is phenomenal. Local authorities are not perfect, but we are grappling with some of these things on a daily basis, which push the costs up, and some of this transparency might deal with it. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 134A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson. I also believe that the transparency of prices should extend to the SEND sector. I agree we need responsible, not highly leveraged, private investment. I understand why the Government are bringing forward these provisions of a profits cap and monetary penalties, because, of course, none of us wants cowboys looking after our children. What worries me, however, is that these kinds of assets are already very out of favour in the private equity sector, which is struggling to sell the assets it has. The provision of the profit cap and monetary penalties or fines is just going to drive capacity out of the sector, and I really am worried about this. Who is going to replace the inevitable lack of capacity that I am sure will result as a consequence of these provisions?

In an ideal world, of course, many of us would like all provision for these kinds of children to be run by charities or the public sector, although some public sector operators have had their own problems. We do not, however, live in an ideal world; the public sector has no money, and charities are struggling to raise money. Most of the private equity operators are highly professional operators, very concerned about their reputation and safety and the quality of their provision, and we need to encourage them. Otherwise, we will have—and I predict this will lead to—a massive shortage of capacity as a result of fines and caps. I am, however, all for full transparency.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

How does the noble Lord feel that we need to make the transition to the kind of system that we want, if he is so worried about the reduction in capacity? How do you deal with the profit gouging that has gone on? If you sort of say you do not have profit gouging, what happens when the suppliers walk away?

[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.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 19th June 2025 Lords Chamber

To go back to Feeding Britain, one of our researchers, Professor Greta Defeyter, did the first and only study of the numbers for councils, which has been referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, but also schools, in this regard. Food is always the squishy part of the sandwich; you cannot do anything about your rent or your electricity, so people always spend a little bit less on food. Both councils and schools are taking money from the schools’ budget, and it is getting smaller, and at the same time we are asking schools to produce breakfast. I do not quite know how this funding is going to work—

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I invite the noble Baroness to acknowledge that this Government, since they were elected, have committed £1 billion to school meals. It would be nice if she would mention that, as well as everything else, which I am sure we all agree about.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

Thank you—I acknowledge that more money is going in and absolutely acknowledge that there is an expansion of free school meals. I am only worried about the evidence that we have seen. Yesterday, we had a whole-day meeting of Feeding Britain, and I am afraid that a lot of the information that we heard is that this is not there yet. I hope that it filters down, because it is a very straightforward thing to do.

I have put a lot of things into the amendment, which is supported by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Suttie and Lady Walmsley, on what school standards should be. It is a good thing for the Government to aim at, and I hope that they will look favourably on the amendment.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 23rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 486 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and shall add a brief footnote to what he has just said.

At Second Reading, I mentioned that when I was in the other place I went round a primary school in Andover, in one of the less well-off parts of the town. The year 1 teacher, who had been there for 20 years, told me that within a few weeks at the beginning of term she could tell which children were likely to end up in trouble—and, because she was also a magistrate in the youth court, she told me she was nearly always right. There will be many other teachers like her who are able to identify at an early stage which children and families need support.

That is why, as other speakers have said, the Department for Education’s budget should be front-loaded, as all the evidence is that this produces the greatest return on investment—not just for the child but for society as a whole. Research by the IFS published only last month, and early research by the IPPR and the New Economics Foundation all confirm that putting things right upstream reduces problems later—problems which are more serious because they have a wider social impact and are more expensive to correct. My noble friend Lady Cash made the point eloquently in her speech. I recall in 2010 canvassing for my noble friend in north Kensington—I am sorry I did not knock on nearly enough doors, as otherwise her parliamentary career might have started a little earlier. In line with the Government’s policy on the NHS, we should put resources into prevention, rather than treatment.

As earlier speakers have said, the previous Labour Government recognised this with Sure Start. There was some tension between those who wanted a universal service—a centre attended by children and families from all backgrounds, so that there was good integration—and those who wanted the service to be more targeted. There was some sort of compromise, in that Sure Start was focused on the more deprived areas but was universal. This resulted in the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, then leading on the policy in the No. 10 Policy Unit, receiving a leaflet inviting him to take his children to an aromatherapy session at his local Sure Start centre.

