World Book Day

Liam Conlon Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. I declare an interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for schools, learning and assessment, and the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on social mobility. This debate was opened so passionately by my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), Chair of the Education Committee, who rightly reminds us of the role of parents in World Book Day, scurrying around and supporting their young people to dress up in fantastic costumes. One of my happiest memories of World Book Day is of when I was a teacher and put together a fantastic costume of the Cyclops from Homer’s “Odyssey”—I do not think the pictures are still online, so do not try to look for them.

Reading is one of life’s joys. It is a bridge to new worlds, to new opportunities and to new ideas. One of my proudest and happiest moments so far as Bracknell’s MP was having the honour to open a new school library at Fox Hill primary in my constituency. Seeing the excitement from so many young readers who could not wait to make use of the new renovated space warmed my heart. So too did visiting Uplands school in Sandhurst alongside the Education Secretary last year, and speaking to students there about the books they were reading and why they had chosen them.

I take this opportunity to officially wish everyone here, in Bracknell Forest and across the country a happy World Book Day, and a happy National Year of Reading. The Government are marking the event with a commitment to ensure that every primary school in England has a library by the end of this Parliament.

Reading has proven benefits for attainment. It has been linked to stronger writing skills, improved brain development and even higher future earnings, but it is not just academically that it benefits young people. It also has a demonstrable impact on wellbeing, including on confidence, empathy and emotional intelligence. Given the challenges facing young people in our modern world, these are the skills we need to help them develop.

As the Chair of the Education Committee said, we are conducting an inquiry into reading for pleasure. We have heard evidence about the wide range of benefits of reading for young people, and that reading for pleasure—reading what we want to read, because we want to read it—has particular advantages. We have also heard alarming evidence that there has been a 36% decrease in the number of children between eight and 18 who are reading for pleasure since 2005. Only a third of children are now picking up a book and enjoying doing so. We are seeing that decline in two particular groups—those with special educational needs and boys.

There are obvious barriers to reading for many SEND learners, particularly those with dyslexia, but that does not mean that they should not be afforded the same opportunities as their classmates to access the benefits and joys of books, or that they do not stand to benefit from reading just as much as their peers. There are many ways to access the world of reading, from traditional physical books to audiobooks, graphic novels, newspapers and e-readers, and it is not just format where inclusion matters. What international evidence exists suggests that the systemic use of age-appropriate, culturally inclusive children’s literature, coupled with an engaging reading experience, can help build positive reading habits and enhance comprehension for SEND learners. For that reason, it is so important that we support and empower schools to create inclusive cultures around reading.

The British Dyslexia Association, a fantastic organisation that just so happens to be based in my constituency, has stressed that there are concrete measures that schools can take and Government can promote that would make a real difference. Those include funding widely stocked and accessible school libraries, providing training and technology to support staff, and early intervention to identify reading difficulties as soon as possible.

According to the National Literacy Trust, reading rates are lower for boys than for girls at every age, and fewer than one in 10 boys aged 14 to 16 read for daily pleasure. That is an important point. Reading is important for attainment but, as I have said, it is already a joy, and it should be encouraged not purely for academic purposes but simply for fun. It is especially interesting that the NTL’s research shows that reading for pleasure dips for both girls and boys in early adolescence, but recovers for girls while remaining persistently low for boys. That drives the widening gender gap on reading for pleasure in the teenage years, so why do young men not pick up books again while their female classmates do? We do not have all the answers to that, but we need to find them.

[Liam Conlon (Beckenham and Penge) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend mentions that reading is so important for children’s development and enjoyment. None of that is possible without the work of incredible children’s authors. Beckenham and Penge was home to Enid Blyton, with over 700 books including the Famous Five series, and Walter de la Mare, with his incredible series of children’s ghost stories. Today, we are home to some fantastic children’s authors, including Penny Chrimes and Peter Bently. Will my hon. Friend join me in thanking every children’s author, past and present, for their incredible contributions?

[Peter Swallow]

Absolutely. As we heard, the range of children’s books is growing. It can be slightly reductive to suggest that a single type of book appeals to a single kind of child, so we need to see a broad range of books. We need non-fiction as well as fiction, because lots of young people love to get into reading by picking up a non-fiction book. Whatever we can do, with the help of children’s authors, to encourage young people to find the thing that gets them reading and gets them hooked so that they carry on reading, including a broader range of works, is important.

This is a world where boys and young men are facing unique pressures. They are increasingly vulnerable to turning away from the world and towards the misogyny and hatred they too often encounter online. Hon. Members in the Chamber may have heard me speak many times about the importance of skills in our education system, but it strikes me that this debate concerns the most essential skill of all, which goes to the heart of how we equip our boys to become healthy and happy young men in today’s world—not reading per se, as important as that is, but empathy. Ultimately, whatever the genre or type of book, reading is about seeing the world from a new perspective and a point of view that is different from our own. That is why it speaks to our common humanity.

As we come together as a nation this year to celebrate our shared love of reading and our mutual responsibility to foster that in the younger generation, we must ensure that that effort is inclusive and inspiring. That is perhaps the biggest challenge, but it also holds the greatest rewards. If we can take reading for pleasure as our starting point, not our ending point, everything else will follow.

I will finish by sharing the book that I am reading at the moment, which is “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” by Olga Tokarczuk. I am reading it with my book club. I thought I would finish with that, purely to point out that no one is ever too old or too young to pick up a good book.