Children with Allergies: School Safeguarding

Sarah Edwards Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of safeguarding children with allergies at school.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. First, I would like to declare that I am an officer for the all-party parliamentary group on allergy. To be clear, I am not the first person to host a Westminster Hall debate or an Adjournment debate on the topic; Members who have been in this place for a much longer time than me, most notably the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) have long called for improvements to allergy safety in schools, and I pay tribute to them.

Many of us have experience of allergies: one in three people in the UK now live with allergic disease. In fact, this afternoon my speech will be tempered by the fact that my own allergies have taken control this morning, so I apologise for the slightly laboured delivery. I have my own personal experience, too; my son suffered a severe allergic reaction to an over-the-counter medication. The terrifying car journey to the hospital, watching his whole body turn blotchy red and not knowing what was wrong, is a fear that no parent should have to endure. The months that followed were filled with anxiety about what else he might be allergic to, and constant worry about receiving a call from nursery with bad news.

I have experienced this on a small scale, compared with many parents who live with the fear every day. I will not be commenting on individual cases, for legal reasons and because of ongoing legal proceedings, but I want to make clear that any child who has been lost in our schools because of an allergic reaction is one too many. Hospital admissions for allergic reactions have risen by over 160% in the past 20 years, and 50% of children are now affected by at least one allergic condition. Every year, approximately 43,000 new cases of child allergy require care. The number of children diagnosed with allergic rhinitis and eczema has tripled in 30 years, with 3.9 million currently affected. Studies show now that incidents of food allergies in England nearly doubled between 2008 and 2018, with a prevalence of 4% among pre-school children.

Children spend at least 20% of their waking hours in school, and food allergies affect around two children in every classroom. It should come as no surprise that 18% of food allergy reactions and 25% of first-time anaphylactic reactions occur in the school environment. Given the amount of time spent at school and the proportion of children affected, it is vital that children and their parents feel that school is a safe place and prepared to deal with allergic reactions, but sadly that is often not the case.

[Sarah Edwards (Tamworth) (Lab)]

Parents want to know that their children can go to school safely, but they might equally have a reaction when they are not at school; 70% of parents of children with allergies report that they have experienced an absence because of an allergy. Does my hon. Friend agree that the vast number of difficulties faced by children with allergies and their parents merits the creation of a cross-departmental allergy tsar who could advise the Government on all the ways that allergies affect the sufferer?

[Chris Bloore]

My hon. Friend is a little ahead of the rest of my speech, but I completely agree, and I will give reasons for that. An allergy tsar who can cross Departments —Health, Education and others—could have a huge impact on how we deal with children with allergies.