All the evaluations of Sure Start were positive. It significantly improved the educational achievement of children from nought to four, with benefits lasting until GCSE, at age 16. Children with access to Sure Start performed significantly better in assessments at age seven, 11 and 16, and needed fewer EHCPs at secondary school. It substantially reduced hospitalisations and decreased absences from school. The benefits were stronger for those in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, for boys and for children from ethnic-minority backgrounds. To my mind, this means that future initiatives should be prioritised and targeted, rather than universal. Indeed, the analysis I have referred to indicated that Sure Start was disproportionately used by middle-class families instead of targeting specific families who needed the support.

Then in 2010—mea culpa—I was a member of the coalition Government who abolished the ring-fence for Sure Start. While there were reasons for cutting public expenditure and reviewing how Sure Start operated, in retrospect it was a short-sighted decision, leading to the closure of many centres and the merging of others.

Fast forward to the introduction of family hubs and Start for Life in 2022-23: like Sure Start, these draw together services in education, public health, parental needs and benefits advice. Although they are for children aged nought to 19, they are not actually all within a centre. Family hubs targeting a much wider range than Sure Start risk diluting the early offer of support, which I believe to be crucial. Of course, family hubs are less generously funded than Sure Start was. Family hubs also place more priority on virtual services and signposting, rather than on in-person community hubs.

What this amendment would do is invite the Government to look at what has happened over the past 20 years, review all the available research, both here and overseas, and come up with an early years strategy. My personal preference would be for one focused on the under-fives—getting them up to speed for primary school and identifying and supporting the families and children that need help, rather than a wholly universal service.

I do not know if noble Lords have read what Jenni Russell wrote in today’s Times. She said:

“One of its starkest examples is the recent collapse in the proportion of children who are ready for school at the age of four”—


a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Russell—

“Some arrive still in nappies, a third can’t listen to simple instructions, a quarter can’t use the toilet alone. In a survey in January half of parents said school-readiness wasn’t their responsibility”.


Those are the families that should be targeted. I know it is difficult to find money for under-fives because there is strong demand from primary schools, secondary schools, and higher and further education, but, as and when the economy improves, that is where the focus should be.

Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, has been in the news this week. She also wrote a report for the coalition Government, Working with Troubled Families. She spoke about her report at an ADCS conference in July 2013, saying,

“we can tackle the problems families have better if we get to children with problems aged 4 rather than as excluded children in pupil referral units at age 11”.

My teacher in Andover would wholly agree with that.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I have put my name to this amendment in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Russell of Liverpool and Lord Young of Cookham, though not because I believe my Government are not doing a great deal about early years—I am sure my noble friend the Minister will be armed with information about what the department is doing and planning—but because I want to be confident that there is a strategy, as mentioned by other noble Lords, which is comprehensive, publicly understood, consulted upon and bought into. I have to say that, right now, I am not absolutely sure that is the case.

I would like to thank organisations for their briefs on this. I want to mention two organisations I talked about in my Second Reading contribution, when I also mentioned the fact that early years were not mentioned in this Bill. The first is Roots of Empathy, which is an international charity based in Canada. I am a trustee of its UK branch. The second is Speech and Language UK, with which I have an association and for which I worked, many years ago, when it was called I CAN. I was delighted when the education team, when in opposition said—I quote our manifesto:

“Developing early communication skills is another key foundation for life, with serious knock-on consequences when development is delayed. Labour will fund evidence-based early-language interventions in primary schools, so that every child can find their voice”.


I would also like to thank the Parent-Infant Foundation, which has produced excellent work for this debate.

Roots of Empathy is a leader in the empathy movement in Canada, which I think has a certain irony, given what the United States leadership has had to say about Canada recently and the fact that that Government seem to find empathy something which is to be disparaged rather than celebrated. It is about developing empathy and emotional literacy in children. The mission is to build caring, peaceful, civil societies through the development of empathy in children and adults. The vision is to change the world, child by child.

The Roots of Empathy programme was created in 1996 by educator and acclaimed social entrepreneur Mary Gordon to break intergenerational cycles of violence and poor parenting. We have Roots of Empathy in some of our schools here in the UK; the programme is in Wales, south London and Scotland. I urge the Minister to visit these schools, with her colleagues, and see how these programmes work.

As the programme has been running since 1996, the scientific evidence about the effects of encouraging empathy among our youngest children shows that it bears fruit as they get older, particularly for boys. I urge the Government to look at Roots of Empathy as something which is certainly in line with our values and certainly delivers. I am very happy to help facilitate visits to the classrooms where this happens.

The timing of interventions, particularly for young children, has to be included in any strategy. High-quality learning in early education and childcare is a crucial opportunity to transform life chances. If it is too late, it is unaffordable and unavailable. The funding of early language interventions in the Labour Party manifesto specified only primary schools, but it is recognised that the commitment to improving communication skills has to be earlier than primary schools. It has to be part of early years, because too many children arrive at primary school not ready to learn and without the speaking skills that they need to be able to learn.

Language at two years old predicts reading, maths and writing when children start school. By the end of the reception year, approximately 20% of children in England are not at the expected level of learning for communication and language and 30% are not at the expected level for literacy. This is a major challenge. That is why I support this intervention and a discussion about early years, what our strategy is and how it will work.

I was a great fan and supporter of Sure Start—of course I was. We are introducing this amendment to ensure that the vital process for early intervention, relational support and family support is not left to chance or short-term policy cycles, as I am afraid it has been in the past. As many noble Lords across the Committee have said, it is based on experience. It took 10 years to quantify the benefits that resulted from the Sure Start programme, by which time its infrastructure had largely been dismantled. So what we need now is a strategy that will outlive all Governments and serve all our children.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I will briefly speak to my amendment in this group and leave the summing up to my noble friend. I use the term “off-rolling” in this. It may be out of date and unfair, but the fact of the matter is that there has been an increase in the number of children not in school over recent years. A Commons report on the issue came out in 2020, but it has been exacerbated by the Covid situation. It is about time we had a real, in-depth dive into why more and more pupils are not within the mainstream system.

There has been some suggestion that the academy system wanting to get rid of bad pupils is to blame or that the greater emphasis on special educational needs has led to the thought that people might be more trouble for the school. I would like to know. I know that some of the academies—the better ones—have fought against this. I remember the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, getting extremely annoyed about the idea of that practice in a Committee stage debate on another Bill. If there are academies that are avoiding it or some that are falling to this, we should know. If academies are here to stay, under this Bill, whether we like it or not, because we have accepted them, can we find out whether there is a specific problem there or if it is something else? The increased number of people not in school is a problem that we have referred to throughout Committee, and it is about time we had a decent and in-depth look at it.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I will make very few remarks. I am an active humanist and I would like to identify my support for the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, and my noble friend Lord Watson. I hope that the Government will take heed of what these rather modest amendments propose. If there is something that needs to be discussed, I ask that my noble friend the Minister calls together those of us who are interested and committed to this to talk about it.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to a number of these amendments and I want to do it from my own experience. First, I will start with the cap on faith. If your Lordships remember, this was originally introduced by the Tony Blair Government for any new schools. I thought at the time, “How sensible is that? If we live, as we do, in a multifaith, multicultural society, isn’t a good thing that children mix with children of different faiths?” Speaking on day nine in Committee, I referenced the fact that my daughter went to a Jewish school. It was wonderful for her to be able to have Jewish, Hindu, Christian and Muslim friends, because that was the ethos of that Jewish school. If you just put the Catholics there, the Anglicans there, the Jews there and the Muslims there, you divide people. I do not want a divided society. I want children to celebrate their faith and their culture, and the best place to do that is in school when they are learning and growing up. You only have to remember what happened in education in Northern Ireland.

Secondly, I want to talk about faith schools in terms of admissions. I am speaking to Amendment 456 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, on the 50% cap, and I cannot add anything further to his excellent contribution, so I turn to my noble friend Lady Burt’s Amendment 457. Faith schools do a fantastic job—I must stop using the word “fantastic”. They do a very good educational job. I look again at my own city, where the four Anglican schools are oversubscribed and are very popular. The way children are admitted raises real questions in my mind. Suddenly, the local Anglican churches, which are in the neighbourhood of that school, fill up their congregations, because when people apply to the school, they have to have a reference from the vicar.

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[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, the amendments in this first group cover admissions and related issues in relation to these clauses. This package of measures will help to ensure that decisions on place planning and admissions support the needs of communities and families while also supporting local authorities to deliver their statutory functions.

I turn first to Amendment 449 from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and Amendment 457 from the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, which seek to ensure that admissions information is available to all parents. They would require the Secretary of State to publish information about schools admissions arrangements, including any faith-based arrangements. I hope to provide some reassurance to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. Admissions authorities are already required by the statutory school admissions code to publish their admissions arrangements on their school’s website, including the proportion of places that will be prioritised for pupils of faith, and ensure that parents can easily understand how admissions arrangements will be satisfied.

Admissions authorities must also provide information to enable local authorities to publish an annual admissions prospectus for parents. The code requires local authorities to publish this information for all schools via a composite prospectus. We believe that the existing approach is proportionate, reflects the diversity of admission arrangements and local circumstances and is not overly burdensome on schools or local authorities, while enabling parents to access the information they need about their local schools.

Amendment 455, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, seeks to insert a new clause to require a review of rural schools’ admissions policies. The admissions system already contains mechanisms to ensure that admissions policies meet local needs, including the policies of rural schools. Admissions authorities must consult locally before making changes, and anyone who considers a school’s admissions policy to be unfair or unlawful can object to the Schools Adjudicator.

Furthermore, our school travel policy ensures that no child is prevented from accessing education by a lack of transport. Local authorities must arrange free travel for children attending their nearest suitable school who could not walk there because of the distance or their special educational needs, disability or mobility problems, or due to route safety. The Government have also set out a plan to deliver better bus services and drive opportunity to underserved regions.

The noble Baroness talked in particular about the issue of the rural services delivery grant. In relation to that, the Government are committed to tackling the issues that matter to rural communities. We are allocating funding through improved needs formulae in 2025-26 to target funding where it is needed the most, investing in the priority services that people rely on the most. Places with significant rural populations will receive on average an almost 6% increase in their core spending power this financial year—a real-terms increase—and no council will see a reduction.

The rural services delivery grant does not properly account for need. In fact, many predominantly rural councils receive nothing from it. That is clearly not right. The Government consulted on proposals to repurpose this funding in the usual way, in the provisional 2025-26 settlement, but the Government are nevertheless keen to hear from councils about how best to consider the impact of rurality on the cost of services as part of the longer-term consultation on local authority funding reform, which was published in June.

Amendment 456 in the name of my noble friend Lord Watson seeks to apply the 50% faith admissions cap to new state-funded schools designated as having a faith character. We greatly value the contribution that faith schools make to our schools system and support the ability of faith schools to set faith-based oversubscription criteria. This can support parents wishing to have their child educated in line with their religious beliefs; it is for the admissions authorities of individual schools to decide whether to adopt such arrangements.

Many faith schools are oversubscribed, which suggests that parents value and want these schools. We also understand that the ability of faith schools to prioritise children of faith when they are oversubscribed—and of course it is only at the point at which a school is oversubscribed that these admissions criteria would bite—is important and, at the risk of disappointing my noble friends and the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, we do not intend to change that approach at this time.

Removing the legal presumption that all new schools should be academies, which is what has brought about this issue, is intended to give local authorities the flexibility to make the best decisions to meet the needs of their communities. Decision-makers will carefully consider proposals from all groups and commission the right new schools to meet need and to ensure every child has the opportunity to achieve—

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I do not feel that my noble friend the Minister has answered the questions asked by my noble friend Lord Watson asked about why this is a change. I do not expect to make any progress right now, but I do think that, before Report, we will need to discuss it further.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I am certainly happy to write to my noble friends and perhaps facilitate the opportunity for them to meet the new Schools Minister to discuss this particular issue.

I was in the process of saying that this relates to the new provisions around opening schools. In doing that, decision-makers will carefully consider proposals from all groups and commission the right new schools to meet need and to ensure every child has the opportunity to achieve and to thrive.

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[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, this group of amendments is important because I think we have a crisis in SEND provision. I am particularly attracted to Amendment 498, on the SEND provision review, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Holmes of Richmond and Lord Watson of Invergowrie, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. Also, on Amendment 502V in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, on the need for more transparency and reporting on SEND funding in state-funded schools, that seems a key and obvious demand, because the SEND issue is having a huge financial impact on schools and education in general.

But for me, as well as that, the issue of SEND provision is important because it potentially shapes how young people see themselves, and in some instances they are being encouraged to develop a habit of dependence and pathologising their own everyday experiences. One in five children in the UK are now identified as having SEND needs, and the number of education, health and care plans for those with the most severe needs has increased by 83% from 2015-16 to 2023-24. The number of 11 to 15 year-olds receiving disability living allowance for which the main condition determining eligibility is a learning disability such as ADHD increased by 70% between 2018 and 2024. So something peculiar seems to be going on and, as part of explaining what is happening here, we need to acknowledge that there is a widening social definition of mental health and neurodiversity—an issue I will raise briefly again in the next group.

Informally, if you go into any school and talk to pupils of all ages, as I do—obviously, as teachers do and those who are familiar with young people—young people regularly describe themselves these days through the prism of a range of mental health acronyms or their particular divergence from the neurotypical norm. They use the language of medical textbooks and psychiatry with ease. Meanwhile, teachers too think in terms of these labels—I am sure that we are all watching “Educating Yorkshire” on Channel 4; it is great viewing—and, almost inevitably, if there is a behavioural issue, staff suggest testing the pupil for ADHD as both an explanation and a solution. So investigating what is going on here is essential, and that is why I am interested in the review.

In that context, I hope that the tablers of the amendment and the Minister get the opportunity to read—if they have not read it already—a new Policy Exchange report entitled Out of Control: Addressing the Rise in Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Disorders amongst Children and Young People. I do not always agree with Policy Exchange, but I found this report fascinating. One issue it identifies is a bug in the system of support. It argues that it is

“designed to meet the needs of a small number of specialised cases, rather than the sizeable”

numbers that it is now expected to support. Even more troublingly, it says:

“These systems of support can also incentivise diagnosis-seeking behaviour … which has squeezed support for those with the most severe needs”.


Those kinds of issues were touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Gove, in an earlier group.

So, to return to spending, spending on EHCPs for those with SEND has ballooned, but funding per head has fallen by nearly a third since 2015-16. So I hope that the tablers of the amendments and the Minister will consider the risks of overdiagnosis in relation to SEND but also how current support may inadvertently encourage an escalation in perceived need, rather than target the support where it is absolutely needed the most, as has been vividly described by some of the speakers on this group.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, in contrast to the previous speaker, I would say the following. I do not know how many noble Lords attended the rally held in Parliament Square yesterday by parents and children about the SEND review, on getting it right, or how many noble Lords attended the drop-in held in our committee room upstairs, which was full of joy and optimism, with lots of Members of Parliament from across the political spectrum—including our new Schools Minister, Georgia Gould—who called in to listen to parents and children. It gives me hope and optimism that, if those listening exercises are taking place as this review goes on, we will end up with something that is worth having and that has involved listening to the people who are at the sharp end of this.

I am actually encouraged by the fact that our new Minister in the Commons has been the leader of a council, has been the Local Government Minister and has hands-on experience of what it is like dealing with the SEND system. I say to my noble friend the Minister that I am encouraged that the Government are listening to parents and children with that direct experience, and that gives me hope that this review is going to produce the right outcome.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)]

My Lords, at this late hour, I sound a slight note of caution and concern over Amendments 465 and 471. I do not have any particular problem with Amendment 463, which is something all of us should be able to embrace, in terms of ensuring education around prevention of sexual violence and promoting respectful relationships.

Amendment 465 in many ways transposes the proposed Private Member’s legislation and tries to put it within this legislation. By removing the requirement for collective worship, what is put in its place seems to be quite vague and ill-defined in its nature. It talks about assemblies that have to promote

“spiritual, moral, social and cultural”

aspects. It strikes me that it almost replaces a religious assembly with what is, in effect, a humanist assembly. That is a conclusion which a lot of people will draw.

The vagueness of what is being proposed to, in effect, replace the collective worship will lead a lot of schools into trying to find other forms of lectures and lessons that they will try to put across within an assembly. There is no doubt that this will lead to a widespread and vast difference of interpretation. There is also no doubt that many of the subjects, while very merited, can be quite controversial. We would be naive if we did not believe that this would create a situation in a number of schools in which there were levels of friction, perhaps between parents and the school, or between governors and the school. There is a certain element of the hornet’s nest being stirred up.

The proposer of the amendment also then talked about choice. It is absolutely right at present that no child or family is compelled to attend religious or collective worship. The right to opt out is enshrined in legislation and, as such, clearly will remain, and I think everyone would accept that. However, the way the amendment before us today is drafted creates this alternative form of assembly, which is compulsory for everyone. It would mean that if a parent objected to a particular assembly, to a lesson, there is no right for them to withdraw their child because there is no provision directly to do that.

There is a danger of unintended consequences as a result of this. Mention was made on a number of occasions today of not wanting to go down the route of Northern Ireland education. Without going into the details, some of what has been said was a bit oversimplified and wrong. But leaving that aside, Members made the point that they see the best social mix of education where there is a wide range of faiths—where, indeed, there is a considerable level of mixing. Removing collective acts of religious worship will actually push some parents much more towards faith schools, feeling that perhaps the faith of their children is not being represented. That will create a situation that makes integration less likely, albeit perhaps in a relatively small fashion. So there is that question of unintended consequences.

I do not believe that Amendment 471 is necessary. The curriculum already at times reflects non-religious topics within RE. This, to some extent, supercharges the non-religious issues within RE. Whether we have faith or not, I think everyone in this House probably, in different ways, holds non-religious beliefs. Unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell is gone. I share with him one unfortunate trait, in that I am a lifelong Manchester United supporter. I have a belief that within the next few years, Manchester United will win the Premiership again. Perhaps that is not a non-religious belief, because the amount of faith required to hold that belief is such that it perhaps tips over into being much more a matter of faith over hope and experience.

Nevertheless, we have seen that the definition is tied to the provisions of a particular part of the ECHR. We know that, as a result of that clause, there has been quite a lot of case law, not just here but throughout Europe, in relation to the definition of non-religious beliefs. A very wide range of topics has come into play and been defined in case law. Again, all those are perfectly legitimate topics. However, it raises the prospect of the non-religious belief side overwhelming the religious side of RE. I may be quite literalist in my view, but I think religious education should principally be about religion, and this clearly dilutes that to an unacceptable extent.

In conclusion, I appreciate, given many of the figures that have been quoted, that we are becoming an increasingly secular society, so I suppose what I am saying may be regarded as a bit unfashionable. But I believe that, in an age when perhaps there are a lot of unnecessary divisions within this country, a lot of our laws and collective values ultimately rely on Judeo-Christian values and traditions. We should not abandon those in a school setting, on a casual basis without specific consultation. These amendments take us too far in that direction.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, the naivety that the noble Lord referred to is actually his own naivety. Because of the area in which it is, the primary school that I attended in Manningham—which is part of my title—in Bradford now has a population that is over 70% Muslim. The idea that, by law, that school has to have Christian services and assemblies is naive and possibly offensive to the parents of those children. Our society needs to recognise that it is not fair to impose these things upon those parents and children.